ggTV Blog

Shipments of our content have arrived and we’ve begun the laborious regimen of mass encoding. There are tons of discs to go through. It’s both exciting and extremely daunting.

When boxes first arrive you think to yourself This is so awesome! We have so much stuff! I wonder which one these is ______…or Where’s the title I’ve been waiting for?! Disc after disc, box after box, plastic wrap upon plastic wrap, it then dawns on you: Oh crap, we have to convert all this stuff.  It’s kind of like getting a wholesale shipment of all your Christmas presents that you’ve been dying to get your hands on all at once only to later realize that none of it is fun because it’s all time-intensive and really boring work. It’s great that there’s so much. It sucks that it means long long days encoding, re-encoding, checking for errors, going through file by file.

Initial waves of encoding have begun. We have a target in mind for launch and it looks like we should be able to hit it (hope I didn’t jinx us). I’m definitely worried and a little bit overwhelmed, but if we can pull it off I’m sure it’ll be worth it. If we can’t, then we’re just going to have to roll with the punches.

On another note, last week I had some productive talks with more content licensors. It could lead to some very interesting agreements — agreements big enough that people will start doing a double-take. My goal is for people to start whispering amongst each other Whoa, where did those goodgameTV guys come out of? Again, hope I didn’t jinx us for a second time.

I’ll refrain from making any more prognostications just in case third time is the charm that actually does jinx us.

In other news, marketing has come to the forefront for us, an important priority. A couple of noteworthy items: 1) we are throwing around a new tagline/slogan for our site that has gone over quite well with many and will perhaps be implemented within the coming weeks, and 2) we’ve hired a marketing expert to help us vitalize our social marketing campaigns. We hope that this social marketer, in conjunction with our Comic Con launch, will help us build site and content awareness to our future audience. Only time will tell…

It’s getting very very hectic on all fronts. Hope to have more updates soon.

As I’m scrolling through my Netflix account and Hulu, I realize that there’s a lot of crossover in terms of content. It seems that all of us, to some degree, are fighting for similar genres. Obviously Hulu and Netflix are much more general and offer something to everyone and we’re more specialized (or we hope to be at least). To that end, my goal is to find more content that makes us head and shoulders above unique. A lot of my focus is now on differentiating ourselves not only by platform but also by the type of shows and movies we carry. This is where we start getting fun and creative…

It looks like indeed we’ll have a decent selection of content at launch if we can get it all up on the site in time. I’m very proud of this. Of course it can always be better and we will continually work hard at bringing in more, better titles. But this is a decent start. Let’s face it, it could be a lot worse, that’s for sure. I’m very excited to be working with our content partners. It’s going to make for an interesting and hopefully lucrative, long ride.

It’s important to state that I’m having a lot of fun starting up this business. Sometimes it’s easy to get overwhelmed and start panicking, but those are actually the best times when you realize that there’s so much more to be done. I hate the feeling of relaxing and thinking there’s not much to do right now, because that’s just not the truth. The fear of failure and resting on one’s laurels is my true motivation and inspiration. It keeps my clock ticking and my mind (over)actively working.

We just closed a couple of content deals and are in the midst of working on some more. The goal is to have a decent amount of content to offer this October when we launch at Comic Con. The last thing we want to be is a garbage pile for bad content, so we’re certainly being somewhat picky in terms of what titles we end up putting up on our site. We’ve already turned down a couple of distributors whose titles don’t quite meet our standards.

I’m really antsy about October because of the amount of work we have ahead of us. In fact, I’m a little bit intimidated. Hopefully we have a great plan so that we can actually accomplish what we set out to do. More importantly, I’d really prefer that we not be embarrassed when we release.

I ended up email bombing a bunch of people (almost everyone in my inbox, which is a LOT of people) when I tested out a feature in Mozilla Thunderbird, my email program. I simply tried to set an auto-reply function up by following the instructions online. WARNING: DO NOT FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS. Pretty much everyone who’s on my email contacts list and on my phone ended up calling me complaining that I had just nuked them with spam. Wow, I feel REALLY REALLY bad.

Lastly, I am going on vacation for a week, super excited. I think it’s a pretty well earned break. I have been stressing myself out lately with a couple of things on my table, but a good number of them are actually baring fruit, so I feel relieved. I’ve hit a lot of my recent goals, so at least I feel better about everything.

The past couple of weeks have been hectic as heck. I’m working on getting titles on the site and it’s progressing very well. For the past three weeks I think I’ve been averaging 12 hour work days. Sometimes it’s gotten pretty stressful.  BUT I know the payoff is going to be huge and well worth it.

The site has undergone construction from the back end to accommodate some very important operational stuff, so there have been very few front end changes. But trust me, we’re hard at work on the site, so it’s definitely not just sitting there.

I expect to have some major news announcements within the next week or two. We’re definitely moving in the right direction to doing something really big, so stay tuned…

PS I haven’t played any games lately, been so bogged down with work that I’m actually not getting enough sleep.  Alas…

Thanks to Oliver, we’ve had a successful relaunch of our site. There’re obviously lots of functions that need to be added, but I think it’s safe to say that everyone now gets the idea when they visit our site. He’s put in a lot of work into this baby, so we’re all very grateful for his efforts burning the midnight oil.

There were some obvious setbacks with Carl’s passing. We’ve managed to move past them and are now refocused on our efforts and direction. I’ve been in constant contact with his wife and we were able to donate a substantial gift to his fund, mostly to help her out in the wake of his departure.

Our next steps involve adding the many planned features onto this site to really help our site shine head and shoulders above the other guys. It’s these features that will give us our edge. In the meantime, we’re planning on acquiring and loading up some content for all our prospective users. This will be the single most important step in our development process. If we get this part right, we’ll be a force. I’m not even going to consider the alternative scenario…

Summer time is when things slow down, much to my dismay. This is when we’re just rearing to go, but a lot of people are on vacation. We’ll try our best to persevere. I hope to have lots of tangible results to show for the fruits of our labor

I am shell-shocked. I am sad. Frustrated. In utter disbelief. I just got the call from Carl’s wife regarding Carl’s passing. This seems impossible as I was just talking to him Friday. He said he was going to send me files by Saturday. I got an email update from him Saturday 4/17/10 at 3:17PM time stamped in my inbox, but no files. And as Saturday came and went, I thought to myself: is this just Carl being Carl? Well, I certainly didn’t mean it in this way, that’s for sure.

On Tuesday I emailed Carl about the incredible progress we’ve been making, waiting to share some good news. He had alluded earlier on that now-dreaded email from Saturday of having a lot of good news to share with me as well. Since our recent breakthrough, we were all "blue skies" (this was his term he overused way too often) with projects and potential home runs lined up.

He didn’t respond to my email. I tried to set up one of our usual calls. No response. I thought to myself that maybe Carl was just too busy with some other thing. He had previously referenced the many things he was multitasking, including things with Harmony Gold, War Eagles, Robotech Anniversary, California State something or other festival, short stories, and newsletters. We were, however, by his own admission, one of his biggest and most ambitious projects and a top priority.

When he failed to respond to me after a couple of days, I became impatient and texted his phone. Hours later his wife called and shared with me all of the bad news. I feel horrible. For me. For her. For his mother. Horrible.

Nothing I said over the phone seemed appropriate or significant. I could tell she was destroyed and I had no words for her that could somehow miraculously salvage the situation. It was just a sad sad moment for us both.

I called my family to inform them of the news. I was pretty emotional and very upset. After all, I had spent the past four months calling the Macek household every week twice per week. Carl and I spent countless hours on the phone partially because there was a lot to say, and also because his mind and mouth are supercharged engines — once you start it up, it’s very difficult to shut down.

He was very inspirational…and loquacious. But inspirational. Too many ideas poured out of him at 100mph. Some were amazing, some were a "pass," but it’s incredible that a man his age had the creative spark and mental enthusiasm of a hyperactive child. Sometimes the tangents would go on and on, but in the span of an hour, he could spew out more original ideas than most people have in years.

It’s this inspiration and verve that I’m going to carry with me. His mind, lingo, and thought process was so youthful and fresh. He was a fine balance of "knowing with experience" and wanting to learn something new and exciting. This balance is something nearly impossible to achieve. It is both praiseworthy and incredibly humbling.

Thank you so much, Carl, for your service and memory. In the short time we knew each other, you certainly made a huge impression on me. I will carry on to the best of my abilities to try and realize our shared vision and dream. Again, thank you.

We’ve been working on our presentations and have really made huge strides. At the same time, we’ve also been shooting out feelers to content producers. The general reaction from them? They are really interested. And I do mean REALLY interested.

I hear the same complaints over and over again coming from the content producers. Nobody has a plan to monetize this content. Producers are going to conventions and even then they come out more confused than when they first entered the room. So, they say, talking to us has been really refreshing because we have such a definitive plan that’s already being set in motion.

Huge names and franchises are being thrown around. It’s really exciting stuff. It’s so exciting that I get nervous just thinking about it…in a good way of course.

I’m really happy to report that so many people have shown such genuine enthusiasm over our project. I wish I could be more specific and name names, but that’d be very unprofessional of me, so I won’t. Just know that if only a couple of these things go through, we’re going to be a big name in a short time. In the meantime, we’re going to keep pitching until we’re blue.

I’m really proud of this moment. It’s been in the works for the better part of three months now. We’ve successfully brought on Carl Macek, who aside from the fact is an established entity in this industry, is also someone I’m a big fan of. And now we’re working together. This is a really really cool thing for me.

Pure and simple, I think Carl can really help us develop and thrive given our system and his expertise. In fact, he’s successfully done this exact same business before with the only difference in the past being that he had to find distribution for content. Well, viola! We have an in-house, built-in distribution platform. So now all we need are the licenses.

We’ve already been through rounds and rounds of brainstorming, so it’s important that we put the pieces together as fast as possible.

I’m really excited.

After much deliberation, we’re simplifying the site and removing the Subscription System. We are now transitioning to a VoD system. This is a pretty big move and is something where we considered all the angles.

The site will be under construction for another month or so. Content will still be in production and all previous production deadlines will remain the same. This step, we feel, is going to be the game changer that helps us better pitch to premium content producers.

Speaking of which, we’re currently in talks with a veteran and reputable person in our niche of the content industry. He’s actually a childhood hero of mine and is responsible for a piece of premium content that I spent nights dreaming and days daydreaming about, so I’m very excited to have the chance to work with him. We feel that he will be a huge asset to us so we’re excited to try and bring him on board.

So all those goodies I mentioned in the previous email are in the midst of being implemented. Hopefully the changes will be live by the end of today/this week. We’re really pushing hard.

Really excited to get this newer version of the site up and running. I’m sure there will be bugs, but what’s new? This will forever be a work-in-progress with us constantly fixing and patching up things that are broken. That’s both just the nature of the business and the reason why it’s so fun and challenging.

As for the pictures and graphics, you’ll have to excuse me. I am not a grahpic artist by trade so am simply doing the best I can with what I have (my limited although growing understanding of visual graphics). People have given me tips and tricks here and there, but I am absolutely nothing compared to the real graphics pros out there.

Onto games: we’re pretty much Modern Warfare 2 super freaks right now. Don’t play every night, but certainly want to, the itch is that bad. Jumped into a team demolition game last night where we lost by a mere 7 points. Not to give too much of an excuse, but I was using a clown class the entire game (riot shield with no secondary weapon), just being a general idiot. And we barely lost. And the other team had the audacity to parade their win and gloat in our faces talking non-stop trash. They were a clan team (all with the same name suffix, not going to embarrass them by disclosing that name).

Anyway, I threw out the gauntlet and said, "So what are you going to say when you lose this game?" referring to the next game. It’s not like we ever play team domination at all or we have any strategy, but we just knew we were better than these bozos. They continued parading their (horrible) trash talking skills (just didn’t find it offensive as much as they wanted to get a reaction out of us). We ended up demolishing them that next game (just about everyone on their clan went extremely KDR negative) and won by double digit points. It was truly embarrassing for them, especially in the "Carnage Report" room where they gave excuse after excuse. Then they all left and said they had to bring in more clanmates to get even. At that point, they had 6 out of 9 people on one clan. We were all randoms except for Oli and me. They had to bring in more? Yikes…..

Anyway, the whole exchange ended when I told them to go watch a show called "Road to Pro" to improve. I told them there were a lot of skills they could learn from watching ‘Team 25 to Life’ work on their game. They wouldn’t have any of it, got pissy, and quit. Buahahaha.

Of course, that’s my side of the story. I’m sure they have a completely different interpretation of why they lost so bad. I’m not sure if they’ll cite getting outkilled, completely pinned, flanked over and over, or failed at capturing any territory. Or if it’s simply because they didn’t have enough (9 out of 9) clanmates on one squad. But I’m telling you…if they watch "Road to Pro," their skills would have improved threefold…hahaha.