Putting a Positive Face Forward

Between Phil Fish quitting Fez 2 (and possibly game development forever!) and the absolutely insane things being said to a developer for simply tweaking the way a gun works in a video game, there's been a lot of focus on what horrible, negative things are being said to people. What isn't being focused on, however, is how nearly every one of us does it (albeit to a much lesser extent).

I will be the first to admit that I'm pretty quick to post some negative things. I may mock a commercial or what someone says in a reality TV show, but until I really gave it some thought I put myself miles above the people who threaten lives. It's easy to forget, after all, that the people that make those commercials are real people too. I sit and talk about how scary it is to pull up the comments section of a game I've posted, yet won't hesitate to attack something done by a bigger company for the same reasons others will gladly insult game developers.

My goal is to become a positive presence, particularly online. I'm not saying I'll never complain about a bug or being sleepy in the morning, and I'll certainly offer constructive criticism or point out things that are wrong and go against what I believe in, but I will avoid picking on anyone else for any reason. After all, "ha ha, that commercial is so stupid" does no good; "I can't believe that commercial tried to sell a car by showing someone failing to kill himself in his car" isn't mean, just sharing something that's important to me. You know, like those kitty pictures or the Michael Scott quotes.

And here's the hard part of the post, folks: the part where I dare you to do the same! Come on, people, let's all use our powers for good!

Not Every Day Has to be Perfect!

This is something I go back and forth with in my own head, usually a few times a day, unless it's one of those super-fantastic days where I get on a roll and kick some major booty. I tell myself that I should get x amount of work done, and if I don't manage to do it, I suddenly feel like I'm gonna take 50 times longer than I should on a project... That if I was actually "at work" I would be working much harder... And so on.

But the reality is, I doubt any of us have ever had even one solid week at any job where we were 100% all day every day. Little breaks, slacking off, checking email or Facebook or whatever on a work computer, texting while working, making things last a little longer than they need to.. Who hasn't been there? So why, then, is it unfair to think that none of these things are going to happen when working from home? Where is the magic switch in one's brain that says, "Sure, since I'm working for myself, I won't slack off any more AND I'll put an extra 10-20 hours of work in per week, no problem! And I'm gonna LOVE IT!"

That's not to say I don't love what I do - I really do! The freedom to work on whatever project I want, to get my message to hundreds of thousands of people, to be able to do it from home sitting next to my fiancee all day... Who wouldn't love that? I just need to remind myself that I am the type of person who's better managed by encouragement and respect than through being battered for not getting something done... Including when I'm my own boss! Heck, imagine if you lived with your boss!

To Do Lists and KEEPING BUSY!!!

Well, it's been quite some time since I blogged, might as well give it another shot right? It just always seems to redundant to use a blog, write in my calendar what happened, update Facebook and send out newsletters... I mean, really, what's supposed to keep them all so different anyway?

So I guess I'll just use this as kind of a daily wrap-up report.

Today I worked my butt off at work (Mondays are my super-long days), and then came home and planned stuff out. I didn't even really DO anything as far as actual accomplishments in game development or even web development go. What I did was PLAN. Oh, and I sent out a new newsletter for the first time in two months, that was fun :)

Remember The Milk is my new superhero for productivity! I'm not looking forward to paying for pro to keep it synced to my android phone once the free trial is over, but either way it's free for computer use at least. I spent a good chunk of time today and yesterday planning out really what it is I've got to do and when to do it by. Here's what it looks like:

Weekly Planner

Tuesday Mar 29

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• (03.5): Go through all the pages on CG and The Critterverse, make sure everything is still correct. (Website Work)
• (04a): The Games Page Itself (Inbox)
• (04b): ASCIIvader (Inbox)
• Check email for subscribers to "Evil Newsletter" and add them to the "MMM Newsletter" list. Send new subscribers a welcome email and old subscribers a daily reminder to play! (Inbox, 8:30PM)
• Check email for new subscribers. Send them a thank you and the latest newsletter! (Inbox, 9:00PM)
• Check email for new contributors, email them to thank them, store their contribution and send them the newest newsletter. (Inbox, 9:30PM)

Wednesday Mar 30

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• (04e): Rubberman (Inbox)
• (04f): Springy Game (Inbox)
• Check email for subscribers to "Evil Newsletter" and add them to the "MMM Newsletter" list. Send new subscribers a welcome email and old subscribers a daily reminder to play! (Inbox, 8:30PM)
• Check email for new subscribers. Send them a thank you and the latest newsletter! (Inbox, 9:00PM)
• Check email for new contributors, email them to thank them, store their contribution and send them the newest newsletter. (Inbox, 9:30PM)

Thursday Mar 31

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• (04c): Candy Catastrophe (Inbox)
• (04d): Make a Story (Inbox)
• (04g): TruHangman (Inbox)
• (04h): TruWordHunt (Inbox)
• (04i): Word Detective (Inbox)
• (04j): Unhide the link to the page and announce that it's ready! (Inbox)
• Check email for subscribers to "Evil Newsletter" and add them to the "MMM Newsletter" list. Send new subscribers a welcome email and old subscribers a daily reminder to play! (Inbox, 8:30PM)
• Check email for new subscribers. Send them a thank you and the latest newsletter! (Inbox, 9:00PM)
• Check email for new contributors, email them to thank them, store their contribution and send them the newest newsletter. (Inbox, 9:30PM)

Friday Apr 1

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• (05a): Meet the Critter Images and Pages themselves (Inbox)
• (05b): Angel (Inbox)
• Check email for subscribers to "Evil Newsletter" and add them to the "MMM Newsletter" list. Send new subscribers a welcome email and old subscribers a daily reminder to play! (Inbox, 8:30PM)
• Check email for new subscribers. Send them a thank you and the latest newsletter! (Inbox, 9:00PM)
• Check email for new contributors, email them to thank them, store their contribution and send them the newest newsletter. (Inbox, 9:30PM)

Saturday Apr 2

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• Check email for subscribers to "Evil Newsletter" and add them to the "MMM Newsletter" list. Send new subscribers a welcome email and old subscribers a daily reminder to play! (Inbox, 8:30PM)
• Check email for new subscribers. Send them a thank you and the latest newsletter! (Inbox, 9:00PM)
• Check email for new contributors, email them to thank them, store their contribution and send them the newest newsletter. (Inbox, 9:30PM)

Sunday Apr 3

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• (05c): Professor Bumbleslotz (Inbox)
• (05d): Ellie (Inbox)
• (05e): The Announcer (Inbox)
• (05f): Rubberman (Inbox)
• (05g): Mrs. Bookworm (Inbox)
• (05h): Captain Candy (Inbox)
• (05i): Mrs. Beehive (Inbox)
• (05j): Dark Lord Critter (Inbox)
• (05k): Bullies (Inbox)
• (05l): Ghosts (Inbox)
• (05m): Minions (Inbox)
• (05n): Slick (Inbox)
• (05o): Spotty (Inbox)
• Check NG and Kong for new comments and reviews, etc. Thank people personally who comment nicely! Let them know about the newsletter and the page, etc (Inbox)
• Check email for subscribers to "Evil Newsletter" and add them to the "MMM Newsletter" list. Send new subscribers a welcome email and old subscribers a daily reminder to play! (Inbox, 8:30PM)
• Check email for new subscribers. Send them a thank you and the latest newsletter! (Inbox, 9:00PM)
• Check email for new contributors, email them to thank them, store their contribution and send them the newest newsletter. (Inbox, 9:30PM)

Pretty busy huh??? Yep, that's just til Sunday too, still a few days planned ahead of that as well. It's nice to see it all in list form, though, and it'll help a lot for encouragement (nothing helps encourage you more than feeling like you failed for having to press that "postpone" button or have tasks lurking in the background all day!!! These things are all, of course, in addition to a normal 50 hour job, so some days seem lighter than others to make up for the fact that I have less time at home those days...

Day of Rest

When I decided to really push myself this year on game development, I had forgotten just how much of a burden forcing yourself to do anything is. The more I forced it in the few hours of free time that I have, the more I disliked it. The more I disliked it, the slower at it I became. Angel (my fiancee) suggested that I take a few days off a week from it... And I originally didn't like it. I figured that'd mean even LESS time to work with it... But now that I'm giving one a shot, I realize it's actually VERY nice! A day off from it actually rejuvenates me on the idea of working on the games, makes me actually want to (which is a first in the last three or four days or so), and it lets me work on other things like figuring out fun holidays and just enjoying free time a little bit.

MDW Update and Daily Holidays for Game Development Challenges

So, I had always been a fan of how there are actually funky holidays pretty much every day of the year, but hadn't thought about making games based around them! There are enough challenges to keep me satisfied for the year, sure, but aside from those I have over 20 days with no true format or time constraints. What better way than to make games for holidays???

I was looking around for sites and found http://www.brownielocks.com. She's got a great collection of yearly, monthly, weekly and daily holidays, and it's all free, unlike the other major holiday site ($40/year, I think?) A quick look at their January listings has me already tossing around ideas for a bunch of them!

Also, a quick little update on Million Dollar Words: I am making a little demo version with 7 quizzes. Each quiz has 10 questions, and I have selected a few from multiple different individual versions I was going to do (there are a few from "Video Game Edition" and a few from the general version). I have 3 done, one almost done, one needs a few questions taken out and then 2 need some work. I would put the first version done by Sunday night with any luck :)

A Wall of Compliments

If you've ever looked at a youtube video that had a couple comments on it, or a game, or a movie, or anything else with any sort of review to it, you'll notice that basically everything ever made has insults. Search for your favorite song on youtube. Nearly every one of em has people going back and forth over the band being the best ever, or how they suck and [band x] is way better.

It's in our nature, especially with something creative we've made, to take the bad the hardest and hardly even notice the good. It's for this reason that I've decided to start my own list of all the compliments I've gotten about my games and save them together. So just know that if you send me something nice, I'll have it saved, and thanks :)

Motivation through Accountability

One of the biggest, if not THE biggest, challenges to all this self-"employed" development and promotion is staying motivated and inspired. Walmart had a $20 little briefcase styled bag thingy with a planner, binder and pad of paper inside, and it's helped me stay organized. One of the biggest thing lots of other developers do is track their little accomplishments daily. So instead of giving themselves a deadline of four months from now to finish a game, they'll give themselves weekly goals or even daily ones... Say for example, finishing a particular screen, creating x amount of content, even something as small as fixing one single bug... That way you can look back and see all these little things you've accomplished.

So what I do now is track several different things. As of now the way it works is:

Goals I set for myself are in yellow.

Game development and promotion are blue. Fixed x bug, got another newsletter subscriber, etc. Heck, even posting here in this blog counts as one :)

Weight loss is displayed with pink highlighter and I put down my current weight once a week (if not more, depending on weigh-ins, but at least on Sundays).

Then on the side of everything, I put the month's goals. These are broken down into game development, promotion and weight loss. At least as of now, this is how they work:

- Game Development has whichever games I want to reach whatever state. I will set up to 3 different dates, although at first I simply put the first goal attempt. If I succeed, I write a little 1 next to the goal. If not, I set a 2nd date for it and if I hit that I write a 2, same for 3rd if necessary.

- Promotion uses an amount of money goal for MochiAds for the month, a number of Personal Points (which are attained through daily activities that I track) and a number of newsletter members by the end of the month.

- Weight Loss is done through Fitness Personal Points (also attained through tracked daily activities) and an end of the month weight loss goal.

At the end of the month, depending on how well I've done at certain things, each goal gets a 1, 2 or 3 (it works a lot like golf for scoring, lower is better). I tally up how many 1s, 2s and 3s (as well as 0s, aka Epic Fails) at the end of the month and see how well the month went!

Tomorrow I'll post what this month's goals are, to give a better example of exactly how it works. This is my first month trying this, so we'll see how it goes!