Month: September 2010

MineCraft Success

The Internet is abuzz with the sensational success story of Minecraft, an independently developed game, that is now raking in US$250k per day. The game is largely the effort of a single developer and the company is pretty much a one-man show. I congratulate the genius behind the game and it breathes life and gives hope to other indie game developers around the world.

At $10 per pop, this developer has cleanly raked in almost US$10 million overnight.

Minecraft is another story on how you can turn problems into opportunities. When they had server problems causing outages, they gave away free copies of the game to everyone who had difficulties playing during the outage. Once the problem was solved, these freebies became converts and paid the ten buck for a license. Read that – he gave stuff away for free during a down-time and this brought in converts once up-time was restored. Brilliant!

However, as good as this story sounds, it reminds me of another adage – overnight success takes years of effort.

Government Business

During the Economic Transformation Programme Open Day held yesterday, one of the key messages sent by the CEOs to our government was – for Government’s role in business to be reduced and for freer competition.

Personally, I can particularly relate to that. In fact, I am so averse to government involvement in business that I have decided to avoid the many government grants that are given out for technology startups. I have also decided to steer clear of the government as much as I can in business. This means avoiding government contracts like the plague. I am crazy like that.

The thing is, I do not see how our present government can reform the business of government to be limited to policy making and regulation, which is what we actually need the government to do instead of actually getting involved in the decision making and operational issues of businesses particularly through its many GLCs. Even if the present opposition takes over the federal government, I do not see the government getting out of business either because the system is already institutionalised and ingrained in our collective psyche that Malaysia Inc is run like that.

Some may ask me why I am so anti government. I am not anti-government. I am merely anti government involvement in business. The reason that I feel this way is that I have personally felt the bite of government involvement in business and I do not want to experience it ever again. I would be very happy if the government, whichever government, decides to just keep its fingers out of business and to instead focus on policy and regulation.

In fact, I would argue that the government should step up regulation – not in the bad way, mind you. Taking the example of the Internet – while I do not think that the government should engage in Internet censorship, I do feel that regulation needs to be stepped up in certain areas such as: policing the collection and transmission of personal information, registration and collection of taxes from internet businesses, and taking cyber-criminals to task.

However, from what I have gathered about the ETP, I believe that it is business as usual for our government. I do not see why the government would happily give away multi-billion dollar cash cows until after they have been milked dry. I will believe our governments’ drive when I actually see it. For now, I will wait and see.

Religion vs Corporation

There has been quite a bit of discussion going back and forth on the merits of a single-founder vs co-founder business in the tech/entrepreneurial circles. In fact, I recently had a conversation with a few successful entrepreneurs on this subject recently and came away with some conclusions. After reading this article on the subject today, I have to give it my personal twist.

So next time you read, write or comment on an article comparing the merits of single and co-founders; next time you feel your personal choice undermined by someone else’s argument, stop and ask yourself: is this about forging an empire, or being master of your own destiny? They’re not the same thing.

I would like to say that in my case, I have come to realise that the reason that I am going into business has always been the same since day one – it has never been about empire building, but about personal freedoms. I have always been clear on this – I need to build a successful company in order to have the freedom to engineer.

That said, the reason why I have decided to go it on my own as a single-founder business is because I am not interested in building a corporation, but interested in starting a religion (not literally). So far, I don’t know of any religion where there are co-founders since most religions seem to have had a single teacher or saviour. There is a reason why this is the case – religions are about passion.

So, instead of building a lifestyle business, I am in the process of starting my own little religion, and I hope that others will ultimately join me. Hiring and contracting will be the way to go for me for a while at least. Donations will also be solicited and welcomed, in addition to volunteers and support. I think it is interesting that such a business model will be used for a technology company.

Sounds crazy? That’s the whole point.

Pissed Off

As interesting as the trip to Japan was, I find myself still generally pissed-off at life after returning from Japan. Looks like it did little to help me recuperate and recharge my batteries. Even my soak in the hot baths did little to iron out the kinks in my back.

I need a significant change in my life to avoid being pissed-off.

PS: I bought myself some toys from Akihabara – a Macross VF-1A (Max Jenius); and a Perfect Grade Wing Gundam Zero.

Japan Photos

I left out the photos from Mount Fuji and Tokyo Dome Hotel because they were shot in RAW and I have not the time to process them presently. The following are a selection of JPEG photos.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

Interesting Akihabara

Let me just summarise the various things that I found interesting about Akihabara. Every geek friend of mine, both guys and girls, have encouraged me to go visit Akihabara. Since I was in Japan, I decided to take my own side-trip there by public transport.

Let’s start with adult videos.

While I was trying to find my bearings in Akihabara, I came across a multi-storey video store that sold nothing but adult videos. It was just like any other video store. It had shelves and shelves of AV, posters of AV stars, life-sized ads of AV stars and screens showing various AV trailers and demos. Some of the DVDs even came with collectible cards of the AV stars.

Now, finding an adult video store is nothing interesting. Almost every other civilised place has one, except in countries with holy attitude like ours, but there was one thing very interesting – pre-owned adult video stores! A brand-new AV DVD costs about 500 yen and the second hand one costs about 300 yen. This just shows that the market is large enough to support a secondary market for such items!

There are many things that can be said about such a society. However, that is tangential.

In addition, almost every DVD store had a small room at the back dedicated to AV. What is more interesting is that these rooms were usually grouped together with the Anime section. I guess that there must be a statistically significant correlation between otaku and the AV consumers. Talking about this, while I was sweating myself off on the streets of Ginza and Harajuku, nobody gave me any free tissue paper.

However, while on the streets of Akihabara, lots of sweet girls dressed up in various costumes would offer me free tissue paper and brochures. While I cannot read Japanese, I got the gist of some of these offers. One of it was of a massage service provided by people dressed in schoolgirl uniforms. Curious. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time in Akihabara to explore these other options.

Speaking of uniforms, while I was in one store browsing, I came across some maid’s uniforms. While there is nothing particularly interesting about finding a store selling maid’s uniforms, I got a surprise when I saw that these were uniforms for men! There was also a 7-storey main-street store specialising in all kinds of kinky toys and equipment.

Okay, as for the stuff that have nothing to do with sex.

There were tons of stores selling regular electronic gadgets and electric items. These were not really worth buying because their prices were similar to those in Malaysia. However, I finally came across a section of Akihabara specialising in small stores selling electronic components and equipment – that puts our own Jalan Pasar to shame. It dawned on me why Japan has a Sony – I have to attribute much of it to places like Akihabara.

There were also stores selling models and hobby collectibles – multi-storey buildings. In most cases, each floor would specialise in certain types of models or collectibles from certain anime series. There were even stores that specialised in selling only female characters while others specialised in mecha and other stuff. I managed to buy some mecha for myself and felt that my visit to Akiba was a success!

I think that no trip to Japan would be complete without a trip to Akihabara and I would have regretted it if I did not explore it on my own.

Tokyo Girls

Tokyo girls look different from the Osaka girls. I would say that they are generally ‘dressier’ than the Osaka girls. I have to say that this impression was formed entirely from observations on the main streets of Ginza and Harajuku. So, it may be biased towards a specific class or set of local Japanese people.

That said, we went for dinner in Shinjuku and had to cross Kabuki-Cho to get to the restaurant. Our tour guide was very careful in exposing us to some of the local delicacies and warned us of the dangers lurking around this area of Tokyo. It was an interesting place to be as a tourist. I actually got to see a few ducks selling their services to some of the local women passing by. I also saw one getting into an on-site negotiation. It was all interesting.

Tomorrow, I will be going to Akihabara on my own, while the rest of my family are in Disneyland. I hope that nothing untoward happens. I will need to rest well tonight after such an exhausting day of shopping today!