Personal Productivity – Processing Information

One of the keys to making sure you are well organized is knowing where your “inboxes” are. These are the sources for all your action items. For me I have six: my notebook, my work e-mail, my home e-mail, our bug database at work, my physical home inbox, and it’s equivalent at work. The idea is that you process your inboxes throughout the day before moving on to “action items” from your TODO list. Identifying these sources and making sure you are reviewing them throughout the day gives people you interact with a sense of responsiveness.

My notebook is action items that I collect when I’m in meetings or when I’m walking around and think of something I need to do. I idea is, if it’s in your head, get it out of there and onto a piece of paper. Your mind always wants to process things. If you get it off your mind and onto a piece of paper, then your mind is free to think about more important things. I always process my notebook first. When I return to my office. I have found usually the most important action items will get placed in there and it usually best to take action on them immediately.

Another tip on giving people that sense of responsiveness is going ahead and doing an action item if it isn’t going to take that long while you are processing your inboxes. For example, a quick response to an e-mail. The general rule is that if it can be done in under two minutes, then do it now. Otherwise, it needs to either be added to a TODO list in order to get worked on later or archived somewhere so that it can be referenced later.

In future entries I will go into more detail on processing e-mail and how to store information so that it can be searchable later when you are looking for it.

Do you have a more efficient method or a process improvement? Add a comment below!

Personal Productivity

Besides games, one of my favorite subjects is personal productivity. I guess it’s probably just an extension of my need to make sure everything is organized. At work I’m constantly improving process in order to make sure we are working at peak efficiency. It’s my feeling that this should also extend to how you organize your personal information. David Allen author of Getting Things Done says, “There is usually an inverse proportion between how much something is on your mind and how much it’s getting done.” If you have all your “open loops” in order so that you can readily access them, then your mind is free to think about longer term actions. I know, for me, I sleep better at night knowing that everything I have to do is written down and in order.

So, over the next few weeks, I’m going to break up a series of posts into the following topics: Processing Information, The “Inbox Zero” Philosophy, Keeping a TODO list, Setting Up a Personal Wiki, and Effective Meetings. Hopefully you can find something in them that helps you in your job or the project you are working on. I’m always available for questions.

I will wrap up this post with some reference books that I’ve read over the years in order to refine my process. They are great reads (or views in case of the Randy Pausch video) and highly recommended. I will be referencing them in the future posts.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better by Gina Trapani
Time Management lecture by Randy Pausch

Hardware Upgrade through Unlock Code

Intel has made an interesting move lately by allowing a user to “upgrade” their computer by purchasing a product key which you enter into the BIOS and it will unlock hardware which is turned off by default. What that means is that the computer that the user bought is capable for more speed, but they’ve downgraded it.

I don’t know how to react to this. My initial reaction is outrage. How could they sell you something that is capable of more and force you to pay more to unlock it. Then I started to think more about it. It allows the customer to initially get into the new hardware at a lower cost and then the ease of upgrade is much easier. At least they aren’t doing something where the “upgrade” is only for a year and then it turns itself off.

This led me to gaming consoles. What would happen if Microsoft took this approach with the Xbox 360? In a way they do this already. While the Xbox 360 is network capable, you can’t play online unless you subscribe to Xbox LIVE. In a way, this is an upgrade, and it’s an annual cost.

So, perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing at all, but it still doesn’t sit with me well. It seems dirty somehow.

IGDA Presentation – Madden Ultimate Team Review

I had the pleasure to speak at the September IGDA meeting giving a development review of Madden Ultimate Team. I was fairly certain that the game community hadn’t heard of Madden Ultimate Team and it was a good chance to reflect on how the Free to Play model could be applied to a football game. I gave an overview of the game mode itself and talked a little bit about the development, how we were on a shortened schedule having to get it out by the end of the football season. Then gave an overview of the Free to Play model and how Madden Ultimate Team related to that. The bulk of the questions that I received after the talk were about the economy that we had created in Madden. I had explained how Madden Ultimate Team was a closed economy where we knew exactly the “gains” and “drains” were and we were able to regulate the amount of coins by controlling the amount the user gain and how many contracts a new card now has.

Overall, I’m looking forward to participating more with IGDA. Coming from Austin, where there is a large game community, I think we could do better here in Orlando. We need to come together and start building that entrepreneurial spirit here so that more companies will form or move to Orlando.

Right now IGDA is having a membership drive through October. If you aren’t a member and are in the Orlando area, go to the IGDA web site and join or re-new your membership. The chapter who has the most join (or re-new) over the next two months will receive a party with a game developing luminary. I know who, but can’t tell. All I can say is that it would be worth it.

Madden Gras

Had a great time at our media launch for Madden NFL 11, on Monday August 9th. It took place in New Orleans on the eve of the release of the game. We had a special VIP area which several PS3 kiosks running Madden on them. While I was playing a game I was impromptu interviewed by a local television station. I talked about our major feature, GameFlow, and answered a few other questions like who the highest rated team was in Madden.

Down below in the street, GameSpot had tents set up where people could get their first hands on Madden NFL 11. There was also a stage with a band playing. People were playing games trying to win Madden Gras t-shirts.

In the afternoon, it was my turn to get interviewed by our live USTREAM coverage of the event. There is a video of the recording and my part starts at 02:35:00. I gave a “shout out” to the server team back in Orlando who was still hard at work trying to make sure our servers wouldn’t melt down on launch night. I talked about various features on our server driven features and that was it. It went pretty quick, but I had a fun time doing it. Would love to start doing more media events like this in the future.

After a late lunch, the floats arrived and we got on board the last one in line. The football player guests we had, Marcus Allen, Deuce McAllister, and Marshall Faulk, were in the lead float. We rode on the float for several blocks, down Bourbon street, ending up in Jackson Square, where another huge stage had been constructed. The floats were loaded with boxes full of t-shirts, beads, cups, and koozies. We threw them out to the crowd as we rode down the parade route. It was awesome. Phillip Holt, the General Manager for EA – Tiburon said it best, “Riding a float and throwing beads down Bourbon Street needs to make your bucket list.”

Nearing the Finish Line

The past three months have been exhausting. This has probably been the most I’ve ever worked between shipping Madden Ultimate Team in January and now Madden NFL 11 in August. The last two weeks have been a lot of overtime making sure the servers are ready for the tens-of-thousands of people who are going to be playing Madden NFL 11 at the same time this up coming week.

If you haven’t tried it yet, pick up the Madden NFL 11 Demo available on PS3 and Xbox 360. Me and a team of two engineers took the existing game and paired down the features from the retail game. It’s the first time we’ve started worked on the demo before submitting the main game to Sony and Microsoft. It’s also the first time we’ve done something other than: two teams and 1 minute quarters. This will give you a flavor of what the retail game is going to be like if you can’t wait until Tuesday.

This weekend I will be heading to New Orleans for the media launch of Madden NFL 11. They are called it “Madden Gras” and it’s open to the public. So, if you are down in New Orleans on Monday. Head down to Fulton Square 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. for some music, food, and of course some Madden football. Then there will be a parade down Bourbon Street at 7:00 p.m. The event will be on USTREAM and I will be on there talking about Madden Ultimate Team.

On Tuesday, I will be flying back and heading directly to the office to help out our Launch Team to make sure our servers are still up and running on the day of release. We monitor them very closely for the first month, but the first night and first weekend are usually the busiest.

So, it’s not over yet, but I can definitely see the finish line.

Hope everyone enjoys Madden NFL 11.

First Orlando IGDA Meeting

With the development of Madden NFL 11 winding down, I felt it was time to get back to one of my promises to myself: get more active in the game development community. Right when I got back to Orlando, I e-mailed the IGDA Chapter Leader, Dustin Clingman, and found out that there was an active chapter and they met monthly. I signed up to get notifications of when the meetings were, but got caught up in shipping Madden Ultimate Team and then Madden.

Dustin was the speaker for the meeting doing a talk on “Creative Responsibility”, driving yourself and the people who you work around you to do their best and not accepting anything less. I could tell it was a personal subject for Dustin and it was geared more towards veterans of the game industry. The meetings are about 75% students and 25% game industry, which is pretty indicative of the Orlando game community. The questions at the end his talk from the students tended to be more “how can I get better?” or “how can I show people in the industry my creativity?” Unless you’ve shipped a game and worked with a group of people, you probably couldn’t get the gist of what he was talking about. I enjoyed the speech and as a driver of quality in our games, I constantly have to evaluate other people’s work. While Madden and NCAA Football are at the top of our industry, I feel we could always do better and we make compromises in quality when it’s not necessary.

I had a good time overall, meeting a few other people in the game industry and a lot of students trying to break in. I’m looking forward to next month’s meeting.

Switching to Android

I’ve always been an early adopter of technology. I have about six months left in my AT&T mobile phone two-year commitment and I will probably be switching carriers. I intentionally didn’t pre-order the new iPhone 4 and I will be switching to an Android based phone once my contract is up.

The main reason: I can’t stand Apple products. Their interface isn’t intuitive to me. Maybe it’s my long term use of Microsoft products. Let’s take iTunes as an example. I’m constantly fighting with that program and it never does what I expect it to. With the resent upgrade to iOS 4, I couldn’t figure out how to create a new folder. I was looking for the “New Folder” button. I had to find out from someone else that the way to create a folder is to drag another icon onto another. Their products are just not intuitive to me.

Another reason is that I have to buy a Macintosh computer if I want to write a program for the phone. Now that I mainly manage people and my job doesn’t include computer programming, I have to scratch that particular itch at home. With an iPhone, the requirement of only being able to create Apps on Macintosh is not practical. With the switch to Android, all I need to do is learn Java and the Android API and I can put self-authored applications right on the phone. This isn’t possible with the closed iPhone even if I did have a Macintosh. Well, I’ve already started plodding my way through a Java book looking at the differences between that language and C++.

Anyway, good luck to all the iPhone users out there. Don’t forget to hold your iPhone properly so that you don’t have any dropped calls.

Reflections on Finaling

Finaling a video game is always tough work. A lot of late hours and a lot of pressure as the deadline looms it’s ugly head. Right now I’m wrapping up Madden NFL 11, where I’m the Development Director for our features that are server dependent. For example, Online Franchise or Madden Ultimate Team from Madden NFL 10, which are game modes which are completely dependent on our game servers. If the servers are down, you don’t play those game modes. All the features that I worked on aren’t announced yet, so I can’t go into the details on what’s new for Madden NFL 11.

This is the seventh game I’ve finaled at Electronic Arts – Tiburon (if you don’t include Madden Ultimate Team) and I do have to say that this has been the smoothest one so far. Now, I have been working until 8 p.m. – 10:30 p.m. for the past four weeks, but that’s not near as bad as some projects where I’ve greeted the sunrise on many an occasion. In fact, that’s one of my metrics for how bad a finaling went: number of sunrises seen. (Worst was Madden NFL 2006 Xbox 360. It was the launch title for the 360 and I saw at least 5 – 6 sunrises).

One of the things I like about working at Tiburon is that we are always striving to improve the processes by which we make games. Sometime is doesn’t happen as fast as people would like, but I see the effort. I can say that the way we make video games now is a lot different than it was on Madden NFL 2002 PC. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to move from programmer to manager was to be part of the improvement.

Now we are seeing the rise of companies like Zynga and EA-Playfish. Who have a new casual take on gaming which is turning traditional game development on its heels. It’s similar to how we developed Madden Ultimate Team. A small team that was brought together to bring a new gaming experience to Madden. With this new take on gaming, comes smaller compact games, which are constantly being updated and not just once a year. It’s an interesting time to be in the game industry.