Afternoon Update – Friday, May 23rd, 2014

Folks,

Fantastic Friday to you all! It was a great day in the studio with some stuff working well, some stuff breaking and lots of preparation for the BSC days. We did a lot of filming and everything is moving along, albeit a bit more slowly than we would have liked. We will make a final decision on Tuesday whether or not we will being the BSC days in May or delay it till June. In terms of good news, we will have the fourth member of the new programming corps join us next week. In the meantime, I want to introduce you to our three newest members in order of their arrival.

The 2nd new member of our programming team to join us is Charles “Bull” Durham. Now, aside from having a somewhat predictable but awesome nickname, Bull can honestly say he has worked on three MMORPGs and survived. And even crazier than that was the fact that he not only wants to work on another MMORPG but he wants to work with me after two separate gigs. As to what he has to say about himself, here we go:

“I’m from Cranston, Rhode Island. I’ve worn many hats, including AC-130 and MC-130 crew chief, cable guy, and vehicle customizer before settling into a games industry career. My first games gig was as a volunteer game operator on Mythic’s “Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict” while still in the Air Force. I missed an opportunity to work on Dark Age of Camelot, but didn’t miss getting hired at Mythic as a game designer on Warhammer Online. From there, I went to Bioware Austin to work on Star Wars: The Old Republic. While there I did plenty of work as a game designer and as a tools programmer. I then left Texas to go to Carbine Studios as a senior game designer, working on WildStar’s economy and tradeskills. My career path left me with a somewhat unique set of skills, and I ended up doing quite a bit of metrics coding as well as finding exploiters and bot programs through the power of data mining. However, excitement about working as an engineer with Mark & Andrew on this amazing out-of-the-box MMO and the lure of the verdant east coast brought me back home. When I am not making things happen in the games I work on, I spend time being a husband, playing with my children, exploring, writing, camping, and creating tabletop RPG campaigns that I never have time to run.”

The next person I want to introduce is our Web UI/UX guy. Unfortunately, he has never worked on an MMORPG so I think we got lucky, otherwise he may have taken an easier D.C. job, like building awesome stuff for folks like the NSA. 🙂 We’re glad to have him aboard and our Backers will soon see the first results from his efforts. Here is what James Koo has to say about himself:

“I graduated from SCAD in 2011 with a degree in graphic design. I picked up html/css on side while attending college, and dabbled in jquery and php after I graduated. While working at a design firm, I collaborated with a software engineer to enter into the Samsung Smart App Challenge in 2013. We made a game called Sushi Land and through this process I realized my passion for interface and game art. During my free time, I enjoy doodling(linkage here) and playing online computer games. Currently, I play Reaper of Souls and League of Legends.”

Last, and certainly not least is someone who I have known for many years. He is well-known (that is an understatement) within the PvP community as well as other communities as well. Fortunately, even though his name is Brian “Psychochild” Green, he isn’t nearly as crazy as certain people here. As to what he has to say about himself, here we go:

“Brian is an experienced MMO developer with over 16 years of experience. His first job in the industry was working on the classic PvP MMORPG Meridian 59, which he later ran under his own company. This experience gave him insight into just about every aspect of running MMORPGs. In addition to MMOs, Brian enjoys games of all types including tabletop RPGs and board games. He has also been (accurately) accused of “rocking a dwarf beard.”

That about sums it up for today. I’m about to dash into my 4th filming session of the day, the programmers are making the game seem more alive than ever and the AC has failed again in this building. Fortunately, it is Memorial Day weekend and we are going to be taking it off so when this building spontaneously combusts, we won’t be here to feel it.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I’ll have another update out after we return to the office on Tuesday.

-Mark

P.S. Here’s a quick piece of concept art from Michelle. It’s a true teaser, in every sense of the word.

P.S.S. I just sent out the following message to about 2 dozen helpful folks. It’s been a good week.