Image via CrunchBase

It has been almost two years since I’ve had any type of television programming fed to me through an actual television set. This doesn’t mean that I’ve watched any less television programming. I think I may be watching even more TV shows than I did before.

However, I am still getting more done and doing more productive things even though I may be watching more TV shows. Before Hulu had mountains of shows available, I was watching TV shows from the network’s websites. Any shows that I used to watch on TV and are not online, I have simply stopped watching them. I was a fan of SmallVille but, it is no where to be found online.

If it can be found, it is more work than it’s worth. I can live without the show. The networks that have decided to put their shows online have been able to reach me and sell advertising at the same time. There is little drawback for them. Either they were not going to have as an audience at all or have me as an audience online.

Being able to watch shows when I wanted to really helps with being productive. I don’t have to schedule my time around when a show is on. I can do the work I need to do and when I want downtime, watch all the episodes I missed. Sounds like a great deal for everyone!

I think it is fantastic and Hulu and YouTube are offering shows of all kinds. I feel the TV and cable model is a thing of the past. I don’t want to plan my time around the network’s schedule and I don’t want to pay for channels that I’ll never watch.

I would much rather pay HBO directly to watch their shows over the internet, on my time, than to pay for cable.

TV is so yesterday.

I recently finished this Dora the Explorer game for Nickelodeon. It was quite a few months of work as the only programmer on the project. The game has about seven mini-games separated by three side-scrollers.

I don’t normally do games for such a young audience so it was interesting. The game mechanics were quite dumbed down. The games themselves were pretty simple: counting, pattern matching, etc. There should be a desktop game coming out for PC and Mac–that is where the bulk of the work is.

I think the game turned out pretty good. It was games like this one that has had me so busy the past several months.

Image via CrunchBase

I’ve known of Scribd for a while as the Mises Institute has put a great deal of their collection online for free. Even though I have known of Scribd, I have not really read any book available on there in great depth–until now. I had read Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Chris Anderson’s Free and Seth Godin’s rebuttal to Gladwell’s review. I have my own opinions on the idea of Free so this was a topic that I am fairly interested in.

I really did not expect to read this book online for free as I didn’t really expect it to be available online for free. I own Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail and loved that book. It is entirely possible that I will eventually buy Free just to have on my bookshelf as digital books just aren’t the same.

Having discovered Free was available for free I decided to read a few pages–perhaps a few chapters–to get a taste of the book. I generally do that at Barnes & Nobles anyway. I am now 205 pages into this 288 page book. In all likelihood, I will finish reading this book as I have less than a third to go and it is pretty damn interesting.

My intention isn’t really to review the book but, to talk about reading an entire book online on a computer monitor. I have done a lot of reading online but, I have never read a book on a digital screen. The experience so far as been satisfactory. It wasn’t as terrible as I had thought but, also not fantastic. I still prefer to have the physical item.

Scribd is great. When I started reading for the first time I wondered where the bookmark tool was. I didn’t find out until I returned to the book at a later time and discovered that Scribd knew where I had left off and suggested to me that I could start from there. Marvelous.

Their service is definitely something I’ll explore further.

Other people with my name have long since bought up the .com domains with my name. In my neverending effort to make Googling my name show my internet presence first, I have bought tommyleung.me and thomasleung.me.

I’m not super sure what I intend to do with those domains yet. They just point to here now. More options for self-branding!

I haven’t written anything since the end of April. Part of it has to do with me being lazy and getting “tied up” taking Facebook quizzes–those things are addictive! The main culprit is how busy I’ve been at work. It only looks like its going to get even busier as we enter the second half of the year.

Since I wrote about my near death experience via bench press, I have joined Planet Fitness. I was making do with make shift workouts for a while–body weight exercises and the such. I can create a pretty good workout anywhere but, there isn’t a real substitute in the modern world for good old iron. I don’t spend my day hunting for my food. Most of my day consists of being seated in an office.

Planet Fitness isn’t the bodybuilder’s gym or the gym for the serious athlete–they just don’t have enough free weights. I’m not a bodybuilder or professional athelete so it’ll do. They are cheap at $20 a month for their premium plan and they are running a deal now for $199 for two years.

I usually have a whole plan of exercises and all that stuff. I decided to forgo all of that this time and aim to accomplish two things while I’m at the gym: work my entire body and be dead tired when I’m done. Of course, I also limit my workouts to around 60 minutes–the shorter the better. Some people swear by split routines and spend hours at the gym. I need the greatest gains in the shortest amount of time–efficient.

My main motivation to go back to the gym was when my good friend who saved me from my bench press death said my arms were bigger back in high school. What?! I was online that night researching gyms! I’m a little vain. It was good motivation at a good time. Doesn’t hurt to be in better shape when summer really rolls around.

The majority of my weekends of late has been filled with looking for a new apartment so that has taken away time from writing. I’m likely going to be a residence of Queens, NY soon. Moving is going to be a pain in the ass–it always is.

Image via Wikipedia

Aside from apartment searching, I also saw some of my friends on Pace University’s Advertising Team compete in the NASC. They were amazing and put together a fantastic plan. I’m going to write about it on my marketing blog, it’s just going take some time. Any ad agency or marketing department would do well to have any one of them working for them–the economy is making hiring scarce but, they are good and persistence will win out.

In other news, I’ve also “officially”  graduated from Pace University. I’ve had the degree for months but, I went to the ceremony and all that. They really need to not do graduation ceremonies so early, I’m not awake yet. I was almost a zombie going through the whole thing and then seriously just went to sleep after it was all said and done.

I will definitely write a little something about this Dora the Explorer game I’m working on once its finished and available on Nickelodeon’s website. This game is supposed to be on sale at retailers too–fancy. Now hopefully, I can find more time to write while work is keeping is busy. I’ve been restructuring my life a little recently as well so that hasn’t helped keep my entries consistent!

I had almost died once. This wasn’t in a car accident or anything you’d expect to have a near death experience. I’ve had a pretty scary car experience too but, it never crossed my mind that I could have died. I’ve also never been in a war or been a police officer or firefighter. I grew up in a semi-dangerous neighborhood–to some people, the entire city of New York is dangerous.

This near death experience happened to me a long time ago. Back in high school, I often took Coed Advanced Weight Training. The other option involved a lot of mindless running around a track–they called that class Track. I don’t really like running and I do like weight lifting so that was a no-brainer. Did I mention it was coed?

So one day, it was after class and people had left. A friend and I stayed behind to do some more lifts. We had competitions in this class for max bench press, number of push ups, pull ups, dips, etc. Now this was a class near the day of the competitions so we wanted to work on the bench press.

I was never a monster bench presser. I was only about 155lbs and my max bench was at 185lbs. However, on this day, at this particular moment, I was not able to bench 185.

We did some warm ups and it was fine. We then proceeded to just do max lifts. I’m lying on the bench and have my hands on the barbell. My spotter is a good friend who has become more of a gym person than me. We pick up the weight and I proceed to do the lift. All of a sudden my arms just give and 185lbs of iron complied with the forces of gravity.

The bar dropped in line with my neck and at one moment I felt the cold metal of the bar touch my neck. At this same moment, my spotter grabs the bar and saves me from a beheading.

I don’ t know for sure if I would have died but, it was certainly not going to be pretty. There is no shortage of bench press accidents online and none of them look fun. To this day, I am still very cautious about doing bench presses.

I did lift 185lbs on the day of the bench press competition. That was not a winning lift–I believe it was closer to 215. I was happy that I did 185 that day. It was more about overcoming the fear than how much weight it was. You never really lose the slight dread that overcomes you when you lie under the bar to do a bench press.

I certainly do not try to do max bench presses anymore. The last highest weight I’ve benched was 215lbs a few times. I increase the weight of my bench at very small increments. I like to stay alive more than I like to have a high bench weight!

I’ve been super busy as of late. It has mostly to do with work. I’m doing two projects and one of them is a much bigger pain in the ass than I would like. Updates across all my blogs are pretty few and far in between as of late. I just haven’t had the time to write something useful in my off time. When I have time to relax I want to actually relax.

My Twitter activity was low for a while too but, I still managed to have some updates. Updating in 140 characters or less is a much easier task than writing a blog post. Especially since I try not to write about the mundane on a blog–who really wants to read that?

On Twitter and Facebook, I’ll update with the mundane–random thoughts that come to mind during the day. My last tweet was about the dentist–not exciting.

Technically, this is a random to useless blog post but, I’m writing more than 140 characters. I felt like my blog was getting stale so instead of trying to write something big, I’m writing something small. I do have another blog entry in mind and I’ve started a draft but, it is going to take a lot more work than this.

In good news, the weather is finally looking like it is going to turn warm and stay that way. It has been a tease in recent weeks. Spring is awesome-not too hot, not too cold, just right!

Follow me on Twitter for more frequent updates whether I’m drowning in work or just being lazy. I’m at least a little interesting!

I thought this video was amazing. AARP U@50 second place winner.

Image by muscapix via Flickr

Many people like to dwell in the past. Past failures or past accomplishments. Past good times or past bad times. What we really need is to live in the now. It is not about who we were with or what we did. It is about who we are with and what we are doing.

Nostalgia is a funny emotion. It makes us feel good and puts the past on a pedestal. However, our memory of the past is always better than what it really was. Trying to relive those moments is never the same. The sad truth is that the past is not coming back. It’s done. What we have is now and tomorrow.

On the flip side, some pasts are terrible. They create phobias. We never want to relive them again. Yet, we still keep them in mind. In fact, we become so deathly afraid of them that we panic at the thought of repeating them! While nostalgic moments are not really as good as we remember, bad moments aren’t as bad as we remember either.

It doesn’t matter which side of the coin the past that you are dwelling on resides. They are both fundamentally the same and lead to the same conclusion: live in the now.

Past achievements do not give us an excuse to do poorly now. Past failures do not give us an excuse to give up before we’ve even tried. What happened in the past is no guarantee of what will happen in the future. The only way you can influence the future is by what you do now.

Don’t scramble and put great energy into reviving the past. Put that energy and focus into creating something new. The past is gone, the now is here.

Stop worrying about what people did in the past. Recognize and celebrate the good, forgive and forget the past, and get to know who they are today.

Live in the now.

I started a marketing blog a while ago but, I didn’t bother announcing it here. I did put a link to it in the menu under “Marketing”. I’ve been pretty busy with work and sometimes just plain lazy! However, I do find the time to debate people about politics and economics on Facebook.

So my marketing blog is called omfg!marketing. This is where I talk about social media, online, interactive, word of mouth, new marketing. I am a believer in this “new” era of marketing where it isn’t about shouting at your consumers but, conversing with them.

So check it out! I only have a few posts as I try to not reiterate the news–there are plenty of other outlets for that. Trying to actually provide useful and possibly unique things! I’m on Twitter a lot these days–can’t imagine living without it now! A little scary.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.