Pink Poogle Toy Forum

PROJEKT 'X' EATS ANDY CHAMBERS ALIVE!

It's been months since I posted anything to the Red Star Games site, but I've got a really good excuse (honest). You see, two things have been going on. First, I started playing World of Warcraft and so while I have no social life any more I do have a level 60 Warlock and raid Molten Core on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Ok, so that isn't a really good excuse but it is kinda funny and more pertinently it's true.

The real excuse for my neglect of fellow revolutionaries is that I've been living in southern California since the start of October '05 doing contract work for Blizzard Entertainment. If you've been living under a rock for the past ten years and don't know about Blizzard they make the biggest mmorpg in the world - the aforementioned World of Warcraft, and are the creators of Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft games.

I've been enjoying my time in SoCal a lot - its very nice to be in a land where winter means it's ever so slightly cooler and the sun doesn't necessarily shine every day (as opposed to four to six months of solid grey overcast and sub-zero temperatures back in the UK). So much so that I've applied for a work permit over here so I can take up a very generous permanent contract at Blizzard. It's very exciting to be back working full time with a dedicated and talented team of creative types.

For me it's some of the same kind of work as I've done in the past in terms of developing plotlines, characters and ideas in big, vibrant universes. But I'm also dealing with new challenges like scripting dialogue and cinematic cut scenes - being able to have your creations actually move around and talk is quite something.

On the home front I note that Starship Troopers has been well received and the Westeros game is gathering momentum (another one of those unfinished tasks is to read through the latest manuscript for Westeros). It's good to see miniatures gaming still has new concepts and ideas ready to put into the market place.

It's been rather painful to contrast this with the difficulties Games Workshop has found itself in over the last year as several of my friends there have been forced to move on. I can only hope that this creates a realization that an expansive retail organisation and integrated manufacturing capacity is no substitute for originality and diversity in the modern market. Time will tell but I'm sure GW will endure, there's still plenty of cool stuff they can do and some seriously skilled individuals there that can do it.

For me, however, the future is in photons and not lead or plastic at least for a while. The process is a slow one, but hopefully you'll be able to see some of the results in a year or two. Hopefully they won't suck either.