Startup – Page 4 – ɔimoɈɒ

Immersive, Connected, Asynchronous

So, there are two types of gameplay I imagine in this game. And this may increase the game far beyond initial scope. Immersive Play This is closest to console-type play. Someone churns their way through 20 levels of combat and research, at varying difficulties to get to the end game. This is enhanced with later … Continue reading “Immersive, Connected, Asynchronous”

So, there are two types of gameplay I imagine in this game. And this may increase the game far beyond initial scope.

Immersive Play

This is closest to console-type play. Someone churns their way through 20 levels of combat and research, at varying difficulties to get to the end game. This is enhanced with later multiplayer and, I would hope, special co-op levels as well as death match style play. But the gameplay is all immersive. It’s real-time tactics which will suck in the attention.

Asynchronous but Connected Play

This is the gameplay done when you only have two minutes or thirty seconds. It’s not enough to immerse you entirely and it may open the gameplay to other platforms (maybe even including emails, push notifications). Have to think a bit more about this one.

more about messaging and supply lines
shared missions ( “I can’t move forward on sigma sector until you blow that bridge” )
passing of information ( “Anyone seen the Derps in Downtown” )

The closest things I can compare this to is using other channels outside WoW to plan raids. What if the online component required people to do things for each other. Think of that segment in the Matrix sequel where they had to hit things within a certain time frame to get through a door. Very silly, the whole sequence. But the idea being that in a war, even a guerilla war, there are sacrifices, feints and advances. In order for Cell B to advance, maybe Cell A has to lead an extremely difficult mission against some major component of alien infrastructure. If they don’t achieve a certain score, then Cell B has a much harder time of it.

One Lump or Two, Vicar?

I’m left to wonder then; is this one game or two?

I’m intrigued by something Willem Kokke said to me earlier this week about starting out with a simpler game to get started. I think that an Asynchonrous Connected game could work as a standalone. As an iPhone game that would be a companion for an iPad strategy game. I already watch TV while using my phone and iPad so why not play a game? Maybe there’s an entire untapped market there. Some console games use phones to help track inventory, to provide in-game information. Why not affect gameplay?

So that’s a simpler idea, that feeds into the development of the story, that can provide story elements in and of itself. It looks like I’ll need to open a new area of the wiki.

Crowd funding Investment: I have a bad feeling about this.

From Gamasutra: Newsbrief: In the wake of Double Fine’s astonishingly successful Kickstarter campaign, industry trade body UKIE called for legislation changes that would allow UK video game companies to use crowd funding to finance their projects. UKIE explained that the UK’s current legal and regulatory framework puts too many restrictions on crowd funding, and the … Continue reading “Crowd funding Investment: I have a bad feeling about this.”

From Gamasutra:

Newsbrief: In the wake of Double Fine’s astonishingly successful Kickstarter campaign, industry trade body UKIE called for legislation changes that would allow UK video game companies to use crowd funding to finance their projects.

UKIE explained that the UK’s current legal and regulatory framework puts too many restrictions on crowd funding, and the group promised to release a report that outlines the ways in which the laws should change to better suit game developers and the entertainment industry at large.

I view this with some discomfort. There is nothing stopping UK video game developers using crowd funding to finance their projects. Nothing. Beginning their position with a straw man argument sets the scene for a document filled with repetition and obfuscatory prose.

The restrictions of the UK’s current legal and regulatory framework are in place to protect people from shysters. It’s not always possible and some people get burned but it’s the best thing for everyone.

There is nothing stopping Kickstarter from being in the UK as-is. But this paper from UKIE is attempting to effect serious change in the way securities are dealt by permitting crowd funding from “small holders” to purchase securities in bulk and I’m extremely wary of it for two reasons:

they’re using Kickstarter as an example. This is disingenuous in my opinion as its saying “look what donations/pre-ordering can accomplish, now let us sell shares this way” and nearly every discussion seems to revolve around selling investments. Kickstarter proves this isn’t required. And their opening argument is utterly defeated.
in my own investment dealings (helping to advise local companies), I’ve had to deal with venture capitalists who have been nothing short of shysters. Term sheets which could drive their own truck through them, legals which are not only different to the terms laid out in the term sheet but actual opposites which, when discovered are resulting to more more than an apology.

So, the mother of all unintended consequences would be to permit this and allow investment managers to punt junk companies on the Internet for pennies. In effect, doing a pre-IPO IPO. With the number of companies out there and the number of potential investors, this becomes an administrative nightmare. While the fund managers laugh all the way to the bank, you have thousands of shareholders wondering why they bothered considering the bulk of the money goes on fees and you’ve got such a micro-percentage of the company that you can’t control anything anyway. Ending up with a heap of shares in a worthless company isn’t the only potential outcome. Are they seriously going to have shareholder meetings with thousands of shareholders when a company is worth £100K?

I might be spending too much time worrying about the motivations of strangers. In my opinion, these people are not to be trusted.

Innovation Island?

From Slugger O’Toole It seems we in Northern Ireland aren’t doing so well when it comes to innovation, at least according to InterTrade Ireland. Simon Hamilton tweeted this announcement from one of his fellow ministers yesterday: “Arlene Foster reveals only 1 of 18 nominations in InterTradeIreland awards from NI & this is a trend. Does … Continue reading “Innovation Island?”

From Slugger O’Toole

It seems we in Northern Ireland aren’t doing so well when it comes to innovation, at least according to InterTrade Ireland. Simon Hamilton tweeted this announcement from one of his fellow ministers yesterday:

“Arlene Foster reveals only 1 of 18 nominations in InterTradeIreland awards from NI & this is a trend. Does ROI have monopoly on innovation?”

I do wonder what “innovation” has to do being represented in an awards show. Does a panel from IntertradeIreland actively search for innovation and inspiration or is this yet another nomination exercise? Someone, maybe even the MD of the business, fills in a form, tells a story and enters a dog’n’pony show?

And shame on our ministers for making a big deal of it. Obviously we’d all love to win an award, parade around with a few suits, have my picture taken (obviously proffering an iPad or laptop towards the camera) and get our pictures into a local advertising aggregator web site. That would be a real measure of innovation in our region.

According to the Technology Strategy Board, Northern Ireland companies do not respond to their competitions as much as they should (based on population). NESTA say that Northern Ireland has a poor rate of response to their programmes. Channel 4 “4IP” told me that they got very few applications from Northern Ireland, much lower than expected. Is it just that we don’t play well with others?

Looking south of the border, they have their own sovereign nation which is an advantage as they have their own controls over corporation tax and other economic drivers. While they were holding out their hands to Europe for a national bailout, they were spending like mad to encourage enterprise. They realised that you have to invest your way out of a recession. We initiate a game development pilot, they copy it but boost the numbers by 10. We have been arguing for a publicly supported incubator, they have about ten of them. We’re playing catchup, yes, but it’s not the private sector who needs to wake up and smell the coffee.

All my life has been in a divided nation. As a vaguely union-supporting post-graduate professional from a middle class catholic background, I have very little national identity of any form and quite literally I am not involved in the politics of the region; I have not voted in years. I feel no loyalty to our political parties because I don’t feel like any of them have any loyalty to me.

Northern Ireland is the most isolated region in the British Isles. We’re the only region of the UK which shares a land border with another sovereign nation; a nation which uses a different currency, offers extremely competitive corporation tax rates and didn’t really suffer thirty years of civil war. We’re separated from the rest of the UK by one of the most expensive stretches of water in the world and due to decades of mismanagement, our pointless little country can only survive in handouts from the UK government. When the block grant goes (and it will), we will have to deal with some very hard questions. Either that or revitalise our previously successful crime and terrorism industry.

It aggravates me when Invest Northern Ireland hands back £50m of their budget to the DFP and blames the private sector for not investing. It makes me ask questions about their ability to forecast when a third of their budget goes unspent. It makes me wonder if they are even aware of recession economics – most businesses I talk to are unable to spend days filling out forms for grants because they are paying the bills and when they’re not working their butts off to pay the bills, they’re trying to build the next big thing on their own time; time, according to Invest Northern Ireland, is worthless.

I have started three businesses in Northern Ireland and I am currently working on starting my fourth. I have never taken a single penny of grant aid from Invest Northern Ireland. The job I’m currently doing means I am supping from the public teat and it can be argued whether or not I would be better off doing my own thing or continuing in this line. I feel that I signed up to a duty of care for the digital sector in Northern Ireland when I took this job and right now I wonder whether I’ve taken on too much responsibility and whether I care too much about the outcomes. Being part of the process of helping our startups has somewhat overtaken my life.

So, in short, no, obviously, the ROI does not have a monopoly on innovation. And yes, our programmes in place are not adequately supporting our startups. And no, it’s not the startups fault.

The Sky Is Rising

A report on the boom in the media industry despite the worst recession in 70 years. Related posts: cultureTECH: What I did… Holidays in England All I needed to know about games… Humans FTW! Sky-Bully FTL!

A report on the boom in the media industry despite the worst recession in 70 years.

A basic intro to Sonappa

Not talking about my next idea hasn’t actually progressed me towards my desired destination. So, I’ve decided to do a bit of the opposite. Over the next weeks, I’ll be posting more material as I generate it, including getting some screenshots put together after I’ve put together some basic sketches. And it’s all going up … Continue reading “A basic intro to Sonappa”

Not talking about my next idea hasn’t actually progressed me towards my desired destination.

So, I’ve decided to do a bit of the opposite. Over the next weeks, I’ll be posting more material as I generate it, including getting some screenshots put together after I’ve put together some basic sketches. And it’s all going up here.

Cultural Tourism – new apps competition!

A new Cultural Tourism app competition for Northern Irish mobile companies. The DCAL initiative aims to harness the innovation and entrepreneurial potential of culture, arts and leisure by encouraging local digital companies to use these sectors as a source of inspiration and content for mobile Apps. Digital technologies are transforming how people access information and … Continue reading “Cultural Tourism – new apps competition!”

A new Cultural Tourism app competition for Northern Irish mobile companies.

The DCAL initiative aims to harness the innovation and entrepreneurial potential of culture, arts and leisure by encouraging local digital companies to use these sectors as a source of inspiration and content for mobile Apps. Digital technologies are transforming how people access information and how business sectors, such as tourism, communicate with consumers. Billions of Apps are downloaded globally each year and this competition offers opportunities to grow the creative industries and tourism sector in the north of Ireland.

The competition is being managed by Momentum / Digital Circle, which promotes the ICT and digital content sector in the north of Ireland. Local digital companies are invited to put forward creative and innovative ideas for two apps showcasing Irish and Ulster-Scots culture respectively. The winning applications will be funded to develop the apps in time for the 2012 tourism season.

The tender documents are located:

There’s Digital Hubs and digital hubs.

There is an inevitability of a concentration on the digital knowledge economy for Northern Ireland. We have a thriving group of developers and designers in Belfast, a huge amount of ambition in the North West and a heap of activity building in the Southern and Western counties of the province. Last week I went to … Continue reading “There’s Digital Hubs and digital hubs.”

Last week I went to the Digital Hub along with Momentum, Belfast City Council, InvestNI and representatives from DCAL and OFMDFM.

We heard the spiel about how it brought some regeneration to the area, that they still have a considerable subvention from the government after 10 years (less than €2m a year, but overall investment has been around €30m since inception and may not include transferred assets).

I also spoke to some of the guys in some of the businesses. They said they wish the Hub was one mile closer to the city centre, that the reason they use bikes and public transport is because they don’t want to bring their cars to that area of town and even the big lads feel a little concerned leaving the Hub with a laptop.

It re-iterates my belief that a city centre location for a Belfast Hub is essential. Not least because Davy Sims put together a map of Digital Media companies in Northern Ireland back in February of 2010 and discovered most were within a square mile in the city centre.

View Belfast Media Square Mile in a larger map

I don’t think we want a straight property play like the Hub in Dublin. We’re a small region with a big ambition so we have to think much more strategically about what goes where. We also need to be 100% joined up. I think I have the support of the Digital Circle steering group in my opinions and in my vision for a digital hub-type infrastructure in Northern Ireland. It’s a big plan, an ambitious plan, even an audacious plan and if it delivers, it will bring the concept to the province as a whole rather than just to a small region.

ideaspace

This morning I had coffee with Marty Neill (from AirPOS and Brian McKimm (from eSynergy). I could have done with another couple of hours (and a whiteboard) but in all I was very pleased with the conversation even though we may not have agreed on the finer points. In essence, I was pitching to try … Continue reading “ideaspace”

In essence, I was pitching to try to increase the “ideaspace” in Northern Ireland.

I’m of the opinion that there are small ideas and big ideas. The theory is that all of these ideas tend to have equal chance of happening in any given time. The difficulty then is not only finding the time to just have ideas but also having the space, time, resource and, probably most importantly, the network, to realise the idea.

Sometimes what seems to be a small idea can turn into a big idea and it’s not always apparent immediately. Facebook began as a blog, turned into a college network and is now permeating every aspect of our lives. Twitter began as a way to send text messages to groups (and have them be able to easily reply to the group). Google began as a search engine and now does pretty much everything.

I can’t speak for others in this but I’m pretty sure that AirPOS started because Marty realised that Point of Sales systems were hopelessly outdated and none of them used the Internet. I’m sure that Onotate started because Rumble Labs needed a controlled way to share graphical assets with clients and generate appropriate feedback. I’m certain that Planzai started out as a way for Richard to organise some of the activities in his dual life as a rockstar software developer and a rockstar. But these were big ideas masquerading as small ideas.

We’re working on methods now to increase the ‘idea space’ in Northern Ireland. We’ve been doing it through the InvestNI Collaborative Network Programme and we’re continuing it with the development of an “innovation hub” in Belfast. Part hub, part incubator, part soft landing zone; the intent is to provide the default industry location for the development of ideas and collaborations. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last three years – with the ideaspace being virtualised – and it’s what we’re going to be executing on for the next three years.

If you’re interested in being a part of it, drop me a line.

Pivot? No, Tack and Gybe!

This weekend I was entertained by the news that Color, a social media startup, was moving from “mobile” to “FaceBook” as their primary platform. Whether you think that’s a good idea or not or whether the only thing Color has going for them was the $40million they received in venture capital, it represent a pivot … Continue reading “Pivot? No, Tack and Gybe!”

My second company pivoted. I didn’t like it much. We started out doing products, bootstrapping due to the complete lack of seed funding in the region (something that has been fixed) and ended up selling our souls to contract development. Yes, we were bootstrapping but only due to lack of choice. And I hated it.

I spent last weekend sailing with Ballyholme Yacht Club and earned my RYA Level 2 “Start Sailing” certificate. The core concept of sailing is summed up by five essentials:

Trim
Balance
Sail setting
Centreboard
Course Made Good

Trim and Balance are all about keeping yourself in the boat while the wind and waves are trying to throw you out. In dinghy sailing, keeping the boat at flat as possible means you can eke out the best performance. Plow the bow in too far and you lose speed, similarly too much weight on the stern causes excessive drag.

Sail Setting is about keeping the wind in your sails. When sailing, your primary method of locomotion is through the wind. While you can make some progress on the currents, surfing the odd wave and negotiating the tides, it is with the wind that you make progress.

Centreboard, also known as a daggerboard or keel, provides resistance to the wind driving you sideways and off course. It also helps in keeping you in a boat. You have to know when to set the centreboard hard or when to pull it in a little to reduce drag.

Course Made Good is figuring out which way you have to point your little boat in order to arrive at the destination, taking into account the current and tides, waves, obstacles, other vessels and, of course, the direction of the wind. Sometimes the most direct route is impossible (sailing upwind) and you may have to tack or gybe your way through the wind to reach your desired goal.

So what are tacking and gybing?

Tacking is moving your boat against the wind to change direction. As you face the wind, the power is lost from the sails. You lose some speed but the manoeuvre is controllable, predictable and if things go wrong, the worst thing that can happen is that you slow to a stop.

Gybing is moving your boat through the wind to change direction. The wind is always fully in the sails, the process is much quicker and much more violent but there is much more risk of losing control and ending up in the water.

Knowing when a tack is needed and when only a gybe will do is something that is gained through experience. It depends on what direction you are going, where you want to go and what direction the wind is heading. it depends on what risks you are taking. Our instructor, Alice, related a tale of how she was forced to tack multiple times during a race when one gybe would have completed the turn because the high winds and risk of capsize would have lost her the race.

I can’t help but relate the concepts of tacking and gybing to startups who feel the need to pivot. In fact, all of the five essentials of sailing can be related in some way and would, in my opinion, go well in a business plan.

Games Development Seminar – Belfast, 14th Sept

Last chance to register for a games technology development seminar here in Belfast. Wed, 14 September from 10:00 to 12:00 at Radisson Blu, Gasworks, Belfast The speaker is Paul Durrant, Abertay University’s Director of Business Development. He has been instrumental in developing a range of projects to support digital media IP generation, business start-up, incubation, … Continue reading “Games Development Seminar – Belfast, 14th Sept”

Last chance to register for a games technology development seminar here in Belfast.

Wed, 14 September from 10:00 to 12:00 at Radisson Blu, Gasworks, Belfast

The speaker is Paul Durrant, Abertay University’s Director of Business Development. He has been instrumental in developing a range of projects to support digital media IP generation, business start-up, incubation, and skills development particularly in the video games area. He developed Dare to be Digital and Dare ProtoPlay to become significant international events including a partnership with BAFTA to recognise talented young developers and the development of the Channel 4 Crunchtime TV series. He also raised £2m to establish a prototype fund for small games developers and has recently launched a partnership with the Technology Strategy Board to fund novel games applications.

In this seminar, Paul will describe the Scottish experience in digital content, the contribution from Abertay and the funding opportunities available through Abertay which are available to companies in Northern Ireland. In particular, he will describe the Abertay University Prototype Fund (http://prototypefund.abertay.ac.uk/) and the Future Games Contest ( https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/future-games-contest )