The Best Links of 2023

Hi friends,

Happy New Year, and greetings from Utrecht.

As you might know, there are two versions of my newsletter: the one hosted here on LinkedIn, and the one I send out myself.

In the self-distributed version, I add a handful of links each week to the things that caught my attention.

These can be related to the games industry and running a business, but just as often they are related to other interests, fascinations and frustrations of mine.

Below is the list of the links that my readers clicked the most, roughly divided by subject.

Things I made

FIRM: FIRM is a management framework for indies. It's decades of business best practices condensed to the smallest possible operating system for a creative business. And it's 100% free. You can also watch my talk on the framework (by way of Pokemon) presented at Reboot 2023.

Next Level Performance Assessment: This self-assessment lets you grade yourself and your company on the three dimensions you need to get a grip on to thrive: strategy, management and self-leadership. It takes about 3 minutes, and includes a full report with actionable next steps.

The Missing Leadership Element: talk "The Missing Leadership Element: Why Self-Awareness is Crucial", originally presented at Reboot 2022, and recorded for Nordic Game 2023. You can also check out the slides.

Things I wrote

Improving company focus with Rocks: A quick guide to Rocks (quarterly priorities, similar to OKRs), and how to use them in your company to improve focus, alignment and accountability.

How to have better meetings: A brief guide to improving your company's approach to meetings. Pairs well with my essays on the perfect weekly meeting, and the perfect annual meeting (quarterly meeting essay coming before the end of 2024Q1)

Solving issues the easy way: Another tool I use with most of my clients, here I explain how to use Issue Lists to get rid of lingering company issues for good.

Why and how to use a company scorecard: A practical guide to setting up a scorecard for your company, giving you a weekly snapshot of your company's health.

Mission, vision, values: One of my first essays, describing Jim Collin's framework for setting your company's mission, vision and values. Includes an exercise for setting your own.

Pitching, Publishing & Fundraising

Rami's Pitch Deck:?There are at least a dozen pitch deck templates out there, but we hadn’t seen Rami’s take on it yet. Well worth checking out if you’re planning to do any pitching in the near future.

2023 Game Publisher Guide:?Don’t think I’ve shared this year’s version yet, and I’m sure it’ll be useful to many of you: Powell Group’s big ol’ publisher list, updated for 2023. Go get those publishers!

The end of cheap money for games:?An on the topic of the changing VC landscape in the past year, from F4 fund founder (try saying that 10 times in a row) David Kaye.

The Promise and The Proven:?In this essay,?Kim Nordstr?m?explains the tension in pitch decks between “the promise” and “the proven”. Basically, he cautions teams to make sure that what they promise is in balance with the arguments that support that vision. Can you support the vision you’re outlining with any arguments or data points that make it believable, such as team experience or game KPIs that provide a strong basis? This is a great mental model to lay over your pitch deck to see if you’re overpromising or not.

(Game) business management

A P&L tool for indies:?Following Unity's news, industry friend and consultant?Casey Al-kaisy?was quick to share his P&L template to help indies figure out how much making a game will actually cost them. Will be updated as more details around Unity's plans emerge.

Adapting your leadership style:?In this HBR essay, former VP of Product Design at Facebook Julie Zhuo shares her experience of navigating the contrasting challenges of managing small and large teams. Insightful read for managers with (rapidly) growing teams.

Game design

Famous game design documents:?Found through Nathan Brown, this Twitter thread links to the original game design documents of some famous games, including Diablo, Prince of Persia, and GTA.

Psychonauts 2 dev documentary:?I completely missed this when it launched, but thanks to Jason Schreier I learned that Double Fine released a 32-episode, 22-hour documentary detailing the development of?Psychonauts 2

GDC Vault business videos

Small Teams, Big Dreams: How to Build a Small Team to Do Great Things: In this 2015 GDC talk, HandCircus' Simon Oliver delivers practical advice on how smaller game development teams can make the most with limited resources to make the best games possible.

Advanced Entrepreneurship: Avoiding Total Studio Disaster: In this 2017 GDC talk, Execution Labs' Jason Della Rocca discusses how game developers can be better entrepreneurs in order to build a successful smaller studio.

Intensely Practical Tips for Growing an Indie Studio: In this 2018 GDC session, Weather Factory's Alexis Kennedy presents a talk about the lessons learned building Failbetter Games, and the lessons taken into a second studio founding, focusing on war stories and practical advice.

Game Studio Leadership: You Can Do It: In this 2017 GDC session, Schell Games founder Jesse Schell presents simple principles of game studio leadership that can help anyone become a better leader, no matter how big or small the team.

A Crash Course in Business and Leadership for Indie Game CEO's and GM's: In this 2017 GDC session, industry veteran Don Daglow covers the most critical issues that face newly-minted indie development leaders: managing money, key people issues, and keys to finishing what you start.

Game Studio Management: Making It Great: In this 2015 GDC talk, Schell Games' Jesse Schell shares six concrete methods he has found to keep a studio happy, healthy and producing great games.

Studio Design: Building a Foundation for Success and Avoiding Business Disaster: In this GDC 2019 session, Execution Labs’ Jason Della Rocca explores the fundamentals of business design so games and studios are set up for success from day one.

Or, try the playlist of all the videos here.

Palestine

Look, I realize that chucking this subject in with the rest of these links is a little schizophrenic. But looking away won't change what is happening, or make it any less atrocious, and these links were clicked a lot. So rather than self-censor, I'm just leaving these here for you to read, or not.

The Games Industry Must Not Stay Silent on Palestine: If you, like me, have been told that the situation in Gaza is "complex", and you feel like you don't know enough to form an opinion,?Rami Ismail,?Tamoor Hussain,?Rasheed Abueideh?and?People Make Games'?Chris Bratt?have got you covered in this video. It's somehow age restricted, but I promise you that all the footage has been sanitized. In the video, Rami, Tamoor and Rasheed give vital context to the situation, and are asking the game dev community to use its combined platform to create more awareness.

Israel's apartheid against Palestinians: An Amnesty report concerning the system of apartheid perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian population.

Gaza is running out of time: the UN released this statement on November 2nd, demanding an immediate ceasefire to prevent an impending genocide. No such (lasting) ceasefire was implemented, so you can imagine where we currently stand.

Miscelaneous

An Assassin's Creed world tour:?I thought this was pretty cool. An Assassin's Creed fan visited AC locations all over the world during his summer vacation, taking comparative pictures. Also check out?part 2,?part 3,?part 4?and?part 5.

Organize your doom pile:?OK, this one's more for myself than anyone else, although I'm sure some of you have similar piles. My doom pile is currently sitting at a cool 500 to-do items, ranging from project ideas to saved articles. I'm gonna do a first round of culling on Friday, and will let you know where I end up in the next BWB.

There Is No Self:?Very interesting article I found via?Wouter van Noort?on linkedin. Contrary to Western philosophy, Eastern philosophy posits that the self we identify with is just an illusion, a byproduct. There is now (Western) research that supports this, and I’m hopeful that this will lead to increased support for and research into practices like mindfulness and meditation in time.

In defense of the unoptimized life:?Another essay that goes against the grain of the productivity discourse. In this one, Evan Armstrong argues that overoptimizing on productivity means lowering your capacity to be inspired, and to follow that inspiration. Much better to leave some wiggle room, and see where inspiration will take you.

The Ultimate Annual Review:?If you want to get started on your own annual review, this is an excellent starting point. Steve Schlafman has put together a list of topics and questions that will help you get "a holistic perspective on where you've been and where you want to go". It's not too late to make a plan for 2024.

See you in two weeks!

Martijn

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