Folks,
Well, it's been a great week here in the studio. We've gotten a lot of work done; posted a couple of updates on our website (more on this later) and interviewing/hiring is going very well. In terms of specifics, first, we have a new programmer starting on Monday! In addition, we hope to sign up another programmer early next week and we've got two other promising candidates that are moving through the interview process. Most of the candidates we are talking to are experienced MMORPG folks so they will be a nice addition to our small but growing family.
In terms of our current workload and team, we are moving along nicely in terms of all aspects of our scheduled work on the game. As Andrew said to me this morning, code is starting to "fan out" (and not just because our office is sweltering today) as more of the foundation code gets done so that the programmers then can move on to other tasks. While we might take a small hit as the new people come online, given the level of experience of some of the new hires, we will quickly make that up. If all goes well in April, May should be a really exciting month in the studio. Even if we hire all the current candidates we will still have a couple of slots open and we will be in really good shape for the push towards Alpha.
In terms of updates this week, many people have been wondering why we haven't posted as many Kickstarter updates over the last month as we have in the past. Well, we are trying to use them sparingly since (1) it is soooo much easier posting on our own website than using the KS editor; (2) we are trying to ensure that update #100 is reserved for a major update. So, expect that until Update #100 hits, expect that we will certainly follow the same pattern so do try to check our website every Friday afternoon. These week's updates were:
1) The April Producer letter from our turtle-loving, former Californian denizen and environmental artist turned Producer, Tyler Rockwell. The letter can be found on our website here. It's another fine letter and it is accompanied by some awesome concept artwork from Michelle and Sandra, including this piece which is a small face study of a very large race, the Giants of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
2) The latest Piercing the Veil from our Community Manager, Renée Machyousky. The full update can be found on our website here. Like she has done on most of our PTVs, she isn't content with answering just a few questions, no, answering just a few questions is for tourists. Instead, we have pages and pages of Q&A with our Backers! Lots of good stuff in there and as always, we're happy to answer a wide-range of questions, including the takeover of our studio by Werebears!
Design works goes well too as Ben is fitting in nicely and there have been a number of high-spirited discussions about PnP, RPG, MMMORPG and Camelot Unchained and so much more. Speaking of PnP, some of the team are coming over to my house in order to begin a Pathfinder campaign. Maybe one day it will be a Camelot Unchained campaign. Now, that would be fun, wouldn't it?
Sadly, It's time to end today's update. I hope everybody who is reading this, Backer or not, had a great week. For those of you who are attending Pax East in Boston this week, enjoy!!! Maybe next year a certain studio from beautiful, downtown Fairfax Virginia will be in attendance.
In the meantime, to shamelessly steal one of my favorite sci-fi lines, "Watch the skies."
-Mark