So, the skies are grey and it’s Monday. What do you do? After leaving the car at the garage (yes, needs to be fixed yet again) and managing to do the daily sprint meeting in about three minutes - what’s next? Logging in, spending some time reading more or less important e-mails, putting the not-so-groovy headset on and then tuning into a very casual easy-listened to station at shoutcast.com. After they had to shut Pandora down for everybody outside the U.S. what’s a girl to do? Shoutcast is the second best thing, keeps you surprised through the entire working day. Variato delectat, as the romans used to say. And when you’re in the mood for something, but still nothing in particular, it’s the easiest way.

Trying to focus but it seems to be one of those days when everything is equally important yet elusive. Some documents to read through. Some planning to do, statistics to move from one place to another, phone calls to make.

But what I really really wanna do is gather my entire fantastic fanatic team around me, steel them back from soccer and talk about how to make Power Racing the coolest gaming experience online today. Talk and interrupt and get annoyed and get cool ideas that could never work and do some mockups and sketches and declare them all to be nuts and then come to my senses, re-consider and continue. Moving the game forward, developing, evolving. I want to discuss and laugh and eat chocolate and make great plans. Great Game Plans.

Because, as you know, I’m one of those that rarely is impressed, hardly ever find a game addicting. I’m just not “gamy” enough. So imagine the challenge in making this a racing game that even I take pleasure in playing! Not just find interesting from an academic, media perspective, but really enjoy. A new favourite waste of time. That would/will be so cool…

So, yes. I miss my team, miss the clutter, the mishaps, the endless discussions. Our Big Meetings seem to be filled with creative - and candy. They work so well together.

Soon. Any day now, we’re gonna be a big noisy malfunctional family again. I can’t wait. And in the meantime, well, Excel is also fun!

// Linda

This weekend (as you can also read in Richards post) there was an intense event at Barkaby Airfield - a couple of the guys from the office and Max from Pole Position teamed up with some total racing maniacs for an entire day filled with fun and games = wicked Japanese cars, skid marks, smoking tires and what have you… I’ve seen the pictures and it looks awesome. Max and the rest of the guys were more than happy with the recordings (and the driving).

Don’t you just want their job?

So, what else is new? Well, this week we’ve had a really interesting and impressive meeting with some guys from Donya that create polygon reduction and optimization miracles. Of course, highly relevant to an online gaming company that certainly think that size matters! And people, let’s face it. Less is as a matter of fact less, not more, no matter what someone might try to tell you. It’s less. Littler. Not so much.

On the scrum side of things I can tell you that the burndown chart is looking great for the racing team this sprint! (and for those of you that aren’t familiar with the terminology - just follow the links to the Scrum Alliance’s glossary) My boys have worked really focused and estimated their slices well so the burndown looks splendid! I told them to take an hour off Friday afternoon but as usual they didn’t pay any attention to me.

Everybody seem to really enjoy working in a scrum environment. More power to the people that actually build the stuff, less talk about things that aren’t gonna happen anyway and more insight in what everbody is actually working on.

If you’ve ever thought of trying out agile development, read “Scrum and XP from the trenches” by Henrik Kniberg (or some other book on the subject - but Henriks book is very to the point without being to “heavy” for a beginner) After that - give it a try. Just do it, like som famous sports company usually says.

Have a great midsummer everyone!

Yesterday really sucked. =)

I had to spend the entire day with our sound supplier, at a closed-off airstrip (Barkaby Flygfält) in the outskirts of Stockholm. Oh, yes, together with a bunch of heavily tuned Japanese cars too; a Nissan Skyline GTR, a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and a Subaru Impreza WRX STi. We were also visited by a couple of crazy BMW M3s and a Saab 9-3 Aero.

The mission? To record car sounds for Power Racing.

To help out with that, a bunch of car tuning and racing enthusiasts (THANKS, guys!) had joined with those maxed out cars, and given us permission to rig microphones at various places. We recorded things liker engine, turbo, BOV, intake, exhaust and cockpit. To be sure to get a really diverse range of samples to work with we recorded during slight, medium, heavy accellerations through all the gears, during idling, during engine breaking, starting, stopping, etc. We did pass-by:s too, to pick up that sick outside sound as the cars flew by. Trust me… 400 bhp in full accelleration is pretty noisy :-).

Additionally we also recorded tyre noises, skids and burnouts.

I really can’t wait to hear and experience the results of yesterday! One thing’s for sure: we’ll spend a great deal of time and energy on tweaking the sounds… Everyone in the team, many being sim racing geeks, we all know by experience how important that dimension of a racing game really is… Looking back now, I really feel that yesterday provided us with a great bank of raw material to nail that part of the game.

Imagine how much fun it was for me to get in my Volvo V50 diesel to drive home, after experiencing those 400+ bhp cars all day…

By the way, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m the executive producer at Power Challenge, and consequently of Power Racing. And I’m a petrol head and a racing game geek too

I don’t know if you remember, but I said something about our great sound guys at Pole Position and their next recording session on an air field… Well, it takes place on Sunday, it’s gonna be great and there will be three seriously cool Japanese cars making some serious noise. And yes, I’m gonna miss out completely.

There is a certain birthday party I have to attend to. My son’s. I guess it would be pretty rotten to just abandon ship and break a 13-year old’s heart. Even though we all know they’re only in it for the presents.

Best of luck to Max, Bernhard and Mats at Pole Position - I hope you’ll have a great day. Don’t forget the snap shots!

/ Linda