by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings0 commentstags: Playstates, Summarizing a Business Organization
With my intention to being doing coding and game development, I got thinking about the definition of being an Indie Game Developer. Indies are distinct from AAA & AA level game developers which are enterprises that do game development so to develop profits for its shareholders. They are value creation machines, driven by passion to create great gaming experiences for the marketplace. Indies also are driven by passion but they approach it differently. I think of them being the single ‘A’ level game developers, with the ‘A’ meaning Amateur. Yet as the game development industry has expanded, so should the definition of what an Indie is. So I believe that ‘A’ level game developers should three sub-categories: A-I, A-II, and A-III. Basically the more money and resources available determines the level. A-I is an Independent effort, A-II is 2-10 people working together, and A-III is 11+ people working together. All of these A level game developers start off unpaid but as they build their product they may carry-on unfunded, self-funded, family-funded, or crowd-funded depending on the scale of the game. AAA The largest sized game developers in the industry employing 100s to 1000s AA The medium sized […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings1 commentstags: Awareness / Understanding, Business Development, Change of Mind, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
It has been just over four months since I made a resolution to start learning how to code. I slowly began to introduce myself to coding concepts using Chris DeLeon’s course ‘Code Your First Game’. I am really enjoying coding! I can see its appeal and how it forces you to get to know how your own mind works. Errors and mistakes are a reflection of perception errors 99.9% of the time. I’m making a concerted effort to stay open and not get frustrated when things do not work. The course had me build some very basic arcade games and culminated in a limited, simple puzzle demo demonstrating the first steps of Heropath. I am really pleased how having a project to work on has given me a focus that I did not have previously. I am now able to take the research and theorizing I’ve been doing and apply it to the roots and definitions of Heropath. Now is the time to adopt a game development engine. I’ve done some research and listened to the feedback of some of my Twitter follows and I’ve come to a decision about which engine to work with. What I’m looking for […]
by Chris Billowsin Political Ponderings, Republic of Bloggers2 commentstags: Components of Human Nature, Human Condition, Human History, Human Misery, Political Opinion, Virtuous Discourse
An open letter to Chris Bateman responding to his blog-letter The New Sickness Unto Death at Only A Game as part of the Republic of Bloggers. Feel welcome to provide your own input via the Comments. Dear Chris, Thank you for engaging me in this poignant discussion about the COVID-19 crisis the world is facing. In addition, thank you for engaging in a private email discussion concerning the dark tone of your post. That was a highly meaningful exchange. I don’t intend to change your mind about the harms committed in reaction to COVID-19, but I will challenge you on some of your specific terminology. I do so to better inform my understanding about your position and to ask you to clarify where I see contradictions in your position. I think we share a common horror that reaction to COVID-19 has done as much damage as the virus itself but would differ about what where our interventions should lie. Now on to parts of your letter: — > Every expectation has now been upended by this monomaniacal fear of an infection that is certainly serious enough to warrant action, yet nowhere near dangerous enough to warrant abandoning democracy. … Are […]
by Chris Billowsin Hobby Heedings, Mental Mischief, Playstates Theory0 commentstags: Components of Human Nature, Comprehensive Analysis, Defining Life
I’ve made a resolution to start learning how to code. I’m only a few hours into it and must say it is enjoyable. There is something magical about making things work on the screen based on your code. Learning how to code is definately a skill that will take time to develop. I’d never say that I have a natural talent to code though I find some of the concepts fascinating which creates enthusiasm and drive to learn more. This got me thinking about where talent is different from skill and where skill relates to art and engineering. With me being the kind of person who loves working with conceptual models, I’ve create a speculative Talent-to-Culture model to illustrate how skills, talent, art, and culture all are related: Talent derives from natural ability or drive, and Talent may lead to skill, and Skill requires tool usage, and Tool usage comes from engineering, and Engineering comes from knowledge or science, and Knowledge comes from concepts, and Concepts comes from culture, and Culture comes from society This model can be inverted, but because I’m focusing on skill development for myself, I started at the skill (top) end of the model. […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings0 commentstags: Awareness / Understanding, Blogging, Business Development
Happy New Year for 2022! Here is a quick review about what I’ve been up to for the past year and where I’m headed in 2022. As I’ve already impelemented in 2021: Promaginy is now my vintage web game website. Cybersideline added a couple of projects with Fandomnaut and Yertunes. Gamenigma was originally going to be my new coding project but then I was able to figure out a way to incorporate lots of my ideas into Heropath. In fact, I experienced a huge synthesis of ideas back in October 2021 which was really exciting and fun. Heropath will be the cumulation of ideas found in Playstates, Tales of Strange Cyberworlds, my passion for crossovers, and many other things. After writing and thinking for many years, a path forward has revealed itself! This is exciting for me because I’ll be moving away from writing and attempt to travel this new pathway through coding. While I will still be updating this blog infrequently, most of my writing on play and games will be moving over to the Heropath’s blog. I’ll be linking to that blog as patterns emerge. So you can expect infrequent coding updates via Heropath and other web projects. […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings1 commentstags: Business Development, Change of Mind, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
I’m a conceptual thinker and because of such I can get caught up into ideas and concepts and believe that understanding something is the same thing as doing something. Such ignorance is typical of thinking types. So I’ve made a resolution to start taking up coding to 1) fix/build my own websites, 2) build my own video games I’ve avoided developing these skills because I’ve always felt I didn’t have the time, but I’ve matured enough in my self-awareness that I need to stop with the self-limiting thinking – the scarcity mentality that plagues so many of us – and just be open to possibilities. The self-limiting thinking that I don’t have enough time to fit it all in is poisonous to getting started. I’m now okay if I don’t finish or accomplish anything since I am going to approach this skill learning with a beginner mind and just enjoy the journey. I’m going to track my skill development, not put any pressure on myself to learn a certain amount of skill by an arbitrary date, and try to find the way of combining intention with spontaneity. Starting today I am going to make a resolution to practice this. Today […]
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