Raul Aliaga Diaz

It all started some time ago when, while a little bit reluctant, I opened a twitter account following the advice by @bbrathwaite on this post: Why Game Developers Should Get on Twitter.

Then I started to follow game developers, some fun people, peers from my university, among others. Sometime around the second semester of 2010, the amazing community manager of the IGDA, @CertainlySocial,  started to run the #gamejobs hashtag, and he has been running it quite professionally.

So I obviously kept a column on my twitter client, Tweetdeck, with the hashtag to look for opportunities. This was close to the time I was looking to take a leap to a job outside my home country. I did all my “homework”, with tasks such as having an updated Linked In profile, my own website, and engaging with several game developers online and offline in Chile, while watching for opportunities published on twitter and many other websites.

Until one day, I saw a tweet by @hilanneg, looking for people to work on social games. After exchanging a few messages and being truly open and honest about my background and aspirations, she arranged a meeting with people at an emerging company, Vostu. The first interview couldn’t be done because of conflicting agendas, and a second one was scheduled, but that one failed too. Then, after @hilanneg casted a “third time is a charm” spell, we finally had the interview!

Vostu has its HQ in New York, with offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. So the conversation was to explore the possibility of working at the Buenos Aires office, which was the easiest way to get all the paperwork done smoothly. After the first interview, I had a second one, and then after a few quick negotiations, an offer was made and I accepted it!, now I’m Senior Game Analyst-Designer at Vostu .

The whole process until acceptance took around 10 days in the middle of December. After that, it’s been a storm of things to do: closing my projects and duties in Chile, arranging things to move to Argentina, moving, etc. Upon my arrival I started to work immediately on the latest company game and after almost three months that passed faster than I’d like to believe, we’re live! The game is Megacity, a city building game for Orkut, designed specifically for Brazil.

And this actually happened. It works!. I don’t have enough words to thank Brenda for encouraging game developers to join twitter, Ryan for taming the wild world of social media to run #gamejobs, Hilary for connecting me with my current employers, and the people at @vostu for receiving me with open arms, helping me to relocate and to bring my best to my current job.

This post is to express gratitude to all of them, to share my “love story” and to encourage others to get the most of #gamejobs, #gamehires, and social media in general.

Thank you, to all of you, again. Yours truly, Raul .

P.S.: If you haven’t yet joined twitter and the game developers community on it, please also read another amazing story about #ims211.

I am changing the update of these links to a monthly edition from now, it seems better that way. You can check my feeds or shared items on google reader, twitter, delicious, etc. See you next month with more links .

Game Development

• Study: 90% Of U.S. ‘Tweens’ Playing Games Online, Industry Missing Opportunity [Gamasutra]. In the case you didn’t notice it.
• NCsoft sued for making Lineage II too darned addicting [Massively].
• Game Maker released for Mac [Edge].

Social Media

• From Mashable: 10 Tips For Aspiring Community Managers, 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web and 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now.

Marketing

• From Mashable too: 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media, Top 5 Mobile Advertising Trends To Watch.

Entrepreneurship

• Avoiding Momentum [Seth Godin's blog]. Your fears of feeling overwhelmed are probably groundless.
• 8 things I wish I knew before starting a business [VentureBeat]. You can learn some of these just by planning a party.
• Chop-Shop Workers and Bootstrappers: Chile Really Wants You [TechCrunch]. Curious.

Misc

• Fred Brooks is about to publish a new book.
• Sound enabled sorting algorithms.
• The trapped Chilean miners are alive!!! :’)

Game Development

• Spending on Experiences Instead of Possessions Results in More Satisfaction [Lifehacker]. I’m putting this one here because, well, game developers are creating experiences since a long time ago.
• Interview: ACE Team Spams Us With Python-Inspired Rock of Ages [Gamasutra]. Fellow Chilean game developers, check them out .
• Game Design Essentials: 20 Real-World Games [Gamasutra Feature Article]. Many “non video” games from which to draw useful game design lessons.

Social Media

• 3 Reasons Why CEOs Hate Social Media [Socialnomics]. Something to be aware of in case you need to perform a tough negotiation.
• From Mashable: How News Consumption is Shifting to the Personalized Social News Stream and Why Games Are the Killer App for Social Networks. Both may seem like old news to some people, but it’s worth to pay attention to these trends anyway, and to get insights in how to communicate them.
• An inspiring presentation: “What the F**k is Social Media NOW?”. My personal best takeaway from it: Listen to your audience, engage with them on a real and respectful fashion, have fun together.

Marketing

• Marketing 101, lessons learned on the battlefield [Score Studios' blog]. This can be on the game development section, since they develop iPhone games, but these are useful for other iPhones apps as well.
• 15 Design Tips to Learn From Apple [Design Shack]. Great insight into the details and design decisions that support the integrated experience Apple thrives to deliver.

Entrepreneurship

• Why Startup Founders Should Stop Reading Business Books [Software by Rob]. Basically, because those books were made to sell, not to give you the final checklist to achieve success.
• When NOT to Invest in Your Freelance Career [Freelance Switch]. Money won’t buy you the time it takes to do your own homework.
• 95 Strategies for Work/Life Balance When You Work From Home [Carol Roth's blog]. Pick whatever suits you and move on .
• Five Whys [Lessons Learned]. Simple and useful method to learn from mistakes at every level.
• How I Document my Business Model Hypotheses [Ash Maurya's blog]. Nice charts and simple ways to provide grounds for business hypotheses.

Misc

• Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. A free introductory programming book.
• Learn more about the social circle google knows about you.
• The Illustrated guide to a Ph.D.
• 15 Great Geeky Web Comic Strips.

Game Development

• Gamers beat algorithms at finding protein structures [Ars technica].
• Glitch Continues To Iron Out The Glitches, Beta Due Soon [TechCrunch]. I’m waiting for this.

Social Media

• From Mashable: How to perform successful social media monitoring, twitter mapping tools and some lessons to learn from Google Wave’s end. My personal take on Google Wave: Scalability issues. Finally, 5 tips for aspiring music bloggers -and actually for any blogger.
• A complete guide to Tumblr [SmashingMagazine], some reasons to quit Foursquare and Gowalla [Cavendo.com] and several resources for community managers [Clases de Periodismo](in Spanish, many links in English though).
• Twitter’s Number 1 Rule: Make your own rules [Tweet Smarter].

Marketing

• Several links on virality: it’s not just magic, from For Entrepreneurs, Success Online, 20bits and My Guest List.

Entrepreneurship

• Are you building a R&D lab or a business? [Mark Maunder's blog]. Good distinction to have in mind, specially for tech driven people.
• How to get good ideas for startups [Penelope Trunks's blog] and Tips for Creative Success from Pixar [Presentation Zen].
• Why We Need To Abolish Software Patents [TechCrunch].
• How to win money using copyleft [Manzana Mecánica, in Spanish]. Many links are in English.
• Six Steps for producing a web site [Six Revisions] and taking A/B Testings to the next level [Performable].

Misc

• Let’s stop the use of the word “obviously” and let’s think twice about what everybody knows [Lifehacker].
• A great presentation about HTML5, done in HTML5.
• The 30 Best iPhone Apps So Far This Year [TechCrunch].
• How the earth would look like if it stood still? [ESRI]. However, it seems that it doesn’t consider Earth’s Magnetic Field [Wikipedia].

It’s been a busy week:

Game Development

• Study: Virtual Goods Significantly Help Brand Awareness, Increase Purchase Intent [Worlds In Motion]. Branding by gameplay.
• Carcassonne on iPhone: $5 for a wonderful package [Ars Technica]. You need to at least know what this game is about. Also, it’s always useful to remember that Myst it’s available on the iPhone too.
• REJECTED! The MagicSteve story [Score Studios blog]. A truly funny story about an iPhone app that randomly quoted Steve.
• Analysis: Is The Game Industry A Happy Place? [Gamasutra]. Great article by @leighalexander, great discussion on the comments. Also check the discussion the article provoked on Slashdot.
• Evaluating Game Mechanics For Depth [Gamasutra Feature Article]. It’s been a while for a simple, useful and clearly written feature article on Gamasutra about game design. This one is worthy!
• Some thoughts about casual game design [Gamasutra Blog Article]. Same thing as above, but on the blogs section.

Social Media

• Beyond Social: Read/Write in The Era of Internet of Things [Read/Write Web]. It’s time to see what the possibilities for next waves are about. This article is somewhat related to this shorter one.
• Foursquare Google Maps Mashup [A VC]. I love mashups.
• Seis aspectos sobre Social Media que deben tener en cuenta los profesionales web [Pulso Social, Spanish]. It describes six aspects Social Media professionals should be aware about: Knowledge, Tools, Strategy, Conversation, Research and Metrics, providing resources for each one.
• Top 20 Sites to Improve Your Twitter Experience [Mashable]. That’s it. Very good ones.

Marketing

• 20 ejemplos de Marketing Guerrilla [Diego Mattei's Blog, Spanish]. Guerrilla Marketing examples, it doesn’t need to be English, you can check them anyway.
• Coke Happines Machine [Mashable]. Just brilliant. Check the video if you want to be amazed, read the article to learn how to work the magic .

Entrepreneurship

• Startups: Welcome to the lost decade [Venture Beat]. Some reflections about the current decade and entrepreneurship.
• Data-driven Startups [David Cancel's Blog]. Insightful and useful slides.
• Will Zynga Become the Google of Games? [NY Times].

Misc

• R in a nutshell [Slashdot]. Nice book review about a really useful and nice tool.
• Doit.Im: User Friendly Task Management Tool. Yet another one, always useful to check if anyone works .
• Course about using Circos [Circos website]. A circular network visualization tool I was planning to write about, but this one seems better .

See you next week!

This is my first post on a series I hope to write on a weekly basis: Last week’s interesting links. Meaning “what I’ve found interesting last week” .

Game Development

• Social Games Classification [Gamasutra blog post]: (A)Synchronicity and (A)Symmetry.
• Image Metrics Acquires Character-FX [Gamasutra]: You should always keep an eye on this company. Seriously.
• The real cost of marketing your game with Social Media [Gamasutra feature article]: An excellent article to extract a clear and focused strategy to develop a social media campaign beyond gaming.
• Free-to-play business model starting to generate a “geiser of money” for iPhone game makers[VentureBeat]: Remember when everyone thought microtransactions were destined to failed?

Social Media

• 5 Social Media Trends to watch right now [Mashable]: Location, Group Buying, Mobile Ads, Mobile Payments and Having a Social Media Policy.
• 10 Tips for Building Brand Communities [Open Forum]: Great tips for community management for brands.
• Foursquare’s Next Game: Choose Your Own Adventure? [Mashable]: Foursquare expanding it’s game-inspired features to grow even more.

Marketing

• MTV to develop Social Games based on Shows and characters [Mashable]: It’s not particularly “news”, but it would probably set a bar for media franchise development on the forefront of current trends: Social Media and Video games.
• 12 Clever Social Media-Friendly Business Cards [Mashable].
• Beyond Personal Brand to Character [Communication Overtones]: Too much focus on brand can hurt the image you’re proyecting if what inspired your personal branding efforts, your values, fade away.

Entrepreneurship

• Entrepreneur: You’re No Steve Jobs, so look before you leap [Techcrunch]: The title is self explanatory. Don’t believe that just because you behave like him you’ll end up having your own Apple.
• Founder personalities and the “first-class man” theory of management [Eric Cries' Lessons Learned]: An interesting article about some myths and research about the personalities of entrepreneurs.
• How to know if you are ready for entrepreneurship [About.com]: Health, focus, will, caring people around you, business network good and activated and years of savings.
• Freelancer Pricing, Business Terms and Effective Project Management [About.com]: Fees, negotiation and first meeting tips.

Misc

• 11 Essential Online Resources for Consultants [Mashable]: I was actually planning to write about something like this, the tool set for the freelance consultant , this one is pretty good though.
• Turning a To-Do List Into a Game [NYTimes]: I’d definitely play this.
• Clients from hell posts on Scope creep and Generation Shift.
• A couple of papers from an old classmate, always inspiring to read such things : Symmetric Submodular Function Minimization Under Hereditary Family Constraints and Matroid Secretary Problem in the Random Assignment Model.

See you next week!