Their piece struck me, I gotta admit. How could 200 000 subway vagrants find their way to the Internet that fast? Was Obama to blame?
I needed to investigate.
So I went to Steven Leunens (pictured after the jump). The man might have answers, I thought. We met several years ago when he was running the TEK9 Call of Duty team – tops in the whole wild world back then.
Each games have their incredible levels, each memorable places have their very own symbol. Here at the gamocracy, if we had to go to a pilgrimage every year maybe our destination would look like our header.
This pixelart illustrated painting is our tribute to everyone spending their time and energy to make games. I had to make a difficult choice there, so many names and games memories in mind but only four spots for cool guys.
I think the balance is fair with those final 4 designers, pc/console/genre/culture. Even so excuse me in advance not picking your favorite one !
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.
We don’t like them too too much. They take a lot of space and they can be aggressive. Why would we invite them to the party?
Yes, why? Why?… Can you be more constructive with your feedback?
Of course you could make a case for money, everybody needs make their world go round. Yet we’re told ads are not even that effective at that… And they definitely don’t match with the Internet of gamers.
Instead, from the very beginning, we agreed that we’ll sell games for a living. This is a little crazy, some people tell us, yet we think it makes more sense than ads invasion. Enough that we’re here at least.
Let’s pretend we got the money aspect covered. Ads also use space and provide information, sometimes useful. What’s up with those?
The space aspect is covered, for sure this time. A portion of it will be used for commercial information and a buy button for games. The rest is invested in a layout that’s not dictated by ad formats.
As for information, our aim is to build a website where opinions on PC games are published and shared and read and evaluated by gamers.
On Gamocracy you won’t get an ad prompting you to play a given game, you’ll get the tip from someone in your gaming entourage and will be able to check the reviews available for this game as published by them or the best sitewide reviewers or other people you picked based on how much you trust their opinion. The goal is to have a place where you can find credible opinions about PC games, as provided by people who did spend 50 WH (WHatever they are, Euros or $$) on the game.
Doesn’t it sound beautiful??? Well, that’s all in theory… :)
For the past few months we’ve been working at making this real. We will soon enter the first public testing phase: if you don’t mind teething troubles, we’ll gladly welcome any kind of help.
With all the fuss going on, it’s not like you didn’t know already. Yet, today, I have found a reason to pay tribute to the man even in here.
I was told several times, and I read too, that we should let people know who we are on the Gamocracy blog. So, when browsing old folders I recently found that video I had nearly forgotten about, I said to myself it could tell a lot without taking too much of your time.
I made it all: shooting, editing, music, special eff… errr I mean titling and sliding words.
SIDENOTE Yes, well, I’m realizing I can’t write I did special effects on a blog we’re building together with Rémi and Morgan because here’s what happens (click the picture to watch the video) when they do special effects… But more on these guys and dotsMarc later. Today’s my time to shine! SIDENOTE
This dates back to… 2004. pfeewww. The highlight to me as I’m watching it now is the music since it’s my only try ever composing anything and, to my surprise, it’s holding its own. The worst part has to be the text at the end about Baldours thanking his teammates. Man, so cheesy…
So, what about Michael Jackson, you ask? (yes you ask!)
Since Baldours is on his own towards the end but doesn’t run away and finally wins, I thought about Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”, precisely because he didn’t. There I was with a soundtrack and a matching title.
I finished editing a version with that song. It worked so well, it was perfect!
Until my little dream of a creation got destroyed… The team owners said it was too risky to use this music in regards to copyright laws. There was no way they would release the video like that.
So I frowned – a lot – and I complained – even more – before I ended up sitting behind a Mac to give a try at doing the music myself. Gotta admit I’d never have done it on a PC…
If you’re into creating online businesses, you might have read experts saying it’s cheaper than ever to start your own thing. Well, they didn’t know, but they were talking about us.
As I was saying before, we’re four people at Gamocracy and we all live in the Paris area in France.
We all work from home to start with.
Marc, our pixel artist and game designer, is staying in the southern part of the city.
Rémi and Morgan, who are coding and designing the site, share a flat in the suburbs where the living room is actually their office. This room… it’s special. It’s not that big but it has 2 huge L-shaped offices and something like 6 17″+ screens in it, including an outstanding (truly, you can’t miss it) 56″ HD TV which works just fine when you need to look at mockups.
I’m living in the south-eastern part of the city, working from my sleeping room. I just got a new chair! You don’t care but my buttock sure does.
We don’t have contractors. The team was built in a such a way that it would allow us to think and create the site on our own.
We have very light processes. I know, I know, they don’t cost money. But they do cost time! We’ve done enough stuff together before to know we don’t need to be after each other to get things done. Efficient teamplay baby!
We use emails, Gtalk and Skype to communicate mostly.
