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IndieZen and Indie 2.0

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:17:32 -0600

There is a new movement among independent game developers, aiming at bringing the number of indie games sold in the computer gaming market to 50% by 2015. While this seems like a lofty goal, there is a very dedicated group building tools to make this possible. They have hosted IMDGC, and have attended SIEGE. These people work as IndieZen.

"Indie 2.0 is indies helping themselves by creating their own tools, toolchains, game engines, and organizing themselves into a self-teaching, self-mentoring, self sufficient organization that promotes collaboration and teamwork among Indie game developers, fostering an environment where we can help each other with the common things, leaving us with more free time to innovate." -Tony Richards, IndieZen.org

Article continues here.

Of Obtuse Emails and Poor Team Skills

Mon, 12 May 2008 00:17:57 -0500

There are some things that a project/group should not be handled. The biggest thing is including threats among poorly written emails. If there is someone that I cannot and will not stand for in a project is having a leader who does not know how to properly open up lines for good communication between him/her and his/her fellow developers. Getting unexpected emails is a normal thing these days. Most email that I do not recognize goes immediately into the trash, because I do not have the time to figure them out. I trashed three emails from this website, and trashed them when I saw the contents was not written well. I knew that this was not an official message but a message that was sent to me by another person. I log in and see that I have three messages, all sent in the same minute by the same person. The first email made little sense, but I could bare it. On to the second; it told me to "check the files" - what files? Following this, in all capitals (cruise control, for the Internet, or some such), was a threat that if I hack his/her computer I'll go to jail. The third email was telling me that he/she was sending me the files. I believe those were out of order. Supposing I could give the benefit of the doubt, one could have arrived faster than the other. [quote=an_Email]"trust me you need those things and if you try to hack my computer i will sew you don't try any thing funny or your out of the group and put in to jail"[/quote] That came to me as part of a fourth email, and it gave me a little chuckle. If I hack his/her computer, they are going to come at me with thread and a needle, and then I'd be out of the group and put into jail. That made very little sense to me, but I do know what they were attempting to say. To make any sense of the situation, I had to go to the group's modDB page and figure out what the project was that I was supposedly getting files for, only to find that it's an attempt at competing with a very well established mod that I happen to enjoy. Having a group that was silent suddenly barage me with obtuse emails that had no substance at all was rather surprising, and frankly, a bit annoying. If they had written one substantial email instead of sending five, I might have been more inclined to take any time to help work with them, since I did join their group, after all. If they had more information regarding the project that they were demanding I work on, I might have budged. In any case, I took the liberty to remove myself from their group and remove all messages on my personal modDB profile.

Thoughts on v4

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 03:17:23 -0600

I am going to make this quick as I should be getting to bed. The new look of the Mod DB is very interesting and I believe they have done good with their use of Web 2.0 technologies. I have been browsing around for a little while and even though they have a little tutorial on how to get around, I have not found it a problem at all; I have found everything I have needed so far. Good job, Mod DB team. I am glad this site is aorund and has done so well over these past years.