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Dev-Diary Of A Slacker

FDJustin

Contributor
User Power
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11%
Apr 30, 2010
715
79
Canada
Long ago I've discovered two things that, in a way work synergistically to make me highly productive. The first is something similar to accountability. I hate to break promises and create disappointment. That I haven't been keeping up with the progress thread is a genuine source of remorse, which is pushing me to "make up for it".
The second is that I spend a thousand times the effort, if I'm doing it in a way that is directly meant to be viewed by others. For proof of this, look at my post count. I've been here since... Mmmarch? Edit: April, I see that now.
Within those posts are tens of thousands of written words, and some multiple of that which can't be tracked, since it was abandoned or rewritten.
In contrast, while I've done much on my own, it pales in comparison to my forum activities. When I do things purely for myself, my task is "done" once it comes together in my head.

Of course I know that's stupid, in the context of being a 'doer'. Maybe it's useful in some other context, who knows. Doesn't really matter; since I am that way, and since I know what makes me productive, I am now starting this thread.

It will be the dev-diary of a slacker. It won't be pretty. It might even be a dumb idea, because you will have a chance to find my secrets and read some no doubt incredibly stupid thoughts. In fact, I reveal my secret project in the next post (that I wrote up last night). Be sure to read it before you give me the jazz about how ideas are just ideas, I'll be all too happy to explore that point after you do, not before.

Whatever downfalls there might be, real or imagined, if this works out for me they will be dramatically eclipsed by the benefits.
 
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FDJustin

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
11%
Apr 30, 2010
715
79
Canada
To begin with, project G.O.D. is an MMO strategy RPG / TCG I would like to develop. The cards need to be rewritten still, more terrain developed, and the game actually produced.

Howeve, the rules are in working order, so I can work on the other things when the game itself begins to be developed (coded I mean), and provide them as needed.

What I need to do is: Set up a forum and website and begin promoting it, in a way that's meant purely to attract people and find out if there is interest in the game before going into development.

To do this, I will begin seeking places where players who engage in similar genres hang out, and get permission to seek feedback / conversation with those players. I'll begin looking for these communities / interacting with them immediately, and this will probably be ongoing.

If it turns out there is some interest and support, I will have an interactive demo made, and at the same time put together a kickstarter presentation.
Speaking of which, tomorrow I'm going to check into the ID and other requirements to open that US bank account from Canada. If possible, open it within the next week or two, if not find a way to satisfy the requirements. Or I can just bribe an American friend I have in mind to open one for me.
Anyway, at that point I should be well enough aware of the best places to hit with a press release / articles / whatever to drive interested people to the site, and in turn to the kickstarter page.

But this is getting ahead of myself a little. I still have no idea how much I will need, or entirely what for. 'Several thousand' for starting an off-shore company, getting accounts and such along those lines.
XYZ for programming the website
ABC for hiring people to develop the product itself
Some amount for scaleable hosting (at least it's relatively easy to hunt down server prices!)
and.... While I'm hoping the majority of the card art will be provided by artists who will be happy to receive links back to their profiles, retain the right to use their own art, and recognition, I'm assuming the other art aspects will have to be purchased. This means game tiles, any sort of character art, pretty menu's, and things like that.
If you've paid attention to me in the past, you might have noticed that I have a lot of hesitation on this part. Part of that comes from a lack of experience and understanding to what the costs will be.
I'd rather give out as little equity in this as possible, but I'm not against it. For a talented programmer who's willing to stay on and maintain the website / game, fix bugs, put in new features etc, it wouldn't even feel like a cost. It wouldn't be a cost, it would be a partnership.



I'm doing something like an experiment. There was a post about someone getting hit with a chain letter that talks about how money doesn't buy happiness, but turns around to imple (practically say outright) that sending the letter on to something like twenty people will bring you wealth, and fialing, of course, ruin.
I thought there was a good lesson to learn in there about what attracts people that think that way. More-over, I think it's possible to lure the 'slow lane' thinkers who like and agree with the letter into taking a few steps into a more fastlane, or more generally, leading a success life.

While the original idea was to produce and release a simple chain letter of five reasons or so, why money doesn't buy happiness, with allusions to a final thing that money can buy, that allows you to be happy... I might take it in a whole different direction, just to see if I can get more scale. Or do both.

Since I plan to use the letter for now, I need to do the following with it: Get feedback on the message and alter accordingley, shrink down the photos, and come up with a way to actually seed it's spread.


I need to come up with a name and location for the website (for now, I'm thinking something like a blogger account), and a date for those 24 hours which I will leave it hosted on.

Each day starting tomorrow, I will go through and edit at least one of the 13 or so articles, so they're readable and my spell chicken can catch any errors.
Since they're mostly inspired by posts on these forums that I've taken to heart, I have to try and find out where I got the topics from, so I can credit the creators and ask permission to use their concepts.

... Once the material looks as good as it will to me, I will try to contact people who have audances that might get something from the message, and offer them a chance to read it's contents. Disclosing that a chain letter does accompany it, and is part of the experiment. But if they're ok with that, and feel their audiance can benefit, sending them that way would be great.
Who knows, maybe some of these people would have something to add to it.

I wasn't sure if I could monetize this. It's not like I have a product, or read any affiliate material that's synergistic. I wasn't even sure if I should try, seeing as I'm not a well respected and knowledgable person who's already gotten what the readers want.
There is advertisement revenue of course, but it's only going to be up for a day, and I don't like ads. They're like this ugly, intrusive, far cruder version of an affiliate product I get pennies for, when I could be getting dollars.
So for now at least, I've chosen to wrap the site's contents up into a downloadable PDF, and offer a chance to donate when downloading it, with any amount, including 0 being fair.


Many of you hate a lack of focus and will no doubt foam at the mouth when I tell you that I have one long term project in mind, something short term, and then I plan to begin yet another long term project!

But you know what? The first one may not even go anywhere. It's entirely possible that people just won't care, and I'll leave what could have been sitting as many hours of toil and procrastination; perhaps pulling it out when I can treat it purely as a hobby.
And even if it does begin going places, this idea has been burning me for years. And I don't need any market research to tell me is a damned good one.

The world - Our world, as digital and vast as it is, is in dire need of a service that makes preperations for people, to get things in order swiftly when they die. I don't just mean some online obituary and bucket list, but a valuable service that will become as household as life insurance itself.

I have many names on several IMing services that have not signed on for years. Most of these people, I have no idea what happened to them. Did they give up the internet? Did they get trolled into a whole new account? Are they dead? I actually have had someone come on and tell me that the account holder died, and they were informing all her contacts.

Add to this the other troubles and stresses revolving around the deceased's wishes, and we have a real series of needs on our hands.

I imagine a site that offers to send an automated email to a specific list, if the account owner has been confirmed deceased. The ability to log into an IM account and send a notice to each contact. Or make a post on the owners blog, a frequented forum.

Beyond that, I want the site to be validated and trusted enough that, paramedics can legally go to it to check a patients information for things like if they are DNR, who the next of kin is, or whatever else. I don't know, I'd have to ask these people "If you had a special account on a website, that you could put in a persons SIN (for example) and instantly get information on things like DNR, what information would you want to see?"


I Don't think the site itself would be too difficult to put together, and I'm confident it will attract people because of what it has to offer. But to put it together, I would need partners, and / or investors... To begin with.

Legal expertise and lots of coverage, SECURITY EXPERTS for what should be pretty obvious reasons, a brandable domain/name, ten thousand miles worth of footwork and knowledge about certain things I just have no clue about. (For instance, when is a will traditionally read, and does the will-maker have the right to make specific arrangements, such as if they wish to be cremated or buried? How can a digital version become legal?)

And no doubt much more I'm simply not aware of.

This was secret project "B." I've finally alluded to what it is, in order to feel vulnurable about it. I know that keeping it secret was just a false sense of security; one I held onto simply because, I know there are people here that can get this under way much sooner, and more efficiently than a lone dreamer.

I... Respect the common sentiment to pick one thing and really focus on it, but I just can't follow that wisdom. Maybe it will be my downfall, maybe it will be my strength. Either way, in a few months, around the time I should be learning if the game of dust will be carried out, and the small side-experiment should be reaching it's conclusion (or at least, be in a 'waiting' phase), I intend to have gathered enough information to be able and solidify the concept into a proposal, have come up with a list of investors to approach, and a design document for the initial site itself.


Other things of note: At some point I want to experience a master mind group. Haven't approached this desire yet, as I lack experience or expertise to offer one.

I've been getting slack on reminding myself of the hours, and that was actually helping quite a bit. So, back to doing that.

I believe in the power of an environment, but I haven't gotten around to producing the best one to encourage working. I only know a handful of things that do it for me:
Produce your work by either talking to someone else, or with the intention of someone else seeing it.
An old toy and a new ornament are nice to notice, and they make me a little happier to see them when my eyes wander. That translates into being a little happier about what I'm doing.
Having enough room to get up and pace, preferably without people around that refuse to understand that pacing is sometimes necessary for my electric bubblegum to work through difficult, or exciting things.
 

FDJustin

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
11%
Apr 30, 2010
715
79
Canada
Ok, so recently what I've done is... A lot of procrastination. Mostly in the 'good' way, such as reading copyblogger and stuff like that. Doesn't mean I've been a good boy, just that it wasn't entirely wasteful.

With that confession out of the way, these are the things I've done otherwise: Found out my current bank account is 'unavailable' if I try to make deposits into it. (But I can still access it up to that point) Weird. I'll try again today, and if it's still a problem, call my bank I guess.

To open an account with Harris, I'll need to either make a deposit from a bank account, or using a credit card. Ok, no problem... But what might be a problem is lack of suitable ID. Ontario doesn't have a provincial ID card. So I'll try to use the one I have from Alberta, as it isn't expired, and just see how things go from there. Uhm, once I got the bank issue sorted out so I can get the $100 usd to open it, that is. If they won't accept it, I could get a drivers license or passport-- But instead, I'll just cheat and have a qualified family member open one.

Wrote up a new front page for the game of dust website, made a more information / faq writeup, and made a few templates for spreading around places that might be interested. So far I found three communities that might be suitable to drop a line on, and see if anyone there would be interested in the game.

I don't know how I missed it before; mtg has a tactics game now. I wanted to check it out, see what kind of playerbase it has... But it seems I'm having trouble with the launcher. Looking at the forums is pretty insightful in a way, I can see a lot of what not to do's in there.

I started getting phpbb installed. Will have to wait until later to be able an proceed.

I've made a lot of changes to the direction on that other project. I uhh, I've changed the tone so many times, it's starting to feel like I have MPD. None the less, each evolution does make me more satisfied with it. I should have it done soon, and ready to put the real work into it. (Because writing, editing, and fixing thousands of words isn't work. ;p)

Haven't done anything for the final project (the one about digital wills and related activity), and it's nearing the end of the month. So I'll get on that soon.


So what does that leave todays agenda looking like?
Deal with bank stuff
Tear down old website
Install bb, make one or two forums for it... Too many leads to too much emptiness in an already fragile young board.
Pick a nice template for the new website, then it should be pretty easy to put together. Only about three pages and some forums.
Compile a strong list of places to hit up for interested people, starting with the most relavent (communities dedicated to wargaming / tcgs) to the relevant, but not so much. (Places dedicated to playing MMO's, and maybe creating games.)

If that isn't enough for a busy day (and I'm sure it will be), I'll spend the rest of the time finishing off that 'side project's articles.
 

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