So much to talk about. So our programming team has all but collapsed. We have one strong programmer on the team, a few that show up to the meetings every now and then but don't do much, and the occasional person that really, really wants to join the team, finds out it's actual work, and quits. I think I'm going to start going to colleges and talking to deans / career counselors to recruit people. With all the people that want to get experience in the game industry, recruiting shouldn't be this hard.
On the art side of things, we're doing really well. We have about 20 artists, some of which have experience working at AAA game studios, which is always nice. Only about half the team tends to make the meetings on a regular basis though, but Jared and Micaela are doing a good job keeping everything organized behind the scenes with the people that can't always make the meetings. So I'm pretty happy with the direction things are going in. I'm also really happy with with the look of the Neg Wath in terms of clothing, weapons, and hair styles as well as their building styles. We're close to uploading some of it.
Now, I'd said since the beginning that funding would be a long shot. I'm going to officially change that to "likely." I'm not going to get into too much details as to that publicly here, just to say that E3 had some unexpected surprises. In case anyone wonders why I have people sign NDAs before they can join the team--this is why. We're not going to be talking about it until it happens or it could spoil things. It's also likely it completely falls apart on its own. The skeptic in me is leaning towards the latter, but hopefully I'm wrong about it. I'll celebrate when the check clears. Until then we're just going to keep focusing on making a great game in our free time.
I've been pushing the team to send me their time sheets for the work they complete. I've had some interest from other studios about having work out sourced to us, so it might be very likely I can at least get the team some money doing work outside the Dawnshine project. This is tricky, because not everyone would be working on the out sourced project, so it will be a little weird when some people are getting paid and some aren't. The team doesn't seem to stress out about stuff like that, though I do.
Aside from all that, let's talk about E3 for a bit. So plans got changed. I was lining up interviews with game companies so I could cover their games in articles I would then write about, but Loki's Planet wanted me to interview game developers on their separate list on camera at our booth, so I had to stop booking interviews on my own. We set up an interview location at our booth with lights and a video camera. All that work and it only got used once, and not by me. That was a little disappointing since I could have lined up more off camera interviews had I known I'd have more time. I call this "Loki Planning." To be fair, Loki is the God of Chaos, so I've gotten pretty used to plans radically changing with them.
I did get to interview quite a few people there and I'll be writing articles on that soon. Right now, I'm stalling because next on my list is an article about a kids game that I'm not the least bit interested in talking about. But not everything I'm going to cover as a game journalist is something I find interesting. It goes with the territory.
Some of the stand outs: I got to ask the lead designer of Ninja Theory and Lead Producer of Capcom some questions about the new DmC coming out. Myself and the other journalists sat down in a press room to have it unveiled to us. It's a pretty cool looking game. I like the idea that you don't have to spasticly spam attack buttons to kill stuff. It's a rhythm game. You can relax and time your button pushes evenly and generate more stylistic attacks that way. I'll be finishing a full article on it for Loki's Planet in a little bit.
But before that, I need to get back to writing that kiddie game article.
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