Area 161

Setting Up for the Long Haul

// April 20th, 2011 // No Comments » // Company Related, Funding, iDevBlogADay

Sometimes, You Gotta Take the Long View

While I was planning on doing a technical post on iOS dev or a progress update on our first game, things went a different way. Like I mentioned last time, our original plan has always been to build a lasting company. Initially, we thought we’d make some cutesy games for a few years, save up some cash and then try the waters of going full time on the biz. However, Smiley’s mind for game ideas and my yearning to push device integration to the limits has revealed our folly in that plan. Our next game is going to need more than just me developing it. It won’t need an army, but it will need someone (if not a couple of people) to help code the game we’re envisioning.

One thing I started to noodle on though was that this team would likely be remote, much like Smiley and I are. Some may live by Smiley since Bellevue Washington is a hotbed for game devs, but I doubt any will live in the sticks of Arizona near me. We would likely have to collaborate on the code. What would be nicer is if the remote team and I could do code jams, much like the game jams at 360iDev. The flights to do it would be expensive, but I could see no other way because the output of those jams are too good to pass up.

Build the Tool to Fund the Company

Normally, you get funding for your company, which helps you build the tools you need to run your company. However, Smiley and I don’t want to take funding on for Area 161. We have some pretty crazy ideas, NONE of which have been tested and proved in the marketplace. Therefore, investors would be meddling and we’d be getting frustrated, etc. We still do need funding though, to hire folks. What to do?

I told Smiley about a month ago, “I need to find us capital.” He said, “How you gonna do that?” I wasn’t sure and I was honest, “I don’t know. Something will come up though. I know it.” Two weeks ago, I started to get the feeling that there was an idea in me, but I had no clue what it was. I was reading an article and while reading it, an idea quickly flashed in my mind. It was a quick flash and I didn’t even realize it until after I read another paragraph or two. “Wait? Did I just have an idea?” I did a mental rewind and sure enough, I did.

Sometimes Ideas Appear Whole and Wrapped in a Package

I whipped out my notebook and starting sketching the idea. After a couple of minutes, it was complete. Version 1 of a tool that I’ll need in order to make Area 161 a viable company: Remote Jams. The actual sketches from the notebook are here. I looked at this tool and said, “Aside from Area 161, I’d use this tool in my dayjob if it was available right now.” During the weeks after I hatched the idea, I kept track of every time I wish I had the tool. It was pretty often. That cemented the idea in my mind and validated the need.

The tool basically simulates the “Hey can you look at this real quick?” moments that we have with onsite teams or live in-room game jams. It’ll be an open source project, with a premium edition to generate income. The goal of the income will be to provide funding for Area 161. The nice thing is that we can’t hire anyone until the tool is complete, but we wouldn’t be as productive until we had the tool anyways.

So is Area 161 dying?

No, far from it. We’ll keep trucking along on our darts game, which won’t require any outside help. We know it’ll be a great game, but we’re under no delusion that it’ll be a runaway success. It’s mainly aimed at kids (and those who are kids at heart) and requires AT LEAST two devices to play, even more to enjoy it to its fullest. However, once we launch it, we gotta start on our next game. It’s a business and a business must be continuous to be long lasting vs a flash in the pan.

Will this crazy notion work? We don’t know. Will I get so distracted with Remote Jams, that Area 161 will suffer? I certainly hope not. Plus, Smiley will be there to keep my butt in check. Is the risk worth it? To be able to build what we want, how we want with whomever we want, what do you think?

We’re still here and we want to grow!

// March 23rd, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Company Related, iDevBlogADay

A Lot has Gone On

Quite a bit of stuff has gone on since we’ve last met via #iDevBlogADay. I’ve stopped traveling every week to Area 161 HQ and am back home with my fam in Arizona. No, that doesn’t mean the company/biz has been dissolved. It just means that the work I was doing *outside* of Area 161 changed. While I’m bummed I don’t get to see Smiley on a weekly basis, we knew this was eventually coming. Our company is now 100% remote.

In addition to that, I’ve come to the realization that our lil business is not really going to be very little. We have plans, big huge plans that are gonna take some cash. While “Darts” is a cutesy fun lil game, the ones we have in the dev pipeline after it are huge in scope and premise. What’s the point of doing something if you don’t go big, right?

Going Big Means Money

Now, we originally had a 3 year game plan. Meaning we were completely okay with it taking us 3 years to get to the point where we were both full time on the biz. That’s when we figured we’d be making cutesy games like Darts over those 3 years. We now see that if we want to build the games we want to build, that’s simply not feasible. If it still takes as long, so be it, but we’d like to get there sooner.

I’m working on some ideas to generate some startup capital. No, I’m not talking VC or Angel funding. That type of startup capital just doesn’t appeal to us. We’re both big thinkers and we don’t really need someone to babysit us. I mean, we might, but we’ll wait until we discover that pain point ourselves. Instead, we’re gonna go the self-funding route. However, neither of us have funds, so that’s a little bit of a speed bump in the plans.

I have a few ideas on how to get some funding.  They will likely take time away from this business in the short term, but the hope is that one of the ideas pays off enough to provide the much needed startup capital. I’ve known that I was going to create a huge gaming company since I was in the sixth grade. Therefore, while the speed bump may seem odd to some, it makes sense to me. I’ve been planning for this business for 23 years, so another year or so isn’t that much to me.

Smiley and I have been friends for a long time. He sees the need for capital as well. Therefore, he’s on board with the plan as well. It’s nice to have a friendship of 20 years as your partner in times like this. He also wants to go big, since most of the game complexity is coming from his ideas! LOL I’m just a programmer, he’s our great game designer.

What Does This Mean for Darts?

Not too much, other than dev has been slow these past few months. In addition to moving back home, my wife and I are expecting a new baby in July and we just bought a house this week. I already mentioned the new job that I started near the beginning of the year. A lot of things demanded my attention and so the game programming lagged.

My dad, our primary game artist, has been here that past couple of weeks. His artistic spark has been rekindled. He sorta hit a speed bump in creativity after doing the initial artwork for the game. I’ll have him do a blog post to explain it for our next post.

I’ve been using Xcode 4 for a lot of prototypes we’ve been building for Darts. Therefore, the introduction of the new IDE has not really affected us much. The biggest problem has been now that we’re using PixelWave for the Darts game, we need some templates for Xcode 4. The PixelWave team are hot on it though, so I expect them to arrive soon.

Expect to see some more in-depth posts about our game dev process, remote development (programmer in AZ, artist in CA and game designer in WA), the PixelWave framework and probably some updates on our funding efforts.

We’d like to thank Miguel Friginal, aka @MysteryCoconut, for figuring out how to speed up the #iDevBlogADay wait list. Now that we’re back on, we’re even more motivated to get stuff done to share with you guys.

Talk again soon and good to be back on track!

Video Blog: Intro to Smiley, his MAME box and games that inspire us

// September 13th, 2010 // No Comments » // Company Related, iDevBlogADay

I’ve been wanting Smiley to get in on this #iDevBlogADay action, but he’s not a blogger. We may convert him to the way but not anytime soon.  Lucky for me, I got my 4th gen iPod Touch on Friday. Therefore, I said, “Well, if you don’t want to write then you can talk on a video.”

Therefore, I present to you Miguel Smiley Archodominion, the other half of Area 161. In this video, we do a brief intro to him, show off his MAME box and then jump into some classic titles that have inspired us. We’re thinking that one post a month we’ll review an older game that’s clearly influenced us and the gaming community in general. It’ll be a nice break from my writing as I’ll likely just be the camera man for those and let Smiley do the talking.

Sidenote: We show off Attaxx which was an early inspiration for the Game Jam idea that I had: Tiny The Blog. Not that they’re anything alike, but you can see where I got the idea of a blob separating and rejoining.

With no further ado, the video.

The Importance of a Good Story, Part 1: Your Personal Story

// July 19th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Company Related, iDevBlogADay, Storytelling

In my one brief year of college, I studied Computer Science and English – Creative Writing. It was the 93-94 school year. In the 16 years since, I’ve read a few hundred business books. One thing I’ve always found odd was how the latter pretty muched ignored most of what I learned in the former.

Business books tell about profits, products and growth. They’ll tell you about a lot of the logic behind building a successful business. This is because those things are repeatable and concrete. “Keep tabs on cost until cash flow is positive, then focus on growth.” There are 3 stages to a startup that can easily be mapped and checked for progress. As indie game devs, these logical steps provide a checklist that we can use as a sanity check.

There is one thing, however, that cannot be described in books, because for each and every business it is unique. The item I’m referring to is: Your Personal Story.

eBay Has a Great Story, or Does It?

Let’s take a quick poll:

Why did Pierre Omidyar start eBay?

1. To help with his girlfriend’s PEZ collection
2. He had a long weekend and wanted to code something

Every programmer has the “B” story, but very few have the “A” story. If you approached a news reporter back during the internet bubble, chances are you had a “B” story. However, there was only ever one “A” story and that was the story of eBay.

Funny thing though, there was no girlfriend with a PEZ collection. It was a complete fabrication by eBay’s earliest PR people. However, most of you probably thought the answer was “A” because a good story is hard to let go or forget.

Now, I don’t advocate flat out lying like eBay did. Lie or not though, it was that story that got eBay it’s earliest press. (Sidenote: For a really good story, but not press worthy, look up why the company went with the non-sensical name of “eBay” vs their more intuitive sounding “Auction Web”.)

Pixar (King of Story) Revealed a Gem During Lunch at WWDC

Michael B. Johnson from Pixar gave a great brown bag chat during WWDC. Amidst showing cool footage, talking about internal tech initiatives and showing off in-house tools, he talked about something that Pixar gets that not many other companies do:

Story is King.

When Michael started with the company, he went to one of the tech guys (Anthony A. Apodaca) who explained the history of the company including where the name “Pixar” came from.

“It’s a moon of Degobah.”

Michael then went on to talk about how he met one of the founders, Ed Catmull. During the meeting, Ed started to also give the rundown of Pixar history. When he came to where the name Pixar came from, he said, “We wanted something computer related like Pixel, but we also wanted something more…” Michael interrupted Ed and said, “Tony already told me where the name came from.” “Oh yeah, what did Tony say?” “He said it was a moon of Degobah.” Ed paused for a moment then said, “Oh that’s a better story, run with that one.”

Michael’s point was that from the tools his team built to the directors of the films themselves, there’s a common goal among them all: To deliver a well-told, compelling story.

Every Story is Different, But…

Here’s the long story of Area 161.

In the fall of 1993, Tom is in line at a 7-11 to get change to ride the bus home. In the register line before him is Smiley, about to get some quarters to play some video games. Smiley opens his wallet to remove some bills to exchange. A picture in Smiley’s wallet catches Tom’s eye. “Hey, is that a picture of Spider-Man in your wallet?” Smiley says, “It sure is.” A geek bond is created in that instant. As we all know, geek bonds are the strongest.

Many years pass and the two share a myriad of experiences:

• They work briefly together at a software shop. Smiley teaches Tom a lesson in business he never forgets, “You work for them. If they pay you to pick your nose, you pick your nose. They pay for the luxury to tell you what exactly to do with your time.” That bit of advice makes working for others tolerable for Tom.
• Smiley’s wedding ceremony is inside his wife’s parents’ home. Oddly enough, Smiley’s wife and Tom’s life criss-cross years before Smiley meets her. Tom stands as co-best man in the ceremony that takes place in the living room.
• Smiley eventually buys his in-law’s house. During the house warming party, Tom visits and says, “Some day we’ll live close to each other.” Smiley asks, “How? I live here near Seattle and you’re wife never wants to move here?” Tom replies, “I don’t know how or when, but I know somehow, someway we’ll live close to each other.”
• Tom finds himself in Arizona years later. While looking for work, he gets a call from a recruiter up near Seattle. “We have this gig.” “Where exactly?” Tom looks up the address, it’s 3.5 miles from Smiley’s home. Tom then finds himself living in a spare bedroom inside Smiley’s house. He tells Smiley, “See.  I told ya, we’d live close.”
• Life works in odd ways. Realizing that the year-long job contract is no chance experience, the two friends strike up a company. While debating company names, they settle on Area 161. Why “161″? As far as we can recall, that was the issue of Spider-Man that Smiley had a reprint of in his wallet.

Almost twenty years have past and not only is the geek bond stronger than ever, but it’s still finding ways to permeate their lives.

Now that’s obviously a lot of story there. Is it a great story? I can’t say, but it’s our story. Is it a good story? Well, I think it’s a heck of a lot better than , “Two geeky friends start a game company.” Which is pretty much every indie dev story, right?

Tools of the Trade

Storytelling is an art, but so is game making. Since you’re all game makers, you know that you are artists. You’ll have to use some of that skill to create your own story. Never told a good story before? Don’t worry there are tricks. The two simplest ones are:

1. Put an ordinary person in extraordinary situations or Put an extraordinary person in an ordinary situation. – From the fantasy world, think Batman (for the former) or Superman (for the latter). In the real world, think Pierre/eBay during the dot com bubble (for the former) and John Carmack/ID during the shareware days (for the latter)
2. A story should always end where it begins. – This one used to confuse me til I realized they didn’t mean quite literally. They just mean you mention something at the start that you then bring back in towards the end. In our case, Spiderman issue 161. It was there at the start of Area 161 history story and pulled back in again towards the end. From the fantasy world, Alan Moore is a master of this technique.

Dig into your history and find your story. The sooner you find it, the sooner you can “own” it. It’s important to own it, because like a good joke, it’s get better every time you tell it. Whether in your head to yourself or to others. You don’t want to be in the middle of an interview with a reporter and find yourself bumbling, “Oh wait, before that…oh and I forgot about…Then was it after or during that time we….”

Next week, I’ll talk about stories in your games. A game is just like a company. There’s a story there, you just have to find it. And when you do, it’ll help you stand out that much more.

3 lessons learned from my last company

// July 12th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Company Related, iDevBlogADay, Partnerships

Thanks to @chrismwaite‘s post, I realized that I have some start-up knowledge that may help some people. My last business, 360|Conferences, was a partnership with John Wilker. It is also the host of the 360iDev conference, which has quickly become the de facto event for iPhone indie devs.  While vastly different from game dev, each one is a business. This means they have a product, they sell said product and profits need to one day surpass expenses. If you never achieve profit, then my tax man says “You have a hobby, not a business.”

An introduction to the company and our purpose

// June 28th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Company Related, iDevBlogADay, Purpose

“Why make games?”

That’s a question you hear often when you tell people you’re starting a video game company. The answer is different for every game maker, so I can’t speak for them all. However, I can answer the question for me and partially for my business partner. Before I get to that though, I want to tackle the reason we’re not starting the business.

Usually, the next thing people say after asking the above question is:
“Oh yeah, I hear people are getting rich off those iPhone games.”

While profits are a concern of every business, I can honestly say that it is not our primary concern at Area 161. You have to remember that Smiley (my biz partner) and I have never made a game before in our lives. (Technically, I made a word based dungeon game in 7th grade, but no one besides me and my teacher saw it and played it, so that doesn’t count.) We realize that there are companies that spend millions of dollars with many employees who never attain “riches.” We’re two guys working on our games part-time after our day jobs. The likelihood of us striking it rich are slim, even slimmer than those small shops that at least give it a full time go.

“If you’re not gonna make it rich, then why bother?”

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. To help understand why, I’d like to start with a story about my grandfather.

My dad’s dad is a Mexican immigrant to America. He started working young, so young in fact that he never learned how to read or write in Spanish, much less English. My grandfather has lived 80+ years of his life never having read a book or signing his name. My grandmother handles all the bills and does all the signing. That didn’t stop him from buying a house for $15K in an area of town where that same house is now worth over several hundred thousand. He paid for this house working as a gardener at a cemetery. (Funny aside: His plot is in that cemetery at the top of a small hill. When asked why that spot, he says with arms stretched out, “Look at that view!”) My grandfather liked lawn care so much, that aside from doing it 40+ hours a week, he’d come home and do it on the weekend.

My grandfather had a pretty healthy side business doing lawns in the neighborhood. When I was young, he hired me as a sub-contractor. He showed me the ropes of the biz and even helped me get my first business going (doing lawns, of course). It was hard work, but he taught me two great business lessons that’ll I’ll never forget.

1) Laziness is contagious. The way my granddad put it was: “If you’re tired and you don’t feel like working, then don’t come to work because you’ll only bring others down with you.” It’s a lesson I’ve applied to my business life and I think it shows. The one thing people comment most about me is, “It’s going to be sad when you’re not around anymore because you make work so much fun.” It’s not that I’m the world’s greatest person. I just make sure I have a smile on and try to make work not suck.

2) It’s a good feeling when you can see the fruit of your labors. I asked gramps why he liked doing yardwork so much. He answered with: “When I finish a job, I can see how much better the yard looks than before I started.” So often in coproraate America, we don’t ever get a sense of accomplishment. Yeah sure, we can check off items on a list: close a bug, rack up a sale, meet our numbers, beat a deadline, etc.  How often though do you get to point at something and say, “I did that.  That is the work of my hard labors.” After 15 years of being in the workforce, I can tell you: not often.

“Who is Area 161?”

I’m a developer by day. Smiley is an appliance sales man. We’re both good at what we do and are successful enough to support our families. We both have a wife and two kids. He lives in Washington state while I live in the deserts of Arizona. As luck would have it though, I landed a contract that was 3.4 miles from his house. With my wife’s blessing, I spend weekdays in Washington, renting a room from Smiley.

Smiley and I have known each other for 20 years. We went to high school together and also worked together briefly at a software company. We can talk for hours upon hours and never run out of things to say. One night, we get to talking about the iOS devices. I tell him how low the cost of entry is to the platform. He’s starts to ask how hard it is to learn Objective-C and how do you go about starting a business. At first I’m a bit perplexed, “Why do you have to learn that stuff? I’m the programmer and business guy. You’re the games and sales guy.” His response, “I wasn’t sure you wanted to go into business with me.” I smiled, “Of course, let’s do this!”

“What makes your games special?”

Our company is broken into two roles. Smiley is gonna be the one in charge of Sales, Marketing and Game Design. My area is Game Programming, Social Media, and Business Operations. My dad is going to be contributing as the artist and our friends will likely be our QA department. While the business will eventually go beyond iOS devices, we realize it’s the simplest (and coolest) market to begin with. Our company’s goal is to break the mold of traditional gameplay either through unique gameplay techniques or interaction methods.

Smiley loves games: he’s what people refer to when they think “gamer”. If there’s a game he likes that you do too, he can probably beat you at it. I, on the other hand, am selective about my games: I’ve played the Myst games and Final Fantasy games. Other than that, I dabble with others but don’t feel any real affinity to them.  Our game design process is this: I think up unique approaches from an iOS/hardware perspective, which will spark a rough idea for a game. Smiley then takes that idea and runs with it. Making it way better than I could’ve on my own.

While the process seems simple, it was rough getting started. At first, Smiley had good game ideas, but there wasn’t anything unique to them, i.e. no reason why they should be on the iOS device vs any other platform. Then I had an idea that I tried to flush out during the 360|iDev game jam, just to get the process going. Smiley then rough patched some ideas onto it afterwards. After we flushed out the game ideas, we realized it was going to be a pretty big game for our first venture. One that will be easy when we’re pros, but probably a bit much to make our first go around. Then finally, after WWDC, things clicked.

We sat around and I was telling him all the cool things I learned. I went to the labs to get some information about some hardware ideas that we had, but weren’t sure if they were even possible. We got some confirmation on those, which then sparked other newer ideas.

We now have 2 concepts to move forward with (3 if you count the game jam idea). We super jazzed about them both and while both will still take some time to program, it’s likely that we can hopefully have one (if not both) out in about half the time it would take for the first idea.

“So these two normal guys think they can change the video game space?”

Yup, pretty much. One thing I’ve found in my past business was differentiation is key. In a crowded space like video games, it’s even more important. We may not (though hopefully will) be the best at something we come up with, but we’ll be different and for that we’ll at least get noticed.

We don’t think our lack of games industry background as a detriment either. We actually see it as a strength. With iOS, the games industry is being turned on its head in more ways than one. How can you get stuck in old world thinking if you’ve never been in that old world to begin with?

If nothing else, we’ll be two old friends going on a new journey together. As the saying goes, “It’s not the destination, but the journey that’s important.” We hope you’ll share that journey with us.