The Blog: August 2011

The world is changing. It’s a blue sphere in constant motion; every second of the day produces a new life changing thought. Whether that thought is acted upon or publicized however, is debatable. Considering that fact, one of the greatest things about human nature is that we are prone to adaptation. As our environments change (consequently we are normally the cause of change), we find ways to change with. Now that that’s out of the way, marketing is a topic that’s been around since the establishment of trade. How else would you draw people to your wooden establishment and convince them that your corn is better than your neighbor’s?

The reality is that marketing has been an essential part of history and those who effectively master the far from dying art, are the most successful. Lets look at Apple for example. Their focus has been brand management since CEO Steve Jobs hopped on board. Because of this, they’ve gone from near bankruptcy to one of the top companies in the world. As of August 1, they held more cash on hand than the United States treasury. Are they selling any products that are necessary for survival of mankind? Are their products much different from those on the market?
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What is it like Interning at Major League Gaming?

“I honestly can’t find the difference between an intern and a regular employee. Employees get one trip to a related conference every year; I was also sent to one. Employees may go to MLG events and I’ve been to two. I deploy apps to production on a daily basis, make design decisions when required and am involved in the process from top to bottom. That is why I feel MLG has been a great experience, because I’ve been completely immersed in the software development process. “– Matt Perry (Intern)

You’ve learned a bit in school, but don’t know if you’re ready for the elite work force. Well, most of us have been there so we understand. I guess one of the royalties of an internship is that you’re not expected to know everything. School has set the foundation for you and now its time to start conditioning your catalogue with experience. That’s the exact same feeling that troubled me in the beginning of this summer, so I figured that my perspective might be useful to anyone considering an internship at Major League Gaming.
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August 4th 3:00 PM: Excitement looms in their eyes as they await the fourth coming. An extraordinary combination of producers, interns, devs and more, unify to kick off the event of the century: Hack-A-thon 4. What is a Hack-a-thon you ask? Well, I’m glad you did because only the foolish can live in ignorance of the mankind’s greatest celebration. It is only that moment that we’ve all dreamed of and considered impossible as children. The one moment that all of our parents told us about, but never truly believed we’d actually see. The period when you’re granted the highest level of honor and allowed 24 hours to work on any project that should strike your chord of desire. Brilliant, isn’t it? Now, the Agorians are an interesting people. Masters of the event is only the least that could be said of their Hack-a-thon abilities.
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Here at MLG, we use a product from Opscode called Chef to manage our server environments. Chef allows us to reliably manage our infrastructure by providing us with the ability to write code that describes how a server should be configured. While not perfect, it has served us well.

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When I was in grade school, I had your typical learning experience. My teacher stood up in front of us everyday and lectured about something that I usually found utterly boring. Fast-forward to college and its still pretty much the same ordeal, except now there are more students. Having said that, you can understand the significant amount of envy that poured from my eyes as I read about the new ways that classes are being taught; one of which is video games. Imagine you went to school excited everyday because calculus was no longer your boring system of numbers and formulas. To add to it, you’ve also sparked a desire to learn because it now becomes a fun challenge. Well that’s the situation with these 6th graders who are learning via the Jason Experiment.
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