MMOBay purchased a paid review, and since I haven’t done review ads for some it’s about time we head for “commercial break”. (There’s some good stuff also for those who don’t care about the ad side of this post).

Site layout
I’d prefer a ‘warmer’ style for a MMO store. While MMOBay is clean, it has this bit ‘cold’ gray style, and it has quite a lot of content. On the good side, it’s good that they let players upload images. That’s a plus. No broken links and pages loaded fast so on the technology side things look good. Overall impression is fine: even the ads didn’t bother me on their site.

I wonder how long they can keep selling MMO accounts?
The first impression that MMOBay gave me was that there’s loads of games supported. You can buy and sell accounts for different games (World of Warcraft being the most popular). For example, there I saw somebody selling ’sexy priest’ for $500.

My initial thoughts were:

• I wonder how long they are going to keep selling these accounts? (since many games says it is against the game rules to sell stuff)
• Why people (and who!) buy these? ($500 bucks for some virtual guy? Where’s the fun of beating the game? Maybe I’m too old or something)
• Why aren’t developers getting into this area of business? (Well, some are)

MMOBay keeps selling this stuff
One thing is sure: MMOBay keeps selling (auctioning) these goodies. Their news item says that today they’ve made their 100,000th auction (don’t know if that’s true, but not saying it wouldn’t be). I think they are having a nice business there (can’t blame for that): they sell (help selling) stuff people want to buy.

Thing worth learning from MMOBay: free credits
Free is good, and MMOBay uses a nice tactic to get people to sign-up: they give free credits. This same method is used by many other sites (such as gambling sites, and very many different stores) where the user gets free credits when he signs up. It’s a good marketing tactic for getting people to sign-up and try your products.

So why aren’t developers doing this?
MMOBay keeps selling accounts, and legally it’s fine - as long as they don’t scam people’s money they won’t go to jail for selling those accounts. On the other hand, for example World of Warcraft rules say that you cannot buy an account (at least the last time I heard about this) which makes me think why they aren’t getting into this account selling bandwagon? Some games are doing this, and of course there’s balancing issues, but since it happens anyway why not change the rules?

World of Warcraft could have its own marketplace for selling stuff - and it could work according to the rules of the markets. Prices could go up, inflation could take place… and people could buy more credits with hard earned dollars. If balancing is an issue, then perhaps make areas where only “non-sold” accounts could be used? It could actually get by getting sites like MMOBay to partner with them. If people want to buy something, why not sell it to them?

In this sense I don’t blame MMOBay (nor other similar sites) for selling/auctioning accounts. If it’s a good business and there’s clearly a demand, then it starts to feel more like serving the customer. There’s already systems in games that if you buy an account, your reputation might be gone - and you’d never get to do campaigns with others. So, the system for stopping selling is formed by the community.

Why are they pretending to be something they aren’t?
It says in their site footer that “MMOBay.net is the #1 MMORPG auction site to buy warcraft accounts”. From what I’ve learned about marketing I’d say this is a bad idea. The more sites I see having “the world’s greatest whatnot” I immediately think they are lying. I suppose if when your company is big as Microsoft you could perhaps sometimes say that, but otherwise it feels just sad.

In my brain it goes like this: if they are lying about small things, then are they lying about other things - and if they are lying, can I trust my money on them?

Why say something like this if it clearly isn’t true? In my eyes, the site value goes downwards (especially since every other MMO seller is saying the same thing - somebody must be lying there).

So, is it secure?
I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. The only thing they say in MMOBay about page that “MMObay.net is the #1 auction site for virtual gaming items, including all of today’s top MMORPGs. We offer a quick and safe way for users to buy and sell their items.” I suppose if you know them personally and have traded items there earlier it can be fine, but since there’s no company info, no business ID, no company address or any person names, it’s very hard to think it would be reliable place to buy stuff.

I’d recommend them to give information about who is operating the site. That would help make it more reliable in the eyes of the potential customer.

Another point to concern would be to explain how the site is trustful, and how the transactions are processed. For a somebody who hasn’t bought accounts earlier it might be quite difficult to know how the site operates.

Sexy priest
Almost forgot this one, so here you go.

The priest is in the middle of the picture.

Yes, he is in sale for $500. Poor fellow.

Bottom line
I’ve said it before and I say it again: This is a paid review ad and I recommend everybody to be careful when buying or selling accounts online. It can be against the game rules and might lead into banning your account - or even losing your money. I’m doing a review here, and expect you to use your own brain for what it comes to using their site. Yeh, I know you already knew that, but just wanted to make sure we both are on the same line here.

For those who want more information about buying game goodies, check out: MMOBay.net

That’s it folks.

The default editor uses Control+Arrow keyboard shortcuts in a really different way than one might expect. When you are editing some text and you press Control+Right Arrow in your keyboard, you’d expect that your cursor moves to the end of the next word. Instead of moving your cursor, BlitzMax IDE opens the next tabbed file there is. It didn’t take me more than 10-20 minutes to get annoyed about this “feature”.

I wonder why they wanted to torture me like this. What bad have I ever done to them? I can bear with all the bugs and delays, but ruining my IDE can’t be forgiven. (Well, luckily you can use other IDEs so you aren’t stuck with the default one - and besides, as far as I know, it might be even possible to change those keyboard shortcuts somehow.)

Funny how such a small thing can have such a big meaning. I suppose the lesson here is that one should follow certain existing & well-working guidelines when doing user interfaces.

On the good side: I really enjoy all the stuff that BlitzMax has - with my long Blitz3D background, moving into BMax looks so far really, really simple. And all the juicy Object Oriented stuff is there! Maybe I’ll forgive this tiny UI glitch after all…

I’m not going to say how to write your resume, but here’s some tips on getting a job.

Show rather than tell
I’ve been involved in recruiting processes and one thing that really catches my eye are “portfolios”. If you can show that you’ve finished games, involved in projects or done something relevant in gaming (like writing a programming blog) then show that to others. If you have done a game, show that (or a short video for example) and tell how you were involved in that project.

See how other producers have got their jobs
We had a lengthy interview about breaking in the industry and if you haven’t checked that (at least 3 times) it’s about time to do so. From that blog entry you’ll get pretty much all the crucial information about getting a job.

Ask for the job
One guy once emailed me how he got inspired about game production after reading this blog, and he said that this gave him the spark to ask for a job. Luckily, he got a job as an associate producer and enjoys every moment. Nobody is going to knock your door and offer you a job unless you actually do something.

Start a blog and write until your fingers bleed until you get a job offer
That’s how I did it (except that I actually continued writing since I never accepted a job…). I knew about game production much less 3 years ago than I know today, but that didn’t stop me from starting. I simply started writing (since I enjoy doing this), learnt helluva lot and slowly things started to move forward and lots of good stuff happened.

Word of warning though: no point doing anything that isn’t fun. If you don’t like writing about your project (and related stuff), then writing a blog does no good. Instead, you could start doing games on monthly basis (like Petri at Kloonigames whose got loads of success thanks at least partly to his experiments) and write blog entries about those games.

The key, I think, is to simply start taking steps towards your goal of getting a job. And keep doing that until you get your producer job.

#1 - In shop one, the stapler page could not be found
The first ad directed me to a front page of some site. There I clicked “products” just to get error “page not found”. I didn’t waste any more seconds on that shop. If they want me to buy stuff from their site, they should make sure their site is accessible.

End of attempt number one.

#2 - In shop two, no staplers here
In the other shop, I couldn’t find staplers. Why advertise staplers if you don’t have them?

If it’s fun to spend money advertising something you don’t have, why not also make a bonfire using dollar bills?

#3 - Third shop, horrible shipping costs
The third shop was more promising. I found a stapler that was said to cost 11 euros. There was technical information about the stapler and I was pleased. I was wondering why they didn’t mention shipping costs anywhere, but since the site was located in Finland (where I live) I thought it wouldn’t be many euros anyway.

So, I took some time and wrote lengthy details (shipping address etc.) and was finally one click away from the purchase. There they said that shipping costs are like 20 euros (or something like that) which made me both laugh and cry at the same time.

Hiding costs is something, but if the shipping cost is like 20 euros then why not simply put that shipping cost in some place where I can see it easily. Would save everybody’s time.

The hunt for the stapler continues.

My personal opinion is that even though Microsoft can pour loads and loads of money into this battle field, it will take them something around 5 years before we’ll see a solution that really works. Microsoft already has pretty good stuff on Xbox Live (not to mention XNA Creator which is also improving), and they have the resources to make this work, but it takes time. Steam wasn’t an overnight success.

The bad news (for Microsoft) is that Valve’s Steam is a solid brand, the place where gamers are used to go to. I predict Microsoft to mess up things first with bad digital rights management (which takes about 1-2 years), then they spend couple of years in heavy marketing and finally after total of about 5 years they have built a decent system… meanwhile Valve has gone steps forward. Tough place for Microsoft.

Perhaps they could simply try buy Valve…

#7 - dispatch
The best of the worst is ‘dispatch’. Sometimes it might have a real meaning, but unfortunately you get to see this term used badly in code (where you ‘dispatch’ whatever to wherever). Dispatch can be bit meaningless, but I’ll admit sometimes it might do fine.

#6 - do
Whenever I see a function named “doUpdateSomething” (instead of just “updateSomething”) or “doCompression” (instead of “compress”) I grin.

In a bad way.

#5 - resolve
Another “generic” term for something. Instead of “setConnectionBetweenThingOneAndStuffTwo” some programmers say “resolveConnection”. Looks perhaps cool, but name is meaningless.

Sigh.

#4 - handle
Similar to ‘resolve’ (or to ‘do’). Generic, meaningless word.

#3 - manage
When I see this used in “manageArrays” or something similar it hurts my stomach.

#2 - perform
Another horrible term. Thank god you don’t see this often, but even seeing it once is too much. Why say “performCompression” when you can simply say “compress”?

#1 - populate
The most horrible and worst function name ever.

If class has member function ‘populate’ whadda heck do you expect it to do? From the dictionary you can see that ‘populate’ is defined as follows: ‘To supply with inhabitants, as by colonization; people’

Are you supplying your classes with inhabitants?

P.S. These of courses are final truths and should be accepted without questioning, but since some people refuse to do that then you can alternatively stick to using some of this stuff but also think if you currently code using some generic verbs that have very little meaning.

Forgotten Lands: First Colony is a neat “little” strategy game that’s just been published. I haven’t tested nor played many casual strategy games, but a quick glance in them reveals that they all have something in common: they somehow resemble hardcore strategy games (such as Civilization or Age of Empires or Settlers), but overall they are made simpler and easier to approach.

This doesn’t mean that these games would be worse or “less strategic”. Even though casual strategy games might be in the light-weight series, they can provide fun for hours. In many casual strategy games the graphics are well done (at least most of the games I’ve tested - although Forgotten Lands might not be the best example here), the games feel polished, and they often provide helpful tutorials and tell user step-by-step what to do.

And the fact that you can get this game for $6,99 (as a Big Fish Games club member) makes it pretty sweet deal.

Try Forgotten Lands: First Colony. It gives a pretty good idea how casual game developers are turning strategy genre into casual one.

I’ve joined casual game group (13 members) and Indie games group (total of 21 members at the time of writing). Together the groups have lent several hundreds of dollars (including my own small lend to mister in Togo, Africa).

I don’t know if Kiva.org is reliable or not, but at least brief search in Google gave me positive feedback about kiva and didn’t see any negative feedback. I leave it for everybody to think on themselves, but if you can think of lending some bucks to developing countries, then it might be worth checking out Kiva.org. And if you join, remember to join the casual & indie game groups there too.

I want to start my own company and make games. And there is the problem: I am using all my free time to learn about everything, I have lots of interests. And I can see, that making games is hard as hell :) I need graphic person (I cant find any around here) and I need people that would work on it as on their dream (I cant find anyone else but me).
So I am stuck with dream, with my will to invest everything in it, and with lack of people. I dont know what to do.

I’ll try to answer these questions. For the first challenge (having lots of interests), there is pretty much only one solution:

If you have too many interests, you need to drop something away.
I’m a sucker for doing everything and anything. I’m curious about how different stuff works. I have many interests, I watch all kinds of television shows and movies (ranging from Dr. Phil to Jurassic Park to Saw movies to Terence Hill movies to Gandhi documents to Jackie Chan cartoons to whatnot). I like to read quite a lot (anything from fiction books to all kinds of programming, business, marketing, project management etc. literacy). I have interest for pen & paper RPGs, I like playing consoles, PC, and so on. I jog and exercise regularly. The list goes on (and certainly doesn’t include all my activities and interests).

I suppose this is quite common for us people: we have many different interests. And at some point we gotta do a bit of prioritizing here. We gotta choose what we really want to do.

Eliminate or reduce the non-important.
That’s how I’ve done it. I realized that if I want to make games, it means that I will need to drop something away. Since reading is still much of my interest, and supports learning new stuff I’ve kept that on top of my interest list (in reality I simply just like reading, so that’s the real reason. My brain tries to give me a logical reason for why I read, even though the real reason is mainly emotional). Anyway, I’ve kept reading in my list. I’ve dropped the amount of time I spend watching television and movies (I still do that too). For example, I’ve dropped the time I spend playing games (recently I’ve played more than “normally”). These give me extra hours. Since physical exercises are good for health (and support not only game development but also life in general) I’ve kept those too.

Bottom line is: something must go. I’ve always suggested people considering if they could do less work (like for every 3 weeks, take 1 week off from work and develop your game that week). I suggest that you don’t try to “wear too many developer hats” (to some extent). If you are good at programming, I think it might not be very useful try to become an artist too. Instead, program a game using no art (or use content packs) and you can attract artists in your project if it’s fun to play (but lacks art). If you have a demo done, you have more chances convincing other people’s that you can finish a game.

Become more productive
An additional way to get more stuff done is to become more productive. I’ve written a lengthy blog post that has list of 100 tips to be more productive. That could be worth checking out.

What’s relevant knowledge
You also mentioned that you have quite a lot of experience in programming, and say that “making games is hard as hell”. In reality, making games can be quite simple. If I managed to write a piece of game using C64, I’m sure you can write a game. Perhaps you might be lacking the right tools. There’s loads of different game engines that can help you get moving. Engines like Leadwerks, Blitz 3D/Max/Basic, Game Maker, Torque Engines and more can be found via DevMaster.net

What if you lack people?
The simple truth is: nobody is going to create game for you. Idea is… merely an idea. Rest of the stuff (bringing that idea into reality) is the “hard” part. Techdojo wrote such an excellent forum thread about this subject, so I recommend you take a look at it: I’ve got this idea for a video game - what do I do next…

In addition, I recommend reading this blog entry: How to create your first game. It should give some tips as well.

And the company part…
Just set it up. Call some people and set the company up. Hardest part is not the paperwork, it’s the step making the call. Just do it.

Good luck and don’t give up.

After I clicked the embedded video, I got to the video’s homepage and noticed control panel for “owner” (notice: you can only see this if you are the author of the video - in other words: have uploaded the video in your youtube account).

There I saw the button “insight”:

I moved on and started checking what other stuff could be found behind the “Insight”. There was some information about the demographics (for one of my zombie game videos): 83% male, 17% female have been watching the video. Most of them are within 18 to 34 years, but there’s also quite many 13-17 years old (20+%) and also 35 to 54 years old (25%).

There was also other information such as discovery (which sounds how people found the video: embedded on a site, external links, through youtube’s “relevant videos” link etc.), popularity, hot spots and views. You can also see from which countries people have watched the video.

I found this to be pretty nice addition for tracking information about who is watching your game videos.