Adventures in game development

As the year comes to an end, we will be making our final pushes for the school year. Some people will part ways and some wont. However, in the spirit of a functional company, we will be doing a review on everyone individually. As such, I have made a fairly encompassing and succinct review form to optimize the process. Its important to note on this one, that it has fillable sections that are not viewable on the iframe, so to really understand what I did, please download the PDF and play with the fillable areas.

THE LONG WAIT IS OVER!!! I finally got things sorted out with the awesome team over at IndieDB and our page for our game is live. There were a bunch of things I needed to add to the page that, for a number of reasons I was not able to get in the amount of time given, and as such, the page was deactivated.  However, the IndieDB team was very helpful and understanding and we were able to get the page live.  The first public, pre-alpha release is up on there now and the second one will be coming in the next weeks.  You can check out the site HERE

As we continue to gain steam and appear more and more in the public eye, it became more and more of a necessity to have a document that everyone could see that tells everyone who MBS is and what we are about in a clear and concise manner. This gave birth to the "Who We Are" document.

Given that we have been bringing on people who are not developers for support roles such as voice acting and public appearances, it became apparent to me that we would need a separate actor contract. Below you will find this exact contract, complete with bonus entitlement.

I drafted up an Intellectual Property Assignment contract back at the beginning of Capstone due to the game idea that was voted on, not being my idea. Given that this is a true company, the need for the ownership and control of the IP to be under the company, and not a contractor was paramount. Below you will find my IP ownership assignment that transfers ownership and rights of the game to the company.

The company polo's arrived in the mail today! Now starts the long and arduous process of invoicing, money collecting and distribution.

I have also begun work on an Indie DB profile for us (See below). Like the Angels List and F6S profiles, it is also currently in draft mode, but when it goes live, I will update this post to include the link and finished images.  What is Indie DB?  Indie DB is a community of independent developers and fans of independent games in which we are able to directly communicate with fans and players. It allows us to show off work very early, establish a solid feedback loop, showcase early builds and so much more. For an independent developer it is a must!

I have now begun work on anF6S profile for us (See below). Like the Angels List, it is also currently in draft mode, but when it goes live, I will update this post to include the link and finished images.  What is F6S?  F6S is similar to Angels List in that it is an online resource for investments. However, where it differs is in the fact that it targets Venture Capitalists and other kinds of investors other than Angels. It is also geared a little more towards projects than companies as a whole, but showcasing our portfolio here will be of great benefit.

I have officially started working on an Angels List profile for us (See below). It is currently in draft mode, but when it goes live, I will update this post to include the link and finished images.  What is Angels List?  Angels List is an online resource for Angel investors to easily view companies and projects and invest in them. It streamlines the process of the initial investor ceremony exponentially and also exposes you to investors that would not otherwise have access to you. 

As we continue development, there became a growing need to update the contractor handbook to account for attendance issues we were encountering during the actual the class period. Below you will find the updated contractor handbook that introduces the new attendance policy. I also made this policy an attachment so when/if we change the policy, it negates the need for everyone to update the entire handbook. This method allows me to only need the attachment itself resigned.

As we continued development, I realized that it would be very important to provide team members the ability to opt out of our contractor agreement if they were only looking for and/or care about the internship credits. As such, I put together a little waiver or compensation contract that does essentially that and only that. Feel free to use it with our own company if you would like, sans our branding.

In line with my last post, I am sharing a presentation on what I have learned over time about the concept of refactoring a project. The Refactoring Dilemma from Steve Chepp

I am going to be tackling this post a little differently today. I have created some presentations on things I have learned through the course of my game development growth, This slideshow is on the prioritization process in agile. Prioritization Pains from Steve Chepp

Attached you will find the official Mad Badger Studio Intellectual Property (IP) Ownership Assignment contract. I generated this contract due to the fact that we currently have three projects in production under the MBS label, one game, one joyful exercise interactive simulation and one Unity 3d API. Of those three IP’s, only one is my original idea/IP. Due to the nature of this industry, when working on an IP not owned by the studio, or the studio owner, you MUST cover your ass legally. This contract signs IP rights to the studio in exchange for a higher revenue share of the IP once money is generated, in accordance with the Contractor Handbook. Please feel free to use this contract as a template for your company if you so desire, but ensure to change your data where applicable to reflect your company.

Attached you will find the official Mad Badger Studio contractor handbook that I created for our company, complete with contracts. It is an iteration on a handbook I wrote for a previous game dev company. This handbook was created with the goal of creating a fun, enriching and encouraging environment, while still making sure our legal asses are covered. Please feel free to use it as a template for your company if you so desire, but ensure to change your data where applicable to reflect your company.

In this video I show off the initial build of the mod we are making and how some of the components I spoke of in earlier videos play into this.

This is a tutorial video I made for how to make e-Signatures. We will be signing contracts moving forward for everyone still on the company after midterm retrospectives. This tutorial will explain how the team must sign these contracts.

In this video I show how we use the custom flow and lane linking in Psyberfire to ensure that we are not clogging pipelines, retaining high velocity and making milestones.

In this video I cover the animating of the Game branding image and the future of what will be done with it.

In this video I show how we use the custom flow in Psyberfire to create a Kaizen board and explain a little about it.