Archive for November, 2007
Friday, November 30th, 2007
Boris Balkan Would Buy It
I’m thinking of writing a book. I’m a still a precious naive little newblar, but I’ve been chatting lately with a friend of a friend who is trying to start up his own little development studio. The little nuggets of info I’ve been offering him have surprised me in terms of their quantity, just what I’ve gleaned from the abortive attempt at Shadowrun Online by my own Sixth World Games.
Game Development for Startups - by Failed_Gamedev_CEO_24,895
Nah. I think I’d write a book on Community Management first. Not that I’m qualified at the half-decade mark, but really, the folks who are qualified are all busy doing it. Sanya, Alan, Rich and Charles are all busy bees. But I have been tinkering with a philosophy lately, called “Coalescent Columnar Community Construction”, which is basically a method of exalting selected players into evangelists, and then building infrastructure around them in the hopes that community will coalesce around them (through the Rule of 150).
I think if I did end up writing a book, it would contain the following chapters-
- Community Management 101
- Managing Expectations
- Becoming a Better Liar
- Downtime, Patch Days, CEO Posts and Other Disasters
- Tools of the Trade
- Integrated Community Development
- The Proper Care & Feeding of Evangelists
- How To Destroy a Community in 12 Easy Steps
- Community Archetypes
- Player Governments, Live Events, Volunteer Programs & Alternate Methods of Hanging Oneself
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
Define “Crowded”
After a successful induction period, familiarizing myself with the role, procedures and policies of my new position, I am flying home tomorrow to Florida. I will be flying out of Los Angeles International Airport, one of the busiest airports on the planet, on the day before Thanksgiving, which is one of the busiest travel days in the country. Panic and mayhem!
Do I strike you, the reader, as a xenophobe by chance? I hope I don’t. I’m really not. It’s kind’ve an odd thing really, my inimitable fear of crowds. I don’t consider myself a very social person. I don’t do the “hanging out” thing much, and I make friends extraordinarily slowly. It honestly takes me about 18 months to make a friend. I’ve come to realize that this may be because my lighter grade social interaction requirements are being fulfilled by complex networks of friends on the net. As part and parcel of my career path, I am required to interact with hundreds, thousands of individual entities in a given day, usually as an operant, but passive force. Maybe this has dulled my ability to transform acquaintances into friends? I wonder if thats endemic to other CMs… hmm.
Where was I before I went all Myspacey on your asses? Ahh yes. Flying.
Friday, November 9th, 2007
It’s Understood That Hollywood
I am now Community Manager for Sulake (pronounced SUE-locky), working with the Virtual Magic Kingdom with Disney. Sulake is a Finnish company best known for it’s flagship title, Habbo Hotel, which boasts over four bajillion users.
I’ll be here in California right up till the day before Thanksgiving, coordinating, training and setting things up to do the job remotely. Luckily, it’s been worked out that I’ll be able to live in Florida with my family and function as full CM. It’s a surprisely rare thing, as even though nearly everything a CM does can be done remotely, most companies aren’t comfortable with folks being offsite. I consider myself fortunate to not only oversee an awesome community team, but to be able to do it near friends and family and what I consider “home”.
So let me tell you really quick about my experiences here so far. My third day in, I was treated to a personal tour of the Disney Studio in North Hollywood. The Disney Studio is a closed lot, unlike others in the area, so I really got to see the awesome behind-the-scenes stuff that few get to see. I arrived with a certain level of reservation and prudence, having grown up in Central Florida, basically the shadow of The Mouse an ever-looming presence. On the way in, I was in the back seat, and we passed through a picket-line of the Writer’s Guild that is on strike right now. Ever feel like the villain in a bad made-for-TV movie? When you cross a picket line, that’s the emotive quality of that experience, I think. It was certainly surreal.
So, inside, I was shown where they made Armageddon and Pirates of the Caribbean. The cafeteria/commisary was nice, and over yonder was the Disney version of the walk of fame, with handprints in gold from Elton John, Robin Williams, and other stars. I kept my composure, it wasn’t too difficult to do. We went into a place called “The Archive”. Up the elevator, which opened on a corridor under construction, that wound around and throughout a level leading up to a very unassuming door. Marked in almost hospital-room like letters, “Archive”. We went in, and there was a lady behind a counter to the right, to the left a large rolling filing cabinet system used for storage.
I kept my cool on the outside, but inside I totally lost it. To the right, THE jetpack used in The Rocketeer. On the left in a corner, the robot from The Black Hole. The rolling cabinet was open to Cubby’s outfit from The Mousecateers. The entire room looked like a simple library at an old middle school, except for the insane treasures it kept. We walked forward a bit, to a small seating area with more artifacts up on the shelves.
I twitched, as to my right, we passed by, oh, a half dozen Emmy’s and Oscar awards in a display case. Actual Emmy’s and Oscars Walt won. Inner composure started to crack here, and I turned left to see what I had missed. The Ruby Slippers. The Key to Oz. The Bedknob from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, with the book The Isle of Naboombu. The Jug from Darby O’ Gail and the Little People. The Sword Cane Mr. Barnaby used in Babes in Toyland. The Toy Blocks from Mary Poppins. So yeah, I left the studio drinking the Kool-Aid.
Now, as for Los Angeles itself. There is probably no other place I loathe as much as the city of Los Angeles. Before you go all Red Hot Chili Peppers with your California-luvin’ on me, strap yourself in and let me explain why.
First off, the geographic location of Los Angeles is freaking ridiculous. The mountains feel like they are consistently trying to push the city and suburbs into the ocean. Everything between the aforementioned mountains and ocean is filled in with gross, expensive, non-stratified suburb. By non-stratified, I mean ghettos sharing elbow room with McMansions. There is no gradient here. One side of the street may be the worst part of the barrio you’d ever care to know about, with the other side being the gated private sixty bedroom residence of Kurt Russell. And then there is the smog. Los Angeles is a frippen bowl covered in clouds that cover a yellow haze of perpetual smog. Like to breathe? Not in LA. Inhale deep. That metallic taste on your tongue could be the smog, or it could be the stroke you are having from driving on the worst roads ever to exist in human history. The roads define the term terrible. Example, they have such an issue with putting roads places that there is actually a highway that travels UNDER the Los Angeles Airport. It literally goes underneath the tarmac where planes are taking off overhead. Are you serious, Los Angeles? Space is that bad that you have to build roads UNDER YOUR AIRPORT? Do you know what that implies about your city and how it is planned?
Traffic is a nightmare of epic proportions. I could get from my hotel to the office in about 10-15 minutes if there were no cars on the road. But there are always cars on the roads and almost always at least one or two traffic jams due to constant construction and violent drivers. I wake at 6:30 to be able to be in by 9. Semi-trucks here have no issue driving a solid 65 mph through heavy construction, or cutting you off. There is no parking. None. No parking in Los Angeles. Go park in Burbank, there are a few spots open over there.
All of the above would be easily stomached if the people themselves were nice, but they aren’t. The people in Los Angeles and Santa Monica especially are plastic individuals, and the zero stratification persists even to the pedestrian levels. My deep senses of south-eastern morality are offended daily walking down 3rd Street Promenade, where the most sickeningly rich and hopeless poor walk side by side.
I saw a plastic woman, the kind with the big-shot corporate husband who works so she can fritter her days away at the spa or buying things she sees in windows, literally walk over a homeless grandmother bundled up on the sidewalk without so much as a second glance. How can one do that? How can one seriously have so ridiculously much and pass by those with ridiculously nothing without doing something reflexive, something so basically human nature? It offends, and I do what I can, but I do imagine that those plastic ladies hunting for Gucci must have to manufacture their own personal rose-tinted realities in order to see the world as selectively as they do.
Didn’t mean to get off on a rant about social responsibility (too late), but the people of this city are out of their damned minds. You know a giant earthquake which IS going to happen is going to kill you all, right? A very large earthquake is going to dump the majority of you into the ocean, and many will die. Los Angelesians know this, and they live with that looming over their heads. If LA was a Shadowrun character, it would have the “Borrowed Time” character flaw. It will die, but many just hope it won’t be while they are here. Is that why things cost +40% more here than they do in the rest of the country? Because they do.
I’ll spare you the rest of my inane prattling and whining about this hideous city of unfulfilled hope. I’ve been lucky, and I’m not one to whine when fortune smiles on me, but I’m truly glad I’m just visiting. This may be the City of Angels, but for the life of me I haven’t seen a single one.
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
Leavin’ On A Jet Plane
Don’t know when I’ll be back again!
(though I do hope California has stopped burning by now)