I met with a publisher earlier in the month. We talked to them about a deal to make another game. They made Mike and I sign NDAs and swear ten different ways not to say anything about the deal and its surrounding machinations. So I guess I won't. But we are planning the new game now, and as soon as it is possible to announce it without lawyers sueing me to a crispy carcass with their evil magic, I will.
With our limited but healthy budget, we made a few part-time hires. (By the way, I am going to get through this without saying "
coming on board"
--I'm so tired of that cliche.)
Gerry Jo Jellestad (a.k.a "
Trick"
) is spending a couple days each week as our codeslave. Gerry did the original Linux port of DROD and made sure that all of our games work on Linux. Also, he's responsible for the Deadly Browser of Death. (How many games do you know that have a working cross-platform HTML browser inside of them?) Also also, he made some fantastic art for The City Beneath. If Gerry weren't already put to work on fixing TCB bugs and working on the next game, I would be happy to see him making more in-game art.
But we actually got somebody to do that on a regular basis--Brett Boyette. She'll be coming in to our Seattle office one day each week to work on cramming meaning and beauty into little 22x22 pixel boxes. The plan is to have her do pretty much all of the Caravel art for the forseeable future. I hired Brett in a traditional way: resume review, phone screens, in-person interviews. She was the best of several candidates, and I think she'll be a fantastic addition to the team. If you'd like to see some of Brett's work, check out her online porfolio:
http://brettboyette.com/
If anybody missed it, we also hired Matt Cramp to catch us up on support requests and lead us on to victory on the marketing front. Or maybe just lead us on to painful but necessary discoveries concerning the nature of marketing games on the internet. We'll see.
So with these new people coming on board, we can't lose!
Aw, crudmonkeys. It's really hard not to say "
coming on board"
. Maybe impossible.
Jamie Jone's Bulk-Mailing Deathstar
We finally got bulk mail working again. "
I hate bulk mail! That's spam!"
No, no, no. I consider it my duty now to explain to everyone that just because we are spurting massive loads of e-mail out to the world, doesn't mean we (or other people doing the same) are spammers. All of our e-mail is specifically asked for by their recipients. "
I don't remember asking for this mail, you filthy jerk!"
say about 3 people getting this Illumination in their in-box. Trust me, you really did, but you just don't remember. And also there is a link at the bottom to unsubscribe. It really will unsubscribe you, and it will not add you to any other lists.
To give a full picture of the effort behind bulk mailing, the real problem is not sending bulk mail. The real problem is keeping your servers from getting shut down when you are using them to send bulk mail. I don't know how somebody like say... Netflix, figures this out, but I assume they pay enough for their hosting that the hosting company decides it is worthwhile to maybe call somebody at Netflix about a perceived problem to discuss it before bringing Netflix's business to a screeching halt. But I am not Netflix, so apparently people can shut down my websites on a whim. My solution is basically to put all of the bulk mailing on one server, and keep everything else (our website, eCommerce stuff, non-bulk mail, CaravelNet) safely away on a different server.
Jamie Jones has heroically volunteered the bulk mail server, accepted the risk of shutdown from his hosting provider, and given me a great quantity of high-level technical advice. He knows a lot about administering Linux servers, and we are extremely lucky to have his help.
Printing CDs Update
I just want to briefly mention that we are still going to print CDs and sell deluxe boxes. In fact, last weekend we assembled 200 shiny black boxes and affixed DROD: The City Beneath illustrations to the front. They look good! We are still waiting to print CDs because there are bugs to fix. Bugs which should not permanently carved into our beloved discs.
-Erik
____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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