The New Death and others
The New Death and others
Death gets a roommate…
An electronic Pope faces a difficult theological question…
A wicked vizier makes a terrible bargain…
44 stories. 19 poems. No sparkly vampires. There’s a thin line between genius and insanity, and James Hutchings has just crossed it – but from which direction?
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/
Smashwords:
http://www.smashwords.com/
Josh Bazin, CMA
It’s been a long road to get to this point, but darn it, I made it.
Thanks to my team, Lindsay, Richard and Sheena. Without you folks the Board Report (and everything else leading up to it) would have been much harder.
Thanks to Jason and Erik (and sometimes Jason) for being great moderators, providing great feedback and giving us the advice we needed to survive the program.
Thanks to my family and friends. It’s been a long road, late nights, early mornings and all the complaining and the like. Thanks for being there for support.
As I said – it’s been a long road to get here, but I’m proud to say that I’m a CMA.
Colored pages…
One of my good friends has always been into Comic books. I’d read them here and there, but never collected. As I got older, I became more intimidated by the huge history of the characters, which hindered me getting into the books.
Along came the Ultimate line from Marvel. Everything was reset. It was a great starting point. I read Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates for a while, in trade paperback form, but I found that the stories weren’t very strong as time passed. I stopped reading them.
I discovered Gaiman’s Sandman, which I enjoyed and also benefited from me starting from square one with that character as well. The Watchmen was another that I really enjoyed (and of course, I read because of the movie).
For my birthday one year, I received the Batman: Hush trade paperbacks. I loved it, but the six or so titles that featured Batman confused me. I didn’t understand why there were so many titles, what the differences were and how important it was to follow them all.
This year, I heard about DC relaunching their titles, starting everything back at #1. I talked to Brandon, the manager at Wizard’s Comics University about the relaunch and got a good sense of what the different titles would be like and to just get an idea of what was out there. I wanted to read Batman stories. He pulled out a copy of Detective Comics #854 from his personal collection and gave it to me to try out. It was the first issue of the Batwoman: Elegy story. The art was amazing. The Batwoman character blew me away. I promptly picked up the Trade Paperback (at Chapters, it was close and available, sorry Brandon!).
Anyway, with the relaunch, I’ve got three titles that I’m definitely putting in a file: Batwoman, Batman, and Detective Comics. Several other titles were of interest, but I was unsure about them. On a one-issue trial: Justice League, Justice League Dark, Batman: The Dark Knight.
In anticipation, I re-read Hush. I caught something I hadn’t caught before, which I really liked. When in Gotham, everything seems to have a sense of darkness or dread about it. The city isn’t a pure place. You can tell by the way everything is depicted. The action moves to Metropolis, and the city is completely different. It’s bright and hopeful. Every panel shows this. It was really need to realize and really added depth to the locations.
I want to be a 2012 ENnies Judge
Hi readers,
I’m nominated to be a judge for the 2012 ENnies – but I need your votes!
You can vote for me here: ENnies Voting Booth
And find out about my platform here: Josh’s Platform
And the other candidates here: Candidate List
Thanks in advance.
CMA SLP Completed
It’s been two years of hard work, but a few weeks back my team and I gave our Board Report to complete the CMA SLP.
I have to thank each member of my team for pushing me, teaching me, and putting up with me. I definitely was not the easiest team member to work with all the time, but I hope that everyone saw that I was playing the role of the nay-sayer to ensure we were considering all the aspects of the discussions. Good luck with your travels, families and future positions!
To all our colleagues in the program, thanks for being candid and sharing with the group. Thanks for making the CMA program one of the best parts of my life thus far! I wish you good luck on all your future endeavors!
To our moderators, thanks. You pushed us hard, but were fair and honest. I don’t think I’d feel as comfortable with our finished product if it wasn’t for you. Thanks.
Kickstarter – Does it help indie producers?
Kickstarter is a crowd-sourcing platform that gives individuals the ability to post a project for the cloud to fund based on the pitch. You set deadlines and a funding goal and provide “rewards” to those that pledge to your project. Several RPG producers have used Kickstarter to launch several products.
I was discussing the use of Kickstarter with Sean Preston from Reality Blurs via Twitter. He was unsure if the platform was right for him. It was a good conversation, which got me thinking about the platform.
Now, to understand where I’m coming from with some of these thoughts, let’s consider two very successful projects.
- Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple: $24,383 raised, $4,000 desired, 535 game copies
- Technoir: $24,255 raised, $ 2,500 desired, 617 game copies, 1164 players guides
Now, for my game copy numbers, if you get a copy of the PDF and a dead-tree version, that only counts as a single copy. Multiple players guides being given out are counted individually.
This is great for the publishers. Tons of cash coming to them and lots of buzz. But now that the 30-45 day buzz of the funding period is over, are these games maintaining the buzz? Are people that didn’t back the project getting excited for them, or has the buzz ended?
Also, what does this mean for sales at release? Comparing the unit totals above to Evil Hat’s numbers indicates to me that comparatively, these books may have hit close their annual expectations for sales in a one month window, unless these are products that are going to set the market on fire like Dresden Files (which, I don’t think they are).
Sure, this gets these creators the capital to do the initial print run, but are they making the most money possible? Maybe. The 5% success fee from Kickstarter and 3-5% processing fee from Amazon payments is probably a better deal than regular distribution channels. But logistics seem to be in the hands of the creators, rather than a distributor – how does the cost of shipping out the rewards eat into the cost savings? Does this make a typical distribution channel better for the bottom line?
Even from a page-count point of view, does Kickstarter add costs if you’re thanking each person with their name in the book? How many pages does it take to thank 500 people? 3? 4? 10?
What are the production costs from your other Kickstarter promo items? Would these costs be incurred if you didn’t use Kickstarter?
Looking at Technoir (and taking averages), they were looking for about 65 backers at $40 each to get the product off the ground. But now they have 850% more books to send out – did they actually do HARM to their bottom line? Being able to report $24k in sales is great, but if you’re not making any profit, then is it worthwhile?
On top of that, you need to consider other customer relations issues. If you issue other rewards, such as adventures, shirts, etc, do you offer those for sale, or do you keep those as limited editions?
Kickstarter doesn’t let you turn the tap off once it starts flowing – so can your business be sustained if things get out of control? Thankfully, you can limit the number of people contributing to a given reward level, which can help, but could also create a PR problem (if, for instance, you limited print copies of books to 200 or something) – PDFs are nice, but books are better.
I’ll grant that the two products that I’ve highlighted here are being put together by people with significant influence on the RPG community, and most other RPG projects are just meeting their goals. But with more and more ‘heavy hitters’ looking to Kickstarter as a way of raising funds, I think its very important that producers think about what the impact of an ‘explosion’ of backers might do to their business.
The Wolfpack Begins…
I have begun the assembly of my Space Wolves army. I’ll post pictures periodically to track my progress.
Wolf Guard with Chainsword and Plasma Pistol (28 points)
Wolf Scouts with Bolt Pistol and Sword or Bolter (15 points each)
Life changes
Recently, I left my position at Pinnacle Wealth Brokers. Unfortunately, the position there was not quite the right fit for my professional development. I do thank everyone at PWB for the experience and wish them the best.
To fill the work void, I have joined the REALTORS Association of Edmonton as the Financial Methods Analyst. I am very excited about the work I am going to be doing with RAE, which includes leading the redesign of accounting processes, thanks to the implementation of new accounting software and eCommerce solutions.
Related to work, my CMA group has been working through the cases for the first half of the second year. I think we have a good team and we are starting to find our stride, and I feel we will be well equipped to do well come M7.
I am planning on making time come March to be involved in my own initiative, NaAdWriMo. I think this project has great potential for helping the gaming community share stories. I sincerely hope it takes off.
My Strengths
Recently at work, the CEO gave me a copy of Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath and asked me to read through it and take the online test. He noted that several of the other individuals that work in the company have taken it and have been very pleased with the results.
I gave the introduction to the book a read and I was impressed. The strategy that this book suggests is not discovering and mitigating weaknesses, but finding and capitalizing strengths. While at first glance, this seems to be the same idea (and it basically is), the key difference is that coaching on an individual’s strengths is a more postive management techinque and is more likely to have positive effects. This is because psychologically to the employee, working on a positive trait just feels better. The book does note that you cannot completely ignore weaknesses – they should be addressed, and you may have to work in an area of weakness, work cannot always be shuffled to only be in your wheelhouse.
I took the test, quite interested in discovering what it was going to tell me.
My top five strengths are:
- Learner
- Responsibility
- Restorative
- Input
- Arranger
Now you’re asking – what do these mean? Very generally, these strengths mean:
- Learner – I have a great desire to learn and want to have continuous improvement
- Responsibility – I take psychological ownership of what I do.
- Restorative – I like to solve problems.
- Input – I like to collect and archive information.
- Arranger – I like to organize resources into the most productive arrangements.
The test also gives more in-depth discussions about these strengths, as well as action plans on how to maximize their usefulness in my work.
When I recieved the results and read the basic descriptions, it was very clear to me that 1,2,&3 were clearly me. 4&5 Seemed off. I read more about them. Yes, they’re me, very much so. Was this useful to me? Yes. Did it tell me anything I didn’t already know? Not really. Did it give me some insight on how to do better at my job by focusing on these strengths? Absolutely.
I think this is an excellent tool (much like the DiSC profile that I completed in the first year of the CMA SLP program) that should be viewed as such. It is not the be-all end all of management tools. Using these tests, along with other tools can help to better understand yourself and the people you work with.
My take on the DLC debate
Downloadable Content (DLC) has continued to pick up steam in the video game world, but many are shaking their heads, calling the content a ‘money grab’, or worse.
I’ll fully admit that I’ve only purchased a handful of DLC packs in my time, and to be honest, I’ve been disatisfied to indifferent with most of them (I’m looking at you, Stimulus Package). I do have the Dragon Age Origins: Awakenings DLC that I have yet to play, which I have high hopes for.
With that knowledge, here’s my take on the DLC front: DLC is (generally) good. Many seem to expect additional content for nothing – this just can’t be done. It’s simple economics – programmers/designers need to get paid. You’ll note that I said generally. Some execeptions have popped up that leave me scratching my head. For instance, Assassin’s Creed 2 apparently (based on my readings on the subject, not experience) shipped with two less chapters that were developed alongside the original game, which were released as DLC later. This is clearly insanity.
Take Borderlands and Fallout 3, for an example. The DLC packs add significant amounts of play to the game for a pretty reasonable price for each. I think more companies need to be doing DLC in this manner. I really find the argument that these DLC packs should have been included in the original game naive.
Day one DLC/on disc content unlocks is another issue that many complain about. I really understand the complaint on this issue and I have to agree, to an extent. If the content is on the disc, it should be playable immediately without additonal charges (in most circumstances). If the content is actually downloaded on day one, I think in most circumstances that content could not make it on the disc because of development timelines – I truly believe that. It sucks and makes the game feel unfinished to consumers though.
However, concepts like EA’s “Project $10″ or whatever you want to call it are ok in my book. I’m not sure I agree with charging to access online play (especially on the Xbox 360, which has a fee to use already), but providing additional content much like Mass Effect 2 did. I understand the desire for game companies to get a piece of the used game market – I can’t blame them. Time will tell on if this will be effective.
Ultimately, DLC is up to YOU, the consumer. If you don’t like it – don’t buy any of it. Companies will get the point when people stop buying this additional content, if consumers really don’t want it. I suspect that consumers do want DLC – companies just need to look to games that have done DLC right.
