I contacted my mentor to ask if I could drop his name and processed his list of outsourcing recommendations today. I think I’m done collecting potential firms now. I have eight requests outstanding for a design document, so I’m going to assume that SOME of those eight are competent. Here’s more Missy, who is illustrating the design document for me:

She’s probably going to handle concept art and maybe final. I need to find a musician/sound designer.

Second contact with the second outsourcing firm, and first contact with two more (one in India, one in Eastern Europe). I also found an article online profiling an entrepreneur in the UK who started a one-man studio the same way — contacted him for mentorship.

I’m pro-crosstrain-ating by “slacking off” work — ie, taking breaks — to start my own company.

The Stanley Parable is a game about gaming, insanity, and existentialism, with aggressively unreliable narrator(s). It’s short. This 1/2 hr video contains, supposedly, all of the playthroughs.

Here’s some code from our game, which shipped on XBLA for 360. I shouldn’t let this out, but here goes:

class shoesmuthafucka

There you go, a peek behind the kimono.

The design brainstorm went very well. I might be called upon to build an audio menuing system for one of the projects. Starting with phone menu systems as an example of utter failure I’m going to do some design thinking around that. Just thought I’d start the conversation here.

The game is out, and is currently top 50 on the App Store, #1 featured on device, and hopefully on the way to the top 25 (it’s almost there on games). This is all very advantageous to revenue figures, and the whole studio is going for pho to celebrate.

The national media claimed it would snow hard on Toronto over the last little while. Best possible fail: hot soup on a rainy day.

The company that my company subcontracts for is soliciting game ideas. I’m pitching my old “Fallopian Invaders” game, mostly to break the ice (I have real ideas I’ll bring too). It’s not really fair to ask for uncompensated ideas, but this is the internet, so: if you have ideas you want to give me (or things I should look at for inspiration) shoot.

One of these is ours (hint — 4:20):

What if everything was like Fitocracy?

[Update: Answer -- "Eliminated a traitor to the Pointocracy: 100,000 pts!]

Developer X made a successful game for Microsoft’s console. X hired Developer Y to release a version for iOS. Y hired the company I work with, Developer Z, to help them.

Somewhere along the way, Microsoft bought X outright. Apple then visited Y to help them help X publish a “Microsoft” title for the Apple platform. Y extended that OEM help to us (Z).

Which is how I came to be involved in a game development Skype meeting with a couple of Apple Engineers today, focusing on ways to reduce memory consumption while maintaining asset quality (make game go fast, look good).

I’ve worked in games for years and never talked with anyone from either Sony or Microsoft, who have been the go-to OEMs in the field. Nintendo used to give someone on one of my teams code drops, so presumably there was some communication going on there.

Anyway, Apple is certainly awesome to work with. Their software tools alone destroy the competition, and on top of that they have wicked developer support and fantastic documentation. If they ever decide to get into games in a really big way I think they’ll have a shot at crushing it.

Or maybe they’re already big into games. Maybe they just don’t care about big console clunkers. I certainly understand the feeling.