Alchemy 101

Here is my current passion, alchemy. A modern type of alchemy in fact. An alchemy involved with teams. The type that isn't going to convert copper to gold but has the aim of converting a good team to a great team. (There might be some hopes for converting a mediocre team to a good team too)
This modern alchemy would be much better than the ancient alchemy since a good team is for sure much more valuable than gold. (Hopefully it can continuously generate gold!)

Is this possible at all? Well, that is exactly what I am after and so far I believe it could be possible. However the ancient alchemists also believed that they could convert the regular metal to gold, so I should know more about the resemblance of this modern alchemy with the predecessors some time in the future. Either way, the journey has started.  😐

The first phase, like most first phases, is doing the homework. In this case studying the current literature and research on the topic. It has been a while that I have started this phase and I will reflect the main points here in a series of posts hopefully.

There are a few main questions revolving around the idea of good teams, these include:

1. What are the characteristics of a good team player?
2. What are the characteristics of a good team leader?
3. What are the characteristics of a good team?
4. How can we measure the performance of a team?
5. How can we predict the performance of a team?
6. How does psychology affect teamwork?
7. How does diversity affect good teamwork?
8. How do creative teams work? Group genius, team chemistry and synergy?
9. What makes teams dysfunctional?
10. How can a team become a better team?

While studying all of the topics above are very necessary, I am focused on exploring the answers for the final question, the actual alchemy. This has been an area that has been studied less than the others and to many it seems to be impossible and it isn't unusual for managers to want to change team structure whenever a deficiency is sensed in the team. Changing and hoping the new team works well might be easy but finding out how to change the existing team and make it better seems to be the hard solution.

I have always believed that any good product or service created is so much dependent on the great people behind it that the other factors like financial resources, timing or luck really seem insignificant. Teams are the software needed to run these groups of people and the more we know about the concept of teams, the more valuable we can be.

The alchemy series of posts will be attempts to uncover the secrets of great teams.

And this was a short introduction to my alchemy.

The Wonderful Human Psyche

So very recently I felt a need to try to learn and study in the field of psychology and understand a few things if possible in that area. I was usually interested in matters related to psychology in the past, well at least the rather recent past since I didn't think about other people that much in the far past, but I never followed the topics in a structured way.

The reason this need was suddenly a high priority for me was the fact that I talked to a few of our folks at the office about some issues they were facing that I really wished I could understand and help but that wasn't the case. The interactions reminded me of the therapy sessions that you usually see in the movies and I thought how blessed the therapists can be to understand the very deep and hidden causes for symptoms and really enhance the life of their clients. That was when I thought how valuable those insights can be for anyone at work so that she/he can really be influential and effective for the colleagues. Why shouldn't normal people know more about this field. The reason we go to offices is to interact with other people anyway, the better we know our minds the better we should interact.

So my journey began and I started researching about therapy and of course found out what a huge world it is and learned about the different methods and techniques for doing it and the various schools of thoughts related to it. One area that seemed to be quite interesting was a rather new method called Coherent Therapy. The reason it seemed interesting to me was the fact that it does not categorize the symptoms as problems that need to be fixed directly and considered illnesses but tries to search for the hidden unconscious beliefs that are the reasons our bodies try to willfully generate those symptoms. In other words the symptoms are a good solution our bodies create in order to fix or reduce the negative effects of some other issue, something we are not really aware of, which are usually found to be incorrect subjective beliefs. The goal for the therapist would then be to find those hidden reasons and try to make the client change his belief system in order to eliminate the symptoms.

Brain science proves the methods used in Coherent Therapy and it shows how memory re-consolidation happens during therapy, mostly rewiring of the implicit memory which is the type of memory that we are not very much aware of. You yourself changing the way your brain is wired in order to feel better, how cool is that! No medication involved.

There is a book I am currently reading on the subject which has been the main source for this method called Depth Oriented Brief Therapy. It has been quite an interesting read so far. There are a few books queued after this.

The human mind is the only important resource in what we do. The way this mind believes, decides and acts for the needs of the individual and for the role the individual plays in a team is the root of anything needed for the processes needed for great projects and products. The better we know ourselves and have control on ourselves and the better we can be useful for others and have positive influence on them, the better work environments we'll have and the better results we'll get.

I already know I should have started reading and practicing in this field earlier.

The Wise Black Sofa

Sees the joy like bright sparks in the room ... sees the passion flowing like rivers east and west ... sees a connection forming everyday ... sees the door as it opens, it closes ... sees the looks direct and otherwise ... feels the slow motions of solitude ... senses the fresh beginnings after the ends ... thinks wisely about the right and wrong ... clears its vision when returns in time ... senses the bond getting stronger ... hears the sound of laughter from where eyes don't see ... contemplates at the green next to it ... hides its worries behind the happiness witnessed ... feels their weights as light as angels ... empathizes with the one left alone ... realizes the glances quick and warm ... mourns alone for long periods ... celebrates the events quietly ... feels the love ... remembers the past while one does in the smokes ... laughs quietly at the jokes ... worries about the future ... forgets all that can go wrong and watches the footsteps ... closes the eyes and embraces the music ... stays in the same location for ever and always... watches those come and go ... longs for their dance of life and delight ... hears the hearts as they beat faster ... feels the heat when it snows outside ... thinks and thinks and thinks ... lets go and enjoys the creation of time ... wonders what stories it will tell ... 

The Pathos of Things

Mono No Aware, a hard to translate Japanese term which literally means the pathos of things is about the awareness of impermanence. Being aware that everything will change and nothing is permanent. While the concept seems really simple, it is one of the toughest things for the conscious mind to consider on a usual basis.

A sadness and melancholy that persists in you when you know that things will not last forever. A sadness that can also bring out the beauty in the current moment and make life more meaningful. Extreme beauty that can only be sensed on top of a deeply sad foundation. The best symbolic representation for the pathos of things is Sakura, cherry blossoms, that are very precious and beautiful while they last, and they last for a very short time.

I have been thinking about this concept a lot lately, very much looking into including it in our latest project, Tale of Ronin, as we have been researching Zen concepts very much and mono no aware has deep roots in Zen concepts and is about the human side of the Samurai which the game is all about.

My current plans are to study various literature and media related to this very important feeling. This is very much intuitive for me since I feel myself very much in a mono no aware state lately. A strange feeling that opens your eyes to the aesthetics of things you know will not be there soon.

I might be consciously thinking about it lately but I think the concept has been dancing around in my subconscious for quite some time. This post called Finally Alive from 2008, which is probably my most favorite post here, was exactly all about mono no aware!

Team Synergy

Synergy enables the emergence of something new. It makes the aggregated value to be more than the sum of its parts. Team synergy makes a team accomplish something much more than what the individuals could have accomplished if they only added up their works. The important reality about synergy is that it is not simply adding the parts and saving time when it comes to teamwork, something new needs to happen in the team and in a new level, something emerging.

I've wondered about this in teams quite a lot and where and when exactly it could happen in teams, as an example in a game development team. One interesting and important answer seems to be related to personality types. People have various personality types and during a long project, various personality types each can have their benefits and advantages, they can complement one another in order to have a creative, effective and efficient team.

Various personality types can be categorized in the broader topic of cognitive diversity in a team which while looks like a big challenge, it contains huge opportunities for a good functioning team. Other matters related to this type of diversity include different work cultural backgrounds or experiences.

I will try to write more about various personality types in game development teams and how they can be challenging or create opportunities if managed well.

The Alchemy of Teamwork

Thinking about teamwork and the ideal specifications for teams has turned to be my curiosity for a while now. I've always been part of various teams (at school, basketball teams, at work, ...) and you always feel some differences between teams and how they deliver results but I had never had a chance to delve into the subject in detail and try and analyze it.

The fact that something happens between the members of the team that makes them become a new whole, the synergy effect, is absolutely interesting. The magic in teams with normal players that lets them deliver much more than teams with stars has always been a beautiful phenomena for me.

Learning about the mysteries of teams and teamwork will have actual practical benefits these days too since our game development activities are all heavily team based and have got various challenges which require highly functioning and productive teams to tackle them. The fact that great products are made by great teams is extremely true for game development.

Looking at our past experiences, I can easily see when we were a good team and the types of results we've got. This is something that can be felt intuitively but my concern these days is to try and find out some details about what was exactly working in those teams and what wasn't at other times.

My aim is to write and summarize the various things that I study or think about in a few blog posts, hoping to integrate them in the near future and wishing to uncover part of the teamwork mysteries.

One very interesting book that I had read close to ten years ago was Herding Cats by Hank Rainwater. I read it when we were working on software development and this is a book about programming teams and how there are various personality types among programmers and how tough it is to manage them, therefore herding cats. I would get reminded about the paragraphs in the book when engaged in daily work with our team members, never knowing how it would all get insanely more challenging when we start game development. If programmers are varied and tough to deal with, adding artists and game designers to your pack will instantly make everything in that book seem like a very introductory tutorial to the chaos of dealing with the extremely different type of people gathered in one place called a game development studio.

My journey to explore the land of team mysteries has led me to reading quite a few books, various articles, thinking and talking to many people and most recently a plan to do some actual computer simulation about teams.

I will be writing about all of the above in the coming posts.

Slides Time

Slideshare has become very convenient and feature rich for some time now and I recently decided to upload a few of my past presentation slides on it so here is their new home:

http://www.slideshare.net/amirhfassihi

4 Decades

I have always had a special feeling about a 40 year old person. Partly due to having heard about the lives of people who revolutionarily changed when they hit 40, somewhere deep inside me has always been the belief that I will experience major changes when I get 40 years old. A belief which has always been mixed with excitement, joy and mystery. Wondering if anything will really happen and occasionally sensing doubts that it might all be part of the myths of life, somehow wanting to believe that there is some truth in it. Maybe because I just enjoy changes, maybe because I despise a routine deterministic life or maybe since I am hoping for an empowered self that magically happens at a point in time.

I should know the exact answer in 4 months from now when I turn 40. The good news is that I have already been feeling the change coming. The world is moving slower, phenomena are seen and understood better, mindset is changing, patterns are being seen in memories and they have found more meanings, balance is even more king, there are more "nows" in time and all in all it appears that the miracle of 40 might in fact not be stuck in the books. Can this be me shedding skin? I will embrace this new self with arms wide open! This new consciousness.

What enhances this euphoric feeling is that I still sense a childish joy inside for many joyous experiences from the past. The beginners excitement towards learning many things, doing many things and becoming many things is still there. Getting back to the ring with better gloves and still loving the fight!

Maybe it is my subconscious making all this up, maybe there is in fact a miracle of 40, but does it really matter? What matters is that I am feeling this miracle with my bones! Getting a chance to be more of yourself sure feels good.

Hello me, get ready to see the new me very soon!

"Life begins at forty." - W. B. Pitkin 
"The first forty years of life give us the text: the next thirty supply the commentary." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it." - Jules Renard

Shadow Blade: Reload Trailer

Here is the brand new trailer for Shadow Blade: Reload

The final stretch for our first Kickstarter campaign

Under 4 days remains from our first Kickstarter campaign for Children of Morta:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deadmage/children-of-morta

We have reached our first stretch goal so far, which is the PS4/Vita version. This has been a very exciting month and things have turned out to be great for the project. The team behind the game has been very passionate and worked together really well and they deserve a big success.

Looking forward to the remaining four days.

Competition is for Losers!

The "How to Start a Startup" series of lectures from Stanford University are quite interesting to watch and follow, however, the talk from Peter Thiel : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_0dVHMpJlo is quite in contrast with the other lectures and very thought provoking. Thiel is indeed a very interesting person.

The basis for that lecture is that if you are doing something where there is serious competition, then you are doing it wrong and it is best to pursue journeys where no one else is engaged in, in order to gain monopoly. It is s a very aggressive mindset for doing business and developing projects and ideas. He describes very well how our whole culture is fixed on cheering people to enter specific competitions and hope they succeed, which in reality a tiny fraction of them will and most will not. He believes the sole reason there is serious competition there means the odds for success are very low.
The whole startup hype these days is around the idea of Lean Startups and he is against the whole idea and believes that the best businesses show quantum leaps and not incremental improvements to existing ideas. 

Remaking the Hero

I am very much proud to see this project come to life, Epic of Kings, a remake of the hero that started it all for us, Garshasp!

Bicephalous Monster

Hello blank page, hello white page ... long time no see.. well I should correct myself... I saw you a few times but did not see what you are turning into now ... a non blank page .. oh yes... you are changing with every press of my fingers ... hmmm... goodbye white page ... goodbye blank page ... it happened again, wanting to write about everything and many things and ending up writing about nothing at all .. I'm just going to be cool with it and let if flow this time... lets see how it goes..

Where should I start from ... hmmm... ok ... I know ... I will just start ... days are good... these days are good ... I don't know how long they will last but they are good ... and they aren't good because of any specific thing or event ... they are good because I don't believe in the infinite chain of causality being real .. well this statement had some contradictions in it apparently but I will let it pass for now since this post is about letting it pass... a free form brain dump ...

Work is still a major player in my life ... we are experiencing the new office with a slightly larger ecosystem .. ecosystem of developers ... making sure one project lands well in Steam airport, trying the best to make sure another takes off ... supporting a third project with a brand new team and dedicating any available time to a fourth remote project with great friends ... oh and at times mourning on a few dead opportunities ... embracing the high low waves of reality. The situation while being very challenging is extremely fun to be in and something to remind you that you are alive. Balancing this with "Memento Mori" will bring the ultimate joy.

More projects would mean more interactions with people, the most important part of every project. Now I am absolutely sure that great people will deliver great product and mediocre people will deliver nothing! The biggest challenges however seem to be two things: First knowing what to do, also knows as project/product validation (a very hot topic in lean startup methodologies) and the second making sure the team morale is what it needs to be. Knowing what to do refers to "Are we building the right product" as opposed to "Are we building the product right". The second is the topic of numerous books, articles and academic research but the first is probably hidden somewhere in black magic books and accessible to the inner circles of the high rank freemasons only. Which you and I are not part of and our only chance is to learn it the hard way.

The second challenge is the challenge of the century! From the outside, it appears that creative projects require developers that are highly skilled in various fields and know their craft inside out. This is what I believed in before getting serious about game development but as years pass and you get involved in serious development, you become to realize that somethings are much much more important than developer talents and skills and those are the attitudes and team morale. Three good developers that are highly motivated, trust in one another, are honest and work passionately can do miracles that teams of 50 with low morale can never even think about. This is probably my biggest understanding today after having the company founded for 11 years now. The biggest assets for a company are its people and you need to care about two things on a daily basis: 1 - Are they doing the right thing? 2 - Is the morale high enough? I think the reason small companies often do great things that leave the big giants in the dust are because of these two factors.

In order to make my attempt at caring about the above two points, I had to change course a bit in the past few months and distance myself from technical tasks and coding. This has been extremely hard to do since I really enjoy working on technical challenges and losing myself in the zone wrestling various programming related issues but that would directly translate to a major absence from seeing where we are heading as a team and how satisfied and happy the other members are. A great analogy for this situation is the Player/Coach position in athletic teams which I have had some experiences and know how destructive it can be. I am not sure how successful I have been regarding the two issues but I have recently found an area to devote some pure programming time to recently and I hope the big euphoria I get from the little dopamine rush of it is enough to keep me alert and alive for focusing on the two main issues.

I recently read the wonderful book by Ed Catmull called Creativity Inc. where he talks about how he changed his role in the company to make sure they can continue and work on great products and found it very much aligned with what Gabe Newell always talks about regarding his role in Valve and the people that work in there and how all this is very much inline with how Walt Disney operated at his great company as described in his biography, The Animated Man. Reading about all the great leaders and how they handled their great teams further reiterates the fact that what is important for success in such teams is very much related to the above mentioned issues.

I really wanted to write about many other things in this post but since it somehow ended up with this two very important points, I would rather keep it like it is and pretend this is a post that focuses on the two grand challenges for any creative project. There is always time for the other stuff, or is there? Memento Mori!

Now all I have to do is find a proper name for this post, oh, you have already read it? Well ... thanks to the nonlinear feature of digital media! ... I can scroll up there and add a title for this post ... lets see.. hmmm.... ....... oh.. I have an idea ... google ... hmm... wikipedia ... hmm... wordhippo.com ... yup .. I have it .. scroll up ...

Good night! 

Porcelain Heart

I ... lost all I had - that April day,
I ... turned to my friends - nothing to say,
I ... wrote down a name - and read it twice,
I ... wallowed in shame...

Akerfeldt, Opeth

Losing all you had ... wallow in shame ... no matter the reason ... no matter the cause ... no excuses ... wallow in shame ... 

Shadow Blade: Reload release date set!

The enhanced PC version of Shadow Blade will be ready for Steam Early Access on July 21st, here is the launch trailer:

The team has done a great job in preparing this version of Shadow Blade for the PC platform. Some changes and additions include more challenging levels, various difficulties, new abilities including the all famous Shuriken!, a level editor and multiplayer race mode.

This is a very exciting time and despite the many ups and downs in our development process, we are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

Shadow Blade Lessons

Every project contains an ocean of hidden knowledge that can be learned and tons of valuable experience. One of the ways to strengthen this learning process is to reflect on the whole development process of the project a few months after the end of the project. Thinking about what went right during the project and what went wrong, all in the hopes of doing better on the next project, being more efficient and producing better quality products.

Here is a postmortem article I wrote today for Gamasutra about Shadow Blade:

Shadow Blade Postmortem

The Three Commandments for The Fall of Video Games (As we know them)

Free to Play has been on my mind for a while now, thinking about how it works, what people expect from it and its dynamics overall. It has never totally clicked for me and I still have a lot of open questions regarding free to play games and their corresponding economics and their effect on the game industry. I certainly don't just hate it and I do believe that there are certain games that are perfect for this over popular monetization model, but that is just it, a certain group of games!

The whole concept can be studied from various different angles, I want to touch upon one of my concerns in this post. I always thought that in any business, not just in games, the creator does his best creation and knows that the users of the service or product will use it and hopefully enjoy the experience and be happy about the product or service, once they are happy with it, then they will pay and you make your money from the happy customers of your business. Very basic, very classic and just what the human race has been used to for centuries, want to make more money? Make the people who love your product or service happier so that they are willing to pay more! What does this have to do with free to play? Well I'm afraid a lot, here it goes:

Only a portion, in fact to be more exact a very small portion, of the players pay in f2p games. There has been a recent report by Swrve lately about f2p monetization that you can get from here. In this report they conclude that 50% of the f2p games revenue comes from only 0.15% of the gamers! Another shocking number is that 9% of this revenue comes from purchases over 50 USD! Well these rare species that spend so much in f2p games have been known for a while now as whales. In other words, we can easily say that people do not pay for f2p games, but there is a tiny portion of them out there who have kept the f2p economics alive. Alive and kicking and generating tons of revenue for the hit titles. Now what is the problem with that? Let the developers suck the cash out of the whales you say? Well lets proceed then:

Developers, especially those who liked to defend the f2p model said that the proper way to charge people for in-app purchases is for cosmetic features, things that do not have any effects on gameplay, in order to provide a fair situation for all players and avoid "pay to win". Well this was a dream that vaporized as fast as a drop of clean water evaporates in the middle of the Sahara! Soon publishers realized that the best things that sell in games are stuff that give you super advantages so that you can clear a level or an obstacle in the game. This is the trend that all major titles such as even Angry Birds have followed. It was not good for gamers to clear these games too quick, since they would not have an option to pay for in-app items, so these games need to block your progress and by the way enable you to proceed a bit if you pay.

Blocking the progress can be done by the following methods

1. Make the game extremely hard and provide powerups that can be purchased (hard levels, requiring certain amount of starts to proceed, ...)
2. Make the player need to repeat levels for different excuses
3. Rely on non skill-based game mechanics that rely on numbers and stats in order to have progress and provide options to buy stats or time, like Clash of Clans.

No wonder why the number of paying players is so extremely low. 

1. What kind of a person would want to pay to buy super powers in game to clear the levels? This is directly contradictory with the basic nature of games which is all about challenges. Alas why play a game if you do not want to confront a challenge? Classically this is known as cheating for athletes and gamers. 
2. Who would like to repeatedly do the same thing in games just because the designer wanted you to? The best way this is implemented in games is known as grinding and that is not a positive point among the gamers for a game to have, especially if you know that the designer has added it to increase the game play time.
3. Who likes to rely on non skill-based mechanics? Non skill? Skill is hand in hand with challenge and the essence of a game.

The people who like to do the above are definitely not the traditional gamers, the people who like to play to get engaged in a challenge with themselves and their abilities or with their friends. But hey, who said such people are playing games these days, the total number of gamers that want to play games for games is maybe at most 40 million in the world. The close to 1 billion that play Angry Birds are then for sure a different target, thanks to the ubiquity of the mobile devices. Out of those new gamers that are in fact non-gamers, there are a tiny fraction that are interested in paying for whatever they can in the game so that they can have progress, the whales!

From the Swrve report, this is a serious suggestion for f2p game designers:

• Have we identified these customers within our own business?
• Are we investing appropriate time and resources on retaining this specific group of players?
• Do we understand where they come from, and have we amended our acquisition strategy accordingly?

By "these customers"the report is clearly referring to the paying customers. 

I like to call the above rules : "The Three Commandments for The Fall of Video Games"!

What happens if we identify those customers, the whales, and then invest the appropriate time and resource in retaining that specific group of players, in other words, design our game so that that specific group are happy with us, the whales are happy with us, and do we know where they come from and amend our acquisition strategy so that we can target them and invite them to our lovely game! Maybe we should focus our acquisition strategy in the north pole and install large billboards there!

So this is the root of my paradox, who are we designing and creating for? The gamer or the whale? Mobile games have been made by people from the game industry with "Game Design" mind sets, maybe this is why we still can play some of the mobile games, seems like it won't last long since the more designers start to obey the above three rules and base their design on the loyal paying customers, the more those games will be strange for people looking for pure play experience and challenge and fun and the more they will appeal to hip wannabe douche bags who will pay more than 100 dollars just to be a bit on the higher parts of that other gamer list on their Facebook account and will share that with all their aunts and grandmas so that they get praised for how cool and adorable they are! If a creator is to pay attention to its customer and create for its customer so that they are happy and bring him wealth, then game designers better start and study these valuable assets and see what clicks with them and brings them joy. I am sure the final product will look nothing like the best games that we have all experience and have changed our lives to some extent and we have been craving for just another close experience for some time now.

Designers will follow those rules, they will make many whales happy and bring tears to their eyes and they will make a lot of cash in the way, all I hope for is that a few designers will remain to stick to what games are and make the digital experiences for the few game lovers that remain in the future!

EDIT: I just read this news: Square Enix president admits that company 'lost focus' and the part of it that I liked very much and brings hope is this:

"Matsuda seems to be suggesting that Square Enix will be changing how it approaches developing games for a global market, by focusing on making games that appeal to what it believes to be a "niche audience" and trusting that players who appreciate those games will seek them out, rather than attempting to make games that will appeal to a broad audience."

King Slayer

I have served him for years... long long years ago ... I can feel the smell of the ocean breeze on the day he sat on the throne ... the day I swore ... the heat of the joy of men around him would burn the surface of the skins already burnt under the bright summer sun ... the sun witnessing the glory and brotherhood in the land ... the day brothers celebrated the rise of the selected one to lead and guide and navigate their battered ship towards safe and dry lands ... this was the day to lay down the daggers and live a life in peace ... the day to cherish safety ... when all is one and one is all. I was thrilled to be part of the elite to protect him for life ... the black cloaks ... living the moments to find an opportunity to leave the life to protect the throne ... the days that were too surreal to be part of this fragile experience.

The wind blew ... the waves collapsed and the storms punished the land that was embracing the dead state of no change ... the sun and moon raced the face of the frozen lands ... wars appeared like little sparks in a young morning fire ... lost were the men that stood as brothers and families ruined ... the heat of the always shining sun was turning cold by the shadows of the everlasting chaos ... I found my meaning in protecting the throne ... I was the right force in the flow of wrong ... feeling the weight of the looks when I did not turn my head ... the oath was my sole savior ... the thing that saves from the dark.

The rise of the rebels and never ending conflict from outside was something he was raised with ... the only deep meaning he had felt from the days he dreamed of living the life of adults ... what had secured the credibility of the throne for all seeking the pleasure of safety...this he had no issues with ... but the shattering blow was the decay from inside ... the things he would hear and see from the ones that had dedicated their souls to him a very short while ago ... I could read the reflexes in his face better than any wise man in his service ... a blessing for the ever present and the life witness... he stepped down from the holy ruling throne every time he was stabbed by a man of his land ... the enemies of the land he crushed ... the enemies within his land crushed him and every symbol of power attached to him ... I was unable to protect the throne from the invisible enemy.

The sun was high and the days were dark ... the grass burned and his heart froze ... never would this be the fair arenas that he was grown to fight in ... never was this explained to him along the stories he was grown with bringing to life the heroes that had cleared the high lands from the various evil invasions ... who was the evil now and why did the angels look so different? The birds of rationality flew away... the days of colorful hope did follow them ... anger fed the monsters of hate ... revenge turned to seeds of pessimism ... power was now the ultimate goal ... the subconscious goal to eliminate the chaos and bring back the fairy tale days of the earlier years ... pushing and forcing .... sitting and thinking on the angry chair ... the throne of hate ... did I know this man ... how fast is the wind of change ... who is right and who is wrong ... fear and the will to order!

The mirrors broken, he tried so much to see only too not understand how blind he was ... the smell of the blood of every brother was an appetizer to slay another ... who needed to rebel from the outside now? Couldn't even kill with his own hands while both hands were holding the crown ... a crown of negativity ... the cries of the angels were not enough to be distinguished from the river of blood... and I stood there ... a protector of the throne ... I was the shield of god serving the chosen one ... seeing the blood of the best men on my sword as the sacrifices for the chosen one ... the one to show the path and the one to bring the light ... never second guessing my meaning ... never second guessing my being.

I am his savior ... and I am his protector ... I am one with the grand presence of the chosen one ... I un-sheath my blade ... in a walk to the grand hall of justice ... the sound of the blade kissing the sheath for the last time begs for a little attention ... my heart has left this heavy armor already ... I can hear my footsteps now ... I am the protector and savior of the throne ... more eyes on me now ... who is right and who is wrong? ... all the men watching me from above ... this is the day ... can hear the sound of him breathing now ... are the last breaths louder ... is this why I hear my own breath too ... my fingers touch his beard for the first time ... pulling his royal throat back while the crown is still dancing above ... my blade is sharp enough to pierce through ... from the back of his majesty ... spraying red wine away from his regal belly ... is this it ... is this the end ... this is the end ... the end of a cycle ... never to be the end of it all ... the beginning of a new story ... the story of another King Slayer .. the story to be lived an played by the next ... just to relive a fiction turned real ... to be a story again ... to be heard and believed and lived ... this is not the end .. this is what it is ... this is me feeling the arrows passing through my body ... time will stop now ... I am forever ... The Beginning...

Shadow Blade Gameplay

We have a new video up for Shadow Blade to show a full play-though for one of its levels. Our current target is to release Shadow Blade early February on AppStore and the Android markets.

http://shadowblade.deadmage.com

Book Time

This post is going to be about books, great books that have been highly valuable for me in the past months, some informative, some influential, some breath taking and some wonderfully amusing. Here goes the list with no particular order, just like how I usually get involved with books and read them.

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki

 Guy Kawasaki is a very interesting person with numerous amount of books and presentations mostly related to entrepreneurship. A very amazing pattern is repeated quite often where a team forms and does something exceptional in a specific period of time and synergy proves once again that it can change the world significantly by showing how the value of the team is much more than the sum of its parts. Time goes, the team is disbanded and each and every one of these people continue glowing in different areas and at different places, they might not experience the same level of excellency again but still they provide value in a different scale. Guy Kawasaki is one of the people from the original Mac days at Apple. Well I just wrote about this pattern because I thought it is related to Kawasaki himself and this is not related to the contents of the book, the book is in general about how you can interact with people and teams in a professional environment in order to be enchanting and charismatic. A very smooth and interesting read.

Co-Opetition by Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff

A word created by mixing Cooperation and Competition. A form of Yin and Yang which can be witnessed in the industry today between major corporations and this book delves into the subject and proves how competition and cooperation are crucial and necessary in today's business interaction and shows many examples of how it is happening around us and how it can prove to be a win-win situation for the organizations. This book touches upon some of the fundamentals of game theory and is a very easy read. An inspiring book.

Samurai Strategies: 42 Martial Secrets from Musashi's Book of Five Rings by Boye Lafayette De Mente and Michihiro Matsumoto

Miyamoto Musashi was one of the best Samurai sword-masters. He has left a very important book known as the Book of Five Rings where he talks about the soul of being a samurai and bushido. This book however contains 42 tips that have been extracted from the Book of Five Rings that although belong to the way of the Samurai, they can be used in daily life, work and business. Very concise and excellent. Can be read in a day but needs to be around to refer back to every once in a while to see what these legendary masters can teach us still that we can use daily in a different world.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

I had heard about Steve Jobs and read about him a bit before his death and probably had some information from him and what he did in his life like all other people and small bits that could be extracted from news sites and magazine articles. However, I was totally blown away when I started reading this book and I read the whole 630 pages of it with the background music of my heart doing the drums. It is one of the best books written about one of the most important people in recent history. I always thought that there is a certain amount of hype around Apple company, its products and its leaders but I was totally changed after reading this book, oh and changed as a consumer too and converted to Apple products! Walter Isaacson is a marvelous writer and the whole biography is nothing short of fascinating. I highly recommend this book. There have been quite a few books written about Steve Jobs recently but this is the one that should be read. This book can change you and the way you look at things forever. This book was also a source of introducing a few more great books and topics for me, some should be in this list.

A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) by George R.R. Martin

The Game of Thrones TV series is great. Like many other movies and series, the book is much much more great. I have wondered and become quite mesmerized a few times after reading this book about the magical fact that how is it that one person can create such deep and detailed fantasy universes. Seems like there is absolutely no limits to the human imaginations (some humans of course) and this is just fascinating. Game of Thrones is a very special type of Fantasy novel, it walks along the fine line between realistic historical events and a fantasy world. 

Success Is a Choice: Ten Steps to Overachieving in Business and Life by Rick Pitino 

Rick Pitino is a great Basketball Coach. We used to talk about Basketball all day with friends during high school and University days and a lot of times the discussions diverged from technical talks and turned into how Basketball is life and life is Basketball. Well, this book is exactly an essay about how to being successful in life with lessons from Basketball. 

The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen 

This is a book about a central concept, the concept of disruptive technologies. Technologies that emerge from nowhere and overthrow huge and stable companies and older technologies. Something that has happened numerous times in the past decades. Clayton Christensen analyses this fact very well. I was able to related these ideas to the game industry and it all made great sense. The mobile games industry is an exact example of a disruptive technology. The book contains many examples. By the way, this is one of the books that was Steve Job's favorite. Apple itself has been a disruptive technology many and overthrown the giants many times.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is another very interesting author with many interesting books. This book delves into the unknown magic that happens in people's mind with the blink of an eye. The instant you know something, that very instant. As usual Malcolm Gladwell evaluates many real world scenarios and they are very interesting. One part of the book which I enjoyed very much is about how experts can find out something instantly like art experts that can know whether a painting is fake or original by a sub second look. This is something I have witnessed in many talented people that I have worked with. Like Outliers from the same author, this is a smooth and fun to read book which gives you a few angles to look at a few real world matters. 

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner

Well, I read this book for the fourth time recently! Probably the most influential book that I have ever read. This is probably the book that caused a change of track in my professional life by giving me the proper courage to break out of the conventional path that was ahead of me. The fabulous story of id software and how they started and how they changed the game industry. David Kushner is an excellent author also and he has done great research for this book. This book is very high on my leader-board.

Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo and William Scott Wilson

Hagakure is Hagakureh. Another gem from the past that must be re-read every few months. "A unique guide to living - and dying: a focused life, a willing death ... ". What topic can be better than this?

The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players by Pat Riley

I always liked Pat Riley and enjoyed watching him on the sideline coaching the Los Angeles Lakers and then the New York Knicks and finally with Miami Heat. The 87-88 Lakers were the team from outer space for me to watch and get blown away by when I was starting the Basketball years. This is another inspiring book about life and leadership from one of the best Basketball coaches. He refers to specific events during his coaching, which are very interesting to hear from the team's coach, knowing that you always witnessed the events from the other side and as a fan. Weaved in between all the basketball events are great tips and advice to be used for daily life activities or work. Alas, there is only one true way!

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

I was thinking about checking out some new Science Fiction stories for a game project that we are working on when I found out about John Scalzi and his Science Fiction novels. So far I have read The Ghost Brigades and it was quite fantastic. A very good author with interesting stories and a lot of novel Sci-Fi ideas. It is very much interesting how different modern Sci-Fi books are compared to the ones from 20 or more years ago. Technology has changed tremendously in these years so no wonder Sci-Fi needed an overhaul. The next book from the author that is queued for me to read is Red Shirts.

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe... by S. C. Gwynne

Native Indians have always been interesting from me. I like their integrity and simplicity and pure connection to nature. Unlike the way they have always been portrayed in the modern media, there seems to be a lot of depth in their culture. This book is based on a true story about one of the strongest Indian tribes, the Comanche. A great book to read that takes you to the beautiful lands owned by Indians in early 18th century.

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (3rd Edition) by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister

This book was in my "To Read" list for quite some time until I heard in a talk from Gabe Newell that this is his bible! What I did after viewing that talk was to read this book from cover to cover and for sure this is one of the best book written about management and working with teams. Absolute beauty! Valve is one of the best companies in the world regarding its business and products and most importantly and quite related to the previous point, regarding its work environment and its organization structure (a flat organization). This book will help you understand companies like Valve very well.

Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent by Nolan Bushnell and Gene Stone

Nolan Bushnell is the founder of Atari. He was the leader of an exceptional team that did exceptional things back in the days that the Atari machines defined the video game industry. Steve Jobs was one of their employees for some time before Apple and Nolan Bushnell has been among the few people who saw Steve Jobs for what he could be and became one of his mentors for many years to come. This book with its fancy title is quite fun to read and focuses on the dark art of dealing with talented people and how different management and leadership skills are required if you are going to work with great talents and the usual business management skills and standards are just going to make you lose people and go down the drain, well, unless you handle mediocre people of course.

Ready Player One: A Novel by Ernest Cline

This is a very interesting Sci-Fi or rather Cyberpunk story. Although this is the first serious work by the young author, its quality is quite good. A near future story where people mostly live in a big massively multiplayer game with a lot of references to the 80s and 90s pop culture. I have not finished this book yet but so far it has been quite fun to read.

Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty

This is not the first book I've read by the best coach of all time, Phil Jackson. Phil talks about the details of events and his ideas and journey during his coaching years with the Bulls and the Lakers. Philosophical at times with many references as how he used his eastern philosophical knowledge and zen to handle the chaos.

Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto by David Kushner

Another very good book by the author of Masters of Doom, David Kushner. This is the story of Grand Theft Auto. Although not as inspirational as Masters of Doom but still an interesting read about one of the most successful video game IPs.

The Art of UNIX Programming (The Addison-Wesley Professional Computng Series) by Eric S. Raymond

Eric Raymond has many good books and articles, The Cathedral and the Bazaar being one of them. This book describes the philosophy behind the design of Unix and the people that worked on it. The hacker culture in general. A fascinating book. Simple, true, beautiful with much love.

The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses by Jesse Schell

This is one of the best books written about game design. Very complete and it follows a well thought process and unlike many other books written on the topic, this one analyses the game design related issues very well both from a low level and implementation stand point and also from a high level and philosophical view. A must read for game designers.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki and David Chadwick

One of the most important attitudes that anyone can have in order to succeed is to always maintain your beginner's mind, the way you saw the world when you were a beginner in a field. Losing the beginner's mind can be a starting point to lose it all. This is a great book on Zen.

The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh, Vo-Dihn Mai and Mobi Ho

Another fabulous book about Zen. The very interesting view that this book has is that you do not need to hide yourself away from the world and sit in solitude to be mindful and meditate, you can do all that while you are engaged in your daily life. This book adjusts your view towards life, a positive adjustment.

Derrida For Beginners by Jim Powell and Van Howell 

Derrida is a very mysterious philosopher with an out of the box way of looking at the world. His deconstruction theory is one that made me curious to learn more about this great thinker. This book is a graphical introduction to his ideas, easy to read but not very easy to understand.

Team Leadership in the Game Industry by Seth Spaulding 

I have recently started reading this one but so far it seems to be a good one. Leadership is not trivial, especially in the game industry where you have to deal with all kinds of people coming from all kinds of backgrounds and with quite different behaviors and ways of looking at their lives and careers. The author has had good experiences in this field and as it seems, leadership in game industry has been a main curiosity for him for quite some time.

Gamers at Work: Stories Behind the Games People Play by Morgan Ramsay and Peter Molyneux

Reading the stories of successful people in a field is always fun. This book is a series of interviews with some major figures in the game industry. Very inspirational.

Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society by Karl Ulrich

Design, Design, Design. It is all about design. Problem solving and coming up with solutions. This is what needs to be done in life in order to create and perceive meaning. This is the essence of engineering. This book is a general book on Design. Interesting to read, although this is not directly about game design, all the principles map to game design very well. Although I have to say that you will not find much ideas that you did not know about if you have been involved with some serious design work, however, reading things that you feel you know unconsciously can always help in refining and solidifying your knowledge.

The Making of Karateka: Journals 1982-1985 by Jordan Mechner

The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985 - 1993 by Jordan Mechner

These are Jordan Mechner's personal logs from the days he was working on the original Karateka game and Prince of Persia. It takes you to those years and the challenges that developers had back in the 80's to make games. Fun to read.

The Macintosh Way by Guy Kawasaki 

A classic from Guy Kawasaki, a story of the people behind the original Macintosh. What they believed in, how they worked and their way of life and work. Highly recommended book.

Artificial Intelligence for Games (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology) by Ian Millington

There are quite a few books around regarding video game AI but this one seems to be more complete, detailed and well written. The Morgan Kaufmann series in game development are usually good books, this one is not an exception. 

Aikido: The Peaceful Martial Art by Stefan Stenudd 

Aikido is beautiful. Martial arts in general are beautiful and the way the balance the physical and mental aspects is probably their significant point. Aikido is very special among them. A technique concerned mostly with harmony, the life energy and the truth. Stefan Stenudd has written a beautiful book where he talks about the techniques, the philosophy and the beauty of the art. 

Fight Club: A Novel by Chuck Palahniuk

I loved the movie, I loved this book. I really like this story and the narrative is amazing in the book, well it was quite good in the movie too.

Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made by Andy Hertzfeld

The title says it all! I have to stress one thing though: It is in fact an insanely great story!

It is quite nice to be able to read such wonderful writings, my joy is that there seems to be a lot more interesting books in the queued "To-Read" list.