Today I handed in my notice (30 days) at Big Fish Games Vancouver after being there for just over 2 years. So by Jan 15th 2011 I’ll be Indie again under my old banner of Grey Alien Games – woot!

I’m totally “stoked” about this as I’ve got a ton of things I really want to do and I’ve met some amazing people over here in Vancouver who I’m looking forward to teaming up with. Also if any of you want to team up or are interested in working with me as a design consultant, let me know! I specialise in Casual Games and Facebook games and I’m passionate about arcade/retro games.

To pre-empt any “reason for quitting” questions, let’s just say that I need to do my own thing again and leave it at that. Thx.

Also, in the Autumn of 2011 I’ll be moving back to the UK because my wife’s work visa will run out (mine was tied to Big Fish Games but hers was not because she was a “dependent”) – unless something happens before then that makes it possible to stay.

Wish me luck in 2011! And good luck to all of you too.

A couple of weeks ago my 6-year old son, Callum, was “messing around” in the garden doing some kind of crazy freeform dancing and I thought it looked cool (and sweet). So I overlaid some Drum and Bass and this is the result. Enjoy! (Check out at 1:25 when I ask him what he is doing and he says “Tricks” and does some really cool moves.)

I told him this video is going on youtube, and Twitter and my blog, and he is ultra excited – so please give a nice rating and be polite in the comments, thanks!

What I liked was that he felt totally happy being natural and expressing himself without any self-conciousness. How long is it since you or I have done that?

Last Sunday I watched the Winter Olympics Hockey final and saw Canada narrowly beat the US team in a nail-biting, incredible game. Somehow the conclusion seemed inevitable and “correct”. What a way to finish the Olympics, it was legendary!

Afterwards I could hear this funny noise and I realised that it was outside, so I went out onto my balcony and was astonished to hear the whole of downtown Vancouver roaring, cheering, and beeping their horns. I live at least four miles away and the sound was carrying across the sea all the way to my house. It was quite something to hear, almost unreal.

Anyway I videoed it, check it out:

My partner, Helen, is going to run a half marathon in May. It’s the BMO Vancouver Marathon & Half Marathon Run (BC) and is raising money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLSC) whose aim is to to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

Helen has run a half marathon for charity before in the UK in 2008, but she has since fallen out of practice at running and now has less than 3 months to train up to be able to run 13 miles (about 21 km)! She gets up at 5:45 twice a week (must to my chagrin) to go swimming and goes running on all the others days, except for one rest day. I know that she has the determination to, a) raise her sponsorship target of $2500, and b) complete the half marathon!

Please consider supporting her (and the charity) by making a secure online donation using your credit card using this link. You will receive an email confirmation, along with your tax receipt for your donation and Helen will be notified as soon as you make your donation.

We thank you in advance for your support, and really appreciate your generosity!

Helen and fellow runner Becky (Helen is the one on the right).

OK OK, so I finally succumbed and have signed up for a twitter account. Was pleased to get Grey Alien as my user name too

You can follow me here.

I’ve yet to see if this service will be annoying or cool. Lots of people seem to think it’s great and so I thought I’d better check it out (after all, I enjoy blogging a lot).

I’ll use it to post updates about the launch of my latest game over the weekend (it went live at midnight last night and is doing very well).

The presentation that Nick Newhard and I did at the Vancouver Game Design Expo got good press (hmm direct link seems to show a blank page but you can see the article if you scroll down on this page).

Quote: “..it was a pitch-perfect primer to game development. Light-hearted enough to appeal to gaming neophytes yet substantial enough to show that games development is a serious discipline and a justifiable investment for education”. Cool!

You can read my full blog post about the presentation here.

A while ago I wrote a blog post about my imminent move from the UK to Canada to work for Big Fish Games. Well it all went to plan and I’m here! In fact I’ve been here for a month now. I was really busy preparing for the move in October/November and then once I arrived here there was a lot of stuff to sort out (including getting a North American PSU for my PC), which is why there has been a conspicuous absence of blog posts.

Before the Move

Moving house normally entails quite a lot of work and I can say for sure that moving continent requires even more work! We are renting our house out in England but in order to do that we needed to embark on a considerable program of home improvements including electrics, plumbing, building work, carpentry, gardening, painting and new carpets! This was all going on whilst I was working on my game and Helen was sorting out all of our stuff to either a) store, b) ship to Canada, c) give away/freecycle, d) sell, or e) throw out. This took AGES, it’s amazing how much clutter you can accumulate – but it was great to have a massive clean out. I even sold my beloved Subaru Impreza Turbo 2000 for a low price to some lucky dude.

We haven’t shipped much stuff over here because we like the idea of having a fresh start – but I did ship two of my guitars and my PC We also shipped our cat, Suki, over too. Shipping a cat costs a *lot* of money when combined with various vet’s bills for injecting and microchipping, but we love her. In fact the guy who picked the cat up said “Is she a pedigree cat?”, but we said “no, just an ordinary moggie.”

The journey

We stayed at Helen’s parents’ house the night before our journey because our house was totally empty! Then we got up very early and got a taxi to Heathrow airport. The flight was straightforward although it was 10 hours long. Conan and I just watched a ton of movies (like Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull) simultaneously so we could enjoy the same moments together. When we arrived my new colleague, Sumi, picked us up from the airport and took us to our temporary accommodation in Kitsilano, which is a really nice area in West Vancouver that has nice big wooden houses and tree-lined streets, and is close to some great shops. The kids promptly fell asleep and we soon followed.

Big Fish Games

I went to my new office a couple of days after arriving and had to set up my own PC because the IT guy from Seattle who was going to do it got turned away at the border because he mentioned the “w” word … “work” … to the border guards.

The Big Fish Games office is on Mainland Street in the middle of Yaletown. It’s a pretty neat place with loads of restaurants and shops around and it looks great at night when all the lights come on. I have got a desk in the corner and have a great view out two massive windows.

We been going to lots of networking events to spread the word about our company because we are recruiting “Casual” game programmers and artists. We are finding that Vancouver is very console game-oriented and so it’s a challenge to find people who really know about casual games. I’ve even bought an iPhone to find out all about it. In fact it’s a great device with GPS, google maps, email, Internet, iPod, games and more – I totally recommend it.

At the end of November I went to Seattle for three days for several meetings including the Big Fish Games “all hands meeting” which was very illuminating and fun. Big Fish Games is doing very well even in this recession. It was great to put a face to the many names I had been conversing with via email. Seattle’s a pretty neat place too.

At the moment I’m finishing off my current game and then I will be working with the designers in Seattle to come up with a new game design in January/February, plus we’ll also ramp up the recruiting then.

Here’s some photos of my colleague Sumi and my desk in the corner, and the view out of one of my windows:

Vancouver

Everyone seems friendly in Vancouver and the city is beautiful. It’s surrounded by the sea, mountains and woodlands. This was a factor in moving here because we lived in the countryside in England and were only a mile from the sea. The weather here is pretty much the same as England in that it’s raining a lot and is pretty cold

We’ve found a superb new house to rent which we are moving into this weekend. It’s in a great area called Point Grey. Conan has been going to school this week and Callum has been going to a pre-school. Helen will start doing freelance science writing again soon to help bolster the coffers as Vancouver is pretty expensive to live in.

So far we’ve been ice skating a couple of times, been bowling, been shopping, been out for walks, eaten some unhealthy but great tasting meals in a local diner. Also I bought us an XBox 360, which is pretty damn neat, so that I can checkout the XBox Live Arcade stuff (I feel it’s my duty as a game designer ). Helen has taken the boys out to do more cool things, such as visiting the aquarium, whilst I’ve been at work – I’m jealous! I’ve even found an orthodontist to continue the brace work that I started in England just before we moved.

Next year I plan to start up my own Aikido class but meanwhile I’m visiting a Ki Aikido class on Granville island who have made me feel welcome. Plus I’ve been running a lot just to get from A to B (and to escape the rain) – running is good fun whilst listening to The Best of Scorpions and AC/DC’s Black Ice, which are two recent purchases.

Why did we move?

Because Helen and I both worked at home and just needed a PC and the Internet to do our jobs, we realised that we could actually live anywhere. So we discussed moving to somewhere warmer, such as Spain, Portugal, France or Italy, for a while to just try it out. Thus when I received the offer of employment in Vancouver from Big Fish Games, we weren’t too shocked at the idea – we thought it would be a great life experience, especially as we had heard so many great things about Vancouver. Also my casual game programming career was going well and I saw it as a good opportunity to work at the forefront of the industry with some very skilled people in order to learn more and have great fun.

Basically if an amazing sounding opportunity comes up in your life, I’d recommend not immediately dismissing it because it seems too radical or impractical. Instead think about how you could grow as a person by taking the opportunity, and if it sounds good, go for it! No obstacle is too big if you want something enough. Also sometimes you can just try something out for the experience. It’s worth remembering that you can always change your situation again in the future if you want.

On Sat 20th Sept 2008 I successfully graded for my 2nd Dan Black Belt in Aikido.

Several members of Bridport Aikido Club, including myself, travelled up to Oldham (near Manchester) on Friday. The journey is 255 miles but it took us 8 hours due to bad traffic. We then did two and a half hours of training with Sensei Kolesnikov, the 6th dan principal of the school. Then the others went for an Indian meal but I didn’t want to do that because I wanted my guts to be in good form for the grading the day after. So I had spaghetti al pomodoro and some mineral water at an Italian restaurant with my good friend Georg who was going for his 1st dan on Saturday – he flew over from Austria specially to do his grading.

I had a relaxing bath and went over the moves in my head and visualised a positive outcome to each section of the grading and saw Sensei Kolesnikov saying “Jake Birkett – 2nd Dan” at the end of the grading. I find this sort of thing is good for building confidence and banishing negative self-defeating thoughts. Lots of sports-people do it.

I had a good night’s sleep in a cheap hotel in Manchester, ate some museli and toast and had a cup of Clipper organic decaff tea that Georg had bought. Then we got the bus to the dojo.

It was a long day which started with a one and half hour training session in the morning followed by a light lunch of fruit and nuts. Then I had to kneel down in the baking sun for 4 hours (the dojo has big windows) whilst other people graded. Then I did my grading which included 32 mind and body ki tests, about 50 different attacks/defences, knife defences, sword defences, sword and jo (spear) katas, and continuous attack by 5 black belts at once. The grading went very well; I didn’t make any mistakes (that I know of )

Then the results were announced and I took part in a two hour high grade course. Finally (after a bit of Sat Nav generated chaos) we finally arrived at the social meal in a Chinese Buffet restaurant in Manchester whereupon I ate like a horse. This was followed by a poor night’s sleep on the floor at a friend’s flat in Manchester (I let my students have the comfy beds), another three hour high grade course on Sunday, and then a six hour drive home.

It was quite tiring, and my legs ached from all the kneeling, but it feels very good to have passed. I’ve been training for 2nd dan for 6 years for since my 1st black belt which took 5 years to obtain – so that’s 11 years in total. I don’t have to do any more gradings now because 3rd dan and higher are awarded as honorary ranks depending on how long you’ve trained for and what you do for the organisation.

Here’s a good pic of me defending from a knife stab to the throat:

Well the post title says it all! I signed the contract yesterday!

I currently write games for Big Fish Games as a contractor and it’s a great job. But a couple of months ago I got an email from BFG half-jokingly saying “We’re opening a new studio in Vancouver, are you interested in being the first designer/programmer there?”. My immediate thought was “this sounds cool, yes I am interested!”, so I got back to them and asked for more details.

We were thinking of moving anyway

Helen (my partner) and I had been discussing living in other countries for a few months at a time (particularly in wintertime to escape the British weather) anyway, so it wasn’t a big shock to get this offer and consider it. Because we both work at home and use the Internet and PCs to do our jobs, we could in fact be based anywhere. So we had talked about going somewhere warmer and working there just for the experience. Working for BFG in Vancouver is bound to be an experience worth having, even if the weather is not much different from England. It will also be a great learning experience for the kids.

Trip to the US and Canada

BFG paid for us to fly to Seattle, where they are based, and meet lots of nice people, and I was interviewed for a day and half. You can read about our trip here. Then we went up to Vancouver (it’s just over 100 miles away) and checked it out. We really liked it. It’s next to the sea and has beaches, parks, lakes, mountains etc. The down town area is not massive, you can walk across it easily, and there are really nice places for a family to live hardly any distance from the centre. You can rent wooden houses on a plot of land with a garden in a nice quiet neighbourhood that is a couple of blocks from a main street, or a couple of blocks from a beach the other way! Very handy.

The job

So I’ll be an employee again instead of running my own company. In some ways this feels like a step backwards, but I’m doing it for the experience. I’ll be working with some great people and will be learning tons about the casual game industry, and I’ll enjoy every day at my job, plus I’ll get paid (very well) regularly. I’ll be loosing the flexibility of working at home, and my independence for a minimum of 2 years but I’m willing to make that trade for the experience. I love making games and I’ll be able to make really great games with the resources of BFG at my disposal. So it’s swings and roundabouts of course. One thing I’ll have to do is make sure I remain fit and healthy as I’ll be sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day!

Aikido

I’ve been at Bridport Aikido Club for 11 years, and running it for 5 years. It will be sad to leave but I have two black belts who can take over. When I’m in Vancouver I’ll set up an Aikido club and get training as soon as possible. Then I can arrange a special Summer or Winter school where my Sensei and people from England come to visit for a week of training – it should be great fun.

Lots to organise

We will keep our house in the UK as a base and will rent it out whilst we are gone. So we are currently embarking on a host of home improvements to make it suitable for renting. We are also de-cluttering by recycling, giving away, selling or dumping loads of our stuff. We don’t want to put much in storage as it’s expensive and we don’t want to ship much over there – the idea of starting afresh with minimal stuff is quite nice. I’m crazy busy with my current game, so Helen is dealing with most of this (phew).

When are we going?

Well we don’t even know the answer to this. BFG are applying for a Visa for me, but that may take a couple of months, and there’s a slim chance it won’t work out. But the aim is to move later this year, perhaps in October or November. So watch this space and I’ll proffer more details as they occur. Wish us luck!

Here’s a picture of a beach in Vancouver near down town – it’s called English Bay:

Helen and I recently visited the US and Canada for a business trip which included visiting the Big Fish Games studio in Seattle. We had a great time and met some really nice people! I posted some reports on the Blitz forum whilst I was over there, and I’ve collated them here as follows:

Monday, Hotel Max, Seattle

Hi all, I’m currently lounging around in Hotel Max in Seattle using the exorbitantly priced wi-fi.

Helen and I flew over on Sunday from London Heathrow, it was a 10 hour flight and was fine, although I found some glass in my melon! I got some free travel vouchers for not suing. Also I watched some sub-par movies. It’#s a real shame that airlines can’t get awesome movies for their media systems.

So today I went to the Big Fish Games offices on 4th Avenue. They have a whole floor on this big central skyscraper with nearly 300 employees.

I finally met John Cutter, the designer who I’m working with. I also met Adrian Woods, the developer of the highly successful Mystery Case Files series (the one which kick-started the Hidden Object genre). I met the guy that made Blood (an old Duke 3D era game where you could play football with the heads of your victims). I saw Azada 2, and heard that Hidden Expedition Amazon has broken all sales records in the last 4 days – it’s sold a pretty crazy number. Met some other developers, designers and nice people. There’s this cool bit of the office where all the artists are working on huge TFTs displaying really lush graphics from up and coming games – some if which I got to see in action. Also everyone gets around on scooters!

So anyway it’s been a good day although I feel very tired due to the time difference. I wanted to go to sleep after I finished at the office but Helen said we needed to go out and get some more sunlight to help us adjust. So we took the ferry over to Bainbridge island. It was really nice and the Seattle skyline looked cool. We ate vegetable burritos, yum. Reminds me, for the first time I had U.S.-style pancakes with maple syrup on this morning. We made the mistake of ordering a “high stack” which was just impossible to eat – tasted great though!

Naturally Helen’s been shopping and bought some nice things whilst I’ve been busy. All the people are really nice here.

On Wednesday we are catching a train to Vancouver, Canada, to stay there for a few days and then we are flying back to London on Saturday. We heard loads of great things about Vancouver so are really looking forward to the visit.

Tuesday Morning, Hotel Max, Seattle

I woke up at 5:30 am today and I’m wide awake. Must be not quite used to the time difference yet. The flight was actually just under 10 hours and the time difference is 8 hours. I watched some inflight movies but the system crashed a few times when I tried to play games (Bejewelled was on the list of games!). Apparently going back is the killer due to jet lag.

Today I’m going over the powerups and enemies for my current game with designer and the artists which should be good fun. Then I’m meeting the CEO, CFO, CTO etc, all the C-level bigwigs. Helen is going wine tasting!

I’m currently debating if I should have pancakes again for breakfast…or eggs.

Tuesday Evening, Hotel Max, Seattle

Phew another crazy busy day. Met loads of people today including the artists for the Mystery Case files and other games. I know what the next Mystery Case files game is going to be and some other secret projects too. I got taken up to the 20th floor which has all the email and phone support staff on it. It has an incredible view of the city and the sea – just amazing. (One helpdesk guy I stood next to whilst I looked out the window must have the best view in the entire company!) They have 300 staff there and are soon moving to new premises. I met people in quality control who I worked with and also the Spanish, French and German translators who did the localisation for Fairway. Then this evening the VP took us to dinner, which was nice. I’ve spoken to so many people and been feeling the jet lag quite a bit so that everything has just been a blur.

In the morning we are catching a train up to Vancouver and having a look around. On Thursday night we are meeting a load of Indie programmers from Vancouver (from the Indiegamer forums), including the programmer of the Professor Fizzwizzle games that my kids and I love playing.

Friday, Hotel L’hermitage, Vancouver

So anyway, we traveled to Vancouver by (slow) train on Wednesday morning and went to the hotel which had only just opened on that day and so we couldn’t check into the room. That was OK though because we took a nice walk through downtown to Granville Island and then over to Kitsalano (where I found a lovely community garden on the old railway tracks). Later that night we ate a meal in Robson street. The weather was great, really sunny.

Yesterday we were taken on a tour of Vancouver by someone who knows it really well and then we had lunch on Kits beach (well in a restaurant there). Then we took a sea bus over to North Vancouver and had a stroll around – it’s nice a peaceful in the residential areas.

In the evening we went to the Indie developer meetup at Earl’s restaurant. It was organised by Ryan Clark of Professor Fizzwizzle fame. I met some interesting people there. Most people weren’t making casual games but were in fact making games for XBLA or iphone or were making MMOs etc. Met some guys who used to work for Relic Entertainment including the programmer of N and N+, he was about my age and on my wavelength about making core games easier and more accessible because when we kids games were just waaaaay too hard. Also met the programmer of Eets who has given up on casual games and is now making an “mmo-thing” as I called it and they were horrified.

Yeah so lots of successful programmers here doing varied things.

Today we will go for a walk around Stanley park as the weather is really great, then it’s a bus back to Seattle for one more night before we fly home.

Monday, Home, Dorset, England

I planned to post about my last day in Vancouver in a Starbucks but was disappointed to find out that the wireless is not free, bummer. There was wireless on the bus, but it didn’t work, arg.

The walk round Stanley Park in Vancouver was great. We only did a short walk round a lake but the weather was awesome – I nearly burned my forehead. We also sat on the beach English Bay which was really cool. What topped it for me was the vegetarian hot dog I bought!

Just as the bus was leaving Vancouver (for Seattle) there was a huge bike rally. Loads (and I mean LOADS) of people brought the city to a standstill as they cycled along a major route, it was cool, and luckily our bus was not delayed and the border crossing was fine.

Back in the U.S. on our last day we went to the Pike St. Market and bought a Zelda Ocarina for my eldest son, way cool. Then we visited the Japanese gardens which were really peaceful. It was a REALLY nice hot day so I bought a “life is good” cap (btw, I ate pancakes AGAIN for breakfast, couldn’t resist).

Flight home was long and movies were still sub-par, but we made it back fine! It’s nice to be home and see the green English countryside.