CEO By Wire

After a year-long hiatus of blogging, I finally joined the unified Unity company-blogging stream, and am thus abandoning this blog. But the weird thing is that I'm actually enjoying blogging now. See all me new posts here: David Helgason's blog.

I'm in a great mood today. Freeverse just released the first of their made-in-Unity serial of games, called Big Bang Brain Games. One of them is even free for the next 30-something hours. Download them from their website: http://www.freeverse.com/braingames/. Also, there are rumors (not all unsubstantiated) of other games. I can't wait.

On other release-related notes, my mother put out a novel. It's in Icelandic though: Feimnismál.

I'll be attending E3 in Los Angeles next week. I'm in town Monday-Thursday, leaving Thursday evening just as the expo ends. If there's Unity customers (or soon-to-be-customers) attending that I don't know about already, do let me know so we can meet up. Drop me a mail, though my cell phone (+45 6014 3418) will probably be the most reliable way to meet up with me when it comes to it.

I can't wait.

Everyone loves Google Earth, right? I give you OTEE HQ:

OTEE HQ

Right now there's a Unity-based course running at Kolding Design School. I think it's the coolest design college in Denmark (yes, even better than
the Danish Design School). I was teaching there two days last week and really impressed with the students, very clever, very creative.

Now it remains to be seen if they're very hard-working too: they've got just 4 weeks to learn Unity, come up with a Serious Game game-design and develop a prototype of the idea. For kids (okay, some of them weren't younger than I) that never used similar tools before, know almost no scripting, and can't do 3D-modelling, I think it daring of them. I'll visit the school again when the course ends to see how they fared; I'm looking very much forwards to it.

This hasn't happened for some 5 years. I had to change number because me and the phone-company had collaborated on losing the rights to it. Nasty. If I want it back, I can maybe get it in 6 months time... no time to wait for that, have we do?

Anyway, the new one is up and running and is +45 6014 3418. It doesn't look too good, but it's nice to say aloud. At least in Danish

I never cease to be amazed by Unity. We had a game jam this weekend (big one, arranged with IGDA, the IT-University of Copenhagen, DigiNet, sponsored by Apple Europe).

5 groups of between 2 and around 6 people created games with Unity in just 48 hours, and the results were breath-taking, especially since none of these people had used Unity before!

I did a fair amount of support, but most of it was just saving people a bit of time by pointing to the docs, and explaining simple 3D geometry. So nothing people couldn't have figured out by themselves... I think that's a big success.

The games should get published online soon, I'll post again then. Right you can see a bit of artwork from one the games here. It's called OneGun and a pretty clever piece of work. It's labeled as a gothic shooter, and is a two player game. The catch is that there's only one gun, and by pressing the space bar either player can steal the gun from the other.

The asset production was amazing to watch, with Jonaz doing a silly amount of evil level work and nasty to behold animated characters. By the way, Jonaz is the guy that did most of the art for the cave demo that was shown at WWDC '05.

To my great surprise I'll be attending MacWorld San Francisco this year... I didn't even know it Saturday morning.

I'll be demoing Unity in the ATI showroom each day of the week (except today, Monday).

Tuesday (tomorrow) I will be there from 16-18.

Times for the other days still in the open, but it will be a rotating 2 hour slot. I'll be posting it here when I know. Be in touch and let's arrange a Unity users get-together. Let's use this tread for planning it: http://forum.otee.dk//viewtopic.php?p=7402.

Taking a day offline is strange. I'm listening to Bach and sipping Chinese Lapsang Sechuan with my London-based family, writing emails to friends and loved ones, helping out with putting up the table, all newly-washed and shiny, wearing all new clothes.

Aside: Icelanders have pretty "alternative" Christmas traditions, and having to wear new clothes for the Holidays is part of that mesh: Instead of Santa Claus, there are 9 or 13 "Christmas guys", pretty low types that sneak and steal. Their mother is a horrible witch and their father a loser of sorts. Last is their cat, the Christmas cat, also a dirty beast that'll eat children that don't have new clothes on... you can imagine what class these unfortunate children belong to.

It's been an amazing year. Although we already moved from the bedroom back in August 2004, in January 2005 we were still but a small (yet cool) band in a shared office.

Things have changed: we are now a real company, with a growing customer base and regular and growing business. Releasing regular updates with amazing (imho) new features, and expanding in the right directions.

(.... I never got the write this to the end... Christmas laziness, a little flu, family and friends, and of courses, work, took over and now I'm back in the office. So much for the tea an Back.)

A new fashion label by my brilliant brother Ingvar and German Susan Ostwald: Ostwald Helgason.

An example:

I never too the time to blog while in Shanghai, but here are some cute photos from this incredible city. The trip was wonderful... I will let the photos tell most of the story:


(Laying a final hand on the expo room)



(the Chinese studying Unity posters and playing GooBall)


(Joe with our interpreter, genius miss Jing Lin)



(When setting up the showroom we employed this seven-strong team of Chinese handymen to help...)



(Danish fashion designer Pia in front of sci-fi-like Shangaian skyline... a rusty boat in between)



(Random street snap: Shanghai is a hectic city, but then what to expect from a city with a population somewhere beteen 12 and 20 million people... no one seems to know for sure)



(Shopping for silk in this nice little booth... as usual language problems made conversation all but impossible, but in retrospect he may have been trying to tell me he had sold one just like this to the Beetles for their Sergeant Peppers cover-shot)

We'll be demoing at Shanghai International Creative Industries Expo, November 30-December 6... which is cool in and by itself, but man, I'm going to China.

Right now I've only got bits of random advice... like eating seafood, which type of restaurant to go to. And someone very dear told me that Heidegger Bar was (or used to be) the place to be. Must collect more info.

We're going along with other "creative companies": Plot which are some of the most visionary architects around, Vilsbøl de Arce who make outrageous and beautiful clothes, and local artists Superflex who make ... hmm, weird stuff – check out their website for hardly-sane stuff.

More details to follow.

I'll be in London this coming weekend (October 28-30). It would be fun to meet with London based Unity users... just send me a mail at david@otee.dk to check with my schedule.

Edit: I'll be going to Mac Expo on Saturday. Find me sneaking around the game area.

Just came back from the Art & Design Leadership Summit that the Laguna College of Art & Design and Apple arranged together (and invited me to come and speak at).

It was great fun. For the benefit of people I met there (and whoever accidentally wanders across this blog of mine), here are the slides for my presentation:

ADLS Presentation


Also, I want to forward the invitation to attend the game-jam we co-host with IGDA and DigiNet.org.

It'll run January 27-29 2005. More details here:

www.diginet.org/o.o.i.s/1021

The price for attending is estimated to be around $50, including some refreshments and a course in Unity on the first day. Yup, that's cheapo, but it won't be louse despite. We'll have people from the Interactive Team of Danish National Broadcasting (dr.dk - rumor has it they'll be covering the game jam on TV), international and local educators and students, and probably some cool indie developers too.

The only catch is that we're low on Macs in our Mac-lab, so we have limited room for people who can't bring their own Macs... sorry.

I'll probably be posting further details later.

A friend of mine gave me a small assignment to do while touristing in LA:

To visit and photograph a couple of gated communities. Especially if I find signs saying "Armed Response", "Protected By Smith & Wesson", etc.

My friend has been reading papers about gated communities in LA for his political science master's thesis, and wants a bit of reality check... and I suspect, cool photos for the thesis.

It'll be fun. Pointers anyone?

I'll be attending a conference at Laguna College of Art and Design October 13 and 14. The following weekend (October 15 and 16) I'll be touristing around Los Angeles, so I'm game if someone wants to go out for dinner or have coffee with me.

The conference is really cool by the way. Just two companies will be presenting software there: Adobe and OTEE. It'll be thrilling to show Unity to the academics and hear where they want to take it.

(I'm also dropping by London later in October, the weekend of October 30 to be specific. More later)

Jeez, apparently the whole summer is passing and I haven't done a single thing except work this company.

But it's paying off: come Monday evening we're releasing Unity 1.1 which sports Windows deployment support. Which is something of a feat in-and-by-itself.

Oh, and I'm moving this blog from it's previous unpublished location, to the OTEE website where people who have no life like me can find it. Kill kill kill pussycat kill. Should get some sleep soon.

Long weekend. Ended of yesterdays workday by getting a morning beer with the guys at most-suspicious bar in Nyhavn, name Hong Kong. Slept far too long into the day (in the arms of Girl). Picked up sushi on way to work (or picked up sounds too easy; I had to wait insanely, but it was really good stuff when it arrived).

I sincerely love my life.

It's late again now, I'm listening to Xploding Plastix' Amateur Girlfriends Go Proskirt Agents of the hateful genre nu-jazz... however it's completely lovable like anything which is insanely too much.

... yeah... last day of what life? We're wrapping up the last stuff for Unity, due to be released tomorrow, probably 2pm Pacific Standard Time (utc-8 if I recall correctly)... it'll be out for the world to enjoy.

Keli is finishing off the webshop so people can actually buy Unity, I'm wrapping up the new Conception designed website, and Joe? He's fixing bugs at what seems to be an average speed of 0.42 bugs per minute.

Most of the guys have gone home now – they know it'll be a long day.

I need coffee. Now.

My company is doing sessions at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference. Come have a look. Our CTO Joachim Ante and Game Director Nicholas Francis will work the crowd and strut our stuff. They'll love it.

The first day of the conference, we're releasing Unity (games, made by you, yada yada yada). It's wonderful! It will make people cry from joy!

I'm going to DiGRA, mainly to tell people there about Unity. Several local game researchers are going there. I hope it's going to be a ball.

...is it that we always end up working until half past three in the night with sweaty palms. It must be somehow integral to value creation...
Dunno, but this boy's off to sleep.

I'll be speaking at the new-media-and-whatnot-conference Reboot7 (June 10th and 11th), under the heading "tools for end user creation of games, the long tail of games". I guess I'll be mentioning our upcoming game development platform Unity, which will be released a few days earlier

Be there or be a cigar-shaped flying object.

Ai, this week has been so fun. Cocktails, dancing in the belly of a ship, theatre, coffees and kissing. Time spent with some of the most wonderful people this world has nurtured. Friends, I'm lucky to have you guys to play with.

Oh, and some business related happy news as well, but I'll tell you later.

Just a short note: my company is bringing out our game-development suite, the Unity Engine, on the 6th of June. It'll be soooo cool you can't even imagine. We just had a graphic artist with no programming knowledge make the best looking rope-swinging monkey and set it all up in 10 minutes flat.

Games, made by you. The world will be blown away!

It's a big big flat shared with three nice people. I'll try to post a view from my bedroom window soon.

It's been a while... the housewarming was this last friday. I'm now living on Åboulevard 18, 4.th. Still 2200 Copenhagen N of course.

By the way, said housewarming was the best. My friends are so cool (as are their friends), almost everyone was there and it was a blast. There even was a bona-fide fight.

Several people seem to be dating as a result of it (you know who you are), and the only collateral damage was a couple of glasses, a relationship or two, and half a bottle of (top brand) orange juice.

It's now official. All my friends and my whole family own Macs (with very few exceptions: you know who you are).

I'm not sure who hasn't switched yet, but someone hasn't Apple's marketshare apparently hardly went up. However, I won't care: what I care about is no-one asking me horrid questions about drivers and network setup.

Congratulations on your wise choice. My iChat handle is davidhelgason on AIM for those who want to give me a (free) call using iChat A/V.