[UnnamedWarrior] has Joined Your Party

To those of you who also didn’t have girlfriends in high school, the Gelatinous Cube will ring a bell as a horrific creature from the D&D Monsters Manual.  A merciless mass of unfeeling jello, it would absorb hapless adventurers and other critters in its translucent corpulence, feeding off their poor souls for eternity.  You didn’t want to stumble upon one without proper gear and a fully rested party.

I’m presently writing this post from a vantage point inside the equivalent of a Gelatinous Cube of the Game Dev universe: a major mobile game developer whose name most industry followers would immediately recognize as a “AAA” outfit.  I’m in a synch-up meeting, after which I’m headed over to an All-Hands, followed by a staff meeting, before an important steering committee update.  I will barely have time to finish my TPS reports before the day is through.  I’ve come to realize I stopped making games a while ago, having shown sufficient aptitude at that function to be promoted out of that responsibility.  Yet, as I write this, I can only smile, because I resigned today.  The exit door is illuminated, its UI now active with the all-important mouseover effect.

In all future posts, I will be referring to my former employer as “GC Games.”  It’s a company that typifies modern, large-scale mobile game development:  its modus operandi is to absorb talented game makers and studios in its formless maw, and through a period of slow and agonizing digestion, which incidentally extracts and excretes all passion and original thought, meld the new materia unto itself.  The result is, if nothing else, consistency.  While its base stats are imposing, this abominable creature does have several weaknesses, chief among them essentially zero Dex or Int -- its maneuverings to garner market share are usually too little, too late, and uninspired.  In time, I will help you understand this beast of the gaming industry, as one day you may encounter one as well, or perhaps even find yourself as I did:  ensnared inside.

As a Product Manager with 10+ years in mobile game development at two such top-tier developers, I will share what I can with you, my fellow adventurers, with the intention to help you make the games you want to make, and ensure that they become sustainable businesses.  I will share some key insights, and answer common questions I’ve been asked over the years, such as:

• What does it really take (talent, time, resources) to build and ship a modern mobile (i.e., Unity) game in XYZ genre?

• Ok so I’ve built an amazing, groundbreaking game.  How do I get the five million users I need to pay back my rich uncle?

• What exactly do you do as a Project Manager?  Oh, you said Product Manager?  WTF is that?  Do you write code?

• What do I need to measure about my games, how do I track those things, and how I do manage my game toward better metrics?

• What is ROI-based feature roadmapping?

• How do you approach A/B testing?  As a PM, do you really believe it’s necessary to “test everything”? (Spoiler: I don’t.)

• What’s up with all those clickbait game ads I see everywhere?

• You said you’ve escaped from the Gelatinous Cube.  What will you be doing now?

I’m glad you asked.  I’ve partnered with a brilliant game designer and friend to build a mobile game studio that’s predicated on (a) making high quality, fun mobile games and (b) building them the way we want to, with whom we want to. Corporate Cancer is our executive handbook.  

As we develop our fledgling game studio, I’ll also bring you along on that journey, so that you might learn from our legion mistakes and occasional successes.  From time to time you may need to steer me right, too.

Until next time.

-- [UnnamedWarrior]