Hermitworks Entertainment Blogs

Well, we heard (through our crack-squad of underground rumor checkers) that the Great Games Experiment is opening up a few days early. Anyone reading this can avoid the rush and sneak in as of 12:01 Thursday. Space Trader is the featured game for the opening of the beta to the public, so we are thankful for the traffic (and testers) that the event will no doubt bring in.

It’s so time for a blog entry. It’s a really busy time for us here at HermitWorks. The fellows over at Garage Games and The Great Games Experiment have featured Phil Daigle and Space Trader on their websites, and it’s driving a nice stream of testers our way. This is an invaluable resource, and it’s great to have their support.

I have decided that being popular is a fool’s errand. I really want to win stuff on the Great Games Experiment, but I just can’t be a friend/kudo’s whore. It’s not something I am comfortable doing. I noticed a whole bunch of rabble signing in and cross-promoting each other, not that gaming the popularity system is against any rules, but it doesn’t feel right to me.

Could this be any sweeter? Yes, that’s right - Mensa Canada is hosting thier Annual Gathering (AG) in Edmonton this summer! I will be able to observe the mating rituals and social interactions of ubernerds in their natural habitat - a hotel conference room!

I want to join Mensa. More accurately, I want infiltrate their nerd-hive. I am going to see if I can get a “Dr.Nick”-style intelligence test.

Everything changes, constantly. I wish I had a content management system for my brain. The types of information that need to be displayed shift around like the instances of them churned out by Ruby on Rails. It’s very tricky to keep things running while our needs shift. I definitely feel my stress level rising. Usually, if I can get a few hours behind the lens, it helps me deal with work-stress. Lately though, I have not been able to do that either. I’m just gonna bear-down and keep trying. I went out to shoot comet McNaught, but cloudy skies kept it from view.

I am feeling a little crappy today, so this one will be short. Somehow however, I am among the most popular developers this week a the Great Games Experiment. I feel better knowing I am popular. I deserve it. I am like the fonze of computer game development, only fatter, and less italian.

It’s good to be back. I was sick-like-dog starting the middle of last week. The guys are ready to rumble and I am feeling spunky. I am beginning to collect sources for our marketing plan, and we are collecting what we need in a wiki. Let me just take a moment and talk about how wiki’s change everything. In my last job, there was five dudes in one room managing online content for a large (more than a hundred publications) print media company. Even though we were all smart guys, and there were no questions regarding the power of our collective digital kung-fu, managing documentation was a pain the arse. I suggested a wiki, my boss was smart enough to see it’s potential and give it a try, and a bottleneck that had been with the company for about three years started to clear up… amazing.

Well, “Space Trader” is nearly finished. Everyones roles are shifting, especially mine. I have moved from artist, to user interface design, back to artist, then a web-monkey, and now I am in marketing. Trying on new hats seems to be part of the job. I have never been a “Marketing Champion” before. In fact, what I have is more like feelings. I feel like “Space Trader” is something special. It’s tricky to think of ways to convey that. In a way, I suppose this blog is the first step.

Hopefully, there will be a long a informative run on this blog. Hello visitor, my name is Jordan Dennis, and I work for HermitWorks Entertainment, the creators of Space Trader. I am an artist and I do whatever I am told. Sometimes, I feel dirty, but mostly I love my job.