Copywriter meeting went well

Hired, and we have a contract of sorts.

He seems like he'll be a good fit. 

Now I have to refinish this tutorial document to show him what dialogue is like....arrrgghhjhhjhhhhhfhhfsikhdsalkdsa;klc;m;l;fa'ldas ~*gasps and dies*

Music Composer Chosen

No lie, I woke up two days ago and was like, "I know which one I'm going to hire!" 

Weird.

On another note, I had a dream that my game had graphics and action similar to Mage Gauntlet.  And vampires.  Weird, were-vampires.  With bad 2d game sprites with low-res shading. 

I gotta stop making lists while I go to sleep.

Musician interviews are finished

But still torn.  Both are good, both were ok to talk with.  Might have to go with a gut feeling on this, but think I'll ask for a second opinion.

I have it down to two incredibly talented composers

I tried to narrow it down by price...but they're asking the same price!  AHA.  HILARIOUS.

Seriously, the stuff they've made is really, really powerful stuff.

That aside, I'm happy with either that I pick, I think.

I seriously need to just pick a musician

I don't have the time to waste on e-mailing all these people back...it's getting frustrating.

This may seriously be the hardest choice I've had to make yet.

=(


I want to hire them all.  Balls. 


OK, recap:


1)  I want classic fantasy. 
2)  I want someone with an understanding of chiptunes for the comedic themes.
3)  I want someone who really wants to work on a fantasy game.
4) I want a really awesome ballad piece that is intricate, so I want someone capable of that.
5) I want someone I can give a chance, my age, if possible. (I believe in hiring in my generation.)

Repeat after me:  Do not let having worked with John Mayer, Hollywood films, International Automakers, A-list film companies, or other people who are amazing.  I want someone who can grow with the project. 

Deep breath.

Music Shortlist finished

Somewhere between 9-11 interviews to schedule this week.


....


I'm going to be spending a lot of time in this Starbucks right here.

FINALLY

Well, that only took 6 months.

Programmer acquired.

Decision time

Well, I have a choice between two programmers.

One guy fell off the face of the earth (would have given it to him otherwise) and the lead I had was too expensive, they wanted to charge me agency prices.  Which is fine, it's their business, but I already told them I had a small budget and I probably couldn't afford them.  I think he knew I would probably turn it down, but he was doing his due diligence, etc.

For the record, I would MUCH rather hire Canadian/American, because the economies are so bad here, but no one wants to work for the equivalent of minimum wage in the programming industry, not that I blame them.  They should get paid well for their work.  But I was willing to take someone on who had some experience, but wanted more for a lower price.  You know, win-win?

I have to be honest, I'm willing to pay someone $25~ an hour to program, and I can't find someone willing to do it in my city or near where I live.  Huh?  How does that make sense? This isn't a hard project.  In fact, in programming terms, I'm positive it's like basic math for me.  I've looked up some of the coding you would have to do for some of the things I want, and 'I' could do it.  But I actually want to pay someone else to do it and I can't find anyone.  This, in my mind, is crazy.

So my choice is currently between two offshore contractors, and both are equally good choices, in my mind.  They both have game creating experience, they both have fairly solid portfolios, and they both have fair prices in my mind.  (Actually, I just did the math, they're both charging me the same at the upfront quote, which is around $25, go figure.)

What I'll do now is an in-depth interview, and see who changes their mind.  Then I'll pick.

Deadline for the programmer is Nov. 15, so I still have a couple days in case I change my mind, or unless I somehow stumble on one before then.  Sigh.

Double Sweet

Twitter has gotten me a dev lead!  From someone I follow.  I imagine they will ask for too many $$$ hmmm...

Well now I'm really annoyed

So I've narrowed down my choice of developers, and the one I'm most interested in e-mails me to tell me he's been busy working on his own games, which is why he hasn't responded to my request for a phone interview.

Er, really?  I'm going to pay you and you can't even answer one simple email with a yes/no answer?  I understand busy like anyone, but I'm all about lining up the next sale.  I'm kinda wondering what this guy's deal is.

So I'm moving on, a couple more interviews, and I think I'll have someone by next week. 

A friend referred a really great coding guy, but he says he doesn't have the time nor the iOS skill to do the job, although he said he'd pass along the opportunity.  So, I almost had the perfect programmer (I met him once, he's as nice as programmers get.) and lost it all in the same week.

Deadline for programmer is Nov. 15.  I don't think I'll be using e-mail-me-sometimes-guy because I already have one of those on staff.  They're fun, and they get the work done eventually, but I have a guy e-mailing me that really wants to do and follows up with me, and compare that to someone I have to send three e-mails to get a response, which twice has been 'um, sure, sounds good, let's talk later.'  Who does that?  Does anyone understand people like this? 

Really

Man, why do people even bother applying for contract positions if they were never really interested in the first place...seriously.

Of course I can do it all myself...I just don't WANT to.  It's a waste of time, and by doing that I'm going to miss the Christmas season for sales, and I have to spend time learning something that a variety of people already know how to do well, which is a huge loss, in my mind.  And it means I can't focus on other elements like story, art design, UX, marketing, beta testing, etc.

Well, whatever.  At this rate, I'll do it all myself.  And get all the $$. (All three of them.)  That'll show them.   

Honestly

How long does it take to make a quote for a project?  It's been more than three days.  I run my own service/product based business based on extremely vague ideas and I still put out a quote in half a day, max.  I shouldn't have to prod someone by e-mail to ask them for the quote as a reminder, should I?

I never want to do Wireframes again.

Seriously.




I did all my e-mails, sent out everything to the two (down from four) people that I'm going to interview that live in city here.


The problem is that I still have all these bids out on these freelancer sites.  My feeling is if I pick one of them now, they're going to be like, "Yo, what took so long?  I took on something else."  Because, as everyone knows, everyone and their dog needs a programmer.  Why?  Because no one can really program.  (In some cases, not even programmers.)


I spent a lot of time redeveloping the way the battle system is going to look on screen.  It sucks when you think that the vague idea that made sense of paper really didn't make any sense when you tried to push it into a wireframe.  Lame.


I might even send a couple of these out to the freelancers I'm interviewing.  But tomorrow.  It's Halloween time and I'm going to enjoy myself.



What sucks is yesterday I spent so much time wireframing/spec'ing that I didn't have time for a nap.  Going three days with two hours sleep is just so passé.  I slept ten hours, would have slept more, but my phone was ringing off the hook from 11 a.m.  And it's Saturday. 


Lame!  =P


For this weekend:


-Finish storyboards (still not done, thanks Photoshop for erasing half my wireframes after I made them, duplicating my work.)
-Hopefully the two people I e-mailed will send me back quotes and we can move on to interviews so I can find out if we can work together or what.
-Sleep, nap, and otherwise ignore reality, including all the work that is coming up in the next two weeks.  It's going to be insane.
-Hopefully the artist will e-mail me the next set of sketches I can share.

I've narrowed it down to under 10 programmers

So because I'm outsourcing programming, as a last ditch effort I put up a CL posting, and some of the responses I got were just as good the outsourced ones, and maybe even better.  I now have:


-3 interviews to give to local people in Toronto
-3-4 ish interviews to give to people located in Russia, Germany, India and potentially Serbia
-Some serious decisions to make

I remember hiring the artist was also this tough, I got a lot, a lot of response, but picking the programmer is much harder at this point, since I won't be able to ask for test results besides what's in their portfolio.  Artists can do mock-up sketches, but even if I ask someone to code something for me, that doesn't tell me if they're a good fit for my team.

To-do tomorrow:

-Spec screens (dreading these)
-finish storyboards (almost done for the half of the demo I want to release)
-send e-mails to set-up interviews and quotes (dreading this b/c it's end of day FOR SURE)
-Nap (I seriously need it.)


Done Today:

-E-mailed about 40 e-mails to programmers
-E-mailed artist 3 times today, sometimes with contradicting instructions
-Then harassed her on Gchat (that clearly helped my credibility...)
-Slept (Was feeling sick...)

Hiring a Programmer

So far, I'm stuck between one or two choices across seas and a local Toronto developer.

I'm tempted to go with the Toronto developer, but I haven't even discussed a budget with him yet, nor much of the game specs.

However, the other developer are so starved for work or scrappy for it that I may go with one of them.  (Serbians and Indian developers are in a close race for a small amount of $.)

Today's tasks to be done:

• Review the applications of foreign programmers
• Write out a full game spec sheet
• Make a mock-up with lines and explanations
• Draft Kickstarter/Indiegogo stuff (haven't decided which I'll go with yet...probably Kickstarter for better American visibility

On the bright side, the devs that have responded to me have been positive that the system I've described won't be hard to code.  Which is good, and fits with the initial questions I asked dev friends (who are too busy to work for low pay.)

I'm a jerk and I'm hiring someone to code for me

Yes, I'm hiring a freelancer to do my code.


I know that makes me a horrid person in the video game community by most standards.  Everyone always says, "Learn how to code."

OK, sure if it was Ruby on Rails, I probably wouldn't mind.  But, no, I don't want to learn Objective C while I pay other people.  I might as well just pay more people.  You know, because I'm not completely destitute yet.

The sad thing is that I want to learn how to code...I just don't have the time at the moment, and it's not cost efficient.  Second, I really believe in the mantra of focusing on what you're good at.  I'm good at

• Creative stuff
• Managing people
• Marketing/PR
• Giving away my money

All of this suggest, logically, that I should hire someone else to do it.  Also

• I would have to buy a Mac (I had a dev but he backed out...we would have used his stuff)
• I would have to learn everything
• The game idea would fizzle out I would get frustrated, I would throw said Mac against wall, negating both progress and possession of a shiny object
• I believe in hiring people helps make the world a better place because people get paid to do work, and you get to stress less.  It's like charity, only I get something else out of it.

More importantly, I'm not very good at logical thinking at the best of times (I'm investing in an adventure iPhone game) so I think someone with experience and code and tricks on hand makes a lot more sense than well, anything else that I could come up with.  I have ideas about how things work, and I could probably cobble things together or tweak (read: destroy) code once it's finished, but it's just so much easier working with someone with experience.