Fire Hose (and Slam Bolt Scrappers) at BiG
If you’re in Boston, making video games, and/or are even remotely interested in the business side of game dev I’d definitely recommend checking out the MIT BiG conference happening this coming Friday at the Microsoft NERD center next to MIT. It’s going to be a day long deal with all sorts of interesting panels on non-traditional marketing strategies, the changing face of social games, and “the next big thing”. Of course, the panel I’m most interested in is how to build and launch a gaming start up, mostly because I’m on it. It should be a lot of fun, I know that some of the guys here in the office are already starting a pool on what kind of stupid stuff I’m going to say.
Oh, and did I mention that we’ll be showing off Slam Bolt Scrappers at the conference? It’s true! We’ll have an awesome 4 player build for people to play, so if you didn’t get a chance to try the game out at PAX East be sure to swing by the conference and give our game a shot! Priority will be given to cosplaying conference goers, especially ones dressed up as Ghostbusters or giant chickens.
April 11, 2010 | | Comments (2)
Category: Events, News
Tags: big, business, microsoft, MIT, nerd, panel, Slam Bolt Scrappers, Sloan, talk
Words of Wisdom: Dave Edery on Digital Distribution
This talk is awesome. I mean, really, really relevant stuff if you are an indie trying to get your game onto XBLA, PSN, WiiWare, or Steam. Dave Edery delivered a fantastic keynote at the Digital Distribution Summit in Australia on what indies can really expect to have to do to get their game accepted onto the Xbox Live Arcade, where the bar is an how it’s moving, and how to best hedge your bets and make sure that your game does as well as it possibly can.
Skip to 8 min in and then watch the entire video. It’s super business oriented but again, if you make games and are serious about making a living doing so then I would really recommend checking this out.
November 24, 2009 | | Comments Off
Category: Words of Wisdom
Tags: business, dave, david, digital, distribution, edery, keynote, lecture, psn, steam, wiiware, xbla
Words of Wisdom: Business Time
On Thursday I wound up spending the majority of the day at two business events – the MassTLC new technologies “unconference” and a panel at MIT on different ways to fundraise and bootstrap in a tough economy. Here’s a quick summary of the interesting things that were discussed!
MassTLC new technology “unconference”
This meeting was a gathering of entrepreneurs, business people, angels/venture capitalists, and just about anyone involved in creating and bringing new technologies to market. I went to a talk on how to raise money from angel investors which went over basic but useful information (know what you’re asking for, get an introduction, have a good story, have experience, find a champion for your cause at the angel group, and give it plenty of time because it’ll take 6 months). Afterwards I attended a talk on standing out from the crowd and capitalizing on your competitive advantages, and I basically got the impression that we need to stand up on our soapbox more and put together a more compelling story for people who want to learn about us. The most fun part of the day, though, was meeting with other entrepreneurs and angels. It’s interesting how different the video game market (and most media markets) are different from other tech ventures – whereas in other ventures you need to show how you’re better than the competition since the customer will only buy one product, in the games market you need to be “good enough” since most consumers will buy from multiple competitors. Really cool stuff!
MIT VMS panel on fundraising/bootstrapping in touch economic times
This panel was a lot of fun since I was speaking on it. I’ll save you the boring bits I spoke about and tell you about some of the cool stories the other guys on the panel told. Ryan Damico from Webnotes spoke about how he got his family and friends to buy into his company by giving them convertible notes, and how they’ve been racing to get customers for their still nascent application. Waseem Daher from Ksplice managed to raise a lot of money through various competitions like the MIT 100K (he won) and even got a European scholarship for development of a Linux version of his product. He ended up moving in to an apartment with his other 3 co-founders to save capital, and by being extremely thrifty they’re going to be able to go to market without investor funding. Awesome! Finally Bryan Schmid of Atlas Devices spoke about getting government contracts and how manufacturing physical hardware changes the game, and what you need to watch out for. All of us then fielded questions for about an hour covering a huge range of start up questions, all the way from how much stock to give advisors and employees to how to hire good employees to how to raise money from your family.
Ok, so not super video-gamey, but I think this stuff is neat to learn about. Don’t worry, next week we can get back to talking about how much Final Fantasy XIII is gonna suck.