Social Media Guru?

By Tommy Leung on 02/26/2009 in Marketing

This blog post came from someone I follow on Twitter. It talks about all the people who have started calling themselves “social media gurus” on social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Are they really “gurus”. What makes them a guru?

“Yes, social media is huge when it comes to marketing on the internet but not all so called social media gurus know what they are doing.”

That is probably the truth of the matter too when it comes to social media. The field itself is so new and bleeding edge, what defines your guru status? I thought it was a good read–I did a retweet. Particularly loved this part at the end:

“Marketing in the social web or utilizing social media for marketing purpose is built on one premise which coincides with the age old form of marketing : word of mouth. That is exactly what social media marketing is. Word of mouth marketing but on the web. You do things that makes others talk about you. Whether through meaningful relationship on a one on one basis with your fans or followers or by doing things that gives value to the people on the other end.”

I’m reading Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz right now so that resonates. I also believe it.

Icelandic Drinking Game

By Tommy Leung on 02/25/2009 in Life

I was at McSorley’s in the East Village neighborhood of New York City with a few European friends last Thursday. McSorley’s is the oldest ale house in NY and from what I’ve gathered in the couple times that I have been there, they only serve light or dark ale. I was at a wine bar called Absinthe not far from McSorley’s earlier in the night. They don’t actually serve any absinthe–sad.

So while at McSorley’s, we met these two guys from Iceland. It didn’t hit me at first that Iceland is bankrupt–I hard forgotten. I did ask those two how it was over there with their money being virtually worthless. They were pretty drunk but the main idea was that it isn’t good–they told me that Iceland had found oil and that would solve their problems.

With all that serious and political stuff aside, they introduced us to a drinking game. This is apparently the only drinking game in all of Iceland–I guess they aren’t that creative. From what I gathered, the name of the game is called Viking–it sounded like “White King” with their accent.

You need to have a decent number of people to play this game–at least four. You sit around a table and someone is chosen to be the Viking. The two people sitting next to the Viking–on each side–needs to pretend to row a paddle furiously.

Imagine you are on a boat with the Viking in the middle. You cannot row inside the boat–if you do, you drink. The person who is the Viking also makes horns on the top of his or her head with their hands.

Now, the person who is the Viking will need to pass on the priviledge of being a Viking to someone else. Once they do, that person needs to make the horns on their head and the two other people sitting next to the new Viking needs to row.

Anyone who messes up needs to drink. This can basically go on forever. It is the most active drinking game I have ever played.

SpongeBob: Demolition Sponge

By Tommy Leung on 02/24/2009 in Games

The latest game that I finished for Nickelodeon is live now. I blogged about it on the company website as well. It was a pretty short project. I was the only programmer behind it. We worked with THIS IS POP. The producer was Georgia Perris–my favorite one there.

Check the game out, there are no codes. The power-ups are pretty cool. The Queen and King jellyfish as also interesting. Shooting hordes of jellyfish is entertaining in its own right.

90/10 Twitter Rule

By Tommy Leung on 02/23/2009 in Marketing

The Pareto Principle (80/20) is pretty valid for almost everything in the universe and a adaptation of that rule is 90/10 or even 110/5 is just as valid in some cases. The idea being that 80% of all effects come from 20% of the causes.

I find it easier to look at it in business terms: 80% of profits come from 20% of customers. I follow Nabbit on Twitter and Nabbit had a tweet about the 90/10 rule of Twitter. I actually think it applies to a lot of social media, interactive, and word of mouth marketing.

This new age of interactive marketing requires that we give and give a lot. What we receive will be directly porportional to what we give. Those just trying to push things down our throats are not going to get much from us. Web 2.0 brought about online communities and information sharing.

I believe the way to successful interactive marketing is by giving away as much useful information as possible. To be helpful and kind and caring. The greedy evildoers are going to be caught redhanded and their faces plastered all over Google. This is an age where you can’t get away with poor customer service and bad products.

Instead of give me, give me, give me. It’s give, give, give.

How To Get Into The Game Industry

By Tommy Leung on 02/17/2009 in Games

Working in the video game industry had always been a dream of mine. I grew up with video games. It was probably my favorite past time as a kid. I have some pretty fond memories of winter breaks from school playing video games with my younger brother. That was what we did all day. It kept us entertained for hours on end.

Christmas was always an exciting time because we would get new games. Then, we would then have winter break to play them to death. The weather would be cold outside. We had no money to go anywhere. Life was simple and the only thing we cared about was beating the next level. Eventually, I got older and had a social life. My brother also got much better than me at playing games so, time to retire!

Being a person who likes to make things, playing all these video games only made me want to make them. I also made comic books, websites, and cartoons–well, I tried to make them. If I find it interesting, I’m going to want to make my own.

When it came time think about college and–if you believe your high school adviser–your future, I was convinced that I wanted to make video games. I love the industry so, why not? To make a long story short, I did end up in the video game industry. I had written about that story before–feel free to read it.

Before I went to college, I spent a great deal of time looking into how I could break into the industry. I bought books on the subject and looked in every online crevice for information. Now that I’ve spent over a year and a half making games professionally, I think I can offer some advice.

What College?

The usual suspects looking for advice on breaking into the game industry are high school students. I was one of them. I think a college education is nice to have. However, I don’t think college teaches you much of what you need to perform any job in the real world.

I still think one should go to college for the experience. At the very least, you’ll meet useful people. I don’t believe one needs to go to a college that specializes in producing students with video game degrees. I went to the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona for one year. I was pursuing a degree in Game Design.

UAT is a pretty small school. They have great contacts and all the students are after similar things. Like-minded people were there in abundance. I place more importance in being able to understand a wide range of subjects. While one would be able to develop a really focused skill set for making video games, they would be lacking in everything else.

I didn’t really want to become a monkey or a small cog in a big machine.

It is also important to remember that the college experience is a one-time deal. I wouldn’t look so far ahead into the future and forget about that. It doesn’t even matter what degree you are pursuing–although a degree in sociology is likely going to be difficult to apply to games.

I have a BA in Marketing from Pace University. If you want to make games, you are likely going to also be interested in graphic design, programming, or some technology field. A business degree will also work since all game companies are still a business. Communication degrees tend to have a lot of overlap with marketing–especially in the PR department.

Your best bet is to study what you really want to study. Chances are, you won’t know what it is and you’ll change your mind during your college career. Getting into the game industry has very little to do with what college you went to. It has a lot to do with how knowledgeable you are of the industry and how much you participate in the community.

How do I get Experience?

Getting experience is the problem for everyone trying to get a job. There is no way to get real experience without doing it for real. Finding internships at game companies would be the surest way to get a feel for how things work.

Internships

I’m not a big fan of interning but, it is a proven method. I interned for a game company once before I went to college. All I did was test a game.

In my experience, if there is work to be done, we are usually too busy to figure out what to give to an intern who might not know anything. That is why I don’t find much real value from interning. It is still a good experience and you get something to put on your resume. The most important benefit are the contacts you’ll make.

I found my internship by using Gamasutra’s list of game companies. You can sort the list by City or State so I looked for all the game companies in New York and sent them internship requests. Most companies didn’t respond to me but, one of them did. And one was all I needed.

Learning on Your Own

My preferred way of getting experience is to actually make a game. There is an abundance of resources online for making games. Learn how to use the tools and create your own game. That is a learning experience unlike any other. You’ll never know how it feels to make a game from beginning to end without doing it.

Doing is the best simulation for the real thing. It will be more complicated on the job because there are other people in charge of quality and creative. Where you might let some defect slide, the client will not. There is also money on the line–that always changes things.

If you are someone who is just incapable of understanding all this technology mumbo jumbo, you can still get experience by doing. You just need to do something different. I made websites about the video game industry. I tried to compete with GameSpot or IGN–it didn’t work. It was still a good experience. I got to understand the industry very well by reading and reporting the news on a daily basis.

I also got to understand some of the business workings of the industry as I made contacts with the PR departments of companies like Eidos, Ubi Soft, and Midway for review copies of games. It was a fun time and I figured out that being a game journalist was not for me.

All you need to figure out is what you want to do in the game industry and do something that relates. If you can’t do the technical, work on the non-technical.

Useful Resources

Since I never got any formal schooling in making games, I had to find a lot of resources to learn on my own. Most of it had to do with passion. If you really want to do it, there are few things that can stop you. Since I spent time learning how to make games and being a part–a very small part–of the industry media, I can share resources on both.

The Technical

On the technical side, GameDev.net is a great site. I spent most of my time looking through their resources for programming. They also have information about art, sound, design, etc. It is a huge treasure trove of information.

Many tutorial sites that I used have since disappeared. However, Flash was not a big player for games back then. The explosion of Flash games have really changed the landscape. Making games and allowing other people to instantly play them is now easier than ever. All you need is a web browser.

I recommend Kongregate‘s set of tutorials for making Flash games. I am working on a series of tutorials myself but, they aren’t ready yet. You can also put your game on Kongregate and have people play and rate it. If you don’t know about Kongregate, look at them as the YouTube of games.

There is also Microsoft’s XNA platform. They have a huge amount of information about making games for XNA that will play on both the XBOX 360 and Windows. I never had that opportunity to put games on an actual console. I think XNA is great way to learn.

Games built in XNA for the XBOX 360 can also be put on the XBOX Live Marketplace if the community deems it worthy.

The Not So Technical

I consider the not so technical side to be the business side. So that could be a journalist, a writer, an analyst, a PR person, etc. Everything that doesn’t need advanced technical know-how. There are very few to zero resources for telling you how to be a game journalist.

You would go through the same steps as any journalist, except you need to be knowledgeable in games. That is the same for all other non-technical positions. There aren’t any real resources for becoming a game analyst, journalist, or PR person. Those are all disciplines that are not unique to games.

I would keep abreast of the industry news and be active in the community. Reading Gamasutra and being a member of the IGDA would be a good start. The IGDA has chapters all over the country that meet regularly; join one of them and get to know the professionals in your area.

You will want to make a name for yourself as someone who understands your field as it relates to video games. A great way to do that is to blog. Blog about game journalism. Write editorial pieces and publish them yourself. Write about marketing in the game industry.

The prerequisite to writing is that you need to know about your topic. So a marketer is going to have to understand marketing and a journalist about journalism.

Resources for Everyone

The IGDA has a special Breaking In section. It looks about the same as when I was looking for information so I don’t know how updated it is. Their Web Links in the Resources section has information for everything you can imagine.

Ernest Adams is a well known industry veteran who speaks about breaking into the industry. He has a book titled Break Into The Game Industry–I bought and read that book. He would be the de facto expert on the subject as he has probably written the most about it.

Industry Expos

I always wanted to go to E3–Electronic Entertainment Exposition. It was my dream as self-proclaimed game journalist. I never did get to go and it is now a shell of its former self. E3 is no longer the extravagant spectacle that it used to be.

E3 isn’t open to the public and only people who are affiliated to the industry are allowed to get in. I don’t know exactly what qualifies and what doesn’t. Working in the industry would certainly qualify–I would hope.

The other big industry gathering is GDC–Game Developers Conference. GDC is really where business gets done. A lot of industry players attend. Where E3 is more of a show for big game companies to demonstrate their new titles to the press, GDC is where the attention is on the game developers.

It is always good to experience an industry event for yourself. Those who love games will always find it incredibly pleasant to be in such an environment. There are other small conventions and shows that take place as well.

One in New York annually–didn’t happen last year due to some economic issue–is Digital Life. I was there every year since I found about it. You almost always end up leaving the show with some free stuff–shirts and other promotional materials. Who doesn’t like free stuff?

On the west coast there is the E for All Expo. Like Digital Life, E for All is really for the fans. You mainly go there to try out the new things that companies are offering. Doesn’t hurt to stay up to date on the new happenings in the industry!

Last Words of Inspiration

There is no road map for getting into the industry. Unlike other professions like lawyers and doctors where you know you need to go to law school or medical school, no such sure-fire route exists in the games industry. I think that it is one of the great advantages to the industry.

At heart, we are still a bunch of kids playing with toys. We make things that are fun. We entertain. We are open. We don’t have massive barriers to entry. It is the diversity of the people that has led to our growth and innovations.

No one can come up with a set of steps that you need to take to end up at an EA or Activision. All you really need is a love of games and persistence.

How to Stay Calm At All Times

By Tommy Leung on 02/06/2009 in Life

Some people are constantly worried about something. It could be anything: large, small, unknown, it doesn’t matter.

Then there are people who are easily panicked. It only takes something small to go wrong and the entire world is falling down around them.

And then there are those who are sturdy like an oak tree. It doesn’t matter what is blowing up around them, they are still as calm as can be. I’m one of those people. I don’t know if this is something innate or if I developed it over time. I do know how I deal with high stress, sporadic situations.

The Art of Thinking Later

This is probably the most effective way to stay calm during any situation. You think about whatever bad news you just got later. Don’t think about it right now and certainly don’t dwell on it right now. Everything always looks worse at the time if you keep thinking about it.

Process the information in a few seconds and then put it on the back burner for later. You don’t need to think about it right now. The idea is to forget about it but, recognize the information you just received. The only way to act rationally and calmly is to be rational and calm.

The less you think about what you just heard, the less you’ll feel about it. The smaller a role emotions play, the more logical you will be. There is no time to feel right now. You need to act right now. You can feel later.

For example, you are driving in a car and for some reason the car in front of you stops abruptly, you are driving a little too close, and the ground is slippery. You slam the breaks because that is your first reaction. You car doesn’t stop but instead slides. You know it is inevitable that you are going to rear-end the car in front.

Most people are going to panic when they slam the breaks to try and avoid an accident. Once the car starts sliding, they panic even more because the breaks didn’t work. At that level of panic, there is no more thinking for most people. For anyone who has ever been in a car accident, you would know they are highly stressful situations.

My example has happened to me. The funny part of the story is that it was my friend driving in front of me and she stopped short on a yellow light that I thought she was going to pass. It had just rained so the ground was a little wet. I slammed my breaks when it was apparent that I didn’t have sufficient room to make a normal stop. My car slid instead of stop.

I applied the art of thinking later right there. The second I knew my car was not going stop in time, I processed the information and forgot about it. My next thought was “how do I avoid this accident?”. This led me to look at my side mirror. My mind was formulating a plan to steer away. I was clear to go into the left lane but, I didn’t. In the couple of seconds that I had to figure out the best course of action, I had decided that I didn’t have room to go left without still hitting the car in front of me. In those seconds, I had also decided that a head on bumper-to-bumper hit would have been least damaging.

In the end, there was still an accident but, no one got hurt and both cars are doing fine.

Find an Immediate Solution

The next thing to do after you’ve decided to think about it later is to use the information you just received and act on it. You don’t want to freeze up or become mentally incapacitated. The quicker you switch your brain to “how” the less you’ll think about what just happened and the less you’ll mix in emotions.

Don’t think about “what”, think about “how”. Once you can move your thinking to “how”, your frame of mind changes. You need a quick solution that you can act on right now to help mitigate the problem. It doesn’t have to be perfect. it just has to move the situation towards recovery. Doing nothing will increase the feeling of panic on your end and of those around you if no one else is going to step up.

The same night after I had gotten into that car accident, I drove the car home. I probably should have known better than to drive on the highway with my hood in the condition that it was in. I didn’t know better and I did go on the highway.

So while I was on the highway, my hood flipped up and covered my entire windshield. I couldn’t see anything. Luckily, this was at 1AM or so, and not many people were around. Nonetheless, the highway had shoulders and turns. I couldn’t see any of it.

First reaction was, “holy shit!”. I didn’t actually say it but, that’s how I felt. Very quickly, I processed the direness of my situation and forgot about it. Next step was to come up with an immediate solution to not die. The first thing I did was slow down. It was the most logical thing to do.

The next thing I did was I used the small space left by the hood in the center bottom of the windshield to see ahead of me. Now that I had some sense of what was in front of me, I found a place to pull over, get out of the car, and putl the hood back down.

I was luckily near an exit and slowly drove to it so that I could take the local streets. By no means was my heart not beating out of my chest and my body not shaking like a leaf in the wind. If the accident I had earlier in the night was high stress, this incident was off the charts.

Sleep On It

I eventually drove myself home and just went to bed. It was a little too much. I just decided to forget about it until the next morning. There was no point in thinking about it, there was nothing I could do.

In the same sense, while you should come up with an immediate solution, it should not be a commitment. Do not make commitments in the heat of the moment. No matter how calm you can be or how well you have mastered the art of thinking later, there is going to be some affect on your mental state.

Don’t make solid commitments until you’ve had time to think it over. You need to sort out all that happened after the fact. You will be more calm because you’ll have realized that you are still alive and the world is still turning. Whatever your problem is, it can be fixed.

Plan in Advance

No one can predict the future. It is never possible to know when unwanted things happen to us. However, sometimes we do know when they can happen. If we are aware of a scenario where something can go wrong and will cause great panic, we should play it through in our minds and find a plausible solution.

It isn’t real if it is just happening in your head. So you don’t need to worry–it isn’t real, you are just preparing. If you know that there is a chance that something can go wrong, come up with a solution in advance. Come up with a few. So if it does happen, you will not feel as shocked and you’ll have a solution. To you, it has already happened before.

Athletes put the mind to great use. They imagine themselves doing well in their sport and it is similar to practicing. There is never a substitute to doing the real thing but, the best alternative is to go through the steps in your mind. It will prepare you mentally. Staying calm is about the mind.

Put Things into Perspective

The quickest thing to do is to put things into perspective. The perspective I am talking about is to ask yourself if someone is going to die. If no one’s life is at risk, you don’t have a problem. Most things are easily reduced to a small nuisance compared to death.

The fact of the matter is, it isn’t that important if no one is doing to die. It might be inconvenient. Someone might be disappointed. You might not get what you want. Plans might fall through. But, as long as no one is dead, there is still tomorrow.

If you can master the art of thinking later, the rest is easy to do. Once you are no longer overcome by the immediate emotional reaction of bad news or bad events, your thinking will be many times clearer. It is all about thinking clearly during distressing times. It will take effort to get a point where even some of the most ridiculous “bad luck” can’t shake you.

Being able to keep your sanity is worth the effort. Life is too short to be constantly living in a state of fear, worry, or panic.

Geo Challenge

By Tommy Leung on 02/05/2009 in Games

My latest Facebook addiction is this game: GEO Challenge by PlayFish. They are responsible for other popular Facebook games like Who Has the Biggest Brain and Word Challenge.

The game is basically a set of four mini-games where your knowledge of world geography is tested. I am generally not very good with geography and have learned quite a bit from this game already. The four mini-games is matching flag with country, matching land mass to country, locating cities, and locating landmarks. I do best in landmarks and worst in flags.

If you haven’t tried this game already, I think you should. You’ll at least learn a something from it and it is fun. As of this writing, I have a score in the 18,000′s–some people have scores in the hundreds of thousands.

UPDATE: A few hours after I posted this, my high score is in the 22,000′s. This game is addictive.

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