Category Archives: Business

Things I found interesting related to the world of business.

The More You Know Who You Are,

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[image] For relaxing times, make it Santory time
(via ffffound)

I didn’t know this would happen, but the journey of starting my own business has taught me more about myself than about business.

“The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” – Bob. Lost in Translation.

And that was not in the plan. The plan was to outsource development, sell millions of copies, and get acquired by Google/Apple/Facebook/EA/Disney in a year. Fortunately, none of that happened. Instead of hiring out the development, I put my head down and learned to do it myself. Instead of selling millions of games and getting acquired, I assembled a small team and made great like-minded friends.

The MBA in me keeps wanting to go big and run fast, but the me in me keeps wanting to stay small, stay creative, and have fun. (Hey we are in the game business after all ) I would spend weeks and weeks drafting and perfecting business documents – executive summary, pitch deck, financial forecast, income / cash-flow statements, valuation, product proposal, cap table, surveys, market research…etc. I had a lot of experience in these before going on my own, and I don’t mind doing the work at all. But I always come to a point where I look back and think to myself, WHY? Didn’t I leave the corporate world to be more creative, and to work on things I love?

Maybe it’s the fact that spending time with spreadsheet gives me a (false) sense of security, a rare luxury for people outside the career track. Maybe I was addicted to talking to big names in the industry and feeling like being part of the circle. Maybe I was too used to dealing with numbers in millions, that dealing with numbers in thousands or even hundreds scared me. Going back to the old corporate tasks and habits was a way of protecting myself from all the uncertainties in starting and running a business.

And reading all the news about everyone raising millions of dollars everyday certainly didn’t help. I love TechMeme / HackerNews / VentureHacks as much as everyone else in tech, but the constant noises from the all-mighty Startup Universe was overwhelming. It made me feel like I wasn’t doing it right if I didn’t do it the way that everyone else was doing it. It made me anxious, stressed, and fearful.

Yeah. Not exactly what I had in mind. I didn’t start a business to make a shit load of money, so why should I care if Zynga is going IPO for an insane amount of money? (real money, not virtual coins) I wasn’t inspired by the noise, and couldn’t think of anyone that I’d rather be from all the startup stuff I was reading about.

I realized the people I draw inspirations from are great designers and artists, and not great businessmen. I put away the MBA hat and started looking inside. Who is Brandon Wu? What do I want? And most importantly, what do I believe in and what do I want to be?

Questions like these help me find a direction that I am happy with. A direction I can devote myself into, one that I can continue going forward even when things get tough, as they always do from time to time.

So what do I believe in? I believe in art, design, music, helping others, sharing good things in life, honesty, honesty in business, open communication, genuineness, creativity, fun, work / life balance, independence. And I believe if we are true to ourselves, good things will happen. I am going to make sure these beliefs are held at Studio Pepwuper and 30 Day Books. Why? Because “fake it until you make it” doesn’t work for me. Business is personal again, and the business needs to be a reflection of me, otherwise we lack authenticity, and we lose sight of what we set out to accomplish.

So before you make your next business decision, think about what you believe in. It might just change the way you see a deal, an opportunity, or a future.

 

p.s.

A video shot in the hospital from Lost in Translation in Tokyo. I went to this hospital to get my wisdom teeth removed (which cost me less than $10, but that’s a story for another day), and found myself surprisingly familiar with the building. When these little document transporting robots showed up, I realized I had found the hospital in the movie by chance. :)

Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.

The Gap between Core and Casual – the Premium Casual

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Video Game Timeline

If you spend enough time observing the game industry, you know there are primarily two markets – the traditional Core market, and the red-hot new Casual market of today. The traditional Core market has been in existence since the days of Atari decades ago. It has evolved from simple games with ASCII art to complex games with close to real-life graphics. Step into any GameStopand most games you see in the shop would fit into this category. They are complex, deep, visually stunning, and often focus on serving the Core gamer market – male from 18 to 35. You see a lot of shooting, fighting, sports, racing, fantasy/sci-fi, military/war, action/adventure games in this market today.

The new Casual games provide socially connected solo experiences on platforms everyone has access to – mobile and social networks. They often offer bite-sized gameplay, cute graphics, simple control mechanism, and hooks to keep players addicted. They are also low cost, often free, with the ability for players to purchase in-game virtual goods. You see a lot of city/farm/shop building games, along with plenty of puzzle, wedding, restaurants, word games. They appeal to the mass, and have done a great job introducing people who previous wouldn’t play games to the gaming world. 

However, I believe there’s a third market in-between these two that’s hasn’t been discussed enough – mainly, people who enjoy the easy-to-start, none-violent nature from Casual games, but desire the complex and engaging experience from traditional Core games. I call this the Premium Casual market. It’s the middle ground between Core and Casual. These are older gamers who grew up with core games but no longer find kill-everything-that-moves fun, recently converted casual gamers who want more than clicking and waiting for something to happen on a farm, a city, or a tower, or anyone who’s discovering the joy of interactive entertainment but haven’t quite found something for them.
 
And this is the market we’d like to serve. We want to combine elements from core games and causal games to create an experience that these people will enjoy. Are there games serving this market? I think games such as Flower, Worms, The Sims, Kart Riderare great examples of Premium Casual games. And as casual gamers continue to grow their appreciation for games and their appetite for better deeper games, I expect the Premium Casual market to grow and more developers to make games for this market.

Eventually the lines will blur as the industry continues to grow. I can’t wait for the day when the size of the game market equals the size of human population (minus the infants). Everyone will be able to find games that appeal to them. And I hope what we are making at Studio Pepwuper can contribute to this goal.

Posted via email from Next Level with Brandon

Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.

Fight! – Competition in The Indie Game Industry #indiegames #gamedev

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Fight!



Competition. If you are in the private sector, you know what I am talking about. Coca Cola vs Pepsi, Activision vs EA, Toyota vs GE. And I am all for having a healthy dose of competition. After all, without competition, there would be no need to improve, and no room for innovation. And the world would be a lot less interesting without different companies one-upping each other trying to impress you, the consumer.


But the benefits of competition only exist when the competition is healthy, meaning that companies compete for your dollars by improving the quality of their offerings, solving a new problem, or providing you with better and better customer service. Unfortunately, not all industries fight the right way. Copying competitor’s products, bad-mouthing the competitor, lying to the customers…etc. These vicious behaviors are infectious. If one company does it in your industry, wait for it to spread until everyone is doing it.


The best way to compete is to increase the value of your offering, while the worst way to compete is to do the exact opposite – to create an illusion of value for your products, and blind customers the value of competitors’.


I’ve been in a few distinctively different industries – foreign exchange, investment banking, books, machines, electronics, PC / console games. Not all of these industries have healthy competitions.


Good thing is, the indie game industry is different, at least from what I’ve seen so far in the last six months. From Indie Fund, Indiecade, to all the forums and blogs dedicated to the indie game industry, indie game developers compete by supporting each other and sharing resources, ideas, and opportunities. Maybe it’s the nature of being small, you know in order to compete with the big guys, you need to work together with other small guys like you. Maybe it’s the nature of games (without the huge corporate structure and pressure to please shareholders), it is a playful industry full of people who love to have fun after all. Or maybe I’ve just been very lucky to not see the dark side of indie game competition yet.


Build better games, attract more people to enjoy games, and discover new ways to have fun. There, our healthy does of competition.

Posted via email from Next Level with Brandon


Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.

3 Quick Lessons from My Failed Project on Kickstarter

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(Optional Reading: backstory) I’ve known about Kickstarter – the crowd-funding website for a few months and always thought it’s a cool platform for creative projects to raise some money to get them started. A few months ago there was a Kickstarter Meetup in cities around the US, and I attended the one in LA where I chatted with people who have successfully funded their projects on Kickstarter and the co-founder Yancey Strickler. All the people I talked to are producing films (well it is Los Angeles after all). People who had experience with Kickstarter all had a very positive experience. The platform provided them with a tool to 1. get financial support to finish the projects and 2. to gain some visibility to their projects. Yanchey gave me some good feedback and intro to the platform. So after all these encouraging conversations, I decided to give it a try and submitted my application. (/Optional Reading Ends)

 

Even though close to $1000 was pledged in 4 weeks of time, I was unable to raise the initial $3456 funding goal. (And on Kickstarter terms, it means the project owner doesn’t get any of the pledged amount and none of the backers were charged.) Here are three things I learned from this experience. If you want to avoid a failed project like mine, read on:

 

1. Network
Having a large fan base or network connected to your project, your organization, or YOU personally is one of the key to success on Kickstarter. Kickstarter.com will bring in some traffic and some backers to your project, but don’t count on it to be a major source. Your college friends, work associates, family, fans, readers, audience, followers… are extremely important for your project. They will be your backers, forward your projects on, and tell their friends about your projects. Understand this early and realize the fullest potential of your network.

 

Studio Pepwuper is in its infancy. And I am a recent corporate convert who’s learning the ropes in a new field. Lesson here: start letting the world know what you are doing early and continue building relationships with people who are interested in you/your organization/your projects.

 

2. PR
Get your project mentioned in popular forums/blogs/magazines/news sites can bring in traffic and backers. But you need to do your research early and contact them before your project starts, or at least make sure there’s enough time to get PR done within the funding deadline. My project was eventually mentioned on a few popular blogs, but if I can do it over again, I’d start the process of PR much earlier to make sure it’s properly done and the journalists/editors have enough time to write about it.

 

3. Management
You NEED to actively manage your project on Kickstarter. I started the project right after my application was accepted without considering my own schedule. I already had a 4-week trip (for my own wedding) scheduled in August, but I was too excited to wait until after the trip to start the project . I overestimated my ability to manage the project while traveling and ended up not getting as much done as I had hoped during the funding period. End result? Not having time to continue pushing for the fund-raising. First you need to have an idea how long it would take for you to reach your funding goal. This depends on the size of your network. The smaller it is, the longer a time period you’ll need to reach your funding goal. Second, you need to make sure you can actively manage your campaign during the period you are fund-raising on Kickstarter – continuously reminding people in your network of your project, working with bloggers and journalists to get your story out, updating backers regularly…etc.

 

Now even if your Kickstarter project fails, that doesn’t mean you don’t gain anything. I managed to finish a prototype of the game project in time and received many valuable feedback from people who’s played it on Kickstarter. It’s also a good exercise in marketing for the project, and I can use the works I produced for this Kickstarter project in my future marketing efforts.

 

Hope this is helpful for people who are interested in crowd-funding for their creative ideas. I recommend two more articles:

Posted via email from Next Level with Brandon

 

Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.

FWD: in UK, Independent Studios Choose Self-Publishing, Digital Distribution

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via gamasutra.com

New survey in UK says,

64% Game Developers self-publish, of which 96% are independent studios.

52% on iPhone platform
38% on PC
36% on PSN
16% on Xbox Live

And for those who self-publish, 72% digitally distribute their games.

In conclusion, if you want your games to be discs selling at retail shops, most would go with a publisher. And digital distribution helps game studios self-publish. Nothing new here, but lovely stats for a nice Tuesday morning.

 

Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.

For Unity3D Stats Junkies – Web Player Hardware Statistics

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via unity3d.com

If your Unity 3D game is going to be mainly played on the browser, you should pay attention to this data on user hardware.

from http://unity3d.com/webplayer/hardware-stats

found via @mrchrisallen

 

Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.

As long as people will accept crap…

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it will be financially profitable to dispense it. – Dick Carett.

(photo taken from Klatch Coffee in San Dimas)

We complain about things, especially products and services. Rude waiters, bad sales rep, useless customer service, crashing software, rotten apples, food served cold. No wonder we keep returning things. And the reason why we keep returning things is because, well, we keep buying crap in the first place! As long as we keep buying crap, we will continue to be served crap.

One of the first things I noticed when returning to the US from Japan was, as many expected, the drop in quality of “things”. I am not talking about “fancy”, because you can definitely find fancy if you want to in the US. There are plenty of world-class blingy restaurants, cars, beaches, and houses here. I am talking about the quality of everyday things, like t-shirts, vending machines, parks, restrooms, coffee shops, clothing stores, diners, buses, friendliness of staff, toilet papers, packaging…etc. I just want them to be a little nicer, a bit more well thought-out. Smaller quantity and better quality would be great. Gotta start saying no to crap from now on!

Posted via email from Brandon Wu’s Road to Where He Wants to Be

Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.

Startup Lawyers

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No I haven’t been slacking off since the last post. My to-do list continued to grow and I’ve also been traveling quite a bit in the last two weeks. But mostly I’ve been on a search to find a great startup lawyer to work with.

First of all, reading. If you are looking for a startup lawyer, I suggest you start from here:

1. How to Work with Lawyers at a Startup by Mark Suster

2. The Startup Lawyer by Ryan Roberts

3. Great Web Startup Lawyers (list of lawyers in different cities) by Giff Constable

I’ve never been to law firms (that weren’t run by family or friends) and meeting all these lawyers has been quite an experience for me. Some are straight shooters, some are a bit intimidating, and some are passionate talkers. Every firm I talked to have their own strengths, and it’s a difficult decision for me to decide on one. It is similar to choosing a business partner, you want to find someone you can always work with comfortably (personally and financially speaking). I have yet to make a decision but I have narrow the choices down to two. Hopefully I’ll be able to finalize next week.

On the other hand, outsourcing partner search continues and I’ve talked to a few promising potential partners. It’s always exciting to talk to people who share the same passion and love the things you do. I’ve also continued to work on pre-production of the demo and am quite happy with the direction the design is heading.


Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.