Final Approach to a shipped game

It's almost noon here on a typically rainy Seattle Saturday. The blinds and sunshades that keep the summer afternoon sun off my bank of monitors are all open, and I can see the ripples of raindrops hitting the puddles on our building's North-West deck.

I'm in the office again.

Since coming back from Christmas break, I've had one day off. This looks to be another such week, and I'll likely be in on Monday even though we're officially closed in observance of MLK day.

I started the day with sixty-one bugs on my plate. Yesterday I started with fifty-two, fixed or moved about eight of them, and left with sixty assigned to me. We're a week and a half from sending our game to be certified by Microsoft and Sony, and I'll probably see everyone else left on the team at some point this weekend. We're not work-a-holics. Well, not most of us anyway. I'm sure there are some who are, but the vast majority of us would rather be spending the long weekend with friends and family, rather than hunkered down at our desks squishing bugs.

But that's the price you pay for turning your hobbies into a career. Life on the bug lines continues...

Playing Now Update

I finally finished Kingdom Hearts last night. It took close to a month, and forty-five hours or so of playtime (Thank you Square, for those wonderfully depressing "Hours Played" counters), but at least now I understand why this game is beloved by so many people. Mix Disney characters with Final Fantasy characters, add world-spanning plot to allow the fusion to make sense, set blender to Frappe, and viola. And I'm only five years behind the times on this one too. :)

At this point, though, it's on to something newer. One of my Christmas presents this year from my Lovely and Gracious wife was Assassin's Creed for my PS3, so now that I've wrapped up the epic RPG, it's time for something a little more action oriented, and shorter. I just don't have the time for epic adventures that I used to. Of course, I'll also be working in the new Sam & Max episode sometime soon...

And believe me, I am still alive

I'm doing game development and I'm still alive...

With apologies to Jonathan Coulton and GlaDoS. Seriously though, I'm still here, just working my slowly expanding fanny off as we push to get Big Game Sequel out the door by the end of the month. Not that I'm working any less than I did when I was on the QA side of this equation, but it's a whole different ballgame when you're responsible for fixing bugs rather than writing them.