Calling for sponsors for an MMA event in April

My friend is organizing and directing a highly anticipated MMA event in late April. There are some very exciting opportunities for local companies to gain some powerful marketing exposure for a modest sponsoring fee. Anyone interested, please contact me and I’ll get you in contact with the event’s organizer.

The trap of company loyalty

Today I saw a 5 year veteran of a company get fired and coldly ejected from the building. I’ve seen people get fired before but this person was a company promoter and someone who seemed to have bought into the company agenda. Then, just like that, it’s all over.

Loyalty is a very important quality to me in anyone I want in my inner circle. I constantly talk about the importance of loyalty and the role it plays in creating powerful win-win relationships. It’s the keystone of success.

That being said, I have to be honest when I say that loyalty has its limits when working for a company. Anyone extending their loyalty to an employer, beyond their ethically required fiduciary duty, is asking for a rude awakening. Let’s be honest…you’re nothing more then a number to them. They have no problem asking you to work late to meet a deadline or sacrifice for the greater good but is that loyalty retuned when profits are shrinking or times get tough?

The reality is, a company is an organization with a mission of making money. They love you when you’re filling pockets with the green stuff but have no use for you when they have to start asking “what have you done for me lately?” That’s ok, cause that’s business. It remains ok so long as you realize this and don’t buy into the happy family bullshit most companies feed “the help.”

You must always give the company your best but focus on your success and that of those deserving people around you. When a CEO says that “we’re had a great quarter” what he or she means is that they had a great quarter. You still have to get yours. Don’t be afraid to view companies for what they are, a stop on the path to your success. Build relationships, work hard, and work towards team success. Do these things with the understanding that there is no “I” in “TEAM” but there is in “Interests.” And since no one else is looking out for yours, it’s your responsibility to.

Breaking into the game industry through Quality Assurance

I started my career in the game industry through the Quality Assurance department at Acclaim Entertainment. It’s a different company now, but it used to publish the NBA JAM series of games, Turok, and a host of other properties. I worked at the Salt Lake City office in Sugarhouse, UT. I loved this job despite getting my real first taste of bullshit office politics.

That first job taught me so much. I knew from the moment I walked into that building that I needed to have a career in the creative / entertainment industries. I loved everything about the place. From the arcade games in the lunch room to the professional recording studio, this place felt like home. The QA area was laid back and I got to work with some of the best guys you could hope to work with. Many of those guys have moved on to be designers, artists, and programmers at other companies. Others ended up in jail or went back to “real jobs.” I would move on from there to work on 13 commercially released titles and work for 4 other studios up to this point in time.

Breaking into the biz through the QA department is an awesome way to get in. This article from Game Career guide has some great tips on interviewing for a QA job. A good read.

Acing the Test Interview

Presentation

I love clean presentation in video games. From a front end standpoint, I think the Kingdom Hearts series does a great job of accomplishing a clean, rich presentation. I’ve included the openings of both games as an example of what inspires me about presentation. These aren’t the front end components but the “feel” generated in these openings extends into the games creating a unifying experience. A lot of games lack that. On an unrelated note, I liked Disney Interactive better then Buena Vista Games for Disney’s games division.

Welcome 2010

Damn, can you beleive it? 2010, where has the time gone. The trasition from 09 to 10 has given me time to think a lot about things. Some of it I would have prefered not to think about. Though it’s important that we learn from the past, we can’t life in it. I wish I would have made a lot of diffferent choices over the years. I’ve lost a lot of ground and a lot of time because of some paths I took. I learned a lot from those paths but they were leassons I think I could have learned in a much more constructive way. Even so, It’s a new year and the question now becomes what will I do with this year.

I really intend for this to be my breakout year. If for no other reason, then simply because I’ve commited to getting all of my IP down on paper. Every project, no matter how small, has been assigned a folder on my computers. The simplist concept gets a write up. I can’t build something if I don’t have the blueprint for it. I’ve kept too much in my head over the years leaving me little to show for my plans and designs. That ended on New Years Eve.

The mission for this year is to build my library of IP. Build a body of work and begin pushing the gates of the entertainment industries to gain enterance. It’s not easy, it won’t be quick, and I’m sure i’m going to suffer more then my fair share of rejection. That’s life. Sometimes you have to tuck your head down and charge forward against the tide regardless of the challenges. I know I’m going to make something special happen this year because I refuse to quit. That alone puts me about 90% of those out there chassing the same dream.

Welcome to 2010, I hope you have a fantastic year and thanks for hanging around the blog for another year.

Posting short blogs

It’s been really tough lately trying to find the time to blog. It’s not cause I don’t have shit to say, believe me on that. A lot of it has been political though and I have a different forum I use for that. So I’m switching things up a bit. Between full posts I’m going to be dropping little twitter like posts to fill in the gaps. I’ll be starting that today, since it’s a lot easier for me to drop a few lines on my phone then having to write up paragraphs using my iPhone.

New Audio Blog Coming

I’ve been toying with the idea of adding some audio blogs to this blog. I think I’ll be starting that within the next two weeks. The blogs will be focused on the video game industry and will be an attempt to confirm my industry knowledge with myself before my planned return to the industry in the coming year. I’ll most likely setup a video channel on YouTube to host the audio blogs. It sounds fun and I look forward to getting it started.

The light of a new day

I woke up today with an increased sense of purpose, a confident calmness. For the longest time I’ve felt off center. Today…feels like a wake-up call. I feel like I’m seeing things clearer.

I’m reserved, but strong. Ready to make the changes in my life needed to take the next step in my evolution as a person. My aggression is resting just below the surface of my reserved calm, ready at a moments notice to be called into action. That aggression is back to serving me instead of trying to make itself my master.

I’ve made so many mistakes, wasted so much time. I’ve never backed down from  a fight…yet, with the most important battles in my life I’ve become comfortable with the status quo. When I charged head long into fights I was fighting for the wrong reasons, when I poured hours of my life into building my ambitions…I was building for the wrong reasons.

Today is a new day. A chance to move one step closer to the man I should be. I have a chance to start this new year off right by embracing the life I’ve always dreamed of. An existence of purpose, value, and strength. I’ve let so many people down who have sacrificed for me. Now its time to justify their faith. Stepping forth into the light of a new day with the cool confidence that its time for me to step up and change the world.

Employee Loyalty

Loyalty in the corporate world in any capacity seems about as difficult to come by as the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. There’s not much incentive for it. Business is a kill or be killed world and the idea of really building a “team” that is truly committed to a corporate project seems laughable at best.

Yet, as a multimillion dollar corporation, a team is exactly what you need to be at the top of your game. When a company is small it can rely on superstars. The ace CEO, the connected CFO, or the brilliant engineer can propel a company to great success. Once a company reaches a critical mass though, it begins to rely on teams of people rather then its aces for success.

Given that it’s already so difficult to maintain any level of corporate loyalty to begin with, does it really make sense to deny your employees holiday pay or any other incentive which might actually grow loyalty? Is the few hundred to a few thousand dollars saved really worth the insult to the employees, or even the hundreds of thousands of dollars lost to reduced productivity and turn over costs?

To build a team of loyal employees, each person must feel like they have a stake in the end game. A paycheck doesn’t cut it because we all know the employee makes nothing compared to corporate profits. Profit sharing, performance bonuses, and basic holiday pay go far in providing employees with that much needed stake. If you’re not going to give your workers a stake in the end goal don’t bother expecting them to care about your objectives. At the very least don’t sign your own death warrant by denying them the most basic things like holiday pay. Be smarter and they’ll work harder.

Project: Syndicate

I had some serious trouble sleeping last night. Came to the conclusion that the main reason I’m so frustrated about things right now is that I’ve not been creating. I haven’t been advancing my goals. One of the keys to my success is going to be the Intellectual Property that I create and own. I’ve been lazy as hell about building a solid library of work. I woke up in a sweat determined that all of that ends today.

I’ve begun work on a moderately scaled project called “Syndicate.” While I’m going to be very tight lipped about the details of the project for now, I can say that it has two primary objectives. The project is based on a very exciting business model. It’s core aims are to serve as my first, fully completed venture proposal and to be aggressively pitched to investing angels. More to come in the days ahead.