Studying Accounting (For An Indie Studio)

     Even if I'm paying someone to do it for me I should have a strong grasp on financial accounting. I plan on running a business one day and knowledge of the "boring stuff" and "hard parts" are necessary for ultimate survival and happiness. If I want to exclude shifty business partners and investors solely looking for profits I need to handle all the business stuff for Yotes Games. By the looks of things (and I'm talking vague estimates here) I'll need to prepare to move to Florida and work with 2 other developers (an art dev and an audio dev) and save a total of $234,000 to get started. That's $100K to satisfy my school debts and $134K to sustain one year of business.

    It's an absurd goal but I'm dumb/naive enough to chase it. In terms of accounting studies though I'm reading my school textbook which came in early during downtime throughout the day. Usually when I'm eating, first waking up, or waiting for my computer to turn on. If I get a head-start on class it'll come as a useful review when I hear the teacher go over it. I want to be as good at this stuff as possible so I need to know this book by heart. Even though it focuses mainly on a corporations perspective rather than an LLC's.

Trademark Annoyances & Scams

    Ever since registering the trademarks for Yotes Games and it's logo I've been getting a crazy amount of letters asking me to spend $300 - $3000 on their trademark registration services. Those services do nothing to further protect me and I really just dump them in the trash. I know that using a TM in commerce alone is enough to hold up a good case in court and registering the mark beforehand with USPTO makes your argument an open/close case.

     These companies are trying to scare people into thinking without their specific international coverage or inclusion in their databases, you could lose the rights to your words & logos! I seriously get a letter a week from a different company trying to use scary language, tiny text, and government looking symbols. Future game devs beware. Legal stuff isn't as walled-off and scary as some would like you to think.

    I just figured this is something worth sharing that I haven't put as a Lesson Learned in a Status Report yet.

Study & Play: Pokemon Platinum

     I've revisited Pokemon Platinum last week to get a feel for this Pokemon game I haven't played since launch. I've been playing it while eating, waiting, before bed, etc. for a full week now. Since my Mobile class game is Pokemon based I figured I might pick up some small details or ideas by just playing it and having some eureka moments like I had playing InFamous a month before. The main thing I'm noticing now are it's flaws and how much my take on it would be perfectly suited for me. My biggest gripe with Platinum in particular is all the waiting and grinding. Those really plague the whole series but I think Gen 4 was where it was at its worst. It really just makes me want to make my game more just so I have something really fun to play.

     I think I'll stop posting Gushing About posts until further notice. I really don't want to force myself to do them and eat up hours of work that could go toward getting this heap of Unicorn Training work done. Almost done with those pesky dungeon maps!

Status Report #49 (Research, Blog Plans, & Invisible Walls)

     The big change this week is my new plans for Yotes Games in 2015. New site look, bi-weekly posts, and updates on my most important game ever. I need to change up the way I do things because day-to-day happenings can be pretty dull when there's nothing tangible to show. Games are also more prone to hype when you don't know every last detail about them.

     A lot of things happened this week and I learned a ton of stuff dev-wise. Catch this week's wisdom review below!