Garry: "YAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH IT'S HIM!!!!! AGAIN!!!! OMFGWTF!!!???? What does he want? Is he going to inundate me with insanity or at least attempt to be positive?"
Me: "Most likely both!"
Unsolicitations? Unsolicited advice (admit it, you missed it!) and felicitations :)
Ok....
Why?
Either the Illuminati have upped the PCP and LSD they're surreptitiously slipping me in my water supply or I'm just in a really upbeat positive mood, the best in quite some time.
.....I have learned an immense amount reading your blogs and your tweets over the years. YOUR unsolicited advice to everyone else :) ....and I am grateful for that. Most importantly I learned you can be a nobody and become a somebody, reasonably quickly, doing something you love, and something of value, even in the UK of the 21st century. You're doing what I have dreamed of since I was about 10, and inspire me not to give up. Not to surrender, no matter how hard it gets. Perhaps I can be helpful in return. Perhaps I can get more ideas to profit from myself....
If I throw 30 things at you and you already know, or find ridiculous, 90% of them, then at least 3 of them will stick :)
Do you want to be Carmack or Newell? For many reasons I would choose Newell.
Here goes....
Firstly.....motivated employees....
Have you considered:
- Stock options? Example; divide Facepunch into 1000 shares, now. Maybe 10,000. The ownership stays exactly the same apart from giving the equivalent, maybe as an "Xmas present" cough cough unconditionally to each employee (11 of you, right?). Now they are invested in your company. Share prices can go up or down - it's in their interests for FPS to do well. They don't have to wait for bonus time, assuming they earned it, if they want to sell 1 of their 2 or 3 or 4 or 20 shares right now, then so be it. Do not part with more than a few % of the total equity at this stage. The bonuses you mentioned a while ago will just be one motivator then....was Microsoft wrong in pursuing stock options in the 80's?
This could also pave the way to thinking about eventual public listing of FPS, by understanding it's value. Do you even know how much Facepunch is actually worth, right now?
-
Private health perks? Let's face it the NHS is a particularly unfunny joke at the expense of British people, especially the poor and middle classes. Can it be reformed directly? No, most unlikely. Can it be fixed indirectly? Yes, by encouraging the proliferation of as much private cover as possible. They will be forced to compete or become irrelevant if private becomes open to everyone. It will be an organic process. Additionally, it's yet another reward for being an employee of FPS. The catch? You make the recruiting process a bit more rigorous. "It's not easy getting to work for Garry Newman, but if you convince him you're worth opening the door, you get well taken care of.....and if you apply yourself properly and consistently you get showered with riches". They win; you win.
-
Throwing a company car at Craig? Maybe he has one already. Maybe he can afford 40. The point is; people get perks for being exceptional or having exceptional responsibilities. As office MANAGER, he qualifies. No I don't secretly work for him. Who else? Team Leaders? Are there currently any programming leads? I guess there's not enough staff so far.....when will there be?
You attract and RETAIN talent.
Second; Hezzy
lol.
Hmmmmmm.....
Bring him back. Enough said.
Actually no.......he is a popular figure. In addition to being half-way competent, an unusual trait in the UK of 2013. Also, he is loyal.....
.......I don't know the full story behind the Minecraft subforum debacle, but, during, "The Great Insanity of 2008/9" he defended you to me by email. He could have done a VNL and just ignored me, or only defended you in public, he chose to come to your defence in his own time with no witnesses for him to profit from.
Don't pay him anything though.... :>
At least not yet.
Third; "there will never be an XBox version of GMod"
How about a GMod Lite for XBox, Wii, PS3, nextgen, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Ouya, RPi, whatever?
Was Notch wrong to put a Minecraft on those different platforms? The numbers say no.
Maybe GMod Lite, maybe don't include the "Lite"....do you REALLY need a keyboard to play a massively scaled-back version of it?
Why bother? It advertises the PC version, FPS, the other games, AND it COULD offer some utility to existing players. Perhaps especially to server admins.....
.....I just spent a few minutes searching Google Play for "GMod" and "Garry's Mod". My reaction? "Meh :(" Tell me the situation is better for iOS? Now try search for "Minecraft" yourself, or connected stuff like, "Tekkit"....use the mobile platforms to leverage the PC GMod.
Fourth; installing GMod server seems too hard. Or at least compared to installing a Minecraft server. Or at least last time I checked several months ago. A monkey could install a basic Minecraft server literally in 10 seconds, it's so insanely easy.....
RUNNING a successful, sustainable, public server is fucking nightmarish enough as I discovered from my Minecraft server experiments, so don't make it any harder with unnecessary technical issues for GMod server admins....
Fifth; target weird platforms like Ouya and RPi a bit more?
Help 'em out and maybe grab a few more sales for Snabbo and Baby Bird Drop. How hard would porting them really be? Perhaps have someone or 2 whose job is to port stuff to as many platforms as possible?
Btw anymore iOS / Android tests like those on the horizon? Had a lot of fun with those 2; fun casual games :)
Sixth; integration between GMod and TWITCH!
They press a button, bang, all their little friends are watching their antics streamed live.
Seventh; you need to steal a load of Minecrafters in favour of GMod and Rust :>
How? Good question....
But there are 20m+ plus of them.
Is it impossible to introduce some of the physics of GMod into Rust?
....One of the key problems with GMod IMO (albeit a great game), was the limitation in map-sizes. Rust doesn't seem to suffer that....
Is there any scope for terrain deformation in Rust? It seems Starforge has somehow managed to accomplish the latter. It looks like a AAA title, in that it's not all blocks/voxels whatever, but you can alter the landscape....interesting....
Rust; you seem to have nailed that. Congrats :)
But again, how about some mobile stuff to accompany it?
Oh....how hard is modding for it? Is there an API/SDK? Maybe the approach taken by Cliffski with Democracy 3 is ideal in that regard. Seems a minimal amount of actual coding is required to mod D3 making it accessible to even more prospective content-producers.
Am I telling you what to do? NO!.....fucking NO-ONE tells Garry Newman what to do! It's just advice :) ....that may or may not help....do whatever you want with it :)
(I've been studying business and marketing, including this one, forever.)
I hope at least some of it is of some use.
PS feel free to throw a Rust key my way :> ....or better yet a bunch of Unity3D assets :P One day I'll get off my procrastinating ass and do something awesome with it :)
Anyway was nice monologuing again, l8r d00d.
😨