Sometimes, I just shake my head at how something can fail so greatly. I’m trying to purchase a ticket from point A to point B. Look closely at this image. Do you see the issue?
Chris Schlarb: Composer
Creativity has a price. For some, it’s simply time spent. For others, and especially those interested in sharing their work with the world at large, this price manifests itself as a pricy ecosystem of publicists, artists, photographers, web site folks, and a slew of other supporting roles to the creative individual. Frequently, this means that there is little funds left for the creative individual(s).
As a musician, Chris Schlarb came to realize this pretty quickly. More importantly, he took action and did something about it. Production companies for games and movies tend to pay more for a piece of work than the end consumer. Amongst other things, Chris is a music composer for video games.
I stumbled upon Chris’ work by pure happenstance. I noticed him in a friend’s Twitterstream. He had been talking about Steph Thirion who happens to be the creator of the very cool iPhone game, Eliss (Web site: http://trsp.net/ , Twitter:stephbysteph). I’ve developed a new found interest in video games, and specifically iPhone based games, I clicked on Chris’s link through Twitter to find out more about him.
Chris has a sparkly resume. He’s been a composer, producer, and musician for years. You can tell that he has a passion for his work within the first few minutes of chatting with him. That feeling is absolutely infectious. I reached out to him partially because I believe in serendipity, and partially because I need to know the process and costs associated with creating music for a video game.
And I’m a music junkie so I don’t want just any old boring music. I would like something special, but I am on a pretty tight budget.
Chris’ philosophy on life is pretty simple and mirrors my own. There are three things that one must live by: passion, education, and action.
Each by itself seems so much less satisfying than all three together. Passion without education or action cumulates in much pontification on a subject matter. Education without passion or action tends to be a bit bland. And of course, action without passion or education can be misguided.
I confessed to Chris that I am in the Passion -> Education. He was kind enough to say our chat about the importance of music for a game was a good step forward towards action.
Chris + I share a lot of similar ideas. Neither of us believes in micro-management. We both see constraints as fuel to creativity, not a limitation to creativity. We both believe that it’s a fantastic time for ‘outsiders’ to infuse produce new games that are outside of the typical “serious games” or even the “casual games”. We discussed game play basics (which I will sharing as the project develops), the general feel of the game, and the pacing of the music.
Although we talked a bit about specific games that we like/dislike and the reasons behind it, we spoke more about “everything else”. The stuff that drives us.
On my end, I shared my ideas on the type of game that I’m looking to create, my very hard (and small) budget, my own emotional hook with music, the time frame, the types of music that I like, and why exactly, I feel that this is a core component in the development of the game.
Chris shared insight on his work style, the types of projects that he’s interested in doing, and why exactly his compositions are so different from everything else that’s out there. He attributes a lot of his ability to act on his passion and education in pretty simple terms. It’s his way of getting past the “primordial stuff”. If you don’t think too long or hard about it, and act almost recklessly, you can get past that element of self-doubt that’s so debilitating.
Chris differentiates in this space. He does so by using live musicians. Most video games loop the music track and is added as an afterthought. Chris wants to be involved from the very beginning as the game develops so the music can help set emotional experience for the players. Playing the game and listening to the music should stir up something.
I adore this idea. It perfectly reflects the way I lead my life and the ongoing soundtrack in my mind for any and all situations.
Our quick meeting had turned into a two hour mind meld and I walked away even more excited than ever before. I promised to stay in touch over the course of the next few weeks as I rally the rest of the team. I stand by my beliefs. Serendipity is a beautiful thing once we let it into our lives.
I’m excited about the next steps. If you’d like to find out more about Chris, please visit him on the web: http://www.chrisschlarb.com or on Twitter: Schlarb.
transcontinental moving
When was the last time that you had a truly brilliant experience with a company or brand?
Luxury brands tend to stand out in this department, especially those in the travel sector. The experience should be luxurious, relaxing, carefree, etc. As an example, upper class carriage on flights offer more than legroom and better food, it should also offer better service.
But what about non “luxury” brands? What is the consumer expectation in the way of experience for those brands?
This morning, I had a truly brilliant experience.
It’s a rare moment when things like this happen. We encounter horrible user experiences all the time. Things that don’t work quite well for a series of reasons. On the most basic level, the experience leaves the consumer feeling less than clever, on a more advanced level, it can anger the consumer.
It is actually pretty difficult and time consuming to consider all touch points and scenarios. Consumers are fairly unpredictable and most companies do not feel like they have to budget or time to consider even the 20% of the user journey that would improve 80% of the user experience. Too frequently, in a digitial world, we focus on the web expereince and forget about the real life touchpoints. This brings me back to my point. I had a truly brilliant experience this morning.
Canal Mercer has offices in both London and San Francisco with plans to expand into Asia later this year. Personally, this has involved maintaining households in multiple countries. It sounds a lot more glamorous than it actually is. In reality, it’s a royal pain in the bum.
Recently, we’ve decided to spend more time developing our clientele in Asia and the US. As such, we are moving our personal effects (but not our office from London). We do it with a bit of sadnes as we love London.
3 years can yield quite a bit of personal effects. It’s been a scramble to pack everything up and we’ve solicited the help of a removals company to ship our goods to the next destination. We found First Move International through a search engine but a close friend had also recommended them.
Their web presence is not fantastic but their service is outstanding. I’ll enumerate:
I’m writing this quickly as I’m dashing off to my next appointment here in London. But I must say this, these people are fantastic. Each person that I’ve emailed, talked to, or have otherwise interacted with has been spot on brilliant.
There are a few things that really sparkled with this company.
1) Problem resolution
The movers were stuck in traffic when the M4 was shut due to an accident. I was emailed with this information so my expectations were re-aligned.
My miscalculation of amount of items shipped were not an issue. They smiled and nodded knowingly, as this is something that happens pretty frequently.
They brought extra bubble wrap and tape and were happy to help wrap the last of the items.
2) Friendliness
Yes, it does matter. Especially during particularly stressful situations, providing the consumer with a sense of calm and comfort goes a long way.
3) Speed
17 items were retaped and sent on their way in… less than 15 minutes. This was just mind boggling. There was no doubt in my mind that I was dealing with professionals. These guys knew exactly what they were doing.
So there we have it. A non-luxury brand that offers brilliant service so far. We’ll write a bit more about the experience as we interact with them throughout the shipping process. So far, well done. Well done indeed.
We’re continuing our discussion of games and social behaviour. I’ve been wondering if participation in games, be it development or the playing of games lends itself to breeding more satisfying social interactions in the way of collaboration, communication, and community development.
This Saturday I had the pleasure of attending my very first “Game Jam”. This particular Game Jam was a two day event hosted by Wild Pockets and Crispy Gamer.
I wasn’t sure what to expect but showed up early on Saturday morning to watch and learn. I was a little taken back by the ages of the attendees. Many of the participants seemed to be around high school or college age. Some were even too young to drive and had convinced a parent to provide transportation (from as far away as Monterey!).
By 9:30am there were roughly 75 participants. Boys lugged in their big desktop systems from home. And yes, I did mean to say boys. None of the handful of girls there seemed to tote any huge boxes.
Participants filed in, some with their fully fleshed out teams and others with a single friend. My own perception of a ‘gamer’ was challenged as I found myself surrounded by more young artists and designers than programmers. For a few moments, some of the participants looked a bit distressed in not finding complimentary skill sets to build a game with. Luckily, the moment passed as people’s desire to build a game surpassed their shyness in approaching perfect strangers.
Then it was off to the races. We were given a few presentations by sponsors for the event, some information from Super Rewards, a virtual currency monetisation platform (aka how do we make money with this?), a quick overview from Hi5 who’s now pushing some of the web to games channel via Mochi Media, and an excellent overview of how to design a game. This was followed by an in depth review of the Wild Pockets scripting language.
The participants looked antsy. They shifted in their seats as if they were wondering when they could be dismissed and just get on with it. They simply wanted to make cool games and seemed to care less about monetisation.
I have to admit, _I_ was totally intrigued. Wild Pockets does seem to offer a really nice quick start framework to allow people to create their own games. I wish that it also runs on the Mac but hey, there’s a reason that I have XP installed. Wild Pockets haa a help system, tutorial, and physical package to support game development. It’s pretty sweet.
The event looked like it was a success for everyone involved. Participants interested in the games market had a chance to showcase their talent, learn a new platform, and make some friends in a supportive environment. Wild Pockets was able to get the word out about their new gaming platform and flesh out their web property with more games.
I didn’t stay for the whole weekend but I did walk away feeling like there’s a whole new realm of games that are just waiting to be developed and discovered by people like myself and others that may not be in the old school target demographic (younger males) for games but who do enjoy playing certain types of games. Suddenly, companies like Wild Pockets lowers some of the barriers to entering the marketplace.
More than that, the gaming industry, the social openness and inclusiveness within that subculture has a chance of spilling over into more mainstream culture. Will we see a change in social behaviours and patterns as people get re acclimated with some of the tenets of society? I admit, that sounds lofty but really… After all, there is a whole generation of people raised attached to the internet but also a bit isolated from day to day IRL interactions.
There aren’t any hard facts out there just yet but I’m excited to be looking at this. Here is something that I learned. If you give people the tools, a common cause, and a fun way of interacting that helps them promote their own goals, you might just have a winning combination. It’s not enough for us to have conversations with our clients, users, customers. We have to provide methods for them to talk to each other as well. As we mature as a group, we have the opportunity to learn from each other and build rich meaningful experiences.
I can’t wait.
Cracking Emerging and Non-Traditional Markets Roundtable
1/3 of our time is spent in markets considered ‘emerging’ by the bulk of Western marketing lingo. However, are emerging markets in the eyes of the Western world considered emerging markets by people within those markets? Or, as I frequently say, “French fries in France are just called fries.”
In an effort to attend at least one of each GDC formats, I approached the roundtable with a bit of curiosity.
The session was lead/moderated by Ben Sawyer, Co-Founder, Digitalmill. We started by sharing our definitions of emerging markets with each other. It was fascinating to see the uniqueness and overlaps in definition. Each of us were highly influenced by the paths that we’d taken in careers. It was fascinating to get a window into the trials and tribulations of someone else’s world of gaming. The roundtable was divided into three sections:
Defining emerging markets
Emerging markets discussed included but were not limited to:
Defining barriers to entry in emerging markets
Cracking the market
Most of us seemed to be there for the last part of the discussion. How does one crack the emerging market? One of the tactics is to identify the barriers to entry and then solve the issue. In fact, having a solution for these barriers frequently offers a unique market opportunity and a leg up on the competition.
Much easier said than done in most cases. As an example, the “last mile” for much of Western Union types of payment transactions in emerging markets (China, Brazil) is literally dependent on a physical network of people who carry currency from one location to the next. Africa has shown some of the more interesting developments in this area with their use of mobile minutes as a tradable commodity.
It’s clear that there is no magic solution to cracking an emerging market. Than again, I wasn’t really expecting one. I’m just glad that more and more people are finally designing goods and services for people in the 90th% of the market.
Last week I was at SXSW. This week it’s GDC. Yes, it’s a tough life but someone’s got to do it. Canal Mercer is interested in examining social interactions across sectors. For the next few months, we’re dedicating some time to Video Games.
Why Video Games? Well, games in general require a certain amount of engagement by the player of the game with the game itself for single player games, with one other person, or, in the case of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) the ability to play with multiple people across large distances.
Up until recently, the majority of console types of video games have been role-playing, shoot em up types of games that have attracted predominantly young males. However, the availability of “casual play” games with internet distribution has broadened the appeal of games to include women. Still the bulk of these games are online representations of offline board games (such as Scrabble and Monopoly).
In short, we’re curious to know how much of the behaviours within game play minic that of real life (or, as I frequently say, “playground rules”). Furthermore, are the principles of social interactions used to further one’s game play? If you’re a games development company, can these principles be used to enable and encourage socially responsible behaviour?
We’ll take a look at things first as a games developer in order to understand how these games are currently being designed in the first place. To be clear, I’m talking about the whole process of developing a video game. Ideation to in store placement (or download) and into the sweaty hands of consumers. Come on, don’t take offense, you know that if you’ve ever played any video games for the period of time that they are intended to be played with, _your_ hands get kind of grubby too.
As a result, there’s really no better place to start our exploration than the Game Development Conference in San Francisco.
The GDC offered so many tracks and options that it was difficult to choose where to start. 6 tracks (Audio, Business Management, Game Design, Production, Programming, Visual Arts), Summits -and- Tutorials. I decided to pick the ones that might be most relevant in building a fun and profitable games company.
The goal is this. Attend at least one of each type of session (full day tutorial, panel, roundtable) and provide a full write-up to share. Readers can access the full list here. Please do enjoy + remember, we’re always happy to hear from you lovely folks!
Hi everyone, after 3 exciting years (and many countries!) Canal Mercer has a new home in San Francisco. We’re now located in our favo(u)rite National Park! Yep, it’s Fort Mason. We’d love for you to swing by + say hello but please be sure to call (bell) first. We spend a lot of time out in the field because we love to be social. We know you understand. :)
We have some fun events in the works so be sure to email us if you want to be on the list. events ( a t ) canalmercer ( you know what goes here! ) com.
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