[casual_games] hey all

[Lennard Feddersen]

This discussion is pretty interesting to me as it mirrors a lot of the 
issues my wife and I have discussed over the past couple of years.  By 
moving back to Northern BC, Canada from Santa Cruz, CA, USA we cut our 
bills to 1/3 of what they were.  When tax considerations are taken into 
account we really don't live differently than we did before - we just 
get to work on the things we are passionate about.  We owned a home 
there with the attendant near silicon valley huge mortgage and bought a 
fixer upper here for cash.  There are many humbling aspects to starting 
over without the silicon valley programmers paycheck but, in a way, 
sorting out all of this stuff allowed us to go off the financial grid in 
a very life liberating way.

This kind of stuff might not make sense for everyone but it has allowed 
us to build something where we didn't have to mortgage the house and 
risk it all on a single game.  I am impressed with Gabriels group 
working part time and hitting one out of the park in their first step up 
to the plate.  Congrats, seriously.

Sometimes I hear about people in this space and back in big corporate 
games bemoaning how hard it all is and I just want to say to them that 
we do make games for a living.  We make games for a living.  We don't 
work on a fish boat where you could get killed or climb into somebodies 
120 degree attic in mid-summer to swap out some wiring that's gone 
decrepit or crawl under the crawlspace in a house to swap out pipes that 
have frozen.  We make games - no surprise that it's competitive and lots 
of people want to do it - but we still spend our time making games!

OK, end of ramble - happy game makin'

Lennard Feddersen
CEO, Rusty Axe Games, Inc.
www.RustyAxe.com

Lennard at RustyAxe.com
P. 250-635-7623 F. 1-309-422-2466
3521 Dogwood, Terrace, BC, Canada, V8G-4Y7




Gabriel wrote:

>Nicolas is right, your place of residence does have an effect on your
>competitiveness (or the kind of success you must achieve to consider
>yourself successful), although living in a 3rd world country has a lot
>of drawbacks as well - hardware, software and related services
>(broadband for example) are quite expensive, long distance calls with
>your US partners are expensive, there are very few people with the
>knowledge needed to work with you, the convenience of buying stuff at
>eBay or Amazon and have it delivered in 3 days doesn't exist... and it
>does feel isolated.
>
>So I'm not so sure about one situation or the other being "better" than
>the other - I think they're "different". In your case I don't know the
>reality of the Philippines, but it may be comparable to the situation
>here.
>
>Good luck!
>	--Gabriel
>
>
>  
>

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