Squad Leader and Advanced Squad Leader

Yeah so i was going to tell you about how i started thinking of my job as a game.

Well, i also think about it a lot in military terms. There's no ranks in private industry, well, there's of course jobs, but they're not so stratified and uniform as the military. More in terms of this guy leads a group of guys, (keeps tabs on them, is responsible for them). He has levels above him, that keep track of a group of guys like him. And so on up.
And the guys he leads, interface with the actual "stuff". The job itself.

I've been thinking a lot lately about being a leader. What good leaders do, bad leaders, what they do.

Thinking a lot about games. I said iphone games are a lot different. They are. In some ways they're better. They've had to simplify and so have honed in on essences of gameplay experiences, building blocks, of games.

it's interesting.

games,

Some high-level observations about games, and observations about the gaming industry. Because i'm actually inside it, at a low level. Front line, in the trenches.

metaphorically speaking.

It means i at least see decisions being made, maybe have a hint about why. See the high-level decisions, and they affect people all down the line. their effects on the game. It's interesting. What else is interesting is i see a little bit more of this now because i'm a part of the process.

try to explain. One thing that's great about smaller companies and start-ups is that you move up fast. I call it "battlefield promotion" but that's not quite right. This is not when someone is fired and you get their job, but just that the company is expnding so rapidly that jobs are being created and shifted around all the time. People getting promoted, getting more responsibilities all the time. It's cool. i like it. There's a lot of things great about start-ups. Remind me to tell you sometime.

But anyway, so now i'm in charge of a group of testers.

It's weird.

So hey i uh

Am working, now, in QA, at a game company. I am back doing QA again, not too happy to be kind of back where i started, down at the bottom, but i am working in the game industry. i think that's the important thing really, to be working in the same indusrty as where you want to be, ultimately.

They're called ngmoco:). They make games for the iphone and ipad. It's a whole different set of circumstances from what i'm used to( which is console game testing, PC game testing) iphone game testing is different from all of those. So i've had to learn a whole lot of new technical stuff. But at some level, it's testing, which i know how to do. Experience tells you where programs are likely to fuck up, what areas of the software to hammer on.

metaphorically speaking.

i hope to maybe share some of my ideas about

working from home