Past and Present Collide
I’ve been away from the blog for a little while now. I published two posts just a day ago, but they were written at the end of January. That was a pretty rough time and publishing them got lost in the shuffle. Writing is important to me, and doing my best to keep current with my Quarterly Report posts at the very least is the best way to keep on a consistent schedule. However, 2017 hasn’t been the normal I’ve become accustomed to for the past few years. I’m not teaching. I am contracting, but it’s on-site and away from my home. It’s a past version of my life meeting with my current realities and creating a rather unusual melding of my life to this point.
- I’m working a 100% independent contract directly with Bluepoint. This is exactly how my contracts with smaller studios go, and how they’ve been with most of my New York work.
- I’m working on-site on a large scale video game project (more than a 10 person team). I haven’t done this since 2013. All my game work post Turbine has been off-site.
- I own a home in a large city on the east coast with my lovely girlfriend. This is part of my ‘present life’ as it were.
- I’m currently living in a two bedroom apartment in Austin, TX for my job with a roommate who I also work with. This is like Bend all over, or my past life.
- Austin has a lot of breweries and hip bars to check out. Like Bend.
- It’s also a big city, though not as big as Philadelphia.
This isn’t to say I’m not enjoying my time at Bluepoint. I don’t think I’ve been treated this well by any studio before. I’m really enjoying the project I’m working on, and Austin is a pretty great city I’m slowly seeing more of. This experience is also giving me a general sense of how I want to move forward from Bluepoint when my contract is up. It’s just fascinating to me to see how my past and my present have collided in my experience here.
Dreams
I never thought I’d get the opportunity to work in-house in a game studio again. Philadelphia hosts a very small community of indie devs. It’s a community I need to get involved in. Unfortunately, that community isn’t going to foster a lot of employment potential unless some of the developers hit on something huge, like ARK: Survival Evolved. Frankly, the teams I’ve kept track of in Philadelphia don’t have the manpower or cash to pull that off anytime soon. ARK is a huge game with lots of server side technology required. Plus, even that team is finding ways to get their community to create content for them. I knew that I’d have to adjust to my reality and dreams after a few months in Philadelphia.
What’s great about dreams however is that you can change them. You can realign them with your reality. That doesn’t mean give up, it means find a way to make it happen within reality’s terms. You can also discover old dreams that you had forgotten. That is what happened after my move to Philly. After a time of adjusting to life, starting teaching, and taking contracts, I reached out to someone who I’d consider a friend now on Twitter about a gig in New York. That is what lead me to working with Psyop, and crashing in New York for a few weeks. Psyop lead me to VaynerMedia, and a temporary two month assignment there. I never did the math fully until I was here in Austin for a few weeks, but that was a dream of mine too.
At Tri-Central, my high school, every senior class would take a week long trip to Washington DC and then to New York City. I went on mine and had a good time in DC. But when we got up to New York and I could see the skyscrapers from the bus while No Leaf Clover was playing, I was astounded by the beauty of this man-made living organism that stretched to the sky. Indianapolis is a city, New York is a living being. Once we got into the city and were able to roam semi-freely, I was blown away by the variety of people there were. Not just based on race or what not, but also the way they dressed and acted! I even saw a real life cartoon pimp in Chinatown. The feeling of awe in New York couldn’t be beat.
Fast Forwarding 12 years to now, I realized that I accomplished a dream of mine last year. I just didn’t know it. I lived and worked in New York City. I got to experience walking around Brooklyn, checking out a few great breweries, seeing some exclusive bars in the East Village, Working on Madison Ave, and walking by the Empire State Building on a daily basis. When you’re in the moment and doing the work it’s easy to loose sight of what you’re living. If you take a second, breathe deep, and open your eyes, you might just realize you’re living one of your dreams.
And yes, I’m living another dream right now. In a few more months, I’ll be living a different one too.
Business Quick Hits
I will be saving most of my business thoughts for a First Half report that I’ll write at the end of July. While June is the half way mark for the year, my 2017 will be defined by the time I was working in Texas, and the time I wasn’t. It’s just easier that way. I do have some things I’d like to share since I missed my Q1 Quarterly Blog.
- I’m shelling out $1600 a month for rent and my rental car. It’s not cheap and has hit my profits a little bit. However, I’m still profitable.
- An additional hit to my profits has been a mix of paying all my taxes (I paid what I was suppose to for my quarterlies for once) and my travel expenses (some were unexpected) roughly every month or so.
- I actually think the cost of a bachelor party I went to exceeded what I expected. Oops.
- I’m not using my normal tracking tools. Instead I’m sticking with what Bluepoint uses to track their tasks and what not, as well as their invoice template. I’m pretty happy with all of it, but I am looking forward to getting back on the Trello bandwagon.
- I’m working on making more connections for future remote work in the fall. Still too early to really do more than meet people and show my face multiple times at events. Everyone I’ve met though happens to be super awesome.
What’s next after this?
When I finish up at Bluepoint, I’ll be making a trek to Indiana for a few days to visit my family and pick up some junk from my house. I have a painting from my grandfather to get as well as some old game systems and other trinkets. Then it’ll be a long 12 hour trek to Philly.
I hope to be teaching three classes in the fall and getting back to regular contributions on the GameTextures blog page. I will be accepting contracts, but the load of contracts will be key. I’ll be looking for a balance between the value of the contract and my time commitment. Why? I’m looking to build something.
I’ve had some big ideas before that have fizzled out (Project NONA, Kitchen Asset Kit). I’m tired of that being the case. When I leave Austin, I’ll have some lightly beefed up savings and no debt. I also feel my brain is working better than before. I should be in a stable place overall.
I’m still slowly working out the kinks and writing down ideas. A lot of my work won’t be starting until I’m back home and able to talk with accountants, indie devs, and people from the larger start up community. Philadelphia has talent, I have experience, and I really like making games and creating experiences. It’s starting to be time for me to do something that’s got the potential to be bigger than just me.
Charles D. Berardo
My grandfather, Charles D. Berardo, was born on May 8th, 1929 and passed away on Febauary 1st, 2017 at the age of 87. His Obituary follows:
Charles passed away Wednesday, February 1, 2017. Born in Meridian, Mississippi, he was a son of the late Charles Bednie and Alice Elizabeth Beasley Dick. Charles served his country faithfully in the U.S. Army for 30 years as a musician. He retired as the Bandleader of the 282nd Army Band. He was awarded the National Defense Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Army of Occupation Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, and Good Conduct Medal. He served overseas in Korea and Germany. Following his military service, he obtained his degree from Midlands Technical College in computer science. He retired from Policy Management Systems after 12 years of service. Family was central to his life, and his military service was key in maintaining his focus on his family, despite the sacrifices he made. Charles was a loving husband, father, grandfather and brother who will be dearly missed.
He is survived by his children; son, John Charles Berardo (Anne Keats); daughter, Elisa Berardo Rose (Kenneth); son, Carlo Anthony Berardo (Linda Smith); 5 grandchildren; sister, Maryjean Breedlove (Wesley “Butch”) and extended family. In addition to his parents, Charles was predeceased by his loving wife of 58 years, Gilda Ventresca Berardo.
My Grandfather was a big part of my life. It wasn’t until we moved to Indiana and I was well into high school that we didn’t see my grandparents at least once a year. I loved going down to South Carolina for Christmas. We always got better presents when we visited.
It wasn’t until I was a bit older that I really appreciated Grandpa for what he stood for. My memories of he and Nona together were almost always those of a loving marriage. They would bicker of course, but it almost always ended with the two of them laughing in one way or another. He would laugh because he couldn’t hear her and she would laugh because us grand kids would make jokes and tease the two of them. We’re a family of teasers. When she got sick, he did his best to take care of her.
Grandpa was also very smart. How many 87 year old men are working to keep their PC’s updated? He had Windows 10! He also had something like 800 passwords. He went to school to learn programming COBOL after he was out of the Army and used that knowledge in the 80’s and early 90’s at his job at an insurance company, or it might have been a company that did data management for insurance, I’m not positive. In the early 2000’s, he helped my Uncle Carlo run his own Trucking Company. I think at one time they had 2 or 3 additional drivers. Not half bad for a retired Sargent Major.
When I think about Grandpa, I think about a man who succeeded at just about everything he did because he worked hard and worked smart. I also think about how I wish I could ask him more questions. Unfortunately, I wasn’t mature enough to really dig deep into asking him real questions and getting into his past until I was in my late 20’s. That’s being human however. We lead short lives.
I miss you Grandpa. I hope you and Nona are having fun in whatever comes after this.
-Daniel Rose