blegh monday

Still trying to figure out what to use the blog for specifically, but I guess I will just keep it as my personal scrap book for the time being (so i can keep stream of conscious off of the Robotmartini.com website).

Monday was a blegh-fun day of problem solving and vacuum intellectualism (and biking).

Nice to see Dan Greene posting comics more regularly, and apparently having no issue with the server's FTP, but very little community action today, which is at the core of the company's biggest challenge / problem. We need to better define who we are, why people should be interested, and then find those people to interest them.

Each member of the staff comes from a different consumer group so disagreement has been boiling up. I think also we are having a clash between the concepts of identity and target audience. We make games as a company, so obviously game players are our audience, but we are not in the business to make just any game, or every game. We make sophisticated, well crafted, well arted, inexpensive games. And within that, we focus on thematic and aesthetic juxtaposition (naive but cynical, intellectual but absurd). We also try to innovate, utilizing unexpected materials (brikis / fold a men) where and when we can. We are a designer friendly company, promoting a designer community by leaving true ownership of each game's design in the hands of its creator -- even to sell to some one else if they want. We offer free games to download, and offer free modules to download for existing games.

But with all that definition, there are plenty of projects that are difficult to articulate why they do not become products to their creators. And this has become the core of recent concern: when a project is rejected by the ownership, even though 'mechanically' speaking, it works. When that is the case, when talking bout sushi projects (which are just black and white on card stock and cost very little money to make) the Design staff and the Executive staff butt heads. I think the Design staff understands most of what the executive staff's reasons, but unfortunately does not agree with it, and in a company as small as ours, active disagreement and defacto resentment can go a long way to derail everything.

todays output

Monday morning press checks
Set up chess with the doctor for tomorrow at noon
Biked over to BH, fed cats, biked back
post bike breakfasting of pancakes
Lounge update review (not publicly available)
Get Bit status confirmed (PO processed by Ken Lilly / CreatusMaximus LLC )
Reviewed the Submission Review sheets from sunday morning. thought I saw something that was fundamentally broken with jewel game, but after thinking it through it was not.
posted WMGN report
Illustration submission completed for faca (no image given per-rules)
did books
called GWG to set up Criminals blind test (answer pending)
dinner of pumpkin and bacon stir-fry (yum)
congratulations to Joe Quiones for His FACA win with Maris
Argument with board of directors over dynamics
back to work on Brikies submission

Saturday overload

Somewhat over loaded today. Odd considering it is Saturday...

Home depot to get garden supplies. Car smells like fertelizer. mowed the yard and had sex. Painting lower front foom two shades of blue, with an ornate pattern and logo running between each in a yin yang style. Still haven't replaced the camera (so you can't see it yet!) but this will improve in house lighting considerably. Working on some redesigns for the posting system on the robot martini website, specifically the community aspects. Announced Bento Black release. Look forward to some final play throughs of Criminals by Kory Heath. De-fle'd cats. reviewing newsletter contents for final aproval. writing submission guidlines for tomorrows project reviews. wishing i had more time (and tallent) for art. updated my profile. need to finish folding a fold-a-man action figure for Batline Fabutsu Bulani's birthday party tonight.

Post 01 :P

Hi,

My name is Gavin Schmitt. I am the president of Robot Martini Inc. (www.robotmartini.com) a small game company based in Maryland.

I have started a blog here, because our old blog is yoked to a dead email address, and I can not find the password anywhere. I will likely use this blog for cross posting from robotmartini.com

here's to another user name, and another password to remember! :)