This guest post is written by Tobias Batton, the CEO of Resistor Productions located in San Francisco, California, the publisher of Disciple MMORPG. Tobias and his company has been working with MoveYourWeb and Apalon for several years and built a number of successful projects. In this series of guest posts however Tobias addresses the fun aspect of building the big relationship with offshore vendor.

Last week we left off with the CTO of Resistor being taken into custody by some friends acting like the ‘KGB agents’.

As the week progressed we knew that we had to build relationships not just with the executive team of our development partners, but with their employees as well. These are the people doing the majority of the work, and it’s important to be friendly with them as well, since they are often working long nights make sure that software is out on time.

After talking with the team for a few days, we decided to show them what and American keg party is like. In Belarus they are no strangers to heavy drinking, but they had never heard of a Keg Stand. We invited the entire company to come.

We ordered a Keg of micro brewed beer from the brewery across the street and decided to have the party right there in the office after working hours.

Once the beer arrived, the team began drinking immediately. It wasn’t long before the drinking competitions started. To our surprise, the CTO, Marc was beating everyone! This was unexpected since there were some big guys trying to slam beers with Marc, but in a way this was his redemption after the fake abduction he endured earlier in the week.

The development had one last shot at redemption to see if they could find someone to beat Marc in the drinking contest. They convinced the PM, Vitaliy, to challenge Marc. This is a pretty big deal because Vitaliy has a reputation for never drinking, he hates it. But with the pride of his company on the line, Vitaliy did not back away from challenging Marc. Here is the video of what happened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRDqtz6NLHc&feature=channel_page

So who won? Leave your comments on this blog post.

So obviously we had quite a rich experience in our trip overseas to meet the development partners, but there was a purpose for all of this.

Relationships are key for productivity and general shared excitement around any development project. If someone does not know who they are working for, its hard to care about the end product.

We achieved our goal, we built working relationships and created memories with people from another country that made the development process for Disciple much easier and increased the communication dramatically.

Tags: game development, mmo development, mmorpg development, offshore outsourcing
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This guest post is written by Tobias Batton, the CEO of Resistor Productions located in San Francisco, California, the publisher of Disciple MMORPG. Tobias and his company has been working with MoveYourWeb and Apalon for several years and built a number of successful projects. In this series of guest posts however Tobias addresses the fun aspect of building the big relationship with offshore vendor.

Last week we left off with getting beaten with branches in a 150 degree sauna in Belarus by our development team.

The next story of our adventures in team building center around the Resistor Productions CTO named Marc. Marc is a good friend with the CEO of Resistor, Tobias, and Tobias knew that Marc had never been overseas. With the anxiety of Marc’s first time overseas, along with the weird feeling of visiting a former soviet state, Tobias went to great lengths to take advantage of Marc’s awkward feelings.

Ahead of the trip Tobias called the owners of Apalon and planned a prank that is so epic in proportion that it rivals anything you have ever seen on the show “Punk’d”.

On the second night in Belarus, Tobias left early to go to dinner with some of the employees of the development firm. Marc was left alone with one of the owners late at night in the offices. It was then that a ‘KGB agent’ showed up, accompanied by an armed guard with an AK-47.

They approached Marc and asked him for his passport. They told him he was wanted for questioning under suspicion of espionage. Marc was completely freaked out. The agents barely spoke English, one had an AK-47 and they kept his passport. They were yelling at him in Russian and trying to get him to sign a confession that was written in Russian, so Marc had no idea what it said!.

When Marc refused to sign the confession, they handcuffed him and put a black bag over his head. They lead him outside and threw him in the backseat of an SUV. They drove around for about an hour and yelled at him to shut up anytime he asked any questions.

Marc was silent and shaking.

After about an hour of driving around, they pulled up to a security gate and showed their badges. The guard let them through. All Marc could think is that he wanted to see his wife, and that he thought he was going to be tortured in some crazy interrogation.

As the car made its way down into a parking lot, there were a group of men yelling outside the car. They parked the car and took the bag off of Marc’s head, and standing in front of him was Tobias, half drunk, with an evil smile on his face.

It’s probably not appropriate to write what Marc said to him in this blog, but there was a very colorful exchange. After Marc released some tension, he shared the laugh with Tobias and the developers.

Marc said he completely believed it was real, and wondered if he would die. It was the most epic prank he ever experienced and will remember it to the end of his days.

Tobias Batton,
CEO Resistor Productions LLC

Tags: game development, mmo development, offshore outsourcing
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This guest post is written by Tobias Batton, the CEO of Resistor Productions located in San Francisco, California, the publisher of Disciple MMORPG. Tobias and his company has been working with MoveYourWeb and Apalon for several years and built a number of successful projects. In this series of guest posts however Tobias addresses the fun aspect of building the big relationship with offshore vendor.

As you know Disciple is a browser based – no client download game that is heavily focused on PvP, level progression and rankings. The actual Production time for this game was about 20 months, from concept to release. This is part one of a series of posts about the different aspects of making a browser game. I thought it would be fun to start with some of the more entertaining aspects of game development.

When we started the design process, the majority of what we were doing was fleshing out the actual game concept on paper. This was everything from gameplay, to story and lore, to art style, and even basic combat formulas.

As our concept became defined, we needed to choose developers to implement our ideas from paper to code. There was a lot of discussion on whether or not we would hire our own developers or hire a professional 3rd party developer. Rather than train our own development team, we thought it would make sense to hire a 3rd party with experience and give them direction, rather than creating our own crew from the ground up.

After a little looking around, we discovered a company called Apalon based in Europe. They were both affordable and qualified to handle our project, and had done work for several large companies in the past such as Fisher Price. We knew from the start that there would be a few issues managing a project in Europe, one of which would be team building and general excitement and moral.

We had to keep the development team excited about the project, and we had to make them feel like we were all part of the same team, even if we were an ocean apart. So during the process of development, the management of Resistor took several trips overseas to manage the development and build relationships.

Apalon is based in a country called “Belarus” which is part of the former USSR and one country east of Poland. These countries have become a hotbed for technology, even Google has set up a huge development office in this area.

On our first trip there we did not really know what to expect, but upon arrival the similarities to the USA are truly uncanny. On nearly every corner of the downtown area you see McDonalds and TGI Fridays, as well as other familiar sites.

As soon as we arrived in the office, we were hard at work, but we also knew we had to find ways to become fast friends with our new partners, so that they could feel as though they were a part of our team, and our friends. I asked them to give us a taste of traditional Belarussian culture.

The first night they took me to a Belarussian Sauna. Its very hot. Like 30 seconds now get me the hell out of here right now hot! I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was quite an experience.

I have been in a Sauna in the USA maybe once or twice in my life. The Russian Sauna is much hotter. After 30 seconds the only thing you are thinking is that you want to get the hell out before you pass out from the heat. You touch your hair and it feels like its about to light on fire. The gentlemen I was there with were pouring beer on the coals and laughing.

Peter, the VP of their company, wanted to leave too, but we were trying to be tough and hang in there. Next thing I know, one of the guys walks in with some tree branches and points for me to lay down. My response was:

“what the hell???”

Matvey, the Operations Manager explains that he will hit the branches against my back, and this is tradition in Belarus. All I could think was that I wanted to get our of there right away. Matvey told me I was a Sauna virgin and they were going to “pop my cherry”. Not wanting to look like a wimp, I reluctantly agreed.

Getting hit with the branches didn’t hurt . . . . When i tried to get up, they pushed me back down. It was similar to a college hazing. After 2 minutes or so, I thought I would die, so I insisted on leaving and they let me go. In all it was a great experience, everyone got their turns with the hot room, I was able to take joy in watching them suffer too.

This was just the first night. In my next post we will cover a staged arrest of our CTO by the “KGB” as well as drinking contests and more! Here is a preview video for what we will cover in the next post:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRDqtz6NLHc

Tobias Batton,
CEO Resistor Productions LLC

Tags: game development, offshore development company, offshore outsourcing
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So you sitting watching the world falling apart with the headlines like this everywhere. I bet if you are using outsourcing or intend to do so the question pops up in your head: which destination is stable and will not get hurt by the crisis or blown away by the next financial storm.

Here is the comment on risks (no risks actually) if you choose Belarus. Much of our force is located there so we have have our homework on this one done. Belarus is not affected by the world crisis b/c it doesn’t actually have mature stock market and not much of a foreign investment in the country. The loan system including subprime is not popular much also – so we won’t have any foreclosures happening destabilizing the financial system. The local currency is fixed towards the dollar and stays on the same level for about 4 years now (with slight rise of ruble against dollar recently). At the same time the was a gradual inflation happening which resulted in lesser purchasing power of the dollar. Worth case scenario for crisis is that devaluation of the belarussian ruble will occur which will be a hit for the country but not the outsourcing industry. In fact it will win in this case (consider employees being able to purchase more for the same salary). Which makes the choice of Belarus as your offshore outsourcing destination right and bold!

Tags: offshore outsourcing, outsourcing industry, power of the dollar, recession
Posted in management, outsourcing | 2 Comments »

In those hard time for virtually any industry the interesting question for outsourcing professionals or companies using outsourcing is the following: Will the offshore outsourcing industry grow or decline? Is this the end of offshore outsourcing golden times or the beginning of the new wave?

From our prospective it’s both. Here is why: about 20-40% of the revenue of traditional outsourcing houses goes from financial institutions. With the collapse companies have been forced to enter into different vertical markets. Typically that would be a good measure to compensate the losses. But the current problem is that everyone is in the same boat – industries, markets, countries. For example travel verticals seeing the rise in cancellation of reservations and tickets, automotive sells dramatically less cars then usual, the list goes on. At the same time in the reality of the crisis companies facing difficulties try to search for the way to stay competitive and make the ends meet. And outsourcing is a cost effective solution which was invented long time ago. It’s a matter of applying it now effectively. During the last two weeks our marketing department sees the increased number of leads coming in. Fact! It’s interesting times because it’s mix of positive and negative happenings for offshore outsourcing companies and the managers need to be creative to make sure that the business drives true value to the customer they need to work on differentiation factors. Price is important too this time! I’m sure that the ineffective players will sink and leave and those with the strategy will become more powerful then ever. They are helping companies to stay competitive in those difficult times anyway.

Tags: offshore outsourcing, outsourcing companies, outsourcing industry, recession
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Every other day I’m getting a ‘partnership offer’ from another ‘outsourcing company’ which started their operations (or I shall say ending).

The shortest example of an unsolicited junk that I have to clean out from my inbox daily:

We are a company in China, and we could provide you with any web related services for only $12 per hour, either PHP, ASP, Net programming or any flash development, web site designing, etc. You can have a whole group of experts, AND you don’t need to pay until the project is completed (only available for those projects are below $2000).

Not only the those ‘marketers’ are not able to understand that they are emailing to the VP of outsourcing company (why would we need to outsource the work when it’s outsourced to us), their spam emails are not wanted (I never subscribed to their mailings) and no one is interested in their cheap and unreliable services.

Anyway this post is not a rant about confusing marketing techniques but about the fact that people cannot think deeper than just following their desire to replicate the success of established big vendors. This so called ‘companies’ fail to recognize that offshore outsourcing market is over-saturated already. There will not be another Wipro, Infosys or Satyam or as a more local example there won’t be another MoveYourWeb, Itransition or Aitoc. Big fish which is swimming in this pond is able to keep with market saturation and keep well. They are able to employ administrative personnel needed for effective functioning of the company (executives, marketing, sales, hr, attorneys, office managers, system and networks admins, representatives). They are able to compete on price easily because there is no need to earn high profits on every employee to maintain the functioning of the company. They are able to provide solid offices and work space to the employees and motivate those. They have millions of other advantages that the similar small company doesn’t have.

Don’t take me wrong – there are and will be successful outsourcing companies starting (few -providing services, many – developing proprietary product) but founding another outsourcing service provider trying to emulate the model of an established successful company located next block is just a FAILURE. A lot of times this new ‘CEOs’ of such ‘companies’ think: ‘We know everything about technology and outsourcing. We’ve been working in outsourcing company for years. Why not to start our own company. We will compete for the customer by lowering prices, offering a additional compensation advantage to employees and claiming that we have a more personalized clients approach and earn some decent buck for it, right?’ WRONG. Optimizing competitive advantages by 10% will not do the trick of competing with big names established long ago! That is simply not enough to brake though. You will end up in spending years of your life, face debt, bad image and other bad karmas. The business model should be different to compete and succeed.

Types of offshore outsourcing companies that can get successful:

1. Companies providing UNIQUE set of services. Take a look at this company providing online tutoring services. Finding the unique niche which is not saturated is the key for companies giving a stake on this business model.
2. Companies leveraging relatively cheap offshore resources to develop unique web properties. Those are generally called Product companies. This is a concept of the future, the only downsize aspect of this is that you will need funding to support the operations. But that’s the different story.
3. Companies which act as an office of established software companies or big outsourcing houses employing AT LEAST 100 full-time people in other countries. Partners that have small ventures don’t qualify (you don’t want to become the company with the 1 customer). In 99.95% of cases this is the dead road since the ‘partner’ will not be able to grow the company big due to the same reasons mentioned plus additional like multi-focus on different businesses that are being run (in 90% the ‘partner’ will be just trying out this outsourcing venture). Only big established companies. Full stop.
4. Companies located in rising outsourcing destinations. Vietnam, Egypt, Argentina and others – outsourcing is just starting there that’s why you can compete on price on the global market and grow because there is not much fight on the local labor markets yet. The disadvantage is lack of strong experience and sometimes communication of the employees so that’s valid to specific types of outsourcing only.

So you are located in a third world country and willing to start your own company or already running it (small one). Does the business model qualify as one of described in 4 types? NO? Then keep building the career at the company you work for, gaining additional experience and skills, leveraging the expertise you have for your success, the success of the company you work for and the ultimate success of the customer. You future is stable and planned and stable in this case. In case the answer is YES – you are at a spot where it might be worth trying. Go for it if you are really confident about it! Just remember that in case everything goes wrong sending out the cry for help if the form of SPAM emails begging for a project will not be the way out.

Tags: it outsourcing, offshore outsourcing, outsourcing, outsourcing business, outsourcing company, web development
Posted in management, outsourcing, web development | 5 Comments »

Outsourcing seems to have recently become a buzz term in the business sphere. Actually, it is not only the word, which has become so popular, but also the process itself. The reality is that many respected businesses aim at outsourcing their business processes. The number of businesses in various industries shifting their work to outside parties is astonishing! If so, outsourcing process must bring quite huge financial benefits to the people introducing it into their businesses.

The very essence of outsourcing is in the wish of many companies to get rid of a significant part of their workload shifting it to third parties. This idea proved to become not that bad, and, therefore, more and more companies bring themselves to trusting outside companies with some part of their work. Furthermore, with the development of the Internet and growing availability of many online services, the work is handled over to outside countries, sometimes, even quite distant: Belarus, India, Pakistan etc. Why is it happening?

The truth is that many developed countries experience lack of qualified and talented professionals, people who are willing to do their job with enthusiasm and proper care. Besides, an employer must pay quite good money to qualified work force in developed countries, which is not always profitable for a company. Here outsourcing to developing countries might become a perfect solution. Imagine, if all work is outsourced to the countries that have immense qualified labour force able to complete your projects perfectly and at lower rates. For instance, if you usually pay a professional in your country about a hundred dollars for doing some qualified job, you will have to pay about twenty dollars to professionals who will do the same job for you through a third party.

Besides, offshore outsourcing industry offers another nice opportunity of organizing your business process in Offshore IT Outsourcing market – Offshore Dedicated Center. The major financial benefit of ODC establishment is that it will save you up to 70% of IT spending by reducing employment costs, contract and project execution. Therefore, if your company is focused on IT, maybe, you should establish an ODC to make your working process more effective, and cheap! It’s your virtual IT department that works produce the product of same or even improved quality but at 1/4 of the cost.

Of course, the fact that so many businesses undertake outsourcing does not mean that you also need it. Before taking up this important decision, you should evaluate if you will really benefit from outsourcing. To do that you will most likely need to consider a number of various factors of your business. First, think carefully if you are comfortable with handling major part of your work over to third parties. The problem is that together with your work requirements and specifications, you will be handing over all the financial details of your business, and so you must establish full trust with the third party firm that is going to perform the work for you.

Secondly, any outsourcing company you choose for working on your projects must have the best security features to protect your personal information and data. Here, references are extremely important. You will need to find out if other firms and companies have previously cooperated with that outsourcing company and if they are satisfied with the results of the outsourcing process. If you get positive feedback on the work of that company, and if you are satisfied with other queries that you have made, go ahead and start outsourcing!

Besides, it is very positive when an outsourcing company let you check the quality of the work performed by its employees before you sign your contract. You can give an outsourcing company a kind of a test (some piece of work) to find out if the quality of their work is good enough for you. If you are not satisfied with the work done by them, you can always say ‘no’, and go search for some other company that will better meet your working standards.

Overall, from the financial point of view, outsourcing is a profitable process to undertake in your business. It helps cut down costs keeping the quality of the work done on the same level as before, and sometimes, even higher. However, think twice before choosing the outsourcing company to work for you. Scan through their official website, examine their portfolio, make the necessary inquiries about the company and only then get in contact with the company’s sales rep.

Tags: offshore dedicated center, offshore outsourcing, outsource, outsourcing
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