Continuing to Fail Fabulously
Hello, everyone! Here comes another update from good ole' BrewCityGamer! Do not let the title of this post fool you as it is actually a positive statement! I know, especially if you follow me, that you will notice me say "Fail Faster!" a ton, which I learned from one of my mentors. You may have even heard it before a thousand times, but I can not stress enough how true that statement is. Never give up, Never surrender! :)
It's been an another adventurous couple of weeks, but when is game development NOT adventurous?!? :)
At the moment I am still currently am reading both Reality is Broken and Beyond Critical: Improving Leadership in Game Development in my spare time. They are both wonderful books and I wish I had more time to read them. Remind you, I am not a big reader and I read slow but I am trying to change that. :) I should have both of these books completed in the coming weeks and will be moving onto reading the popular, Team Leadership in the Game Industry by Seth Spaulding. Can't wait to dig into that one!
In my last update, I was talking about my Extra Life event this year which was on November 5th. Just a little update on that. All the gamers this year (including myself) who have raised money for the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin have raised currently $107,998.56 ranking them #15 on the Extra Life charts! You can check out the 2016 Extra Life Totals by clicking HERE. That is FANTASTIC! I think that might even break last year's record if I am not mistaken. I already received my T-Shirt for this year's event for raising over $200 (I raised $750 this year so far) but I will post a picture when I get my 2016 Silver Hero Medal in the mail! You get medals for raising certain amounts of money in total. Over the past 3 years, I have raised over $1,000 for the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin which is why I qualified for the Silver Hero Medal :) Again, for anyone reading this who donated to my event this year, THANK YOU! Currently this year alone in total, Extra Life has raised over $8 million dollars! I am looking forward to a long life of participating and raising money through Extra Life!
I also promised that I would be highlighting my 2016 24-Hour Extra Life stream here on my Twitch channel, and I have delivered! I even highlighted the part where a couple of my donators made my Wife and I sing Disney songs because we didn't have any stretch goals past $500. :) It was embarrassing, my Wife is a great singer, which makes me looks worse. LOL. Hope you all enjoy that one, but hey it's for the kids! The videos are also on my YouTube channel for those of you who are not on Twitch. Check out 1 of my highlights below on Twitch and YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe to both sites!
Watch live video from on www.twitch.tv
Watch live video from on www.twitch.tv
On November 10th we had our 3rd monthly Local MKE Game Developers Night at the 42 Ale House! It was probably our best event yet and everyone was having a lot of fun. My team at Raid+ was able to get together a very early alpha stage of our upcoming game that we are working on which was nice to get feedback on. You can check out all the videos, pictures, and updated for this monthly event by checking out our Facebook Group or keeping up to date with our Raid+ Social sites! :) We went around and recorded a bunch of interviews to which we are going to be compiling into a video that will be on our YouTube channel as well in the near future. The other developers and those who attended seemed to be having a lot of fun playing all the games. One of the other developers even had a tournament going for their upcoming game. Enjoy some pictures from the event below! :)
Watch live video from on www.twitch.tv
It's been an another adventurous couple of weeks, but when is game development NOT adventurous?!? :)
At the moment I am still currently am reading both Reality is Broken and Beyond Critical: Improving Leadership in Game Development in my spare time. They are both wonderful books and I wish I had more time to read them. Remind you, I am not a big reader and I read slow but I am trying to change that. :) I should have both of these books completed in the coming weeks and will be moving onto reading the popular, Team Leadership in the Game Industry by Seth Spaulding. Can't wait to dig into that one!
In my last update, I was talking about my Extra Life event this year which was on November 5th. Just a little update on that. All the gamers this year (including myself) who have raised money for the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin have raised currently $107,998.56 ranking them #15 on the Extra Life charts! You can check out the 2016 Extra Life Totals by clicking HERE. That is FANTASTIC! I think that might even break last year's record if I am not mistaken. I already received my T-Shirt for this year's event for raising over $200 (I raised $750 this year so far) but I will post a picture when I get my 2016 Silver Hero Medal in the mail! You get medals for raising certain amounts of money in total. Over the past 3 years, I have raised over $1,000 for the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin which is why I qualified for the Silver Hero Medal :) Again, for anyone reading this who donated to my event this year, THANK YOU! Currently this year alone in total, Extra Life has raised over $8 million dollars! I am looking forward to a long life of participating and raising money through Extra Life!
I also promised that I would be highlighting my 2016 24-Hour Extra Life stream here on my Twitch channel, and I have delivered! I even highlighted the part where a couple of my donators made my Wife and I sing Disney songs because we didn't have any stretch goals past $500. :) It was embarrassing, my Wife is a great singer, which makes me looks worse. LOL. Hope you all enjoy that one, but hey it's for the kids! The videos are also on my YouTube channel for those of you who are not on Twitch. Check out 1 of my highlights below on Twitch and YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe to both sites!
If you have been following me, then you know that I have been in charge of running an event at the 42 Ale House called the Local MKE Game Developers Night. My last big update I showed you a bunch of pictures from October's event and said that the LIVE stream would be highlighted asap and up on YouTube as well. Well feel free to check out a couple below, and head on over to our channels to check out the rest!
Join us for the final monthly event of the year on December 8th! Click on the image to take you to the Facebook Event. Feel free to invite your friends and family! Every little bit helping spread the word about this event would be 1,000x appreciated! If you are a local Milwaukee developer and would like to show off your product, by all means, contact me via email! (jlecus@raidplusinteractive.com) I will be promoting this last event like made crazy these next couple of weeks, stay tuned in for more information! :) Made this image below using Photoshop for our last event. It's MKE, and it's REALLY cold right now, so why not theme the posts instead of them being green all the time, am I right? :)
In my previous post's you may have seen that I did a Let's Play on Twitch for Raid+ on the game Outlast and that I was going to post them up on our YouTube and Twitch page. I delivered again! :) Boom! Check out the YouTube video below, then head on over to our channel to check out the rest of them! Don't forget to subscribe to keep up to date with all of Raid+ Interactive's YouTube videos and also check out all of our developer friends. Stay tuned in for my next Let's Play series I am going to be doing, as it's going to be RETRO this time around. :) Got to go borrow a Game Capture device from one of our team members at Raid+ for the time being until I can afford to purchase my own.
I also updated my YouTube page and Raid+'s YouTube page overall, so I recommend checking those out too soon next time you are on cruising around! :)
The game I mentioned above that we are now working on for Raid+ I will be helping out with! Yay! I can finally get back into designing and programming! Don't get me wrong, I love marketing, but I LOVE making games. The feeling you get when you see people enjoying what you are creating is one of the best feelings in the world. So we have been basically in sprint 0/1 at Raid+, getting things prepared for the game with pipelines, game wiki, etc. Good ole' Agile! I will be working on some minor programming tasks and of course heavily involved in the design process. Right now, my first programming task is to get the 4-player camera working. Which isn't hard to implement a basic 4-player split screen, I just now have to be able to implement it into code so that it automatically split's the screen depending on how many players are detected. Here is a little snapshot for you to enjoy! I will be continuing to update you on the progress of our game, but of course follow our social sites. I plan on overhauling and updating our Raid+ Developers Blog here soon too! I'll keep you posted on that! :) We are also starting the discussion about the Midwest Gaming Classic 2017 as a team already. (Video about the MWGC is in the previous post below).
Last but not least, of course, you are probably wondering if I have any updates on the job search? Well, that journey continues! But I am not worried! I have been keeping pretty busy staying engaged in the companies communities, studying up on the job's I am being interviewed for to help keep my knowledge and skills fresh, staying extremely active on Linked-IN and other social groups or sites. I am well aware, especially considering they told me, that these interviews I am currently in will take a little bit a time. I will be keeping everyone posted on these updates. Like I said, I haven't really been broadcasting this too much on social media (unless you follow me on Linked-IN or know me personally) as I really do not want to jinx anything until I officially obtain a career opportunity. :)
Made some awesome new friends on my social networks recently. Found out about two really cool events that were happing over this past weekend that I was following. Really interesting event's and I highly recommend checking them out! If I ever have the opportunity to attend one of these event's, I would in a heartbeat! Click on the images below and it will take you to their sites for more information. You'll see why I liked these events! :)
Topcoder Open 2016
CTN Animation Expo 2016
One of my other recent connections in the gaming industry also has his own Podcast that I am going to add to my things to listen too while I am working! :) I am going to give his podcast a shout out here and you should definitely check it out! Click the image below to go to their twitter page for more information!
I know I keep saying that I do things in my spare time, and I really need to stop saying that because I DON'T have any spare time. LOL. But I am still continuing my education by trying to finish those Stack Social Unity3D C# Courses I talked about in previous posts. I haven't had any recent project with this due to my recent programming responsibilities at Raid+ but I am still 110% focused on completing these courses. I am also 110% focused on obtaining my CSM certification in the near future. I will be purchasing the Project Management Body of Knowledge book or whatever prep materials I will need for the exam in the near future. As I study, I will save up some money on the side in order to get it. :)
I always like to post a couple images or comics that found humorous, interesting, or inspirational about game development in my post's. So here are a couple things I found being on the internet lately and saved to post up in this update! Hope you enjoy! :)
Basically, that is it for the moment as far as updates. I don't even want to begin to starting ranting on about my regular life, because 'Ain't no one got time for that!'! LOL! On a real note, my outside life is basically the same ole', same ole'. Just continuing to Bartend to help pay the bills and helping out with some current family matters. Our wedding photographers finally got back to us and handed over all of our pictures from our wedding back in August. They put it in a really neat chest, with a bunch of goodies inside. Made my Wife happy, and that's all that matters, right!?! :) Here are a couple images we got back.
My beautiful Wife with our nieces from Hawaii!
My Wife and I with our usher's!
My Wife still want's to go over all of them together, as we have only gone over a chunk of them. So I am sure I will post some more if I find any good ones! :) That also reminds me, I CAN NOT BELIEVE THANKSGIVING IS COMING UP! Where does time go? Well, I hope all of my readers have a very safe and happy holiday! Whew, anyway, that about wraps it up for now! Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow me on Twitter (@BrewCityGamer), connect with me on Linked-IN, and subscribe to my YouTube channel to get more recent updates! :)
Until next time, Keep on Dev'n and game on!
