Hey, gamers. If you’re reading this, we hope you’re okay. This is a weird, stressful time. As just ordinary people, we’ve been thinking of ways to do more than just social distancing.
If you haven’t seen it, we’re working with WINGS and other industry folks on a GDC Relief fund. A lot of indie devs were banking on GDC this week, having meetings, showing games to press, meeting the big platforms, and signing with publishers to make their dreams come true. Now they lost not only the opportunity to do so, but they lost a lot of money on their upended plans. Read more about the fund here if you’re interested in helping artists down on their luck.
For all of you at home, consider this the beginning of a weekly blog series about being home. The Versus Evil team are all experts at working remotely and being home. With a mix of seriousness and levity, we’d like to offer this list of tips for those of you working from home:
- Start at a normal time.
- Have a comfortable space to sit – make sure you have lower back support.
- Get dressed for the day/don’t forget to brush your teeth by 11 am.
- Stand up and walk around at least once an hour.
- Get out of the house at least once or twice a day – check the mail, walk around the block, have a coffee on your back porch.
- Exercise! You can do a lot at home to stay active, and there are even loads of apps to help keep you on track like Sweat, Aaptiv, or Nike Training Club.
- Use video calling whenever possible – this helps with keeping human connection remotely.
- Try to separate spaces if someone else is working from home with you. Let them know when you have meetings for the day and try to have a system for when you are concentrating (like closing the door) so they know not to bug you.
- End at a set time – when done shut down/log out and let things be unless they truly can’t wait until the morning.
- If you didn’t get as much done for the day as you wanted, don’t be too hard on yourself, if you were available for the day it’s the same as being in the office. Some days you’ll get more done than others.
- Be extra patient over the next few weeks – this is an extraordinary time so people will be stressed and out of sorts – remember we’re all just people taking it one day at a time and unless it’s something life or death, it can probably wait a day.
- Come to a realization that traditional office culture is an archaic, stupid burden hailing from the 19th century that has no place in a modern world filled with 2 hour commutes, cell phones and Internet. Have an epiphany that the 10 hours of work you were putting in at your office can be done in 5 now plus you can actually spend time with your loved ones. The unwanted desk visitors no longer exist, the bosses checking to see if you’re sitting at your desk are now at home, and you may never want to go back to an office space ever again. We recommend going through this around week 2 of staying home.
That’s all for now. Stay safe and healthy, we’ll get through this together.
