Video capture by Casual Connect

I recently attended Casual Connect 2011 in Seattle where I spoke on a panel about being indie hosted by Mark Baxter. Fellow panelists were Ola Rogula (Doll Divine) and Shane Neville (Ninja Robot Dinosaur).

The panel was called “DIY: Indie Game Dev from Napkin to Profitability” and you can watch the whole video here.

The sound volume is a bit low but if you turn it up it’s clear enough. Enjoy!

Doing the panel was a lot of fun, plus I got a free pass to Casual Connect, which was awesome. Next week I’m on a panel at PAX Dev about being indie.

A couple of months ago I did my no.2 speech at Toastmasters and it was called “How I changed my Financial Blueprint” and it went pretty well. It was about a book I read called “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” by T Harv Eker, and the effect that it had on my finances.

I posted the text for the speech here and now I have a video of it kindly recorded by another Club 59 member, Steve Cosmic.

Watching yourself speak is very educational. You can see all the little mistakes you made and improve upon them next time.

Let me know what you think.

I hope to post more videos of future speeches, so watch this space!

Last Monday I did my second speech at Toastmasters Club 59. It was a speech about money, a topic that some people are not comfortable talking about, but it didn’t seem to phase my audience because the speech went down very well indeed!

Here’s the written version of the speech – the actual speech varied a little bit from this because I did it from memory.

How I changed my Financial Blueprint

Greeting

Thank you madam Toastmaster. Good evening fellow toastmasters and most welcome guests.

Pause.

Strong Opening

“Rich People Suck!”

Pause

Last year I attended a seminar about changing our attitude towards money and during one exercise we had to write down our negative beliefs about money. The guy next to me wrote “Rich people suck” and it’s quite a common negative belief, along with things like: “I don’t deserve to be rich”, or “money is evil and not spiritual”, or “finances are sooo boring”.

Tonight I’m going to tell you about a book I read that made a big impact on the way I think about money.

About the Book

I’ve been into positive thinking and personal development for quite a few years but I never really applied that style of thinking to my finances properly until I read this book.

[Hold up the book]

It’s called “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” by T Harv Eker.

Has anyone heard of it?

It’s not a dry book about finances – it’s packed full of great ideas, and is quite funny and blunt in places.

[Put book down]

The main aim behind the book is to get you to look at your financial blueprint, that’s the way you think about money and deal with money, and to replace any thoughts that hinder your financial success with better thoughts.

I read it quickly and enjoyed it a lot, and then straight away I lent it to Helen, my partner, and said “you’ve got to read this so we can be on the same financial wavelength”.

Our successes

This was back in January 2007 and at the time I ran my own company making computer games and Helen was (and still is) a freelance Science Writer.

One of the things Helen got from the book was a realisation that she wasn’t charging enough – that her work was worth much more. She doubled her rates immediately and still got plenty of work and was able to say no to lower paid jobs. A couple of months later she was earning triple her original rate on some particular jobs!

As for myself, for a little while I’d had a goal of making £5000 from my game company every month. In March 2007 I had my first £5000 month. Then my company went on to have a great year, and the following year my turnover doubled and things are still going strong!

A large part of our success was because we are good at what we do but when we shifted our attitudes towards money, things got even better.

So where do negative beliefs about money come from?

Beliefs about Money

When we are children we hear our parents talk about money in the home, and we hear our peers at school, and what they say begins to shape our financial blueprint.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees”
“No way! We can’t afford that”
“I got the blues so I’m going out shopping.”

Stuff like that. Then by the time we reach adulthood our financial blueprint is already affecting the way we deal with money. It defines if we are always broke, or if we horde our money, or if we are well on the way to being a millionaire.

The book talks about many negative beliefs about money and offers positive alternatives that we can replace them with. Also the great thing about the advice in the book is that it doesn’t just apply to money, it’s about creating wealth in all areas of your life such as love, happiness and health.

For example, one concept I love from the book is that of being bigger than your problems. So let’s say on a scale of 1 to 10 that I’m only a level 1 in terms of dealing with problems. Then along comes a level 3 problem and it seems insurmountable to me. I think “Oh my God, how am I going to deal with that?” But if I work on myself and expand my comfort zone so that I’m say a level 8 person, a level 3 problem is really tiny by comparison, something that I can deal with easily.

Educating yourself

Therefore educating yourself about managing money is vital in becoming financially successful. Once you start effectively managing your money you start to think more about long-term savings, ways to cut your costs, and ways to invest your money to make it grow.

Another great piece of advice from the book is to split your income into several different bank accounts. That’s what I do.

I put 10% of my earnings into long-term savings that I never touch, this is for my future.

Then I make sure all my outgoings are dealt with and then I split the remainder into several more accounts: a giving account, a contingency account, an education account and a Play account. That’s the best account because the idea is to spend it every month just having fun. When you know how much money you have spare for fun you don’t overspend.

The result of using a system like this is that I know exactly how much money I’ve got available for different things. I feel much more in control of my finances.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I encourage you to examine your beliefs about money and ask yourself if those beliefs are serving you well or hindering you. I also encourage you to educate yourself more about money in order to manage your finances more effectively.

Strong Ending

Finally I’d like to remind you that to be successful in whatever you’re passionate about, you’ll need to overcome many obstacles along the way …

And that is why … you need to be … “bigger than your problems!”

Thank you madam Toastmaster.

Last weekend I spoke on a panel at PAX called: “I’ve Just Been F#$%ing Fired”: How To Get Back Into the Industry On Your Own Terms Through Mobile Game Development”. (I haven’t actually been fired but I know about running an Indie company.)

It was a bit last minute, someone dropped out of the Panel and I was asked to step in, and being the sort to take opportunities I did. Originally the panel was supposed to be about Mobile game development, which I have limited experience with, but I thought that my knowledge of running an Indie company would be valuable anyway.

The panel went great and was very enjoyable. My co-panellists were very knowledgeable and it was good to meet them. The audience was not massive, maybe 50 people because I think lots of people went to the PAX 10 Panel that was on at the same time instead. I wasn’t nervous at all, it was just like chatting with friends except into a microphone.

The coolest thing was that I got a free PAX pass and so I was able to visit the show for the first time and see all the latest games and attend some great panels and even go to a nerdcore concert!

Anyway, the panel had a slideshow and I made some notes beforehand about the questions on the slideshow so that I didn’t draw a blank. Either I or the other panelists mentioned all my points (because we agreed on everything) and we talked about other stuff too. Apparently the panels are recorded and I’d like to find out how to get a copy of the recording.

So here are my rough notes for those who are interested:

Intro

- Been a hobbyist game programmer since age of 8, but fell intro trap of making business software for nearly a decade.
- Finally saw the light and followed my dream to make games for a living.
- Quit my job with no real plan or savings but with a determination to succeed and a belief in myself.
- It was hard work, and money was scarce for quite a while, but it fun and rewarding learning how to make professional casual games, plus I got to sit in the garden whenever I wanted.
- Eventually my games got better and I was noticed by BFG and did some games as a contractor for them.
- Then they offered me a job in Vancouver. I took it for the experience and networking then moved my family from the UK.

Pick a Platform

- Arcade style: Investigate XLBA. Mini arcade game: iphone or Flash game (ads or licensed but not much money in it). Possibly Steam but Indie PC arcade games don’t sell that well off-Steam.
- Casual game: PC and Mac downloads via big portals (need pretty big budget to compete these days). Possibly WiiWare and even iPhone. Some casual games on XBLA.
- Why iphone? Can make very small game to get started with low budget (smaller than XBLA or Casual game) and just a couple of months of programming. Lots of tools, comprehensive language and great resources. Submit yourself to appstore + 70% of profits. BUT tons of competition and a chance of very little return.

Manage Finances

- Start saving money whilst you have a job.
- When Indie reduce all outgoings massively.
- Try to get people to work for profit share (or part pay and part %) so you don’t have to pay them. Caveat: pros want to be paid and they often do the best work.
- Learn the basics of accounting. Track expenses and sales. I expensed some consoles, games, events like this, and a plasma TV! Make a balance sheet. Hire an accountant as they save you money and will stop you getting into legal trouble. $1000 is nothing, they’ll save you that straight away. Who wants to fill out forms? Not me. Delegate it to someone who can do it faster and better. Don’t do anything illegal (on purpose or through ignorance) or it’ll bite you on the ass.
- Team up with someone with money. They may want control though.
- Get a business loan (tricky if you are new), or personal loan (pretend it’s to upgrade your house), or buy everything on credit cards if you don’t have savings (not very sensible but it sure makes you want to succeed quickly to pay them off!)
- Find an investor. Not easy. Need more than just an idea, need a prototype and a strong case to get money from publishers.
- Speculate to accumulate!

Choose Employees

- I’ve worked in a distributed team, it sounds cool, but it’s not cool. It can be done but is hard work. Tons of emails. Working in an office with other team members is way more productive and fun (if you don’t distract each other). OR at least live near each other so you can meet up often.
- Only work as a one person team if you are making a very small game and are great at art and music or plan to buy cheap art and music or use free stuff. That used to work 4 years ago but doesn’t cut it now. Working on your own will take to long as well.
- Need designer/programmer (could be separate people), artist x1 minimum, hire musician as a contractor, plus marketing or publisher. Minimum team of 2 for a casual game but 4 is better.
- Find other designers to bounce ideas off of because other team members may not know about game design.

Adjust to Change

- Roll with the punches. Rocky says something like: “It ain’t about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
- Change can often be good and present a new opportunity.
- Change is always a learning experience.
- Be open to change not rigid because when making a game you have to iterate ideas a lot and scrap many. Don’t cling onto something because you made it and it’s your baby, if the playtesters think it stinks, ditch it.
- Funding down: reduce scope. Funding up: boost scope, or finish game and make another. More eggs in more baskets is good.

Get Distributed

- A good game will NOT sell itself.
- Learn marketing and spend a lot of time and some money doing it
- OR hire a publisher (delegate so you can keep making great games, but they will take a big cut). Learn from them so you can do it yourself in the future if you want.
- For casual games, use portals.
- Find someone with a game on XBLA and see how they got it on there and seek advice or partner with them.
- App store = easy to get on. Backup with website and viral marketing.

Legal Aspects

- NDAs when showing other people ideas, but don’t be too scared and never show anyone.
- Don’t copy another game’s characters or story or graphics. Mechanics are often cloned in the casual world, but try to add something new so it stands out. Build your own brand of IP.
- Don’t make fan games, you can’t sell them unless you are extremely lucky and strike a deal with the IP holder.
- Satires of existing are legally OK, but still it may be best to come up with something totally new.
- Make sure all fonts, sound and art are totally from legal sources. Beware “free” sources. Read the small print as often it’s not legal for commercial titles.
- Don’t get bogged down in legality. Just get on with making the game!

Take Aways

- Believe in yourself
- Want to succeed
- Ready Fire Aim
- Work hard and learn as much as possible
- Seek advice
- Networking (which is why you are here right?)
- Take opportunities
- Speculate to accumulate.
- Go to my blog: www.greyaliengames.com/blog
- Keep it simple! (but not too simple)

As I’ve mentioned before I’m improving my public speaking skills because I really enjoy helping people to become successful as game designers, or in running their business, or just in their daily lives. I feel like it’s a mission of mine, a life purpose if you will, and I intend to pursue it.

Already I help people via my blog and I receive grateful comments and emails every week that encourage me to keep going (thanks everyone!) I also enjoy talking to people one-on-one about their goals and aspirations to see if I can help them – so public speaking seems like a good way to literally reach a larger audience. Plus it’s a self-growth experience for me because I have to be confident and communicate my ideas clearly.

Anyway, I’ve made a list of my speaking credentials and would love to hear from you if you are interested in having me do a speech at your venue, or even an interview (via email or phone or whatever).

I recently joined Toastmasters in order to improve my public speakings skills and I’m enjoying it a lot. I joined Club 59 at Kitsilano Yacht Club. The idea is that I will do 10 speeches over time covering a range of topics and using different skills and then I’ll be a “Competent Communicator”. Then I can go onto more advanced levels if I want. Toastmasters is a tiny bit like a cult but it doesn’t cost much and you meet nice people and improve yourself, so I’m willing to be inducted and become a convert.

How did it go?

Anyway, last Friday I received an email saying that there were some speech slots available on Monday. This felt a bit soon for me to do my Icebreaker but I thought I’d go for it anyway, so I sent off an email before I could change my mind. I prepared my speech over the weekend and did it on Monday night. It went very well and felt good, I wasn’t too nervous. Many people congratulated me on a great Ice Breaker afterwards and the club president said it was the best one he’d seen in a long time! This is certainly encouraging.

How I prepared

I managed to do the speech from memory without any notes and I did it in 5 minutes 55 seconds (I was aiming for 6 minutes). It was all down to the preparation. This is what I did:

- I figured out how many words I read aloud per minute. That’s about 150 words.

- I worked out that 6 minutes is about 900 words.

- I thought up a theme and carefully crafted an intro and an outro in MS Word.

- I filled in the middle bit with details of my past split into several sections. These sections acted as natural pauses in the speech and people commented that my pauses were very good, so it must have worked.

- I read it aloud several times and timed myself.

- It was taking longer than 6 minutes so I edited the text to remove some less critical sentences.

- I read it aloud some more and got the time to about 5 mins 50 seconds.

- I made an outline of the speech with bullet points for the details and practised it some more just looking at that.

- I made a list of just the section headers and practised just from that.

- Finally I practised with no list.

- Some important bits I repeated over and over to drum the correct words and delivery technique into my head.

- Most of the time I practised standing up so that I could move around and wave my hands (I actually did an Aikido move at one point during the speech followed by a block and punch and then some other similar stuff).

- I wanted to show Helen to get her feedback but she was really ill all weekend, so I asked my colleagues at work to be a dummy audience but only one volunteered. Anyway, it was good to practice in front of at least one person before I did it for real.

- I arrived at toastmasters early and made sure that I spoke to as many people as possible so that they were familiar to me and not scary later on when they were in the audience.

- When I did my speech I made sure to speak slowly and carefully, to breathe and project my voice, and to look at different audience members. Also I moved around the stage and used my arms to accentuate points.

- Oh and of course before I got there I visualised myself doing a great speech, feeling confident, and everyone saying it was good afterwards. This step is probably more important that all the others! But solid preparation certainly helped a lot.

Although I haven’t done many speeches before I guess I had a slight advantage over most noobs because of my 8 years of Aikido teaching (although that’s to a very familiar class and more physical than about speeches), and multiple years of computer system sales before that – it all helps to combat nerves.

So without further ado, here’s a transcript of my speech (my actual words varied a bit on the day as my memory is not perfect and I wanted to speak naturally instead of repeating verbatim). Of course, you had to be there to really appreciate it Enjoy!

My Ice Breaker Speech

Monday 24th August 2009

Title: From Nought to One Hundred.

Thank you Mr/Madam Toastmaster.
Good evening Mr/Madam Chair, fellow Toastmasters and most welcome guests.

Introduction:

Someone once asked me “If I take up a martial art, what is the percentage chance that I’ll reach black belt?”. And I said: Well here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter what the average percentage chance is. What matters is if YOU want to be a black belt enough then you’ll be one, and if you don’t want it enough, then you’ll never be one. The percentage chance for you is simply 100 or zero.

I turns out that for me… [pull out my black belt from my back pocket and hold up] … it was 100 percent.

I earned this black belt in 2002 for Aikido and I gained my 2nd dan (that’s a higher level of black belt) last year.

Tonight I’m going to tell you a bit about myself including why I took up Aikido and how I ended up here.

[put black belt back down on lectern]

Living in England:

Like most people in Vancouver I wasn’t born here. If my accent hasn’t already given it away by now, I’m from England.

I grew up in the countryside in the county of Dorset, which on the South coast. It’s a beautiful area steeped in ancient Roman and Celtic history.

My hometown is called Bridport. It’s a small town near the sea and I lived there happily for most of my life.

My First Computer:

My family moved to Bridport when I was 8 years old and that is when I got my first computer. In those days computers came with a BASIC programming manual and because games cost money I learnt to program them instead for fun. I continued programming games as a hobby for the next 22 years until it became my full-time job, but more on that in a moment.

Aikido:

In my early 20s I was developing business software in the day and playing computer games all night long. One day I came to the realisation that I needed to do some exercise or I was going to get pretty unhealthy due to my sedentary lifestyle.

Then a friend told me about an Aikido class that had started up at the local leisure centre. Aikido is a Japanese martial art that involves blending with an attackers’ energy to use against them instead of blocking and then punching or kicking back like most other martial arts.

I found the first class to be very intriguing and I was relieved that there was no smashing of bricks with my head or thrusting my hands into a bucket of hot coals.

Aikido encourages a positive attitude and we learn perseverance and endurance in a supportive atmosphere. During lessons we also mediate and do deep breathing to tune into Universal energy (more on that in a future speech!)

When my teacher moved on I was honoured to become the teacher and I’ve taught children and adults for the last 8 years.

Business Software to Game Developer:

As I mentioned earlier my day job was developing business software. Specifically it was stock control, accounting and reporting systems for bookshops. Sounds pretty thrilling doesn’t it?

Well anyway, eventually I became the manager of the company and the software became very successful. However, I was aware that I was making the owner of the company big money whilst working myself into the ground. Does that sound familiar to anyone here?

So I decided to follow my passion and set up my own company and make computer games for a living. I quit my job without any real plan or savings but with a belief in myself and my abilities and with a determination to succeed. I somehow *knew* that I could make it work – that it was going to be 100% chance of success for me.

Moving to Vancouver:

And to cut a long story short, it did work. I made 6 commercial games and then Big Fish Games in Seattle offered me a job in a new studio that was opening in Vancouver.

I had to think very carefully about their offer because I have a family with two boys aged 8 and 5, and it would mean completely uprooting and moving to a different continent, which I’m sure some of you may be familiar with.

However, we thought that it was a great opportunity for us all to gain experience and have fun, so we moved here last November and we’ve been loving it, especially this awesome summer!

Future Aims:

Over the years I’ve got more and more into personal development and so joining Toastmasters was a natural progression for me especially because I want to begin teaching personal development soon. I believe that communicating clearly is extremely important in personal, social and business situations and I look forward to becoming a Competent Communicator with your help.

Conclusion:

So I hope that I’ve demonstrated today that to go from zero to 100 you need to really want to achieve something and really believe that you can do it. Then you can take dedicated action towards that goal and succeed. Go for it!

I just had a busy but fun few days. On Friday Nick Newhard from BFG Seattle came up to Vancouver and we prepared notes for our Vancouver Game Design Expo presentation called “10 Secrets to Designing Instantly Addictive and Enjoyable Games”. Nick is an industry veteran game designer – he made a game called Blood back in the Doom and Duke Nukem 3D days.

Vancouver Film School

On Friday night we got invited to a speakers’ Dinner at the Vancouver Film School cafe and then got taken on a tour around the Game Design Campus. It’s a pretty cool place and the course seems well thought out. I’ve was given a CD containing some of the students’ final projects (Flash games) to check out. Oh and I got a free jacket, a free bag, a free water bottle and a free pen, neato!

On Saturday we there were a whole load of presentations at the VFS Theatre and we watched one about prototyping by a guy called Matt who use to work for Nexon but who is now “Independent” (he said that sounded better than unemployed). It made a lot of sense and I hope to use some of the info for my next game. Then we continued working on our presentation notes and were beginning to wish that the presentation was called “2 Secrets to…” instead

Visualising Success

That night I spent some time visualising a successful presentation. So like me not being too nervous, smiling, making jokes (which the audience laugh at), and applause at the end, plus people telling us it was a great presentation. This is the kind of thing I learnt to do years ago before my Aikido gradings and before important sales presentations when I was selling business software.

Technical Hitches

Sunday morning we wanted to run through the presentation a couple more times but we ran into some technical hitches. Nick’s laptop had ceased to boot and so he wasn’t able to make some important edits. So we downloaded a trial version of Office 2007 (500+MB) in order to install Powerpoint 2007 on my PC, but when we ran Powerpoint we discovered that it was a crippled version that wouldn’t allow us to edit the notes or save! Damn you Microsoft! In the end we were able to edit it in an older version but we only got to practice the presentation once and that meant that we were nearly late for the presentation – oh and I left my notes printout in the office in the rush! We got there just in time to discover that they hadn’t set up the laptop to display the speakers’ notes whilst the main slideshow was projected onto the big screen. So this required a bit more technical jiggery pokery to resolve.

All of these last minute hitches that seemed to be conspiring against us and made us feel pretty nervous. I was more nervous than for my 2nd dan black belt grading in Aikido where I got attacked with a real knife for example! I guess I felt way better prepared for that, ha ha. But I did some deep breathing and walked around on stage and familiarised myself with the audience before we began, which helped.

The presentation

The presentation itself lasted exactly 35 minutes, which was the target time, and went very well. We didn’t sound too nervous, I encouraged some audience participation by getting them to name the game screenshots, and the jokes went down well. I actually made more jokes than planned because when I relaxed I imagined I was just talking to one person and so the jokes came out naturally. The presentation was jam packed with vital info and loads of people were making notes, even game designers from mainstream AAA game companies. We made sure that the presentation referenced both Casual games and mainstream games so that people could easily see the parallels. Also some of my notes just said RIFF, which meant waffle in an adlib manner about a particular game or topic. These sections added life to the presentation because they don’t sound as dry as when you read from notes.

At the end of the presentation loads of people rushed up to us and asked us questions, and one game designer from a AAA game company said it was the best presentation of the weekend (this was something specific I had visualised the night before), so that was pretty cool. Then we chilled out and had a big congratulatory lunch in Yaletown and I resumed adding sound effects to my current game.

Conclusion

Overall doing the presentation was fun, but it’s a LOT of work to deliver an info packed half hour presentation. It probably took us a couple of days to plan and make the slideshow (lots of screenshots) and a couple more days to make all the notes and practice it. So if you are asked to do a presentation somewhere, don’t underestimate the work involved. Also definitely try visualising a successful presentation so that you get into a positive mindset, not a worried mindset. Hopefully now if I’m asked to do another one I’ll be less nervous and better prepared.