Rush Beta/New Kids Turbo!

This week we’ll be rushing to make a new version of our platform game for this Friday. At this point both of our newest games will be ready to go out for evaluation just before the Christmas work slump kicks in. I’ve heard some companies even close their offices for the entire month of December, lucky them… The bigger the company is you work for, the more they’ll be influenced by other companies’ schedules. This whole feeling that working in between the holidays is useless gets reinforced because there’s no one to do business with. This spirals into an escalating scale of being unable to do anything at all, possibly aided by a large train defect that will pop up every other day during the harsh weather. This results in a numbing effect for those involved that makes working very useless indeed. You start thinking: let’s work again when this whole mess is over…

I think that’s a good thing, go ahead and forget the capitalist institutions that rule us all for a few days and celebrate life and love while eating till your stuffed! But, when you’re a small developer life is completely different….

There’s no one to blame for not working here at Xform, the work will have to be finished anyway. We’re not dependant on other businesses like the big corporations are. Our production results are what we make of it and responsibility is carried by everyone almost equally. No use in shoving your tasks onto someone else’s desk, it will wind up right back on yours the next day.

This week almost everyone at Xform will have to work on one project in order for it to get to a more playable state next Friday. I’m not directly involved in producing any assets normally, but I’ll be finishing the trailer for our aquatic racing project this week, so in a way, I’ll be part of production for a week. On top of that, I’ll be responsible for making sure that everyone can do their job and have all the tools that they need to do their job, and of course that they’re not malnourished (a lot).

Today is still special though. We’re going to check out the New Kids: Turbo! movie in the theaters. It’s almost impossible to describe to a foreigner how these characters fit into Dutch society, but believe me, you can find them in real life if you look hard enough. They’re funny as hell and it’s going to be crazy! Check out the trailer, kut:

Untill next week!

-- Erik