Journal: Austin GDC, Majesco Betrayal, and Moving to Korea

September 13, 2003, 3:06 AM
Radisson, Austin, Texas
Austin Game Development Conference Over

Today

Austin Game Developers conf: EA guy on networking, Mike Steel on customer service. Spent the night with Mark Terrano, Mike Steel, Patricia Steele, a UI designer named Nicole, a lady named Bridget. Played Dragons across the pond.

To-Do

Need to get the camera fixed and take more pictures. Need to set up a website for pictures and political essays and book recommendations. Need to take many more pictures of Kyle. Must work against a fixed schedule. Forgot meeting with Feargus. Must call and apologize. Forgot to call back EA on CnC Generals. So overloaded that I do not want to log in and check my email. Keep forgetting Ethernet cable.

Must set up an actual schedule now: Korea, exercise, budget, bizdev, follow-up communication with everyone ASAP, Kyle, Kai-wen and family. Send Majesco a post-mortem asking for more time and showing them what we are doing about it. Set up VPN to Taldren-Korea. Learn to use a Wiki.

Design Notes on the Way

DO NOT make a continuous map game — 2x the overall labor, not good.

Order of Priority:

1. Customer Service
2. Social Network supports
3. Gameplay Systems
4. Content

Gameplay must be much more RTS and fun to replay rather than be content based. Must look at A Tale in the Desert for an MMO done by 4 people! And that doesn't require combat.

Must follow-up on the proposal to do Ryl with iPaq and Steven. Retain the UI designer's services very, very early on to make a great UI theme for the whole game and for some of the more complex systems. Have Mark Terrano, Mike and Patricia and others give a free review of the game design. Pay Jason Robar to add and to critique.

Deeply integrate the mobile phone — get messages when your buddies are online, when your guild is doing well or poorly. As a leader player be able to set rally points/goals through the cell phone to direct your troops.

Think hard about group experience systems and other membership organizations. Incent players to find newbies and train them.

New profession tree: Adventurer → root class leads to basic professions → learn the UI and core gameplay. 5-8 Basic classes → 20-30 Advanced Classes. Add a name and/or rank at each level like: Bob → Bob Smith → Sir Bob Smith.

Prototype immediately the martial arts gameplay. Prototype immediately the guild-on-guild or strategic gameplay. Then build out from here.

Use a pushout PayPal system to reward good players, in-game rewards, merchandise rewards as well. ( /truetip )

"We must figure out how to get slowly boiling frogs to invite the other frogs into the water." — me

Display everything you possibly can to other players as you walk around — level up shimmers, are you rich? Are you powerful in combat? Whatever your character is best at, show an icon for 1, 2, 3.

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September 15, 2003, 9:50 PM
Back in Costa Mesa at the Taldren Offices

Things look grim with Majesco as they are no longer bugging us and they took back 4 of their Xbox development kits.

The game is coming along well and I hope we didn't make all of these changes too late. I have 10 days to go to produce my slides for the Korean talk and I am a bit nervous about it, but I should be able to pull it together.

Kyle has grown so much.

I still haven't done my time or money management system. I think I am afraid of being organized or something.

I am still not studying Korean on a steady basis.

Got the no from EA on CnC water expansion pack.

Looking forward to working in Korea. Zach and Sean said they do not want to go to Korea!

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September 28, 2003, Sunday

A lot has happened. On the 18th of September Zach, Sean and I met with Jesse Sutton at Majesco. After spending a crappy night in a crappy hotel near Penn Station in NYC. Jesse dropped his load of shit on us telling us he was dropping us and stealing Black9.

We are now pursuing what will become a lawsuit against Majesco.

This past week I wrote the proposal for Ryl online here in the NA market, and I also wrote my slides for the WCG 2003.

Also of interesting note is that Feza Sanigok and Jason Willig of VUG PPG surprised the heck out of me by announcing that they want to quit Vivendi and work for us to help create the international publishing company of Taldren!

Yesterday I started to formally get things ready to move to Korea by placing my telescope and astronomy books in Joe Pearce's care, my politics, outdoors, home improvement and some science books in Zach and Beth's hands.

We will be eBaying more stuff and having a big garage sale sometime in the weekend of Oct 25th or Oct 26th. I need to find out this week what I need to do to get proper visas for working in Korea.

I sleep much better now that I am not working with Majesco, but I still feel anxious that I do not accomplish enough on a given Sunday.

For some reason I cannot force myself to follow the Korean language lesson plans, a budget or a time budget.

I am finishing up reading Outlaws on the Marsh. An amazing novel.

I need to put my book up on the Taldren website, and I need to have my own site somewhere.

I do not listen to music enough.

Kyle is absolutely wonderful, today he crawled into my lap many times, especially to tell me stories. I need to teach him more stuff.