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Developer Diary

Well, we've made it through another development cycle. The games are off to Sony and MS for review and normalcy is slowly creeping back into our lives. The days sleeping in our offices are behind us. I can tell you from personal experience, trying to use two office desk chairs as a bed is not a good idea. Hector slept in a beanbag that was "borrowed" from the QA group. Unfortunately for one team programmers, Matt Daugherty, the futon he ordered for his office didn’t arrive until after we submitted the games to Sony and Microsoft, so he got to sleep on the floor during that time, luckily he was able to procure an inflatable air mattress.

Well we all are getting to enjoy sleeping in our own beds again, leaving the office at normal hours and getting reacquainted to our friends and family who have been oh so patient with us in letting us indulge in our passion for making games. It's funny to look around the team members now and remember what they all looked like at the beginning of the project. As for me, I finally got to get a haircut and some solid sleep. I no longer look like a B-movie zombie. Little kids no longer run away from the sight of me…ok, maybe I'm exaggerating here, but sometimes it sure felt like that. At the beginning of the project we all start out as clean shaven, respectable members of society. By the end some look pretty scary, which is probably appropriate with Halloween coming up. No need for costumes. A couple of guys have even grown what could be described as Grizzly Adams beards. But now that the hard part of development is done, members of the team are now looking to take well deserved breaks whether to just chill at home with the family or take off to some exotic locale to recharge the batteries. We're getting our haircuts, shaving off our beards, going back to the gym, and eating healthy diets again…deep dish pizza counts as healthy, right? We also get to look forward to our wrap party, which Hector and I still need to plan out.

As for Hector and myself, we're not quite done yet. We now have the PR portion of our job to deal with. In fact, next week we're taking off to Europe to help with the official launch the game. We'll be touring to Munich, London, and Paris. We're really both excited by this, even though we know it will be very grueling hopping from city to city. Last week Ed and Paulo Garcia, one of Senior Designers, did the US media tour which went really well. So while we don't get to rest just quite yet, it will be a change of pace. It will be good to get out there and see firsthand how people react to the game. We can't wait.

Tell your friends,
-h