The Stand-Up Revisited

Hello friends!

A while ago, I (Richard, business dude and one of the designers at Clever Endeavour Games) wrote an article about the daily stand-up meeting in Agile Management and some tips on doing it right vs. doing it wrong. The conclusion was, as usual, that there's no solved formula for how to do it and it depends on team size, the dynamic of the employees, the goals of the stand-ups, etc.

Today I wanted to present the "stand-up" that we do at Clever Endeavour Games. We practice a relatively agile (like a young gazelle) management style of production. Our morning stand-ups take place in the form of "Inbox meetings" which happen at 11am, one hour after we get to work. The Inbox is a place in our project management software where we put any idea, thought, discussion, issue, etc. that we want to deal with but needs the input of the whole team. We put them there during the day, and discuss them in the next Inbox meeting; if they're urgent then we'll interrupt work to discuss them.

So every morning, we look at the Inbox and we discuss what needs to be discussed. If it takes more than a few minutes to deal with, we make it a task and put it into our sprint or discuss it in a separate meeting. The meeting usually takes about 20 minutes or less, and gets us up to speed on all the new things that have come up, avoiding a longer meeting on Mondays.

We also discuss what we're up to during the day if it's unclear, but seeing as our team is only 4 people it's not as necessary to discuss it each day because we usually have a good idea already of what others are working on. 

I found that the traditional "stand-up" didn't do much for us, and there was a need for this sort of review of new issues that have come up. The issue with the traditional stand-up was that the team didn't find the discussion of what happened yesterday to be relevant or useful, and we still do the "what's happening today" portion of it. 

Personally, I think there is some use in having the discussion of what was accomplished yesterday because it helps people feel proud of their work, and makes them accountable if they didn't get anything done. Then again, it puts a lot of pressure to be done tasks by the end of the day, and that may or may not be positive. To be determined!

Anyway just wanted to share my thoughts on this and see if the community had different experiences or what they thought of the stand-up.

Your Game Can Change People's Lives (Even Unintentionally)

I recently received an email, directed to our company, that I feel I need to share with the world, and especially with the game development world. This email, which I was given permission to quote below, is the proof that games can truly make a difference, and I personally think that it gives our craft meaning and purpose.

Before getting into it, I should stress something; our game is not a serious game. It's not a game that tries to convey a deep message, and not a game with a moral mission. It's silly, it's fun, it's ridiculous, and it involves animals building traps for each other, jumping around levels that they've built themselves, and occasionally getting hit by crossbows and spinning saws.

I'll share with you the message, with the name switched up for anonymity:

"My husband bought Ultimate Chicken Horse at PAX East this year, and I wanted to relate to you a story about my son (Jake).

He's nine and been having a lot of trouble in school / socially because of his Aspergers / anxiety diagnoses. He has an in-home behavioral therapist (that he kind of hates) and a whole bunch of other support, but there is just something about your game that has really opened him up. He plays it with EVERYONE who comes to our house. It has allowed his therapist to reach him because they've bonded playing the game together. The neighborhood kids come over and play with him and he has really socially progressed and started to make some good connections with his peers-- all because of your game!

There is something about the mix of cooperation, building, competition, and random chance that's just reached him in a way that other games (like Minecraft) haven't. 

Anyway, I just thought you'd like to hear about the little way your game is making a big difference in Jake's life."

This. This is it. This is what gives our careers meaning. This is what proves to me that games are so much more than what the majority of the world thinks they are, and this shows that even unintentionally, games have the power to change the course of people's lives. 

I love my job, and I love coming to work every day to do what I enjoy doing. But knowing that our game can have this profound of an effect on a nine-year old boy magnifies that love and gives it meaning. I thought I'd share this tidbit with the world and I hope that you realize that games, your games (if you're in this industry), even the silly ones, can be strong agents for change.

YouTuber / Streamer Outreach and the Importance of Starting Small

Hello friends!

Here at Clever Endeavour Games, for our recently launched title Ultimate Chicken Horse, we depend highly on content creators to help spread the word about our game. Content creators in this case refers to people recording gameplay videos on YouTube, playing the game on Twitch, etc. 

What I wanted to write about today is how we went about getting videos from some of the biggest names on YouTube (Pewdiepie, Markiplier, JackSepticEye, SeaNanners, etc.). Someday, hopefully soon, we'll do a proper write-up about the direct effect those videos have on sales. For today however, we'll keep it more general and talk about how we actually reached those people.

Before we break it down, I'd like to debunk a quick assumption: we didn't get those videos from direct contact with these content creators, because we've never actually had that contact. 

Approach only those who might actually play your game.

Above are two YouTubers, one of whom only plays Clash of Clans and the other who is playing Call of Duty. Why would we approach either of them to talk about Ultimate Chicken Horse? Well, actually, the one on the right is Ali-A and is more of a variety streamer, and we would look into what kind of stuff he plays before sending the game / our pitch. If you send your game to people who would definitely not play it, you're being spammy and people don't like that. Word spreads in their community just like it does in game dev! Think before you send. 

Personalize your emails.

Make your emails out to an actual person. Even if some of it is copy pasted, at least write their name and why you think they might like your game. Don't batch email with the recipients in "bcc:" because people know that's what's happening. And for the love of any and all gods, if you need to email to a list, don't email to the whole list in the "to:" field.

Start with the smaller YouTubers / Streamers.

People who "do YouTube" as a living are aware of the content that's out there. The small ones are following the big ones, the big ones are watching the smaller ones for new content. There are a couple of reasons for following this piece of advice:

1. The smaller channels will listen to you, will read your email, and will often respond.

2. Word spreads both up and down (in terms of content creator size / following), so if enough smaller folks are playing, the big ones are likely to see it. 

When I talk about "small" by the way, what I mean is somewhere in the 50k - 500k subscribers range or so, for YouTube. On Twitch it's much harder to tell how big the following is but I'd still say around 10k - 200k is small enough to start. I think you should always give codes to content creators if they ask for it as long as they're putting out decent content on a regular basis, but I don't think it's worth your time to go searching for people with 400 subscribers.

Engage with the community(ies).

We try to leave comments on most YouTube videos, and the response from the communities is really great! People don't expect that the developer will actually be there, and when a YouTuber sees a back and forth between one of their community members / fans and the developer, it earns some respect in their eyes. 

I figured a picture of an angry mob was better than a friendly one, even though these tend to be quite positive interactions :)

On Twitch, it's nice to hang out in chat and to do giveaways if you feel it will help you. Streamers really appreciate it! Of course don't kill yourself to be up at 3am when someone in Portugal is streaming, but do what you can.

Here's an older video of Markiplier playing, in case you were curious to see!

That's all for today folks! Back next week with more updates or info!