Ask Dr. LJ: What's my rate?

OK, so Origins happened, and this that and the other, and Volity's investment trail, while still warm, has yet to reach a conclusion. I am now even broker than I was the last time I said I was broke - I am no longer frequenting cafés coz I have lost the ability to pay for things in cash - and since there is no salary for me in the foreseeable[1] future I'm going to pick up where I left off three weeks ago and look for short-term part-time contract work.

I've cruised jobs.perl.org and got a half-dozen applications ready to go, and my question is: knowing what y'all know about me - basically, I am a super-expert at whateverthehell these people want me to do regarding Perl and databases and websites - what should I be asking for? Is $125/hr too much? (too little?)

[1] While it is true that, things being what they are for us, "the foreseeable future" describes a time period about 50 hours long, the fact remains that the particular such slice I refer to here has no paycheck for me in it.

Volity stuff

So what is going on?

I have been corresponding with a lot of friendly people since we made our debut to the print game world at Origins. Not only have I learned to be generally less shy about writing people in the industry, but sometimes people approach me, as has happened once already when the head of a Cambridge-based CCG and RPG publisher phoned me after hearing about us on misuba's podcast, delighted to discover another north-of-Boston game company.

When I say that the investment trail stays interesting, this is a lot of what I mean. Picking up connections is crucial, not just in the interest of locating funding sources but in learning more about the markets we want to work with. The print-based developers are offering some interesting pushback about what Volity is lacking, comparing us to systems like Vassal and Lackey that let you mock up networkable game components without any programming. They lack any analogue of Volity's referee (so no rules enforcement, or game records, or even help in setting games up), but on the other hand any computer-savvy person can jump in and play with them quickly, whereas our system asks that you know (or learn) two entire programming languages and SVG before you can make a game.

Despite all these new friends, I am feeling pessimistic about our chances for picking up Volity contract work. The game companies that are most interested in us helping them are the smallest ones, and I fear they instantly dismiss our $4,000+ quotes, no matter how juicy I make them look. The local publisher feels that the entire concept is laughable to begin with; in his world, a print publisher with $4,000 lying around would rather spend it on marketing, reprinting, or other comfortably knowable costs than on a crazy wildcard like a Volity game. This will become less true once we have a huge userbase, but that's a ways off.

One company we met at Origins is interested enough in collecting quotes that they already have a form letter about it, though. Will write them back tomorrow.

We still nominally have one guy's interest from my angel-group bombing run two months ago. He encouraged us to rethink our investment plan and get back in touch with him. We did this, and I wrote him back Thursday night. No response yet.

Am going to mail all our current investors tomorrow, and sometime soon - maybe next week - will pitch our new plan at our original friends-and-family funding list. (So if you're reading this you're likely to get one (and if you weren't on the original pitch list last fall but would like to be - maybe you know some potential investors and would like to pass the info along to them? - please let me know).)

I'm presently thinking that undefined behavior may occur if we move into August without getting past first base with any potential money sources. We'll see what happens.

New Modern Art art

Check out this preview of Mike Doyle's new art for the upcoming edition of Modern Art. No more Karl Gitter & company. What do you think?

The rest of Doyle's blog is worth looking at, especially for his various unrequested makeovers of well-known board games. I would totally buy his design concept for Settlers hexes! Which I cannot link to because Blogger is dumb! Oh well.