Satya Murthy

Its raining outside in Columbus, OH -  sort of dark and gloomy. But I am feeling fresh and ready to rock… so y’all have a splendid day!

I have never been a great fan of reading books, at least those without any pictures…large pictures….maybe I should accept that I cant read anything except comic books!

I recently made a habit of reading books or at least buying them regularly. I used to have a lot of them by my ex-gf took most of them from me, when we moved away from each other…let me rephrase that, she took every single book I had, I bought and come to treasure them.

Enough of Ramayan… this is what I am planning to read this weekend – Robin Sharma’s The Greatness Guide 2

Every time I read one of his books, it really inspires me and I swear to god I need some inspiration right now.

Have a good weekend!

Its about 1:52am right now and I just cant go to sleep. In some ways I feel like “Jerry McGuire”, not sure how many of you have seen it. This email is long overdue and there is a lot of thinking going on in my mind, so, these few words might not be able to capture them all. My thought could be broken and come in bits and pieces, so pardon me if its gets boring or confusing at times. You are free to say, ‘has satya gone mad?’.
After just coming back from a great dinner at Marriott with Monica and Prakash, I am starting to wonder what is Gameshastra all about! Would you be able to explain to someone in once sentence if asked? The only picture that comes to my mind is the film “300″. Its about these 300 Greeks who wanted to win a battle with 1,70,000 crazy Persian warriors! They were defending their territory, and did not want to give up. Now I am not sure about the legitimacy of the story, but, I think its inspiring, intriguing and filled with passion. I see ourselves in the same situation… a decade ago I started my career purely for passion… I literally lived on the streets, works for peanuts just to have my creative hunger satisfied. I look at now, we no longer have the passion to learn…succeed…win…conquer! Of course there are exceptions among us. Where has the passion gone…where is the madness to create something unique (trust me you create something ‘cool’ only when u are nuts, which is another word for passion). We worry about things that are petty, minuscule, tiny and insignificant. What we don’t realize is the accomplishments we all have made in that last 6-12 months. It requires a lot of courage and (if I may use the word) ‘balls’ to do what we have done here. I got an email from a senior recruiter of EA, asking me if I wanted to join them at EA, Singapore. I thought to myself and realized, I am probably never gonna get this opportunity to work with a team which has this sheer power and madness to success. I look at art team, trying to struggle day and night to please even the smallest of our clients. I am not forcing them to stay, they realize what needs to be done and are responsible enough to push themselves beyond 24-36hr shifts to make happen! Where else can I find the likes of Lance, who sleeps under the desk and works 2 shifts at a time and Jim, who talks crazy stuff half of which I don’t understand, but still in some weird way I know what he is talking about. Oh did I mention Jason, who is the Santa Clause, every time he is coming back, its Christmas at Gameshastra, we all wait to see what Santa has got in his big bag of games and graphic cards and Chris, every time he walks into a room he is like “Hellooooo I am here” without saying a word. Not to mention the ‘ever pushy’ Prakash who wants everything done in 10minutes, however big or small. The fact of life is we need them all, and this is like a magic potion which is almost ready, except for one small but significant catalyst, … your trust and faith! You (including me) form the core of this company, any company, and as long as we decide to fight this battle together of becoming the coolest gaming company/making the next big title, nothing….I mean absolutely nothing will come in our way! At this moment the only words ringing in my ears are from the film ‘independence day’… “We will not quietly go into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive!”  I can completely relate to what we do at Gameshastra to these 4 sentences. After Goa meet, I stopped focusing on the petty issues, stopped issues bother me, have you? Everyday I wake to the thought of how to make a difference in team, how to implement a new plan, how to introduce something new into our system… I wake up with  thoughts on how to make my clients happy. Imagine a year down the road when we have had one of our original titles out into the market. We don’t have to deal with petty clients!!! We will have the luxury to pick the client we want to work with… at that point your business cards will make a difference! People will know you by the game that you worked on..not outsourced but a real “made in gameshastra” title. I can speak for Bjorn, Jason and myself, we have taken up on ourselves to make sure we absolutely have a seamless and transparent system. No BS! You, as the people have a larger part to play in this, it’s a system setup for you and unless you take the first step of speaking up and wanting to make a change, nothing is going to make a difference. Pls remember something like Gameshastra has never been done before, imagine doing what Activison/EA did within a span of 5 yrs, isn’t it insane? Yes it is insane! Now the question is, is it possible to do something like that? Yes, absolutely. They have made all the mistakes for us and we just pickup where they left off, making sure we learn from their mistakes. The only way we will reach the top, when each one of us, imagines and acts as leader. You are the core team, and for anyone else coming into the company, you are the older and more senior team! You stand as role models and you project an image which is an image of an ideal Gameshastra leader!
Now coming back to square one… What is gameshastra? Is it sheer brute force of gaming in India? Is it the collection of all the insanely passionate people put together? Or is it the definition of “making games”? I don’t know, I cant answer that…its up to you guys to define it, apply it and create it!