Shh... a moment of silence for the dead ;-)
by Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr · 09/29/2008 (11:39 pm) · 2 comments
OK, I haven't posted on here in like... well, forever. Unlike my usual novels I write for .plans (er, Blogs, whatever), this one is going to be short and sweet. It's not Game Development, but it business related - and something Indies might want to look at.
Businesses die all the time. One of mine died screaming and kicking. Usually you get to hear about the death of a business second hand, and only the events leading up to the last couple of breaths of the company. Gamer Zone was a LAN gaming center in Wichita, Kansas. Games, geeks, and fun. I burned through two years of life trying to make Gamer Zone work, and unfortunately, it died.
There's a lot to be learned from failures, and most people have no choice but to learn from their OWN failures. I'm giving people a chance to learn from someone else's mistakes for once - I'm chronicling the company from just before it's first days to it's last days, and eventually it's aftermath and toll a failure can take on a person's life.
Right now the introduction and first "episode" is online (and four more episodes are already written), with a new one released every month until the entire story is told. Some of it is dry, some of it is funny, and some of it is a slow train wreck in progress.
Being a game developer (er, well, WAS a game developer - I haven't developed anything new in a couple of years, but that may change shortly ;-), some of the lessons are pretty interesting as applied to Indie Game Developers.
I'm also going to submit this as a resource (no idea if it's going to be accepted - it's kind of... off the wall for Garage Games resources) as a bit more information to give indie businesses a fighting chance.
The Story Of Gamer Zone
As for me... hehehehehe... the "game dev bug" has been biting me lately. I've kept up on the current versions of TGE and T2D (er, whatever the hell it's called now), so I might just sit down and start messing around one of these days ;-)
Businesses die all the time. One of mine died screaming and kicking. Usually you get to hear about the death of a business second hand, and only the events leading up to the last couple of breaths of the company. Gamer Zone was a LAN gaming center in Wichita, Kansas. Games, geeks, and fun. I burned through two years of life trying to make Gamer Zone work, and unfortunately, it died.
There's a lot to be learned from failures, and most people have no choice but to learn from their OWN failures. I'm giving people a chance to learn from someone else's mistakes for once - I'm chronicling the company from just before it's first days to it's last days, and eventually it's aftermath and toll a failure can take on a person's life.
Right now the introduction and first "episode" is online (and four more episodes are already written), with a new one released every month until the entire story is told. Some of it is dry, some of it is funny, and some of it is a slow train wreck in progress.
Being a game developer (er, well, WAS a game developer - I haven't developed anything new in a couple of years, but that may change shortly ;-), some of the lessons are pretty interesting as applied to Indie Game Developers.
I'm also going to submit this as a resource (no idea if it's going to be accepted - it's kind of... off the wall for Garage Games resources) as a bit more information to give indie businesses a fighting chance.
The Story Of Gamer Zone
As for me... hehehehehe... the "game dev bug" has been biting me lately. I've kept up on the current versions of TGE and T2D (er, whatever the hell it's called now), so I might just sit down and start messing around one of these days ;-)
#2
10/01/2008 (11:51 pm)
Failures are a learning experience. It was a big, expensive failure, so I figure it was a really good learning experience ;-) Businesses fail, ya move on, as you say, to bigger and better :-) 
Torque 3D Owner Eric Forhan
Sorry to hear about GZ.
Here's to bigger and better ...
-E