What's going on with your life?

A creationist terror-squad has taken over the Hurg Museum of Natural History!

I NEED to stop drinking

Moving away from doom and gloom, was going over wedding planning stuff (fun..) and my best man asked me to be his best man. Bit of a shock as I expected him to ask one of his 3 brothers instead.

...now I have to think of a good speech. Wonder if I can recycle his one for mine....

I just got a new phone, but I had no credit with AT&T so I had to put a down payment. Oh man so much money

uhh how do i resize this oh jesus its so big

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/VXBvncn.jpg]

Rota where I work is changing in October, when I need to book some holidays (attend a wedding).

I have loads of days, but I'm annoyed that ppl that has gone recently have been able to join regular days off to holidays, while the line manager talked to me like "you don't know when your days off are gonna be"… that's unfair if I'll have to just book only holidays without being able to do like the others.

Especially considering how hard I work and always been available to adjust my schedules to help them (if I knew I was getting then something in return).

I guess this could also go in the „Do you enjoy your job in the games industry?“ thread or “MapCore Job Census” but I haven’t shared in this thread yet, so here’s what’s up: I quit my job on Friday.

To give some perspective to those who might not know: I’ve been working for an investor and assisted the gaming start-ups (online, social & mobile) in their portfolio for the past 2 years. My title was “Business Intelligence Analyst” but my assignments went beyond the scope of data analysis. Big companies have different roles/people for these tasks: BIs, Product Managers, Monetization Designers, Online Marketing Specialists, Business Developers, … I switched between these roles depending on the problem at hand. I supervised a Data Scientist who helped me with the number crunching, optimized marketing campaigns, studied the theory and best practices of Casual & F2P game design - basically supported the developers in any way I could. On the positive side I’ve had a lot of freedom on what to work on, there were no hierarchies and corporate BS. But it also meant little guidance and no advice from somebody who had successfully built a free-to-play gaming company yet. I learnt a lot about game design, data analysis, online marketing, entrepreneurship and investment deals. But some of you I’ve talked to individually recently already know that I wasn’t very happy anymore and have toyed with the idea to go back to level design for the past 6-9 months or so.

Why? There is something extremely satisfying about coming up with a vision in your head, sitting down to craft it (often for hours without a break) and at the end of the day see what you’ve accomplished. Somebody posted a link to a TED talk about the secret of happiness being “flow” and while I don’t think it’s the only answer I can resonate with the idea. If you constantly jump from one construction site to the next (in my case: even disconnected from the actual teams, because you’re in an advisory role, often in a different location) you go home wondering what you’ve actually accomplished that day.

Secondly it takes a certain mindset if your primary responsibility is to make the company more money. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, mind you, but it’s a different perspective that e.g. a designer has, who needs to ensure that the experience is fun. It takes both voices to create a successful product in my opinion, but right now I don’t think I can be a good spokesperson for the monetary-side when I don’t feel passionate about it. My biggest passion still is to build worlds and create fun experiences. This is why I decided against pursuing a Product Manager role, which would probably fit me best if you take a glance at my resume and which would probably also be better paid than an LD job. Yet, when I did some low-poly modelling in Maya and whiteboxing in UE4 for the hell of it this summer, I remembered, why I got into games in the first place.

So when I heard that local Goodgame Studios had licensed UE4 and are building a team to develop games for the Core Gaming market, I applied, passed the design test + interview and got an offer. I’m going to commence working there on December 1^st. It also means that I won’t have to move further away from my family and my new girlfriend, which is also very good. I know that the industry is very volatile and this is a challenge that I’ll probably face later down the road, but when I thought it over and over again, about where I want to take my career and what could happen, I realized that it doesn’t make sense to be afraid and work a job that I dislike till the end of my days because it is supposedly more stable and brings in a few hundred more bucks.

I've tried a bunch of different things over the past years, peeked behind the curtains of different departments and companies in different segments of the gaming market (talked to a bunch of folks, too). I've pretty much come full circle and feel like the creative side is for me. I just see a lot of people burning out or not being able to keep up. I hope that won't happen to me. I hope I can maintain a healthy balance between a passion for my job, social life and financial income in the future. But right now I’m just stoked to get mapping again

Quote from FrieChamp

I guess this could also go in the „Do you enjoy your job in the games industry?“ thread or “MapCore Job Census” but I haven’t shared in this thread yet, so here’s what’s up: I quit my job on Friday.

To give some perspective to those who might not know: I’ve been working for an investor and assisted the gaming start-ups (online, social & mobile) in their portfolio for the past 2 years. My title was “Business Intelligence Analyst” but my assignments went beyond the scope of data analysis. Big companies have different roles/people for these tasks: BIs, Product Managers, Monetization Designers, Online Marketing Specialists, Business Developers, … I switched between these roles depending on the problem at hand. I supervised a Data Scientist who helped me with the number crunching, optimized marketing campaigns, studied the theory and best practices of Casual & F2P game design - basically supported the developers in any way I could. On the positive side I’ve had a lot of freedom on what to work on, there were no hierarchies and corporate BS. But it also meant little guidance and no advice from somebody who had successfully built a free-to-play gaming company yet. I learnt a lot about game design, data analysis, online marketing, entrepreneurship and investment deals. But some of you I’ve talked to individually recently already know that I wasn’t very happy anymore and have toyed with the idea to go back to level design for the past 6-9 months or so.

Why? There is something extremely satisfying about coming up with a vision in your head, sitting down to craft it (often for hours without a break) and at the end of the day see what you’ve accomplished. Somebody posted a link to a TED talk about the secret of happiness being “flow” and while I don’t think it’s the only answer I can resonate with the idea. If you constantly jump from one construction site to the next (in my case: even disconnected from the actual teams, because you’re in an advisory role, often in a different location) you go home wondering what you’ve actually accomplished that day.

Secondly it takes a certain mindset if your primary responsibility is to make the company more money. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, mind you, but it’s a different perspective that e.g. a designer has, who needs to ensure that the experience is fun. It takes both voices to create a successful product in my opinion, but right now I don’t think I can be a good spokesperson for the monetary-side when I don’t feel passionate about it. My biggest passion still is to build worlds and create fun experiences. This is why I decided against pursuing a Product Manager role, which would probably fit me best if you take a glance at my resume and which would probably also be better paid than an LD job. Yet, when I did some low-poly modelling in Maya and whiteboxing in UE4 for the hell of it this summer, I remembered, why I got into games in the first place.

So when I heard that local Goodgame Studios had licensed UE4 and are building a team to develop games for the Core Gaming market, I applied, passed the design test + interview and got an offer. I’m going to commence working there on December 1^st. It also means that I won’t have to move further away from my family and my new girlfriend, which is also very good. I know that the industry is very volatile and this is a challenge that I’ll probably face later down the road, but when I thought it over and over again, about where I want to take my career and what could happen, I realized that it doesn’t make sense to be afraid and work a job that I dislike till the end of my days because it is supposedly more stable and brings in a few hundred more bucks.

I've tried a bunch of different things over the past years, peeked behind the curtains of different departments and companies in different segments of the gaming market (talked to a bunch of folks, too). I've pretty much come full circle and feel like the creative side is for me. I just see a lot of people burning out or not being able to keep up. I hope that won't happen to me. I hope I can maintain a healthy balance between a passion for my job, social life and financial income in the future. But right now I’m just stoked to get mapping again

Display More

Can verify, making levels is fun as hell

Almost forgot: big thanks to everyone I've talked to, forwarded my resume etc. over the past months! mapcore

Oooh interesting choice, Frie! Nice one

I applied for a job at an outdoors company yesterday.. Even though I'm hopefully still going to Canada, I need a proper backup plan. The job is called "product technician", which means that I'll be responsible for the production of prototypes, which sounds like a job that would fit into what I like to do. So now I'm waiting on 2 answers, both are probably a month away. Fucking sucks. I hate waiting for answers.

Oh and I did a TOEFL test in late August. I scored 110/120 which basically means that I speak, write, read and listen at a higher level in English than I do in Norwegian...

That is awesome Frie !!! Congrats :]]]]

Please tell me this is an ipad you're holding.

lol imagine holding it to your ear.

Yeah that's an iPad.

They went from tiny to oversized. 4.5" ideal size for me.

Totally not happy with what they came up, design makes me puke (makes me think of a flattened iPhone Edge), plus a rounded parallelepiped is hardly to be considered ergonomic.

Also hate they adopted the Android vendors' tactics and put the stabilised camera only on the 6+

Quote from Thrik

the iPhone 6 Plus is definitely too big unless you have huge hands. I literally couldn't get my thumb within a couple of centimetres of the top of the screen, it's pretty much a dealbreaker for one-hand users.

They have "Reachability" for that

http://youtu.be/tqx5ANqFFiU

OT: I cannot use the phone holding it firmly like they always show, can't type.

Quote from FrieChamp

I guess this could also go in the „Do you enjoy your job in the games industry?“ thread or “MapCore Job Census” but I haven’t shared in this thread yet, so here’s what’s up: I quit my job on Friday.

To give some perspective to those who might not know: I’ve been working for an investor and assisted the gaming start-ups (online, social & mobile) in their portfolio for the past 2 years. My title was “Business Intelligence Analyst” but my assignments went beyond the scope of data analysis. Big companies have different roles/people for these tasks: BIs, Product Managers, Monetization Designers, Online Marketing Specialists, Business Developers, … I switched between these roles depending on the problem at hand. I supervised a Data Scientist who helped me with the number crunching, optimized marketing campaigns, studied the theory and best practices of Casual & F2P game design - basically supported the developers in any way I could. On the positive side I’ve had a lot of freedom on what to work on, there were no hierarchies and corporate BS. But it also meant little guidance and no advice from somebody who had successfully built a free-to-play gaming company yet. I learnt a lot about game design, data analysis, online marketing, entrepreneurship and investment deals. But some of you I’ve talked to individually recently already know that I wasn’t very happy anymore and have toyed with the idea to go back to level design for the past 6-9 months or so.

Why? There is something extremely satisfying about coming up with a vision in your head, sitting down to craft it (often for hours without a break) and at the end of the day see what you’ve accomplished. Somebody posted a link to a TED talk about the secret of happiness being “flow” and while I don’t think it’s the only answer I can resonate with the idea. If you constantly jump from one construction site to the next (in my case: even disconnected from the actual teams, because you’re in an advisory role, often in a different location) you go home wondering what you’ve actually accomplished that day.

Secondly it takes a certain mindset if your primary responsibility is to make the company more money. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, mind you, but it’s a different perspective that e.g. a designer has, who needs to ensure that the experience is fun. It takes both voices to create a successful product in my opinion, but right now I don’t think I can be a good spokesperson for the monetary-side when I don’t feel passionate about it. My biggest passion still is to build worlds and create fun experiences. This is why I decided against pursuing a Product Manager role, which would probably fit me best if you take a glance at my resume and which would probably also be better paid than an LD job. Yet, when I did some low-poly modelling in Maya and whiteboxing in UE4 for the hell of it this summer, I remembered, why I got into games in the first place.

So when I heard that local Goodgame Studios had licensed UE4 and are building a team to develop games for the Core Gaming market, I applied, passed the design test + interview and got an offer. I’m going to commence working there on December 1^st. It also means that I won’t have to move further away from my family and my new girlfriend, which is also very good. I know that the industry is very volatile and this is a challenge that I’ll probably face later down the road, but when I thought it over and over again, about where I want to take my career and what could happen, I realized that it doesn’t make sense to be afraid and work a job that I dislike till the end of my days because it is supposedly more stable and brings in a few hundred more bucks.

I've tried a bunch of different things over the past years, peeked behind the curtains of different departments and companies in different segments of the gaming market (talked to a bunch of folks, too). I've pretty much come full circle and feel like the creative side is for me. I just see a lot of people burning out or not being able to keep up. I hope that won't happen to me. I hope I can maintain a healthy balance between a passion for my job, social life and financial income in the future. But right now I’m just stoked to get mapping again

Display More

Nice man

On the topic of flow etc. I read a book where the guy made the point that fatigue isnt from working too hard. It's from having too many unfinished projects and loose ends. I personally started to get more energetic when I started finishing existing projects and more importantly, started saying no to new projects.

Quote from Thrik

Went and checked out the iPhone 6 today, I have to say the iPhone 6 Plus is definitely too big unless you have huge hands. I literally couldn't get my thumb within a couple of centimetres of the top of the screen, it's pretty much a dealbreaker for one-hand users.

[Blocked Image: https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10371371_10204852690382131_9205179583694181125_n.jpg?oh=a74f8a47c52ea3c51a6d5053d1db32b6&oe=54D0B5BD&__gda__=1418368472_d405038e0cff527c67a68fc66e2b6d9f]

That almost looks like the new sony phone. 6 inch phone lol. Even in the commercial they only use the bluetooth thing to talk.

Cool that it's waterproof though

My sis last year got me an original Fight Club tshirt, Tyler with the quote "we have jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need" (which is actually something said by an Italian hermit ages ago)

Got pulled over for the first time in my life by Police earlier this evening for speeding. Whoops. Got off with a friendly warning. Phew.

The one time I decide to give it the beans on an empty stretch of road a police car appears around the bend. God damnit.