So much going on this year. 2010 is THE year.

2009…ugh.

For our family, 2009 was awful.  My wife’s closest friend since childhood died of cancer. It is something that we are still coming to terms with. Few people have close friends from the time they’re small children all the way through their adult lives consistently. 

And professionally 2009 was rough. Demigod’s launch was a very difficult time.  When it came out, the network libraries we had licensed just didn’t work right.  Those of you who know me know I don’t care who’s fault it is. I am all about making something work. Demigod pushed that to the limit. Our name was on the box. It was my job to make good but the effort took its toll one me and my team that I recruited in to fix Demigod.

2010…w00t. 

2010, by contrast I am very much looking forward to.

Personally, our family is very excited about “Future House” coming to completion.  It’s supposed to be done next Fall. As it’s come together I fully admit it’s excessive. I didn’t really mean for the house to be so ridiculous. That’s the problem with blue prints. The whole house was only like 16 inches on 14 inches on paper. That’s not big right? How it became a 20,000 square foot monstrosity was a long journey.

Our three children continue to be amazing for us. Each one so different and interesting. Debbie and I are so relieved that the kids are so healthy. I’m not sure if any of them have actually ever been “sick”.  They’re so bright and so kind, it makes them very enjoyable to be around.

“I will work harder”

Professionally, things are shaping up very well. This year will be a challenger.  Now, at work, I relate the most to Boxer from Animal Farm. Whatever challenge there is, my answer is to just work harder. That almost did me in on Demigod. There was a week last Spring where I would work all day and all night with the dev team to code up a new networking system and then stay on the next day to work with QA and GPG on integration and then repeat again and again for weeks straight. I gained weight, lost some hair, went a bit gray. I’m mostly back to normal now though I still have to lose some weight.

Control..or not?

This year, the constant hiring has made it harder and harder for me to be directly involved in every facet of the company. The first time this really hit home was with an incident in which Impulse had a game called Warlords Battlecry 3 where the publisher had removed its copy protection but not the code in the actual game that looked for it resulting in a diminished game experience. In the old days, I’d have played the game myself. But as we’ve gotten larger, I’ve had to rely on managers – which is still fine. But now my managers have to rely on their own minions who report to the managers who then report to me and that got us into some pain there. 

The main things at work that I  “control” have been Elemental and well that was it.  In October, I added Object Desktop back to my list of things I directly ran because I wasn’t happy with the attempt to mainstream. Everyone wants to go after (no pun intended) Joe User.  I don’t want to go after them. I want Power User. 

I have started to get back into Sins of a Solar Empire. Diplomacy, the new add on, does improve the game a lot. I spent a couple days making new maps for it and torturing those involved on various changes I wanted to get in in order to keep players from gaming it (too easy right now but tomorrow will be much better).

Digital Distribution

The other area that I’ve been involved but not as directly has been Impulse.  That’s been more collaborative because there are so many moving parts.  It’s been hard to compete with Steam since I’m a fan of Steam. More than a fan. A fanboy. But it really does need the competition. The whole forcing people to bundle the Steam client in order to make use of Steamworks is BS. It’s shameful. If Microsoft pulled that, there’d be riots. But because it’s Valve, they get cut slack (including by me – fanboy). But I’m not thinking of Valve 2010. I’m thinking of Valve 2015 when it’s owned by some mega company and then it won’t be so cool if someone were to own the whole market. 

If Impulse had dominant market share, I’d be tempted to start a competitor to it.  Heck, when WindowBlinds started dominating skinning so much, I used to promote our competitors (Chroma at the time) – much to the consternation of my team. I just don’t like anyone dominating something.

Kids growing up

My oldest son turned 13 this year.  He’s such a good kid. I just am not prepared for having a child that has reached that stage. It’s amazing how fast he grew from his being a little kid to the young man he’s growing into.  I always imagined being a better dad than I actually am. I had always assumed I would play LEGOs with my kids. Or want to be the coach of the various sports they play. I don’t. 

The year I gave up politics

I used to follow politics a lot more than I do now. As a conservative, I was pretty excited when the Republicans took over congress and Bush was President. But given how badly they screwed things up, it’s pushed me more and more towards the libertarian camp. Government seems to attract dumb people. Don’t give them power.

Last year I got into trouble because I remarked on Facebook that if UPS was going to boycott Fox News then I’d use a different shipper. This got picked up everywhere. Ironically, I don’t watch Fox News except on the rare occasion. I prefer the Internet for my news. But holy cow did the political nuts come out of the woodwork for that. I instantly became a “Neocon”.  I never realized that ones choice of shipper was so crucial.

The book

I never thought I’d get to write books that would be published in an actual store. This year, I have the opportunity. But it’s a lot harder than I thought. I have a new respect for good writers. I salute you.