I just received word that I’m moderating a panel at PAX East! It’ll be Saturday, March 27th, at noon in the Wyvern Theatre. Right here in Boston. Aw yeah.

I HAVE A GREAT IDEA FOR A GAME!!

That’s great! We’re happy for you, we really are. But you know what? Our studio isn’t gonna help you realize your vision, and chances are no other company will either. I know it’s shocking, but the reason we dove headfirst into the start-up ocean full of shattered dreams and razor blades was because WE ACTUALLY HAVE A GREAT IDEA FOR A GAME TOO! So if you really feel passionately about your awesome idea and want nothing more than to see it live then go make it your own damn self, we’re busy. But we’ll throw you a bone with this helpful panel full of tasty tidbits on how to get started. Gaming entrepreneurs Chris Oltyan, Eitan Glinert, and Ichiro Lambe will regale you with tales of wonder and woe, led by our fearless moderator Darius Kazemi. Only the brave will survive, no refunds.

With participants:

• Chris Oltyan,  Director of Product Development, ZeeGee Games
• Eitan Glinert, President, Firehose Games
• Ichiro Lambe, President, Dejobaan Games
• Darius Kazemi, President, Orbus Gameworks (Moderator)

(Banner photo by the ever-excellent Vincent Diamante. I love how I can search Flickr for CC-licensed PAX photos and his are the first to come up.)

Because my work email address is more or less public, every now and then I get an email from some entrepreneurial guy saying, “Hey, I have this great business idea and I’m looking for a game industry partner. But I can’t tell you more about it until you sign an NDA.”

I usually respond to these letters along the lines of, “Tell me as much as you can without making me sign an NDA and then I’ll decide. If you can’t tell me anything, you can go talk to someone else because it’s not worth my time.” What I really want to tell them is that business is not about ideas, but rather, about execution. For example, I’m not afraid of my competition learning about my philosophies on metrics because ideas are cheap and execution is everything (edited June 08 to add: notice how their competing product doesn’t exist anymore?). I’m sure there are a bunch of smart people working there who have already thought of all my great ideas, but they can’t implement them because they’re a giant company and they have a million other things to do and things move at a snail’s pace.

Today, though, I got one of those dumb letters and it begged a different response. Mostly because the email, addressed solely to me, opened with

Hello, Tom –

*cough*

Here’s my response:

My friend,

A word of advice: the next time you send out a form letter to every industry email address you can find, please take care to change the name at the top of your letter to match the recipient’s.

Cheers,
Darius (not Tom)