I kinda work in the games industry

This post is sort of a combination of a lot of things that have been bouncing around in my head for a while.

I kinda work in the games industry. It's weird. The company I work for definitely makes games. We released several this year. But we make F2P/social games so I feel completely disconnected from the types of games that I like to play. A lot of my coworkers aren't really gamers. We don't really talk about games at lunch or when we talk about our weekends.

I don't know if working at other F2P/social game developers feels like this.

Gaming news sites don't write about our types of games, except for the rare one that penetrates into the public eye: Candy Crash, Clash of Clans, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, Farmville, Words with Friends.

I play all of our games, at least to try them out. I've really enjoyed several of them. I'm even spent money in a couple of them with no regrets. These are definitely games, but they're different. They're not a subtype of "traditional" but more like a newly discovered relative. 

When G****gate flared up, nobody wanted us to take a stand. Nobody at work even talked about it. Only one person who I talked to about it had even heard of it.

Granted, we aren't really part of gaming culture. We're part of startup/tech culture. That's where we're located; that's who we recruit from; it's where people leave us to go. Our products live on the same platforms. We do the same analyses. By the same token the core group that influence the direction our games go, product managers (not designers), tend to come not from game design backgrounds, but business and finance. They come up with the features that go into the game and define how they should work. But they've never designed games before, never studied it at all.

We make games, but we aren't much of a gaming company.

Businesses include "goodwill" on their balance sheet sometimes. This reflects that there's more to a business than just their asset. That a brand has value. That's because a brand name can be exploited for monetary gains. Designing F2P games feels like managing "goodwill" at a personal level. Endear the player to the game enough that when the moment of pinch occurs (when the player's assets are not enough to overcome whatever challenge they face) that they will be sufficiently invested in the game to justify spending money on the game. Nobody likes spending money at these moments but, if you play it right, they will.

It's psychological manipulation as a business model. These aren't objects of art, dealing out enriching experiences. They can be fun but they aren't what I want to make.

When GDC rolls around, despite it being nearby I feel no compulsion to go. The talks there aren't for our games. They particularly aren't for me. My job isn't really one that exists in traditional gaming. I'm a data analyst. I don't design or code. I pull data from our databases to make sure the game is performing well and to investigate our user behavior. There's little need for my job when game development means putting a game out there and then mostly moving onto the next one. Our games live for a long time, we need to know how they're doing so we can make changes to make them better. To get more installs. To get more money from our players. I do good work. I'm always trying to figure out how to write better SQL, how to make better, more informative reports, how to make more productive insights. I'm proud of my work.

I've been thinking a lot about the upcoming year and I don't want to live in the Bay Area anymore. I like working where I do. I love working with the people I do. I love doing my work. If I could do my job but live anywhere I wanted to, I would in a heartbeat. I don't know where I would choose to move though. The Bay Area is just too big for our tastes, and it just doesn't work. We have to live too far away from where we work and still end up paying too much in rent to be able to save enough money to buy a house someday. And rent prices seems to be going up too fast for raises/promotions to make much of a difference.

But the one big goal for 2015 is to get the heck out of here. Whatever that takes. It's not somewhere practical to live the for a long time so we may as well get out of here now.

Countries To Move To

Sarah and I have been discussing moving to a Europe some day. Not in the next few years, but eventually. We even think of raising our (eventual) children there. So we've done much talking about which countries we would/would not want to move to. Here are our thoughts on several of them.

The United Kingdom:
The land that brought us Dr. Who, Harry Potter and...other things. Sarah would be fine moving here but I'm not very keen on it. I want to move somewhere that is very different. Learning a new language is actually a major part of why I want to move. I just don't feel that the UK is different enough for me.

France:
It seems like France would be many people's first choice for where they would move if they left the United States of America. It definitely has the new language factor that I desire but I'm still not drawn in. It's somewhat of a hipstery reason, but I don't want to move here because I feel like that would be most people's first choice of where to move.

Sweden:
This was a very strong contender. New language, not an obvious first choice, DreamHack, with a bonus side of strong a English language presence. This one is still a good choice.

Germany:
Another good choice. I like the language and already have some experience with it. Sarah doesn't though. It also not many people's (at least in America) first choice. I like it, and a definite possibility.

The Netherlands:
New language, definitely different, legalized marijuana, live sex shows. Sounds perfect, right? It's pretty good, but I just don't feel a particular compulsion towards it.

Luxembourg:
Out of the left field and a very strong choice. It's a very small country, which is somewhat appealing. It's situated very close to both France and Germany, which is neat. The thing that I find most appealing, however is their educational system. They have a trilingual educational system. Instruction begins in Luxembourgish, changes to German, and then finishes out in French. Proficiency in all three is required for graduation from secondary school. In addition to this, English is also taught in the compulsory schooling. This one is currently my favorite and Sarah seems to like the idea as well.

I don't know where we'll end up, but I'm sure we'll be happy when we get there. I can't wait.

Fourth of July Weekend

This Fourth of July weekend, Sarah and I went up to my parent's cabin in Hardy, AR on the Spring River. We left Saturday at around 7:00pm and arrived there at around 9:30pm. We spent an hour or so just sitting on the front porch talking with my mom. The next day we went for a long walk with my dad down the river's edge and then we went up to Mammoth Springs to visit our family friend Glenda's cabin and check out the source of the river.

When we got back, we ate lunch and just sat on the porch for a while, watching the river. They kept pressuring us to go and canoe and swim in the river, but we didn't have swimsuits. So we instead went into town to check out the shops. It was Sunday, so some of them were closed, but there were several neat little shops, mostly filled with antiques. We did not get to go into the goth shop, the tattoo and piercing parlor or the book store.

When we got back from town, my mom insisted on teaching us how to play bridge, which is ultimately a pretty simple game, but the guidelines (not rules) for how you do the initial bidding are VERY complicated. Then there was dinner and we watched some fireworks. The next cabin over was launching the very large, loud fireworks from the road. That day my grandmother was also there, so Sarah and I spent the evening in a hotel.

The next morning we caught this show on TV called How the States Got Their Shapes. That show was way more interesting than it had any right being. We eventually had to stop watching it so we could check out. We got breakfast at The Corner Booth, which had some great, cheap breakfast food (served all day).

Then we took the hour-and-a-half drive to Mountain Home to check in on Sarah's dad. We visited him at the store and hung out with him for a while before he got off and we had some good grilled food. After being in Mountain Home for a couple hours, we drove back to Little Rock. We saw zero cops on the 3.5 hour drive home.

Parents Gone = Work Party

The events in question took place between high school and college, if I remember correctly. But that's not important.

I was working at the movie theater at the time and the manager (whose butt I had slapped once) was actually fairly young, in his mid 20s or so. I managed to let slip that my parents were going to be away one weekend. Now, what happens when you do this, kids? That's right, everyone decides that there needs to be a party at my place.

And a party there was. It was mostly just people hanging out and stuff. The manager did buy some alcohol for everyone (keep in mind that the employees were between the ages of 16 to 18). I honestly don't remember much. I didn't do much if any drinking, since I was worried about keeping the place in order. Eventually everybody left and I tidied up the place.

The next day I finished off the Smirnoff Ices that the 16 year old fellow employee left behind, for obvious reasons. Then in the evening I gathered up all the trash, loaded it into my car and dumped it in the dumpster at my other place of employment, a Mexican restaurant.

It was as if nothing had happened. Not like the time my parents left my brother home alone and came back to the beer cans everywhere and him passed out on his bed.