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I’m 41, and I have never voted. Nope, thats nonsense, let me re-phrase it. I have never cast a vote that ever influenced anything, ever. That’s because I’ve always lived in a ‘safe seat’ meaning the local MP had nothing to fear, knowing he (and it was always a he) had a job for life, huge salary and expenses to boot.

Today I will be voting in the UK referendum on changing the voting system. I’ll be voting yes, but regardless of my personal views on that, my vote will actually be counted, because it’s not being done on some patronising non-proportional system like constituency voting. I know that AV isn’t PR, but it’s better than FPTP. I have grown incensed by the total lies put out by the No2AV campaign. I’m strongly pro-AV, and I could make a much better argument for FPTP than they did, but they chose to pretend it would cost more (what price democracy eh?) and that the money would be taken from intensive care wards to pay for it. They literally tried to claim that if you vote YesToAV, children would die.

Pathetic.

I hear that the No camp will be annoyed if yes wins on a low turnout, which is ironic, because the whole problem of first past the post is that there is no actual post. You can win with 1% of the vote, if every other candidate only gets 0.99%. So if there is a 1% turnout and yes wins, it will be a victory on the terms of FPTP. Bwahahahahaha. I got 3 No2AV leaflets through my door, with the postman, meaning it’s not being done by political activists for free, but being paid for, no doubt by some wealthy people with a vested interest in the current system.

So anyway, back to the voting system cost issue, to prove to them that the cost of Democracy should not be an issue, Democracy 2 is 50% off today with a special code. Check it out:

50% off Democracy2.

Happy voting,

So who else has played this? it’s a pretty cool little game. If you enjoyed RTS games before they went 3D, you might like it.

I mention it because someone on the blog commented on it, so I checked it out and today added it to showmethegames here:

http://www.showmethegames.com/strategy.php

It’s one of those ‘build a metric crapload of units’ style RTS games, and surprisingly moreish. The developers site is here:

http://www.isotope244.com

My current news is very technical. A lot of waffling away on vertex buffer batching code to make my engine much, much, much smoother and faster. If I ever write GSB 2, it will run much better on older machines. Not that it’s a slouch now, but it could mean bigger fleets :D

Still a while before I begin hinting at the next game…

Ok, so today I went along to Kingston university to be their guest at a games production course. It was pretty interesting, and fantastic that they thought to invite not one, but two indie devs (I was the second one) to go talk to students. I LOVE the idea that students on games courses aren’t automatically told ‘now go get a junior tester job at EA’ at the end. It seems that being an indie developer is considered a pretty reasonable career move now, which is awesome.

The students games were a mixed bag. Some had some really cool ideas. One of them had a really marketable, really clever, really original (I thought anyway…) character as the hero. Some of teams had obviously thought quite hard about business strategy for their game. Some had not…

What I tried to get across to them, and in retrospect I was *really* easy on them, with this point, is that the competition for game development jobs, sales, and success is HUGE.  Assuming that people doing this course see themselves, eventually as being a lead programmer/artist/designer on some big budget cool game in a few years time, they massively need to up their game by a scary amount.

If you are doing a game design or production course right now, you need to not only be top of your class, you need to be sailing past that goalpost so it’s a distant memory. You need to be clearly, unambigously, demonstrably the very very best at what you are doing. Think of it like this:

• You have no experience.
• You have no reputation.
• You have no contacts in the industry.

So you need to absolutely flipping blow people away with your skills and your portfolio. If you are a coder, that means having straight A’s in everything, and knock-out demos that prove you have serious mastery of your language(s). If you are an artist you need a BIG portfolio showing stuff that makes people go *wow*.  If you are a designer, you need a large number of diverse, fully designed, fully described, game designs in different styles. You need to be able to critique a game design idea read out to you, on the spot. Can you do this?

If you don’t have that, the job will go to one of the 99 other applicants who have all of those. If you think I’m kidding, I’m not. I’m a humble one-man studio and I regularly get sent CV’s from people wanting a job. I suspect Bioware and Valve get quite a few more :D

And that is to get a job at an existing studio. Running your own studio has a whole set of extra challenges and demands. This is an awesome job, and a great industry. It is, not surprisingly very difficult to get to do this.

ShowMeTheGames has an interview with Chris from muzzy lane software here:

http://www.showmethegames.com/makinghistory_interview.php

They make the strategy game ‘Making History’, which is used, a bit like Democracy 2 is, to teach kids history in schools.

I’m not really sure how to promote ShowMeTheGames. Hopefully, the RSS feed works now, but getting news sites to link to it is naturally problematic, because some will see it as a competitor to them. Hopefully the site can grow organically over time anyway. Feel free to quote the site or link to it when appropriate. I really want it to be the #1 site for showcasing indie PC games that you can buy direct from the developers. My heart sinks every time I see a cool new indie game and realise that the developers have an exclusive deal that you can only buy it from a third party. That just seems so lazy, and short-term. I’m sure everyone thinks they can always rely on their third party partners, and everything will be fine, but then, who predicted last week that impulse would get sold?

First up, let me point you at this interview with Celso Riva from winter wolves games. He makes ‘visual novel/ RPG hybrid games that you will love or hate, and pretty much owns that as a niche, which is a cool position to be in. Some of the art in his games is great. Also, I humbly point out that ShowMeTheGames now has an RSS feed. I presume I coded it properly, but who really knows!

I shot some arrows yesterday, in my first archery bout of the year, although sadly it’s not so warm today. I did surprisngly well. Only 1 out of 20 missed the target, which after 6 months of no shooting ain’t so bad. Got 4 bullseyes too. It always amazes me how much archery makes you realise how stressed or distracted you are. It requires you to be attentive, focused and relaxed, and right now I’m none of those :D

Here is a lesson for those who think ads don’t work. I recently bought a car (haven’t physically got it yet, but I’ve ordered it). It’s my first new car since going full time indie, so it’s about bloody time. Anyway, I’m not really a ‘car’ person, and know very little about them. I have no idea why I need multiple valves or what torque is.

Anyway, I did a little bit of research, wanting a geeky car with awesome mileage that looked nice. I did 3 test drives, and bought the one I liked the most. So far, so meh.

THEN, I realised when watching TV, a few days later that an advert I *know* I’d seen before (because I commented on the way people hold drumsticks in it), but which I hadn’t even realised was for a car (I must have ignored the rest of the ad) was the car I chose. Not only that, I really *like* the ad. It appeals to me in the way 99% of car ads do not.

Now that could be a co-incidence, but there are not a ton of car ads on TV right now, probably due to the recession. There is a BIG variety of cars to choose from, and the one car I chose was the one car ad I like, from the limited pool of car ads currently running. That could be just luck, but to quote a wise man “In my experience, there is no such thing as luck“. It might seem like I could have bought any car, but it always looks like derren brown is offering you a choice of a pack of cards, but he isn’t really. We are all sooo soo easily led.

Food for thought, perhaps.

BUY MY GAMES!!!!! BUY MY GAMES!!!! BUY MY GAMES!!!!!