Adventures are inevitable, the main thing is to live them in a good campaign.
Background
You may have read the previous parts about my âamazingâ stories. My epic began with the fact that in the summer of 2011, in the intervals between climbing roofs and cathedrals, I worked as a promoter of a strip bar on Nevsky Prospekt. One night, from Friday to Saturday, a tipsy company stopped in front of me, the main factory of which asked me where to have a good rest ...
This factory started up owned an underground club of slot machines, where he invited me to work. And his friend, as it turned out, with his team made all sorts of orders related to social games. So I got into gamedev. The club soon covered OBEP (it was a fun night). Then, after a failed project with Chinese masks, a move to the city of dreams followed by a dream job. Surprisingly, the employer was again associated with slot machines, only legal, and the business itself was of a huge scope. Models walked around his office, and a girl from a star factory lived at the reception.
After that there were numerous attempts of their projects, scam, failures and overcoming themselves, their fears and misconceptions. As a result, I fulfilled the dream and made the game, but it failed miserably. However, fate, with its characteristic sense of humor, pulled me out of the depths of despair, making the next week after the start of the game the best in my life. The girl with whom I was hopelessly in love, thanks to the vanishingly unlikely coincidence, answered me in return. A day after the release of the game, when I reached the emotional bottom of the worlds.
Then there was work in the development of AR applications, a business trip to Cherepovets and dismissal, another project and treacherous betrayal with throwing money and half a year of life, several months of test tasks and interviews in another city, as a result of which I again achieved a dream job in a dream city in a cool grocery startup. However, this did not last long, and, thinking about what to do now, in my head I had a combination of my favorite game mechanics and some developments from previous projects that allow you to attract and retain players at a price significantly lower than the market. So the concept of mmorpg came about. I began to assemble a team and look for investments.
And now, in fact, the freshest part of history ...
I saw during a regular trip to Sobes. I also advertised my first site in 2005.
Search for an investor in MMORPG
In the early autumn morning of 2017, I stood in the kitchen of my Stavropol apartment and watched a beautiful sunrise. The heavenly iridescent beauty, combined with the just-completed phoning with a potential investor, a Russian IT company based on the West
So, at that time I had: an assembled team of excellent specialists, ready to get to work even tomorrow, the concept of the coolest game, agreements that, in theory, allow you to attract and retain players at a price 10 (O_o) times lower than the market, and the investor who gave all this is good. The cocktail is just a bomb! But there is one caveat ... An investor is welcome provided that I find another, minotrained co-investor. The price of the issue is $ 30-40k. Itâs a rather favorable situation, because it would seem that finding a second person with small seed crumbs, provided that the first one is already there, is a completely solvable task.
Having shoveled all the more or less suitable gaming and IT companies, funds and most of the public business angels, in the end it turned out to seriously hook on some guys who specialize in fan applications. The Fund delved into the idea, it pleased him, however, it officially did not have any âexpertiseâ in games, and for this reason the manager sent it to a review to his playmate friend ... who, apparently, didnât delve into the idea, yes and in mmorpg, I see it, not so strong, and issued a negative verdict. It was the closest attempt, and it failed at the very last moment.
âThe maximum that you get from friendship with investors on Facebook and verbal promises - postcards from their travels in your tapeâ
Kaiji, almost literally
All this fuss with funds began to annoy me. What does it cost only the largest Russian gaming venture office at that time, the head of which said that he did not understand anything from the description and he didnât care about the project, but if we figure out how to screw their service there, then theyâll really look letter again!
In the end, it all came down to the fact that the price of the Stavropol apartment is equivalent to the missing part of the seed money, and I was to become the second investor myself. Close to perfect situation. By the way, the potential investor also received the first money at the dawn of his career from the sale of his apartment, so this option of co-investment could work for me. ButâŚ
However, his fund suddenly decided that the project was too early and he was no longer interested in it, regardless of who would be the co-investor. Badum ts. Finita la comedy.
After a few more months of unsuccessful search for an investor, it became clear that this line cannot be taken now and it is necessary to start moving along another road. It was not possible to invest in the game on their own for the reason that it was given on the same conditions that the first investor had money: there would be a first investor, there would be an apartment [âWell yes, but actually noâ]. It seems that again I had to get a job, and I went in search of her.
Overqualified
And then a rather original problem suddenly surfaced. They didnât take me to good roles because I didnât have enough experience, but they didnât let me go to the initial ones because there was too much experience! Sitting in Stavropol, it was quite easy for me to help my sister, who had no experience at all, to get into a well-known company from a well-known IT conglomerate. But after more than half a year of searching, I didnât manage to integrate into any system after more than six months of searching and interviews thanks to my unusual and versatile experience and veins of creativity and entrepreneurship. Systems build their filters in such a way that people like me cannot penetrate them without lies and mimicry. However, I did not intend to lie, invent, or hide anything from my biography, so my efforts did not bring success. The system could only give a gap only if you communicate with its owner directly. As a result, in the fall of 2018 it turned out to grab onto one very interesting straw.
When you send another piggyback escort
It was one well-known Russian cosmetic company with an odious entrepreneur at the head. For several years they had been thinking of creating a loyalty system, and suddenly I appeared on the threshold of it with the concept of it. And they also wanted to make a game for their new brand. Here it is!
This businessman is constantly on the move, and he was just going to St. Petersburg, where I was at that time. This meeting was the most amazing and interesting interview I have ever attended.
She walked in a chic restaurant by the pond with black swans on Krestovsky Island (St. Petersburg Rublevka), where for each visitor there are 3 headwaiters and 5 hostesses. The meeting was also attended by two top managers and the wife of the entrepreneur, his inner circle. Most of the time the meeting was not devoted to my ideas, but to the current tasks of the company, and instead of the classic balabalism, the mouth was filled with delicious food. We ate and talked for more than 5 hours. Already at the very end, when they were heading for the exit, the most vivid picture from the meeting was imprinted in the memory: the businessman in a dark silk cape with the embroidery of the Japanese dragon on his back imposingly heads towards the exit, and along the carpet path 10 people of the restaurant lined up on both sides, and each thanks him for the visit, leaning a little towards him, because he is not tall. Picture from the ordinary life of the yakuza boss!
As a result of the meeting, I was given 2 tasks, according to the results of which a proposal came to me from whatsapp from the entrepreneur on the most interesting work with a starting salary 1.5 times higher than the already considerable Moscow past. Fuh, well, finally it will be possible to get into the stream and realize your potential! And it will be possible to cut your project on the salary slowly. Or first buy a good motik, and then make a project. This alignment fully justified all my ordeals in recent years. It seemed that after years of wandering in the ocean, the winds of fate were about to take my boat to the mysterious and abundant shores, where I will find adventure and treasure!
Finding the Treasure Planet
However ... however, the entrepreneur decided to show my concept to a certain IT specialist from his company. IT specialist made a comment on the concept, half negative, half favorable. And the scales once again leaned not in my direction. The ensuing attempt to propose organizing a sought-after in-house startup related to the company's main international brand did not lead to anything.
This case is very revealing. This is not the first time that literally 1 step has remained before the treasured turning point, and at the last moment everything began to go awry. Having written this, I realized that just a couple of minutes ago I sent for signing a critical agreement. I wonder how it goes this time?
Then, at the end of autumn 2018, I was completely at a loss. The second such chance with work could not be expected, and I did not even consider the initial roles. Why, time after time and year after year, does everything happen according to similar scenarios? No matter how much effort in which direction I would make, everything soon turned into a pumpkin, and excellent chances were torn off at the very last moment. If I managed to leak to my cherished goal, then for a long time I did not stop and, despite all the efforts, I vomited like a foreign element. And this alignment was not only in work, but also in all significant aspects of life. All this suggested that fate has its own scenario, which eludes my understanding, and countless attempts to solve problems in the forehead are more like fighting with consequences, or playing a cat with a conditional opponent âhandâ.
I have long suspected that events may have a certain essence beyond my consciousness and escaping full understanding. The elusive Truth ... How can one reach and realize it? It is desirable here and now, and not on the other side of Infinity ...
Do you believe in a god that brings you down? Do you believe in a god that wears a crown? Do you believe in a god that makes you bow? Or do you believe in me?
Marco V - GODD
The elusive truth
All my life I have been collecting pieces of the puzzle, which gradually reveal the multidimensional mosaic of the mysteries of the Universe. This puzzle is so beautiful and multifaceted that I consider it my duty to express it in my creations, books and games. It was his pieces, obtained by the most ornate, non-obvious and sometimes sophisticated ways, were and remain for me the main swag according to the results of my adventures. I associate the mosaic of mysteries of the Universe with the engraving of Flammarion, and I even made it a redrawn and augmented version of the cover for my science fiction novel âThe Other Side of Infinityâ, including due to which I got into the first group of developers and in which I tried to show some sections of a partially assembled mosaic. By the fall of 2018, much more plots had already been collected than in 2010 at the time of writing, but there were still no cornerstones that I could not solve, which is why the main ideas of the picture eluded me. For the time being.
At the end of 2018, tragic events took place, the final of which occurred on December 31. Thanks to this event and the subsequent random access to one scientific research group, the main missing pieces of the mosaic were found. All the strange events of my life, and the inability to get into and gain a foothold in the flow of one of the systems, and pseudorandom unlikely events played out "on a thin one", and the collection of pieces of mosaics, and much more found their explanation. The director of all events, remaining behind the scenes, really was. This director is myself.
Perhaps you are aware of those who watch over your home,
And experience it as a place to visit and play with reality.
You are becoming aware of yourself as a gamemaster.
Lost Tribe - Gamemaster
Answers to the cornerstone questions were found, but the puzzle as a whole, especially with regard to my current life, was still not assembled. Where to go next? Another project, no longer an IT project, failed to launch on its own again. Realizing that any attempt to force is unlikely to lead to any progress, I gave my boat to the power of the winds of fate. A tailwind was found the next day.
It so happened that, besides IT, I was somehow hanging around the furniture business: my mother is my middle manager at one of St. Petersburg furniture companies, and from time to time I did various useful things for her. At the beginning of 2019, a good moment turned up for the opening of my furniture salon (an old furniture maker, whom I helped a little at the time of launching his factory, suggested giving my products for sale). So, in March 2019, my furniture salon was opened. Then, by June, I had a great opportunity to participate in the Video Game Developers Conference with ...
Capsule of sleep!
âI canât stand while others are working. Going to Lie Down â- Warcraft 3 Bull
Adventures in the land of dreams
Knowing the need for office workers in a private place for quick sleep, I have long had a similar idea. Those capsules that I saw do not have a special privacy, sound insulation, some kind of free space and the possibility for dreamers, for example, to lie on their stomach. I realized that I could make an original and sought-after product and wrote to the organizer of the conference. What a reaction she had! âWow, now you can never leave work!â - one of the memorable phrases. So, the green light to participate in the conference was given. My neighbor in the Cosmos shopping center with his carpentry workshop specializing in individual premium furniture was chosen as the capsule manufacturer. Cool mattresses were found in my other neighbors. The remaining components of the capsule collected from a variety of sources. To top it all, like a cherry on the cake, an assistant to participate in the conference was also found among the neighbors in Space.
As a result, it turned out to make a really useful and popular product that gathered a lot of positive emotions and reviews. Almost all the workers of the middle and entry level who visited the capsule were delighted and want the same in the office. And some dozens of visitors even had to be awakened and asked to release the capsule for the next. However, the delight of simple hard workers, understanding the value of a private place to sleep, is one thing, and bringing the matter to sale is another. As I expected, the most important and difficult thing is to find the first buyer. Then, I dreamed that rumors about such a useful and convenient thing, and an additional line in the company's vacancies about the possibility of obtaining a unique and demanded resource, a quiet sleep during working hours, should spread and I will gradually have new clients.
Check this theory has not yet succeeded. The most loyal likely client - the organizer of the conference, whose staff really liked the capsule, fell apart because Berloga does not look futuristic and does not fit into the office design, and now they are not interested in developing an individual model for the current office design with my forces. [Again, the situation with the disruption at the last moment of an event that changes the game.] My attempts to find a client revealed a clear trend: ordinary employees are delighted, and decision makers want something more beautiful than practical. From the feedback: âwe need a hi-tech bed ratherâŚâ Also, a rather frequent request was, almost verbatim, this: âWe want something futuristic to cut off like in the Fifth Elementâ.
He made a wardrobe for sleeping, but the royal mansions turned out. As I accidentally found out, the upper classes in the New Age used dream cabinets, and even Peter 1 slept in the closet.
Future
Interestingly, among the research group, thanks to which I added the basic elements of the mosaic of the Universe, there was a man who was studying at an American research institute, where they mastered the sound effects on the brain with might and main, allowing to achieve not only the effects of the Fifth Element capsule, but also - something even better. These technologies have been mastered for training astronauts, and for training someone else. All these technologies and understanding how to use them are available to certain people, including this researcher. Sooner or later, I am going to collect such a high-tech capsule, and in fact it can be assembled at any time. Everything rests on the fact that it is more than 10 times more expensive than my âDenâ. Apparently, this is a matter of a somewhat distant future. A future that affects the past and the present.
And now I am waiting for the completion of the story with an important furniture order, the success of which will allow me to continue to study the Secrets of the Universe from my own experience. An experience that after a while crystallizes in art form in my new book and in that same mmorpg.
Dirty Pair - Space Fantasy
The road runs all forward, where is she calling, which one is preparing the turn, what pattern will she make? Thousands of roads will merge in one single way. I know the beginning, but the result ... I find out somehow!