Indonesia as video game developer

This is actually is part of my “kolokium” but i wanted people to read it and give them my opinion about it..

Video games, computers and internet are now just a part of our everyday modern life that we take for granted. We never noticed that these have change the way we live for the last 30 years. Video game is now growing so rapidly thanks to the technologic expansion that our way of life has achieved. And now new types of entrepreneur are making gold out of this global phenomenon. Bill Gates of Microsoft is one of these entrepreneurs who changed direction and started to plunged in this industry by developing Microsoft Xbox as a new comer gaming console for the last 4 years.

Video game has emerged to its own industry and transforms the face of future business. Big companies such as Sony, Microsoft, Atari, Nintendo, Sega is competing each other to achieve total supremacy in this global competition industry. Traditional games are starting to be abandoned; board games, card games and etc have no longer the first priority of entertainment options. The convergence of video games technology as entertainment is one of the hearts of our evolving encounter with technology in our daily life.

As an acknowledgement of this phenomenon, Indonesia tries to participate in this digital entertainment industry. So far as it goes, the only participating way for Indonesia is by consuming these video games. This is supported by the fact that Indonesia is one of the countries that has the biggest basis of amateur video gamers in Southeast Asia. Where many known video games console such as Sony Play station and Microsoft Xbox are owned by middle to upper class society. Video game rentals and arcades are easily found on the side of the streets with its cheap cost of rent so everyone can play. Indonesia has always been the costumer to sell to and failed to come up with fresh idea of a video game of their own. It is been said that we lack the knowledge and of course the capital to fund a game development. And by that reason people who are in the business of video games in Indonesia never been more than a game retailer and supplier.

In reality, Indonesia is eager to participate in this Industry. This action is supported by the government by setting up to open a study of Video Gaming for High School and Universities. Indonesia is looking forward to be a producer of this global Industry, not just a retailer anymore. Will our nation has what it takes? or will it be just another topic that stay “untouched”. To be frank, i am quite eager to see Indonesia as one of the biggest game developer in, at least asia for the future. Afterall video game Industry is a creative industry.

10 paradoxes

1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they’re also often quiet and at rest.

Creative people can control their energy, they are not hyperactive but not also quiet. They knew when to focus on things and when to relax. It is learned not something that is born with. Creative people is at self peacefulness and can spill their ideas whenever they can.  That is why they are in control.

2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time.

People who make creative contribution might be considered smart but intelligence was never a factor to be creative. Some people with high IQ might get complacent so they eventually lose the curiosity essential to achieve creative stuff.

3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.

One great combination that can make creativity, No question about it. Being playful makes us fun to think something instead of being stressed about it. Being discipline is one thing that we must have to overcome obstacles and to complete our thinking. While responsibility and irresponsibility, well according to David Riesman people always wanted to be both responsible and irresponsible at the same time. So i guess that is true because i feel the same

4. Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality.

Being creative sometimes pushing you to the limit and came up with things that is hard to define. if an idea came up but it is impossible for us to make it happen than is it called a mere imagination? or a fantasy? Well sometimes reality is just to hard for us to deal with, so instead we create a fantasy in a real world as our basis for creating ideas.

5. Creative people trend to be both extroverted and introverted.

I guess being both extroverted and introverted is not hard. It depends on the crowd itself. When we are gathering with people who we are already knew than it would be easy to be extrovert. On the other hand, when we are facing a totally different crowd than automatically we would be introvert. However it always important to communicate people and share ideas.

6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time.

Creative people are humble about their results of work but very proud of their knowledge. Clearly when compared to other people then we could see that their knowledge provide a sense of securities, a sense of self assurance, which give them pride. it is normal because to get that knowledge is not easy and requires a lot of sacrifies.

7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping.

Creative people are not limited by their gender, the concept itself is called psychological androgyny. Creative people are more likely to have not only the strength of their own gender but those of the other one too.

8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative.

We need both to be creative because we need to be conservative or traditionalist to learn rules and understanding the importance of it. But the motivation to take risk and break the safery of traditional traits is also necessary. We might never improve our way of thinking if we “play it safe” all the time.

9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.

Without passion, we will lose interest regarding our work. However,without being objective about it is making our work not very good and lacks credibility. There should be a balance between these two extreme alterations in order to achieve the perfect condition. Once a stabilization is achieved we can find what others don’t in doing our work.

10. Creative people’s openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment.

Being open makes us exposed and vulnerable, it will invite critism and vicious attacks. So suffering and pain will be easy to understand. However it is also an act of enjoyment, where all the pain and suffering is also the meaning of people’s attention towars our open minded creative ideas.  These pain and suffering is actually quite rewarding to keep our creative mind flowing. The real pain is when we stop giving creative idea, then it must’ve mean we are no longer creative people,

Creativity is a gift of mind..or a curse??

You can be creative in certain way, but first before we discuss about being creative, we should choose our interest focus. What are you interested in? is is music? Sports? Dancing? Writing? that is completely up to you. While I want to be creative in both Music, especially in playing guitar, and in sports. Well i do both of sports and musics for fun but that doesn’t mean that i don’t wanna be good at those two. If i’m good at something than i would feel that i can achieve something in addition to the creativity that i have. I always try to do my best when i’m working on something.  But that is not enough, i still need to be creative to be good on something. it some gift that i need to achieve instead of being given.

Creative people are made not born according to some people. And that is one thing that i’m truly hold until today. And that being a gift has made it dangerous, a dangerous gift. When creativity is owned by poor moraled people they would use it to do crimes instead of using it for a good purpose. The most common act of crime that they usually done is, PIRACY! Yes it’s the one thing that still hard to exterminate. Creative people make their creation and others just “creatively” hijack their creation. Hijackers are also creative you know. Nowadays there are a lot of pirated movies available on the market. You can even download a movie from the internet without paying a cent.  So what happens to the creative people who made the movies? did they get paid for their creativity? the answer would be no. Refering to that fact i would said that any form of piracy would kill our creativity juice especially in entertainment industry. it would change the gift of mind to a curse that would run out dry. So lets fight against piracy!!

Creative people are made?!

Recently, i saw all my friend’s blog and it was great. All of them is very great and creative on their own way. I started to wonder, why can they be so creative and blessed with plentyful of idea. That makes me wondering, how can i be as creative as they can. And so i started to search of how to be creative on the web and i found these from wikiHOW.  Here are somethings that we can do to develop our creative side.

1. Create lists – you can expand your creativity greatly and get that side working by making up a list whenever you have a problem which needs some creative thinking, list down as many ideas as you possibly can for solutions and let your creativity flow.
2. Make changes in your life – sometimes we can get a creative block if we are stuck in a rut, make some changes to your daily life to get the channels flowing again.
3. Work on the bad ideas – even if you are only coming up with bad ideas you are still being creative so work on the bad ones and develop them, whose to say it is a bad idea anyway, it could turn into a great idea and solution to your problems.
4. Work in a group – working in a group and brainstorming together is a great way to develop creativity.
5. Challenge yourself and others – if you challenge yourself by telling yourself you can’t do something the way you always have done it, you will then have to think of new ways to get around the problem which can lead to some very creative suggestions.
6. Doodle – if you are stuck for ideas to a solution then keep a pen and paper handy and let your imagination clear and doodle ideas on the paper, it’s surprising what you will come up with if you free your mind this way.
7. Using Crayons as Lincoln Logs!

   Encourage the thinking side of your brain – the right side of your brain is where the creativity starts so give it a jolt and wake it up by activating using the left side, try breathing out using only your left nostril a few times.

8. Hire a life coach – if you feel your creativity is truly depleted then consider hiring a life coach to help you find it, a life coach can help you to establish the areas where your creativity is lacking and work with you to strengthen it.
9. Think like a child – let go of all your adult obligations, stresses, strains and worries and go back to your childhood, children have the best imaginations and their creativity knows no bounds, think like a child when you are stuck for creative ideas and they will soon flow freely once again.
10. Relax – creativity can often become depleted if we are under great stress, learning a relaxation technique not only makes you feel better but can help to clear your mind, give you a fresh start and get your creative side flowing again.
11. Use some mind games – keep a few mind games to hand such as logic puzzles, by taking your mind off your problem and solving a puzzle you are using your brain and using your brain leads to positive and creative thinking.

There you go, some info and steps to develop our creativity. Or you can also browse on wikiHows to find out what you are interested in and how to do that. I personally agree with those steps above and eager to do it myself.  I want to be creative so i made myself creative. Thanks to wikiHow for the info!

The Arsene Wenger way

The recently global crisis have affected a lot of business sectors. And that does not exclude european footbal clubs.  English Premier League has the most foreign investors owning their local football clubs. Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Newcastle, Aston Villa are all owned by foreigner from outside England. and now they are in a brink of financial problems because their investors are having difficulties of financing their clubs. English Premier League has the most expenditure compare to any other erupean league, they even have the most debt of all. The biggest debt came from the 4 major club of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea. Luckily their investors are not even considering to sell these clubs because of the clubs own achievement. However the financial crisis has made these 4 clubs to spent their money wisely.

In order to to make money these clubs have to win championship. To win championship, they need quality players. And to buy quality players, they need lots of money. Well, not according to Arsene Wenger anyway. He prefer to buy unknown young players and then trained them to be the best. That way, he doesn’t have to spent much on transfers unless he is desperate. He’s been doing this since ages ago, i remembered when he bought Thiery Henry from Juventus. At first he was no one, but after years of training he became “King Henry” as arsenal fans used to call him. And then there is Cesc Fabregas, he get him for free from Barcelona Youth team after that he train him for at least a year. Now, he have become a vital player in Arsenal. Arsene Wenger even sold Patrick Viera because he is very confident with Fabregas’s ability. He continue to do this until now, and keep finding new talents to recruit and make them a football star.  This season he bought Carlos Vela, Aaron Ramsey to the arsenal squads. Not to mention there are also other players such as Nicklas Bendtner, Denilson, Diaby awaiting their time to shine. Nowadays if an Arsenal scout comes to their club, their starting to worried because they know that they might lose a good player with a minimum price.

This has been going for at leat 10 years now, and now Arsenal has a new nickname refering to their youth players, “The Young Gunners”. This transfer policy Arsene Wenger undergoing is starting to capture attention from other English Clubs Managers. Manchester United who is sucsesfull with their “class of 92” also try to do the same. But Alex Ferguson is still spend his money too much on young players. Cristiano Ronaldo, Anderson, Nani, Rooney, all bought under 21 years old and still they did not come cheap. Arsene Wenger is not a “spender” type, he invest on players by training them instead of buying them with a hefty sum of money. This managerial ability of his can be considered as level 5 creativity. Inspired those to do the same as he is, even make other managers be creative and came up with thier own transfer method. This is coming handy, especially at these time of financial crisis where we can’t spent too much to buy players anymore. It turns out that the Profesor is both genius and creative.

The Most Creative Company

Hellboy, this is the movie I watched last week. Another comic adaptation movie that was made this year alongside with batman and wanted. Up until now this now, this movie has made 200 million US dollars income. Although in my opinion the second movie was not better than the first one. So what’s this got to do with the most creative company? Like I said before, this movie is a comic adaptation. And the company who is responsible for the comic release is Dark Horse Comics.

When I was given this question, I came up with a several answers. Several name of companies that might considered likely to be as the most creative company. At first I would say that EA Games, the biggest game developer in America, as the most creative company. But it turns out that EA Games has made several controversial decisions and some malpractice over the year, based on information in wikipedia.org. After that I just stop considering EA Games as a creative company anymore. And then I watched the sequel of the first Hellboy movie about two weeks back. At the end of the movie, during the credit, I saw the name of Dark Horse comics as the one who held the license of hellboy. It sounded familiar though, so I try to look for info about Dark Horse comics. It turns out that Dark Horse also published other titles such as 300, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of course Star Wars.

Dark Horse Comics is an independent comic book publisher, founded by Mike Richardson. Initially, this publisher was financed by the profit of Mike Richardson’s comic book store. He invested his profit from his comic book store so he can build Dark Horse. Although not having their own character of super heroes, they manage to publish many stories of super powered characters through licensing. And it goes along very well for the company. Nowadays, Dark Horse comic is one of the largest independent comic book publishers behind Marvel and DC. Dark Horse also have film arm called Dark Horse Entertainment. This film arm is the one who produced films of Dark Horse Comics including The Mask and Hellboy.

So what makes me think that this independent comic publisher is the most creative company? It’s because of the way this company has emerged to become one of the largest independent comic publishers from just a small time comic shop. They probably not as famous like Marvel Comics but they have made more films than Marvel’s. Movies such as Aeon Flux, Aliens, Godzilla, Digimon, Xena, King Kong, Terminator and other licensed properties that was made both as serial TV show or as Box Office Movies.

The fact that the company is being independent makes it more attractive for a comic creator. Because they tend to be more flexible than a majority of other comic publisher and let the comic creator as imaginative as they can. So that way, they can sustain their well known creativity to make new story line and developed new characters. All of that is to entertain comic book fans all over the world with their new creation of fantasy.

Who is the most creative person??

Menurut saya ini pertanyaan yang sangat mudah yang diberikan bapak Agus kepada kami. Kenapa? Karena dengan seperti ini lah saya bisa sangat subyektif dan memberitahukan siapa tokoh paling kreatif yang saya kagumi. Selama kuliah kita terus mendengar nama-nama Einstein, Niels Bohr, Wright bersaudara dan lainnya. Ya mereka memang kreatif dan telah berkontribusi dengan melakukan penemuan-penemuan yang terus dipergunakan sebagai dasar teknologi dan inovasi kita saat ini.

Tetapi saat ini saya akan menjawab pertanyaan diatas dengan jawaban saya sendiri. Yaitu GEORGE LUCAS.

Ya, the George Lucas, orang yang membuat dunia terkesima dengan filmnya yang fenomenal “STAR WARS SAGA”. Sebuah film epik dengan 6 episode yang memakan waktu sekitar 2 dekade untuk menyelesaikannya. Konsep star wars yang dibuatnya sejak ia duduk di bangku SMA kini telah membuatnya jadi orang kaya raya. Dari konsep inilah ia memperoleh banyak uang. Semuanya berawal ketika ia membuat sketsa gambar makhluk-makhluk luar angkasa di basement rumahnya. Ia terus menggambar dan membiarkan imajinasinya lepas begitu saja, dimanapun ia berada ia menggambar, bahkan ketika ia sedang berada di tengah-tengah pelajaran. Ketika teman-temannya sedang asyik bermain menikmati masa SMA nya, ia sedang menyusun sebuah mahakarya yang hingga kini menjadi sebuah legenda perfilman.

Kemudian, lihatlah STAR WARS sekarang, ceritanya telah sangat berkembang bahkan telah merambah ke banyak franchise. Mulai dari komik, majalah, mainan, games, dan lainnya. Fans fanatik dari berbagai penjuru dunia memburu segala macam merchandise yang berhubungan dengan Star Wars. Bahkan bagi beberapa fans fanatik, film ini sudah jadi suatu agama bagi mereka. Setelah itu George Lucas pun membuat perusahaan yang juga berhubungan dengan Star Wars, yaitu Lucasfilm Limited. Lucasfilm limited kemudian menjadi sebuah world leading company untuk mendevelop teknologi2 film terbaru hingga saat ini seperti misalnya sepsial efek, sound dan animasi komputer. Bahkan perusahaan ini sudah sangat berkembang pesat dan mempunyai beberapa sub divisi khusus yang independen. Lucasart, Industrial light and magic, Skywalker sound, dan pixar,yang telah dibeli oleh Disney. Menurut majalah Forbes, pada tahun 2005, George Lucas mendapatkan revenue sebesar 20 Milliar dollar US dari Star Wars Franchise.

Maka dari itu, industri perfilman pun tidak akan pernah lupa betapa suksesnya George Lucas dengan imajinasi kreatifnya yang telah membuatnya memenangkan banyak penghargaan, uang dan hati para fansnya.

Kenapa kita harus kreatif??

Apabila kita telusuri arti kata dari “KREATIF“, pasti kebanyakan orang akan menjawab kreatif adalah unik, tak biasa, dan baru. Setidaknya itu sepenggal kata yang banyak saya dengar. lalu bagaimana sih kita berpikir kreatif? maka mereka pasti menjawab, kita harus berpikir “out of the box“.

Bagi saya, itu semua cuma kata-kata. karena sejujurnya saya masih belum bisa menemukan arti dari kreatif dan bagaimana caranya menjadi kreatif. Saya tidak tahu bagaimana berpikir out of the box seperti yang banyak diomongkan.  Pola pikir saya standart saja, untuk terus berpikir olah otak pun masih susah. Lalu kenapa kita harus kreatif?

Maka jawaban saya adalah…karena sudah menjadi tuntutan dan gaya hidup kita untuk menjadi seseorang yang kreatif. ya, saat ini seiring dengan perkembangan yang terjadi di sekitar kita, kita dituntut untuk menjadi kreatif. Hampir segala hal yang kita lakukan membutuhkan kreatifitas, dimana kita membiarkan pikiran kita terus berkembang untuk menemukan hal-hal baru. Kreatifitas menjadi hal vital di dunia penuh persaingan, terutama di dunia kerja. Dimana suatu kreatifitas bisa menyelamatkan nasib suatu perusahaan dari keruntuhan. Tetapi tidak bisa dipungkiri, menjadi kreatif juga menyenangkan. Menyadari kita bisa mewujudkan sesuatu yang baru dari yang selama ini cuma sekedar mimpi.

Jadi, kenapa kita harus kreatif? menurut saya, karena kita dituntut untuk kreatif, karena itu menyenangkan dan karena dengan menjadi kreatif, mimpi kita bisa terwujud.