Gavin’s Blog

Stolen Notebook went to the second meeting of IGDA Madison on Tuesday. The guest speaker was Alex Seropian from Wideload Games. I had actually seen him before on the panel for the “How to Structure a Successful Independent Development or Publishing Enterprise” conference at E3 in 2005. I have found that a lot of what he had to say at E3 and on Tuesday is very relevant to Stolen Notebook.
Wideload is a relatively small company, Alex mentioned there are only 15 people working there full time. Their plan is to stay independent and Alex also mentioned that due to their small size controlling their IP is very important. This is true for Stolen Notebook as well, to paraphrase Alex with a small team the strength of the group lies in its ideas, whereas a lot of the strength of a large team may lie in its ability to execute the ideas of a third party that lacks the resources to follow through on those ideas.
All in all it was a good meeting, despite my coming up empty in the raffle, and I’m eager to see what the next meeting will hold.

Breaking out slightly from my business role I have in the last few weeks begun trying to learn Maya. Doing so will at the very least help me better understand what the other team members are discussing during meetings and in the best case scenario will allow me to contribute to the creation of Stolen Notebook titles in the future.

Let me begin by saying that I am not an artist at all and although I am not sure in what capacity I will be asked to use the Maya skills I will be gaining I am sure it will not be for modeling. Nevertheless, I have begun by trying to learn all the basics, including modeling without worrying too much about how they will apply to what I am asked to do in the future.

When I ran Maya for the first time a window popped up with videos that explain some of the “essentials” of using Maya. These videos are where I started, there are seven about a minute in length each, and I would highly recommend that someone with no experience with Maya begin with the videos as well. The videos teach basic skills including how to zoom and pan your view, create objects and manipulate them, select object components, and animate with keyframes. After viewing the videos and playing around a bit with what I had learned I began with the tutorials. Pressing F1 will bring up the Maya help menu and clicking on “Learning Resources” in the upper left will give you access to the Getting Started with Maya tutorials. If at all possible I recommend having dual monitors, it is very convenient to be able to view the tutorial on one screen and have Maya open on the other. The first few tutorials focus on techniques for modeling, are easy to follow, and even when done by a non-artist produce recognizable models. However, as the tutorials become more complex they sometimes come to a point where you are told to use a given tool to refine the model and make it look more realistic without the specific instructions provided in earlier tutorials. If you’re like me, inartistic and just trying to get a feel for the tools I wouldn’t spend too much time becoming frustrated with refining the models to look perfect. I know I won’t be doing any detailed modeling for Stolen Notebook so I am happy to just know what the tools are and how they are used, as I mentioned earlier this will help with my better understanding the subject matter at meetings and certainly aid in my communication with Denrei. Currently I am up to the tutorial on animation, but haven’t worked on it in about a week as I have been working on a mini-milestone called Hogan’s Alley, which calls for me to model a shooting range. Hopefully it should be complete by this coming weekend at which point it will be available for download and I’ll check back with a post on how it all went.

As you may have read on the main page Stolen Notebook will be relocating over the weekend. Therefore, over the last few days I have had a bit of busy work to do to ensure that all concerned parties are aware of our move. This involved making the IRS, the State of Wisconsin, and US Bank aware of the move. For the IRS I completed and mailed form 8822, which is fairly easy to complete and involves no charge. The Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions however charges a $10 fee to change the address of an LLC’s registered agent, which needed to be done as I am moving along with Stolen Notebook. Changing Stolen Notebook’s address with US Bank was also very simple and involved not more than a ten minute trip there. Finally as a last precaution I completed a change of address form with the USPS while at the post office mailing the IRS and Wisconsin forms. An address change may be completed with the USPS on their website, however there is a one dollar fee so I chose to go to the post office in person to complete the form.

My role for the Lord of Collisions milestone involved drawing up the click-wrap license that all people installing Crossblast or the sntools have to agree to.

Again to draw up theses documents I used the forms included in Nolo’s Web and Software Development: A Legal Guide as a starting point. I started with their click-wrap end user license and edited it to better suit our situation. In doing this I incorporated a good portion of their software beta tester nondisclosure agreement. The reason the original click-wrap license needed to be modified was that it was intended for a finished product the end user had purchased. For example, the language from the original click-wrap license regarding any warranties and claims of merchantability did not at all fit for our current release. In order to remedy this I incorporated sections from the beta tester agreement. For example, the section titled Limited Warranty was replaced by the section Disclaimer of Warranty.

Last but certainly not least I drew the bracket up on the whiteboard for the double elimination Crossblast Invitational Tournament held in honor of Crossblast’s release and won by Denrei.

Today I will continue my post on E3 2005. This post will focus on the value of E3’s workshops and sessions.

All of the members of Stolen Notebook except for me signed up for the free exhibits only pass. I elected to pay for the Superpass which enabled me access to the workshops and conference sessions in addition to the exhibit floor. The initial reason for this was that the other members of Stolen Notebook thought the cost of the conferences would be too much for them relative to the benefits they would derive from attending. I on the other hand, although having been to business school had zero experience in the game business and felt attending the conferences would be of substantial benefit to me. While this turned out to be true I feel I could have gathered the same beneficial knowledge on my own with a little research at the bookstore and on the internet for a lot cheaper. Does this mean I left E3 feeling I had wasted my money on the Superpass? No. Let me explain, at the time Stolen Notebook was not working on Outland Inc, but on a much larger scale project, which ultimately proved to be unrealistic in scope for the size of the team. The plan was to get the game close to a finished state then pitch it to publishers. The problem with this was how to get in touch with publishers; I had made a list of ones we would be potentially interested in from very small companies with only a few titles to the largest most well established companies. I spent one afternoon mostly calling them, but emailing if no number was available to try and get in touch with someone who could give me information on submissions. Out of close to thirty companies I never spoke to anyone except for a few secretaries and never had any of my messages returned. When I went to E3 I still had my publisher list and as it turned out a lot of the companies on it had representatives speaking at the various sessions I would be attending. After each session the speakers will generally stick around for a few minutes to meet and exchange business cards with anyone who wishes to. I of course took this opportunity and ended up leaving E3 with direct contact information for around ten people. When I got home I emailed each one of them to follow up. I reminded them who I was, what our project was, and asked if they could give me any information on the submission process. Some responded with specifics regarding submissions and some told me they would send details when we were ready to submit, but the important point is that they all responded and very pleasantly at that. And that, in my opinion is the value of conferences and workshops at E3, getting past the gatekeepers and making contacts. The content of the sessions is often interesting and useful, but if cost is an issue I would not recommend attending solely for the content itself. Save your money and research the topics you are interested in on your own.

One caveat before I sign off, I of course only attended the more business related sessions so what I’ve said might not hold true for the other sessions, although I’m willing to bet that regardless of the topic of a session it’s a great place to make contacts.