Defiance at E3!

So, E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) has come and gone, and with it the first time Defiance had a hands-on playable demo of our game.  A large part of my time since joining the Defiance team has been helping to get the demo ready for E3 and making sure everything ran smoothly.  Which it did!  The hard work paid off and the show went extremely well with no problems.

And people were very excited to see the game and run around in it for the first time (or drive, on our personal ATVs which are a lot of fun and handle brilliantly).  We also had an exciting new trailer that mixes up footage from the TV show with footage of the game and really highlights the close cross-overs between the two.  Here's a link: 

What I love most about this trailer is the times you aren't quite sure for a moment whether you're looking at the game, or the live actors.  In particular, check out the real and game versions of Nolan, one of the show's main characters who is played by Grant Bowler.  Obviously, the character will appear in both and is just one of the many ways that the show and game will tie together.  I can't talk about any details that haven't already been made public, but I've been very excited to help out with all this planning and I hope it turns out as enjoyable as we intend!

Photo from E3 of the actor Grant Nolan playing the game he appears in - how cool is this?

Here's a G4TV  interview with Bowler himself from the E3 floor:
http://www.g4tv.com/videos/59104/defiances-grant-bowler-floor-report-e3-2012-live/

Gamespy awarded us the "Best MMORPG" award at E3: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/dishonored/1225010p1.html

Game Informer's review: http://www.gameinformer.com/games/defiance/b/xbox360/archive/2012/06/06/a-massively-multiplayer-sci-fi-shooting-gallery.aspx

The Escapist's review, with a nice selection of screenshots: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/previews/9719-E3-Preview-Defiance

Check out this photo of a bunch of the award nominations that were displayed in the booth during the show (this was part way through the day, not sure if this is a complete collection yet):

And if you can't get enough, a whole bunch more links are posted on the Defiance community forums which do exist, although in a very limited state as yet.  Those forums will be expanding over time as our launch date approaches, of course, so keep watching!

We've already got two fan sites I've seen so far, the Defiance Wiki and Defiance Junkies.  It's great to see our future players are as excited as we are.

Keep watching the official site and follow Defiance on Facebook and @DefianceMMO on Twitter to keep up to date with the very latest news!  And I hope we'll be seeing you on the forums soon, and in game in April. =)

Work habits

There's a very good commencement speech by Neil Gaiman here:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/05/trust-me-im-doctor-honorary-of-fine.html

The whole thing is good, but this part particularly caught my attention:

You get work however you get work.  But people keep working ... because their work is good, and because they're easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time; and you don't even need all three.  Two out of three is fine.  People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time.  People will forgive the lateness of your work if it's good and they like you.  And you don't have to be as good as everyone else if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you.

I try to aim for all three; goodness knows I make enough mistakes at times that I can't afford to ignore one and trust I'll always be perfect on the other two.  If I aim for three and don't always succeed in all three, hopefully I still succeed in two at least.  But the recent layoffs in the game industry reminded me that the point about other mistakes being more tolerated if it's always a pleasure to hear from you is a particularly good one.  I've seen enough layoffs in this industry as well as my previous to realize that you never know when you'll be relying on the opinions of former co-workers to decide whether you get a job or you don't.  I know I've watched some highly skilled people interview for positions they're quite qualified for, only to not get a job offer because too many people said they were unpleasant, or difficult to work with, or unreliable.  All the brilliance in the world isn't enough alone when you work on a team.

A little while ago I randomly asked Twitter: "If you made a list of most important work habits/lessons you wish everybody in your workplace had learned, what would top your list?"

Here are the replies I got:

• Hygiene >.<
• Get away from your office for an hour-long lunch.
• Being able to think on your own when given initial direction. Being fluent in English is nice too.
• Work ethic. People at my current job have this. Previous ones...
• Take ownership of your mistakes. Don't be afraid to admit that you're wrong, and learn from mistakes. Propose solutions.
• Top of my list is a split between attention to detail & follow through, too many people drop the ball and don't follow up on things
• Remember your fellow co-workers are humans, not automatons. Communicate with and treat them accordingly.
• Thinking back to my retail days.... use logic and common sense.
• Listen before reacting.
• Baking
• Document your changes!
• Punctuality! It is disrespectful to everyone in that you can't be bothered to show up on time (repeat offenders, that is).
• Independent time prioritization. :)

All good ones!  I was thinking over these and others last month when I went to talk to kids at a local high school's career day.  If all those kids went into their first job knowing all the above, boy, there would be nothing stopping their advancement.  It's a shame some of these things take so long to learn; and some people never do learn them.  I know I still have a lot to learn and I hate to look back to all the mistakes I made when I actually did start my first real job way back in the 90s. If I had to make my own wish list I'd look for when hiring someone, I think it would be:

• Reliability (be that person who will ALWAYS deliver what they promise, when they promise it)
• Follow-up (pro-actively clearing away problems and making sure no details get lost)
• Attitude (I don't care how brilliant you are if you're a negative, sarcastic, backstabbing drama seeker)

Sadly, these aren't things it's easy to teach, and certainly not things that can be communicated in one short job fair.  Those kids are going to have to learn these things themselves the hard way, but I guess that's sometimes how the hardest lessons are learned.  Good luck to them!