Another week of little dev work, but a lot of analysis. I think I’m just about done the analysis stuff and with just a bit of time remaining (less than 33 days, you might say…) these next few sprints will be big
I’m also incredibly tired tonight, so this post is going to be really bad. Sorry.
Highlights
Rediscovered mind maps and have really enjoyed the way they help me think through problems
May have seriously come up with the game title…oh my!
A lot of progress on the game’s overall pitch, scope, and key ideas. Or, uh, something
MEGA-MONTH MARCHES EVER ON
Lowlights
Having a hard time concentrating and staying focused. I need to really, uh, not be bad at that. I think I’ve put this in every single lowlight since I was born
What is game…?
Too tired, sorry
Show & Tell
HOW TO QUIT YOUR JOB AND GO BROKE MAKING VIDEO GAMES – THE BURN CHART
It takes some real skill and precision to quit a good job making lots of money to pursue a career in which you’ll make very little. It requires strategy. Foresight. A willful ignorance of consequence. I’m here to talk about my own process so that you, too, can self-destruct your finances
Today, I want to talk about my burn chart, which you’ve may have seen after reading one of my WARP DOGS CORP LOGS posts.
There may be other, more accurate names for this style of chart, so let me show you what I mean:
So, what exactly is this thing?
In short, the burn chart is the primary method to measure when exactly I’ll be out of money and broke as all hell.
It performs this tremendous service by looking at my current cash reserves each week and compares that to both a fixed and moving estimate of where I predict my cash reserves should be each week.
It then plots this all on a nifty graph so I can visualize how fast I’m spending and when exactly I can expect to run out.
Make sense? Well, let’s dig in some more…
FIXED ESTIMATE
This is the grey line.
The fixed estimate is simple. I took a look at our average monthly expenses and compared it to our average monthly income after I quit my job. I then simply looked at the difference between the expenses and income, and called this difference the expense delta.
Said a different way, the expense delta is what’s needed to break even each month – for example, if average expenses were $5,000, and average income was $3,000, then the expense delta would be $2,000.
The Fixed Estimate is simply this delta subtracted from my cash reserves on a weekly basis. It’s a steady, consistent march to $0, and it’s also the line I want to continuously “beat” each week if I want to elongate this project.
CASH ON HAND
This is the blue line with stars.
At the start of each week I’ll record how much cash on hand I have left. The difference week to week will be reflected by the steepness of the line.
They key here is to beat the estimate. It’s sort of like racing where you want to beat your best lap times – only it’s exactly the opposite because you want to go slower, not faster.
But what happens if I do go slower? Or faster? I mean, it’s extremely unlikely I’ll spend exactly $500 a week over the course of many months, and the move I deviate from the average the less useful the fixed expense line will be.
To solve this problem, I added the moving estimate line.
MOVING ESTIMATE
This is the yellow line with the circles
Like the fixed estimate, the moving estimate steadily marches to 0 by subtracting an expense delta each week.
Unlike the fixed estimate, the speed it marches is not forever constant, but rather is based on a moving average of my actual expenses each week
Let’s use an example.
Week 1: $400 spent
Week 2: $300 spent
Week 3: $500 spent
Over these 3 weeks the moving estimate would come out to $400, and it’d look like so:
Lookin’ good! My thriftiness has bought me more time to work on my projects
Now, let’s say week 4 and 5 look like this:
Week 4: $900 spent
Week 5: $900 spent
Now, obviously I know that spending more per week means I’ll run out of money faster, and vice versa, but it’s one thing to know something and quite another to visualize it
You can see how it shaves off 2 weeks from the fixed estimate – that’s a lot of to give up!
In conclusion, this graph does two things main things:
It gamifies the otherwise dull task of tracking weekly expenses, encouraging me to stay under spending goals and beat my previous expectations, plus,
It allows me to apply principals of Agile to my financial situation, adjusting my strategies and focus on a weekly basis
So, hopefully this has all made sense. If you’re looking to quit your job to pursue some passion then I strongly encourage you to make something similar – never discount the power of visualizing the speed in which your money is running out
The state of our WARP CORP is strong. MEGA-MONTH is halfway over and boy are the results promising already!
The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE)continues to hold at 14 weeks away. Astonishing!
Our team of highly respected accountants are slacking off, but are ready for the call to action later in the week
The astute among you may have realized that despite the rather salient header image Christmas is, in fact, not 33 days away. So what is…?
We shall have to find out together!
Thank you.
SPRINT GOALS
This is likely to be the 3rd week of very little programming, though the hope is to begin to ramp up as the week goes on. As has become typical, lack of time and overall concentration has contributed to a very slow pace. This pace is expected to increase dramatically in, oh, 33 days or so.
Here’s this week’s TOP 3P O W E R * G O A L S
What even is this game? Continued from last week, we’ll be focusing on what this game is and isn’t. I’ve also scoped in work on an actual, real-life, honest-to-goodness pitch that I can start to share people so they can make fun of me
Let’s read! a bunch of stuff. I have a huge amount of stuff to read that I’ve bought over the last few months and years. Books on game design, Lua programming, inspirational books, books on self-employment, and a whole lot more. So much, in fact, that it’s become necessary to create an entire POWER GOAL for it so I can begin to actually read the darn things
Improve your concentration with these ten easy steps. Well, maybe it’ll be more than 10 steps, but I really need to address this problem, so I’m making an entire goal for it. I must be better at concentrating and minimizing distractions…or I’ll be in some big trouble when I’m eventually on my own
What is “game”? This question has plagued mankind for generations. Can it be answered here? Answered today? Can it be answered at all? Is answer even the right word? Is answer spelled right? Why the ‘w’? What purpose does it serve in that word?
All good questions.
None of them were answered in this sprint.
Highlights
Thought a lot about what my game is and isn’t. Ended up with a nice foundation with which to begin analysis on
Continuing to enjoy Evernote. I ended up building a ton more notebooks and stacks of notebooks and tags and all sorts of other crazy words and phrases
MEGA-MONTH MARCHES EVER ON
Lowlights
Having a hard time concentrating and staying focused. I need to really, uh, not be bad at that
A bit worried that I may be spinning my wheels the closer I get to my quit date. It’s easy to do and redo things at this stage, and I’m afraid I’m refactoring too much
The state of our WARP CORP is strong. MEGA-MONTH has only recently dawned, yet we’ve already been able to put away a lot of cash into the WARP DOGS coffers. Our current extinction-level-event (ELE) is a record-breaking 14 weeks away. Incredible!
Our highly respected accountants are celebrating by taking the rest of the week off.
It’s likely to snow here at WARP DOGS HQ in beautiful, behind-the-Safeway, North Bend, Washington. As Founder, CEO, and Chief Meteorologist of WARP DOGS I have been asked to provide a comment on these situations. My response is thus:
LET IT SNOW.
Thank you.
SPRINT GOALS
The nice thing about sprints is that you can change your mind often. Last sprint was proof of this: I took a break from programming and pivoted to lore and world-building. A fun diversion, and I got a whole lot done.
This sprint is more of the same. One thing that my brainstorming sessions taught me was that I needed more constraints. Before I jump back into programming I plan to take an entire sprint – this sprint – to really narrow down the scope of what I’m working on. I enjoy editing and taking a knife to my own work, so this shouldn’t be too bad.
Here’s this week’s P O W E R * G O A L S
A logo and name and it’s all good, dog. This PG was from last sprint and continues through this one. It’s related to the company itself – naming, logo, that type of thing
What even is this game? Ah, a good question! Is it Animal Crossing meets Zelda, or Zelda meets Animal Crossing? Is it truly inspired by Undertale, or is that game so deeply rooted in my brain that essentially everything I make or think about is inspired by Undertale? Tricky quesitons to answer.
An unexplored world full of possibility. I enjoyed this brainstorming quite a bit and think I can provide even more details and context. I’m on a roll, so it’d be crazy to sto now
Time to get to it. The hope is to have some visuals to share before the end of this.
The nice thing about sprints – really, one of the most defining things – is being able to change gears quickly. After weeks of programming I essentially spent an entire week where I didn’t open up my IDE once…and it was the best decision I’ve made thus far.
An entire world poured out of my head, complete with a map, lore, context, and a whole bunch more. I can’t share a whole ton of it right now as it’s still being shaped into something coherent, but it’s rad.
Highlights
Sketched out a map across several mediums + had a bunch of fun
Came up with names and backgrounds for a lot of areas in-game
Brainstorming sessions went much better than expected
Incorporated much into ever-growing Evernote
MEGA-MONTH MARCHES EVER ON
Lowlights
Spent some more money I probably didn’t need to 🙁
Learned I’m still not an artist despite everything – oops
