Game Developers -- Call

[Sivakatirswami]

Andre, we appreciate your "defense"  and it's true we could always be 
more polite, But e-mail has this problem of being faceless. I'm sure 
Rick would have told me this face to face with a big smile on his face 
and all the good "heart" intentions of being helpful, making sure my 
feet were on the ground.

I'm 100% with Rick on this one.

"Sometimes being nice and politically correct all the time fails to make 
the point."

He's right... I did not take his post at all badly. Our spiritual master 
once said:

"If you want to be a ballet dancer you to go the best teacher, if he 
tells you your style is off, your left leg is weak, you don't eat right, 
you need to work on the bar for a couple of weeks to stretch out before 
I'll even let you start dancing... etc" it's tough medicine, but that  
is  what you came to him for in the first place.

So having Rick's "strong medicine - balancing insights" on our initial 
presentation I take to be VERY helpful. Sure, he could have wasted a 
half an hour and tried to sugar coat the pill; but then, like he says, I 
might have missed the point. When people disagree, it takes a little 
courage just to accept the other person's point of view, not take it 
personally, and let the conversation "roll on."

All is well.  It is a perfect universe.

Thanks
Sivakatirswami

Rick Harrison wrote:
>
> On Jul 15, 2006, at 12:44 PM, Andre Garzia wrote:
>
>> Rick,
>>
>> it is not about flames, many times here, I was replying to some one 
>> pointing them on some very different direction than the one their 
>> we're going and yet, we can always be nice. Be honest is one thing, 
>> but you can always write your email in a more polite way. You don't 
>> call other peoples projects and ideas joke on public lists just 
>> because you fell that they are a joke.  Or if you want to call it 
>> that way, you send it as a private email.
>
> Andre,
>
> I was not referring to you or your comments personally at all.
>
> Sometimes being nice and politically correct all the time fails to 
> make the point.
>
> What caught my attention was that someone was asking for the Moon and 
> the Stars,
> and offering to pay very little in return for those qualifications.
>
> I said nothing about their idea, or project being a joke.  I was 
> discussing their
> extraordinarily high expectations of the quality of candidate they 
> were looking to get
> for the little money they were willing to pay.
>
> It is also a bit of a long shot to ask for all of those 
> qualifications, lack of pay, and
> also to have an interest in Hindu ideology.  An extremely tall order 
> for most people.
>
> I didn't send it as a private email because there are a few on this 
> list who could use
> a reminder about how much one should expect in the way of 
> qualifications when
> paying for programming services.  You could have responded to me 
> privately as well.
> I know you have my email address.  Any future responses you can please 
> direct to me
> offline.
>
>>
>> I am working for the Kauai Hindu Monastery, I am sure many on this 
>> list would not have accepted the same contract I did accept but I am 
>> having the best moment of my life working with them. Its a very 
>> inspiring thing to see your work actually helping people out there, 
>> not only making money but actually making people live better. I am 
>> not saying that you were wrong but that there are multiple ways of 
>> looking into something, no one holds all the truth in their hands.
>>
>
> It's nice of you to donate your work to a cause you believe in, if you 
> like working for little or no pay that is your business.
>
> However, if you are charging below market rates, remember that you are 
> potentially dragging down the rest of us
> who still need to eat and keep a roof over our heads.  Places like 
> Froogle, eBay, and eLance are actually dragging down
> profit margins worldwide.  As a friend of mine put it, "eBay is a 
> place where buyers are looking for stupid sellers, and sellers
> are looking for stupid buyers".  The whole world economy is based on 
> ignorance of prices and the true value of products or services.
> Now that everyone in the world can go to Froogle to find the best 
> price for any item, it drags everyone else trying to sell that
> same item down to that lowest price, the result is that profit margins 
> are disappearing.  When profit margins get too low it
> for a product it is no longer worth making or selling that product.
>
> Here is another example, there is a friend of mine who already has a 
> full-time job working for a company.   Since he is doing this
> his other business on the side, he wants to help people out from the 
> good of his heart and charges only 1/5th the market price
> per hour for the same job.  He isn't concerned at all for himself 
> because he has his other job keeping him afloat, but he is
> damaging all the similar businesses in this area.  His unfair 
> competition is putting them out of business!  He isn't considering
> the damage he is doing to his own local economy by charging prices way 
> below market value.  (But I digress.)
>
> I never claimed to hold all the truth in my hands.  Of course you 
> don't qualify for that either, so that statement is a wash.
>
>> I am sure you're talking honest and that many will think just like 
>> you and that is not wrong but someone on this list might want to 
>> enter such project not all for the money but for something else too 
>> and then a very nice game might emerge, I'd give all my help to see 
>> such project fruit.
>
> Like I said, if you want to just give your talent away for free that 
> is your business.  I actually have several very heavy projects of
> great value that could use your free time and efforts which would make 
> you feel just fantastic because you'd be helping out the
> world!
>
>>
>> I've seen more than one small-no-budget-for-you project rise and get 
>> the big bucks, this happened because the people who worked on it were 
>> passionate about it and then reward came. Remember it's a game about 
>> Hindu concepts, Hinduism has a very huge following and it also may 
>> appeals to other crowds such as new age people or if the game is fun 
>> enough, to gamers in general. Knowing the works of the monks in 
>> Kauai, their magazines and books and how far they can reach, knowing 
>> that computers and games are very popular in asia and in america 
>> (where you have many many Hindus), I am sure such project could soar.
>
> I've seen a lot of shareware and small no budget projects go 
> completely to waste, and never earn any money to speak of.  The big 
> bucks ones
> are usually the rare exceptions.  I was not referring to the subject 
> matter of their game at all in my comments, just candidate 
> expectations and pay.
>
> Perhaps I've just seen too many examples of programmers who took a lot 
> of abuse from managers that they never should have in the past and that
> has colored my view of the programming world.  I've met more people in 
> my line of work who think that programmers should just give them hours 
> and hours of blood, sweat, and tears without ever compensating them 
> properly.  There are also a lot of managers that have never programmed 
> one line of code, but yet believe that code should just magically 
> appear in front of them after 2 minutes of programming time has 
> elapsed.  They suffer from the "Is it done yet?" syndrome.  I've met 
> others who think that because you work with computers, it means that 
> you must therefore know everything there is to know about all 
> computers, and all software programs that exist in the entire world.
>
> I really believe in the hard work that programmers do with Revolution 
> and other computer languages.  I also believe strongly that they 
> should be
> adequately compensated for their efforts with at least fair market 
> value pay for their respective areas of the world.  Programming 
> authors who have written
> 20 games know all about Versiontracker, Tucows, and other distribution 
> points for their software.  They are probably so successful at that level
> that it would be highly unlikely for them to want to work on a game 
> which promises little pay for their efforts.
>
> Oh, and just to state some of my other beliefs a little more clearly, 
> Music is not free just because one can download it and duplicate it.
> Likewise software is not free just because one can download it and 
> duplicate it.  These things are only free if the author or creator
> of the work states specifically that the work is free.  Otherwise, you 
> must pay for these creations.
>
>>
>> Don't mistake them for amateurs, they were coding and doing computer 
>> projects and dtp since a very long time. They may be naive about game 
>> markets, but if they trully want to make this game, I am sure it will 
>> reach far.
>
> I was trying to get them to pull back on their extra high 
> expectations.  Anyone who has 20 games out on the market with all of 
> the rest of the
> qualifications listed will not work for them for peanuts.  I was not 
> trying to discourage them on their project.
>
>>
>> PS: ... the side effect of working with Monks who are also a 
>> publishing house is that you learn much, not only talking to them but 
>> reading them, nothing beats walking besides Sivakatirswami listening 
>> him explaining what is karma!
>>
>> Cheers
>> Andre
>
> Please contact me off list for any further comments.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rick
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 14, 2006, at 7:47 PM, Rick Harrison wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry, I couldn't sound nicer about this.  I'm sure I'll get flamed 
>>> for just trying to be honest.
>>
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