As I write this, I’m sitting in a microbrewery in an airport in Phoenix, Arizona, getting pleasantly drunk before my delayed flight leaves.
I’ve had a very busy couple of months! By the end of next week, I will have visited Fort Myers and Bonita Springs, FL, Fort Worth and Dallas, TX, Oklahoma City, OK, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Austin, TX, and Seattle, WA. Holy shit! I love traveling, and I love that I have that kind of freedom.
E3 was a fantastic show. I got to see my friends from all over the world, make a bunch of new friends, see some awesome games and get some fantastically productive networking done.
Life is good!
In other news, I’ve been reading From Reel to Deal by Dov S-S Simens.
It’s a complete how-to guide to make an independent movie from start to finish. Everything from writing it to finding a director to securing financing to buying what you need for the shoot to who you need to hire to managing people to handling post-production to publicity to finding distributors to making gobs of money. It’s an absolutely phenomenal book with lots of parallels to the game industry, particularly the methods of securing financing for a project.
The beauty of this book is that it’s PURE nitty-gritty details instead of high theory and basic fuzzy concepts. It’s MEAT. PURE MEAT. Information you can take and immediately use. It’s viciously pragmatic, and I LOVE that. No bullshit, no dicking around, it’s pure information generated from hands-on experience from an expert. It’s one of the best, most inspiring books I’ve read in ages and I’m BLAZING through it.
I’m not even interested in making movies, and I’m loving it! The amount of detail he puts into it and the breakneck pace he keeps is phenomenal, and it gives you a whole new appreciation for all of your favorite movies. And better yet, it demystifies the whole process and shows how anyone can accomplish someone amazing with a little know-how. Absolutely terrific book, and I couldn’t recommend it enough.
I have a friend that’s heavily interested in intellectual property development with a bent toward movies, and I immediately bought the book for him without even asking him if he wanted it. It’s that good. Holy shit. If you’re interested in business and want to know how it’s done in the fastest-paced, most brutal, vicious, cutthroat business environment on earth, READ FROM REEL TO DEAL.
After that I’m going to finish reading The Magic of Conflict, which is basically a book about achieving peace and happiness in life and getting all Zen about shit. It sounds peculiarly hippie for me, but it has a lot of practical advice and meditation techniques I can really get into. And anything that can calm my stupid brain the hell down is good.
Also, I’ve bought an Xbox 360 and I’ve been playing the hell out of Oblivion. Fantastic game. I haven’t played games in over four months, and this is a hell of a way to get back into it. Updates have been sparse for this reason. ;)
That’s all for now!
Who still even reads me? :(