Career

That Thing I Do

In a boardroom in Marseille, sixteen people sit hunched over iPads and Samsung tablets playing mobile games. Good natured arguments break out, and a quiet hum of conversation is broken only by an explosion or a sword slash.

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Lunch is served but no one stops what they’re doing. There’s simply too much to do – 600 games have to be cut down to 200 by the end of today.

This is a meeting of the best and brightest the mobile gaming industry has to offer.

This is the 10th Annual International Mobile Gaming Awards and the whole reason for my trip to Europe in the first place.

Two years ago I became involved with the IMGAs when I pitched them a panel idea. The head of the awards, got in contact asking if I would instead be willing to run their public relations outreach. I said yes and a few months later flew off to Barcelona (the first time) for the awards ceremony. It was a small event held in the heart of Mobile World Congress, but what shocked me immediately was the caliber of the attendees.

The heads of some of the biggest publishers and studios were there, as well as the editor in chiefs of every major mobile gaming site. It just felt different from any other award ceremony or show I had visited before. I knew I wanted to get more involved.

The following year I was asked to return to the IMGAs as a judge. I was ecstatic. Then, this year I was asked if I the Chairman for the entire judging process. I was speechless. It was one of the proudest moments of my life and it is an organization whose goals I care deeply for.

One of the things that differentiates the IMGAs from so many other award shows is there is no cost to enter; everything is paid for by the sponsors. In addition the prizes are real instead of just a cool plaque or trophy you can put on a bookshelf. Over the past ten years the awards have given away millions of dollars in prizes to everyone from massive game publishing studios to tiny one or two person development companies.

Which brings us to the other thing that differentiates the IMGAs so much – what kind of games end up in the nominations. In an industry run by companies who have millions of dollars in advertising budgets (ever heard of Angry Birds or Candy Crush?) the awards are one of the best ways an indie developer or small company can get the attention it needs to break through all the noise.

We’ve been called the Oscars of mobile gaming and it is not a title we take lightly.

The judging is exhaustive and is specifically designed to ensure the big games and the small sit on a level playing field. Before the judges even arrives in Marseille the IMGA team comb through the full list of submitted titles to weed out anything not published the following year or anything so filled with bugs as to make it unplayable. This year we had 1,000 games submitted: after the weeding our we had 600.

Once the judges arrive they’re thrown into the thick of it. The following 48 hours see those 600 games whittled down even further to just 60. Welcome to the big leagues, hope you brought your A-Game.

The first day is taken up with nothing but playing games: the judges are broken up into groups and given between 50-100 games to play through. Many of the games are known to the judges before they even play them, but for some this is their first chance to play through an unknown, new game.

They’re looking for specific things and if they don’t find it a game gets cut. Does a game go above and beyond in the graphics or sound categories? Did they nail an art style or make up their own that’s beautiful or striking? Is the game attempting something truly innovative in a market known for copy-cats and recycling old ideas?

Doing all of this in such a short time would be impossible without a varied jury and this year we had a great one: designers, game studio founders, journalists, marketers, publishers and even academics, all of whom have a speciality in mobile gaming.

Day one is just about getting through each groups list and by the end of it our 600 games had turned into around 160. A good first day, but it’s the second day that’s the hardest.

It starts with a brief discussion on the categories for this years awards. Some categories are set in stone, Excellence in Graphics or Gameplay for example, but others change year by year. Last year was the first year to include an Excellence in Storytelling award and this year we agreed to add Best Sound Design and Best Art Design as well.

We then go through the full list and discuss which categories each game should be entered into. From there the list is distributed to the judges and the voting begins. Once that’s out of the way the real judging starts.

Only those judges who have played a game can vote on it and it only needs a majority of votes to stay on the list. However, if a game doesn’t receive a majority of votes a judge may chose to “champion” a game and must defend that game to the judges and persuade them to give it another try. If another judge is persuaded by the argument they can second his defense and the game is saved for the time being, usually as the judge who seconded takes a chance to pick up and play the game in question.

In years past one round of voting was enough to get the list down to a manageable size. This year it took three.

Sometimes a judges favorite game won’t make the list and sometimes a game another judge thinks is truly undeserving will. The arguments can get heated.

After all the voting is finished we end up with around 20 games per category (a game can be in more than one category). Then its time for The Ballot.

The Ballot is the final voting session, but unlike everything else it’s done in secret; no one knows who voted for which game. Each judge gets ten votes per category, and can award one 10, one 9, one 8 etc to which ever ten games they believe most deserves to be in it. I collect the results, tally them and the top 10 nominees make it into the nominations.

At the end of all of this we finally have around 60 games down from over 1000.

Simple right? And that’s only the first round.

After everything is over and done with in Marseille, all of the judges head home to spend another month with each of the final games on the list. Right before the awards show we meet up to decide the winners of each category. Most of the time a few simple votes do the job, but for some of the more competitive categories (Gameplay for example) another secret ballot is cast, this time with only one vote on it.

After two months of work the judging is done and we have the years winners.

I jokingly call it all the Gauntlet and it takes a lot out of you. But the people who put their time and energy into the event know what they’re getting into. If you ask any of them about it they’ll tell you it’s the most in-depth judging for any award in the industry and I agree. And it should be.

Every day another 124 games are approved to the Apple App Store alone. Any show that tries to award the best in mobile can easily only cherry pick the ones that rose to the top, that got the most articles written about them or were the most downloaded. Forcing yourself to go in deeper, to jump into the pile upon pile of games available is exhausting, frustrating and in many ways overwhelming.

But when you do find that diamond in the ruff, a game that no one on the jury knew about that completely blows you away it makes everything worth it.

It really is the coolest thing I do.

There’s a million reasons you leave your job.

There’s the common reasons: you have another opportunity that comes up, you have to move, you’re getting married or having a baby and need some extended time off.

I didn’t leave for any of these reasons.

There’s the less common reasons: you’re going back to school or you’re having surgery or an illness that needs to be taken care of.  You and your boss are fighting, you and your boss aren’t getting along, or you’ve developed an unhealthy emotional connection with someone in your office and just need to get away.

I didn’t leave for any of these reasons.

Then there’s the rare and unsightly reasons: you’ve caught someone stealing from the company, sexual harassment claims, a family tragedy, an emotional breakdown or simply being fired.

I definitely didn’t leave for any of those reasons.

I had always thought that the idea of the “quarter life crisis” as so many in my generation are apt to call it, was ridiculous.  An excuse to quit your job and go teach English abroad or run off to a new city and become a waiter or a barista.  An excuse to go back to school and “find yourself”.  In the end, an excuse.  And as much as I hate to say it, I looked down on those people.

Well that was stupid.

Actually, it was beyond stupid.  I should have seen the signs years ago – that feeling of restlessness that every traveler knows means its time to move on.  An urge to become more involved, more effective, more known.  My entire being was fighting a pitched battle between putting down roots or jumping onto the next flight to Thailand.  I was conflicted by my need to make a difference in my community and my sense of hopelessness in being able to do anything of importance.  I felt trapped.

I was waiting for something or someone to change my own situation instead of forcing a change myself.  I was too scared to make the leap.

Stupid.

I had been at my job for the past two and a half years.  Originally hired on as a junior account manager I was quickly promoted four times in two and a half years and helped to turn a team of two into a team of nine, We went from bringing in tens of thousand of dollars into bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars in a quarter.

I had never been challenged like this before: I was running full campaigns for clients that spanned from PR to advertising to events around the country and the world.  I was writing business plans, I was bringing in new business and helping to build a team and a company from scratch.

At 25 I was promoted to Director of Accounts, running the day to day of the company and its accounts and overseeing a team of five.  I was the youngest officer in the company and one of the youngest agency directors in Sacramento.  I was ecstatic.

Really, really stupid.

I failed in this position.  Miserably.

The reasons are less important than the outcome and the outcome was that I lost the trust and more importantly the respect of my team.  It was a slow realization but when it came it hit me hard.

Taking a step back, I looked at what I had been doing over the past few months and was shocked by the results.  Every bad habit, every distasteful trait I had seen in old bosses were present in my “leadership” qualities.  I was running on my own schedule, coming in late, running off to trips around the US for business meetings with little advance notice.  I sat in my office and rarely came out to chat with my team instead making them come to me.  I was trying to lead by instinct but when that instinct is based on a false foundation it was always going to be off-kilter.

You can moan over your mistakes or you can fix them.  I chose the latter.  I gave up my office and moved into a shared workspace with my coworkers.  I brought them into my calls and my work, showing them what I was doing and ensuring I always knew what they were up to; if anyone went on vacation I could seamlessly take over their projects.

Robert Greene notes that “at all times you must attend to those around you”.  I began taking a much greater interest in what my teammates wanted out of their jobs and the company as a whole.  Slowly but surely I turned things around.

I presented an overall restructure to the company that would address most of the issues I had heard from my coworkers.  I included a biz dev and marketing strategy for the company as a whole that would see incomes rise across the board.  In a role that had seen me challenged in more ways than I could ever imagine this was my biggest one to date.  It was wholeheartedly endorsed and I felt accomplished for the first time in months.

I had learned more and grown more from this job than other in life.

So why would I leave that?

Six moths earlier I had begun working through a thought experiment with friends.  It didn’t take long before we realized that the project not only had legs but would be able to run fast and far if we gave it the right attention.  All of the joy, the excitement and fear that you only experience in a start-up began to come back.

I left because for the first time in my life I had found a project that I was truly passionate about, a project that connected all of the things that I love doing the most.  It combined writing, events, community involvement and civic duty. I wanted this and I wanted it bad.

The truth of the matter is it’s ambitious, possibly even impossible.  But I knew that going into it, and I knew that when my I put my notice in two weeks ago.

So that’s where things stand: I’m putting the last two years behind me and focusing all of my energy and attention on this new problem.  I want to see what happens when you put everything you have into something, when you make it so public that you simply can’t fail because everyone is watching.  I want to see if I can stand it and if I can rise to the occasion.

I’m leaving in two days for Europe for two weeks to clear my head.  I have four months of funds saved up and no idea how to make money off of this thing.

Should be fun.