Well, guess what? It’s snowing. Unbe-******-lievable! It’s at least two weeks early. The acceptable preliminary date for first snow is 15-20th of November.

this is how we feel —–> 

So right now I’m sort of going through the early stages of shock. I’m considering all sorts of weird solutions and clothing to survive this horrible weather. It feels un-friendly, to say the least. I desperately need to stay indoors, keeping that fire lit, the knitted socks on and the movies constantly playing. Add coffee, books and happy singing children with big smiles on their faces and you have yourself a Kellogg’s moment!

But right now, while the snow keep falling, most of us here express angry mutterings about having to change to winter tyres- it hits us, so surprisingly, every year.

Some people here in the office are longing for Fallout 3 - so all together there’s a sense of expactation in the air… a bit like Christmas. Snowflakes, the talk about games and that special Friday feeling.

From all of us - to all of you: a very merry weekend!

Our sprint ended this afternoon and it was time for a retrospective. (Retrospection? I’m not sure…) We haven’t made these very successful in the past so we tried to do it slightly different today. We timeboxed it (30 minutes) and everyone had prepared themselves by thinking of/writing down two good and two not so good things from the last couple of sprints. I had also sat down before the meeting to go through what had been worked on lately, in case we’d get stuck and had trouble remembering what the sprints consisted of.

It went well. It was ok. And some part of that great cosy feeling had no doubt to do with the candy I brought to our gathering. Sometimes you need some sweet encouragement.

The team has been working so great lately (ok they’ve always been great, I know) and made a huge difference to the game in a very short while. They’ve adapted to Scrum and are being extremely flexible and agile! And - they’re focused and get the work done. So a big round of applause for my own dearest racing team! (clap clap clap)

Power Racing is looking Beta ready. There is some serious work left to be done on the web side of things, but the actual tracks and cars look awesome, the physics are swell and the sound is gonna be so hot.

I told them to go home early today, they totally deserve it and my brain is almost boiling. Tomorrow we plan the new sprint. (and today, it rains…glorious November weather…)

// L, signing out

It’s Thursday morning…what do you do? You want to be inspired, you want to think of games, coming up with new ideas… you enter Kongregate! So I did, and I went to the adventure/rpg-section. And there I found this cute little killer game, called Johnny Rocketfingers.

He’s a stick figure running around ripping of drug dealers. Such a bad boy. He makes breaking a guys arm look aestheticly appealing. Let me try to explain why I love him and other games like it.

It’s like being able to walk into a film, like suddenly being inside a movie, being able to change the events, the outcome, the end. (I guess you could say all games do that, but to me most games are too demanding, take too long or causes too much stress)

There’s a walkthrough the developer himself encourages you to look at, making every step of the way as difficult or easy as you want.

The graphics are simple yet with a great sense of humour. The music and dialogue sets the mood perfectly. And you don’t get punished for being shot in the head, you instantly get the option to try again. Wonderful.

So - if you’re 18 or over and like a sort of cut scene-ish, thug-ish challenge, look up Johnny Rocketfingers…

// shaolinda

In two articles/interviews at gameindustry.biz, people from Blizzard talk about the potential pitfalls and difficulties with MMOs and releasing them into the great wide open (Internet). Sort of interesting to hear what other people in the industry find challenging.

Interview with Blizzards’s Frank Pearce

Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime telling it like it is

Tomas Ahlström: Feelgood Manager, President of Fun, Party Guru, The Maharaja of Wellbeing, threw together a little summer feast some months ago. To celebrate summer, we barbequed, we drank, we built castles in the sand.

Everyone was there, but everyone can’t win. There can be only one pyramid.

Per and Tomas U, creating a…square? Block? What is this?

This is another team: Sebastian, Jonas, Josef…

And lookie lookie, what have we here? It’s Karl (we miss you!) and Thorbjörn (Pow) doing what they do best. Acting like children.

This is a hotel and the (”fake”) beach located some 400 odd meters from our office:

…and like I said, there can be only one pyramid:

And there you were, thinking geeks don’t know how to have fun or look cool…tssss…

/ shaolinda, Reporter Of Truths

Yesterday, I was priviliged to sit down with Tomas U, brainstorming about a small, but potentially important, film project. He’s just insanely creative and the ideas popping out if his head makes you wonder how his brain works. In a good way. Power Challenge is entering this competition and we need a 60 sec. presentation film, showing the jury/audience what we are, who we are and what we do.

Presenting anything in 60 seconds really forces you to cut the crap and find the core, the very heart and soul of that specific area/person/whatever.

So…who are we? What makes us special?

Well, we quickly nailed a few punchlines and core values. Me and Tomas (not Ahlström, Unosson) agreed that at Power Challenge

- we’re passionate about what we do (take pride in our work)

- we like working together, we have fun

- we overcome the harsh reality and technological obsticles (making sure anyone online, anywhere in the world can play high quality games in a few minutes, in a few Mb

And I really think this is it. We love being here. The developers are extremely talented and devoted - they can build anything given the tools and amount of time needed (the rest of us at least have strong feelings for games). And what we do, making sure most people can easily access high quality games, is really quite unique. There are thousands of games out there, but honestly, most of them are either horrid to look at or require huge downloads and installations. We’re none of those. We’re cute and friendly and “one size fits all”.

We’re gonna keep working on it today, or Tomas will do the work and I might end up adding speaker voice (terrible thought, my English isn’t what it used to be… I might order Per or Michael to do it… they’re a lot more “Yo MTV Cribs” than I am)

I think we’ll put it on Youtube or something once it’s done. Or after the competition. So we didn’t put all this effort into it and none of you get to see it

Later!

/ L

As every single one of you who ever read anything here before knows, we’re making a racing game. It’s not out yet, but we sort of sense the release in a not so distant future. My guess (not for sure, it’s just a guess) is there will be a first version of the game out early spring 2009.

There are a lot of aspects of the game we’re still discussing, that we still have time to make up our minds about. Music is one of them. And we all agree that music - and all sound! - is really important in a racing game, right? Just as it really matters when you drive in real life. The exact right song/album/artist/radio station for that specific day/time/mood. It makes all the difference.

We are discussing different options when it comes to handling music in the game and on the site. There are some elements we have to take into consideration.

1. The game has to remain itsy bitsy tiny in size - no mega downloads are allowed (at least not to start with, everyone must be able to access and play the game in the same easy manner as Power Soccer).

2. Everyone does not enjoy the same kind of music - there should be different options and choices available.

3. Copyright, etc. We can’t distribute music any way we like, chanses are it’s either expensive or difficult.

Now, difficult doesn’t scare us. Most things are fixable, it’s just a matter of how long it’s gonna take. But there are some serious questions and issues we have to settle regarding the music. This might not be completely resolved by Beta release time (and in that case you will have to settle for your own mp3 playlists for a while longer), we’ll just have to see how much time it takes, how clever ideas we come up with and how many people will be working on it. It’s all a matter of resources.

One idea is having some sort of car radio into which you can integrate your favourite Shoutcast channels, or other web radio. Or another kind of music player where you simply play, random or otherwise, your mp3s. A third interesting idea is distributing unsigned artists through Power Racing. Imagine some sort of download centre, presenting different artists (within all sorts of genres), providing our users with downloadable tracks and at the same time providing PR for the artists. I’d love that.

This is what Power Challenge is all about. Using the Internet for instant access and distribution of high quality material. It would be great to take this one step further and include music.

But that’s just me talking. We might end up doing this completely different. We just have to wait and see. But I sense the feeling of excitement in the air again, whenever we get into these never ending talks and discussions on every aspect of how we can make this a truly great, unique, game.

We don’t always agree. But we feel really passionate about what we’re doing, and I think that matters more.

/ L

Someone (guess who) said “we want to know more about you, who the person behind the posts is, the name of your kids, what you look like…” etc. And I was genuinly surprised. And flattered somehow. I mean, I’m lvl 3 for Christ’s sake! I also realise that the entire world isn’t interested in knowing this, personal, stuff. On the other hand, the entire world is hardly reading this blog, so I guess that’s not a major problem after all. But this is a dev blog, not a “my life story so far”. Like, who do I think I am? Still, washeka asked so nicely - how could I refuse?

So. Where do I start? How on earth am I gonna get away with focusing on me and still not ending up to far out of the PC universe? Or… hang on…AM I THE PC UNIVERSE?!?

In that case, this is the story of how a lazy but somewhat talented mother of three with a fancy for wacky hairstyles became a blog writing producer at PC.

I’m 35 this year, sort of born and raised in this glorious city, Linköping. Lived here and there, spent some time in England (blond, semi-long hair), tried living in Stockholm (short, sprawling red hair sometimes with hightlights) but ended up here where it all started, and it feels like home. My first pair of Converse were bright green. During school years (really long semi-curly hair, goldenish) I had a horse, a cat, guineapig, mice and two dogs. Not at the same time though. Sang in the school choir. For real. Have always loved reading and writing, it’s the one thing that keeps my spirit up when everything else fails. That, and hearing my kids laugh. Priceless. Children…there are 3 of them. Lewis is 13, Laura is 12 and Ruben is 7. They all love (L.O.V.E.) gaming but Ruben is the only one remotely interested in sports. We have 3 cats, cute as pie.

This is them:

Leia and Sokrates:

and Dimitar (named after the Bulgarian turncoat Berbatov that now wears the Man U colours), this is him:

We live in a yellow house, near the water, outside of town. It’s old, has personality and we like it there. People rarely bug you in the countryside. One can wear old ugly clothes and use the axe (chopping up wood, nothing else) without anyone paying any attention.

This is Ruben playing bandy:

When he doesn’t play bandy he likes to play Lego Star Wars or Battlefront or Untold Legends. Laura prefers GTA, Sims or Stardoll. Lewis is (still - after four years!) a sucker for Runescape (despite this, he’s without a doubt extremely bright and talented). Anders, my boyfriend, plays Hattrick (traitor), loves soccer and is generally a great inspiration to me. He also likes Grid, which is beyond me. But I guess opposites attract , right?

This is Lewis and Laura at the company barbeque feast at the down town beach:

…and this is them and me and Anders (and in the background, Michael taking his clothes off, blaming the blazing sun):

During my years at university (lots of different red tones, always highlights, orange/golden/blonde, semi-short but in the growing process) my talented and outstanding teachers Henric and Peter opened my eyes to the beauty of technology (in theory) and new media. Preferably all mixed up with some good old “culture”. (I can hear Sipwell cry in pain now…) I then ended up at IT-ceum, a computer history museum in Linköping where we did some game exhibitions, talked about games and computer technology and researched game/computer history. It was great for a while, but the cultural sector is generally in serious need of funding, so to pay the bills and expand my life experience I jumped aboard the PC ship.

This story, of how it all began and I got this job, is well known by now. Legendary, some would say. Tomas like to claim I harassed him - and at Easter of all times! - but that’s a lie. I merely called him (on his cellphone) on Maundy Thursday (evening, 6 p.m.-ish) practically yelling about..:

how cool it is that there is a game studio in Linköping and I just love games and I’d love to work there and although I’m not a programmer maybe I could work as a script writer or something? and I’m working with games at this museum and my friend Peter read this e-mail saying thay you’re hiring and …

Etc. Well… after a few minutes he said, in a sort of pressured, worried voice “who are you and what do you want?” I guess I should have presented myself in a dignified and sensible manner. Then again - I got the job, right?

As a matter of fact, they weren’t really looking for a producer at that time. They were hiring developers. But Tomas liked my joie de vivre and energy and love of games so he trusted me with this huge responsibility. “Make sure the production runs smoothly and everything comes out on time”. Then he went on holiday and I was left trying to understand the difference between c++ and java, game server and pool server, back end and front end.

During that summer my own copyrighted management style was invented, “Management by Milkshake”. In order for the developers to not completely hate me, or loose faith in the company, I had to make up for my lack of understanding. I did what any sensible parent would have done. I bribed them! Large amounts of milkshake, candy and ice cream secured my position until the rest of the management was back from holiday.

(to prove that I survived, and even was trusted to represent the company on further happenings, this is a picture of me giving a performance (talking about my job) on an alumni event at the university earlier this year):

And that sort of sums it up. That’s me. I’m a producer for Power Racing, I rarely go to the gym, I never drive to fast outside schools and day cares centers, I have to drink coffe as soon as I get up in the morning, I genuinly l-o-v-e working at PC, I’d rather vote left then right, my car is red, my shoe size is 38/39 = British 5.5, American 8, and I think the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice is a modern masterpiece (and not only because of the wet-after-swimming-sequence with Mr Darcy)

Did I miss anything?

L.

Anna Ternheim has done it again, made this marvelous song and it send shivers down my spine. I swear I’ve listened to it like three houndred times so far. Can’t get it out of my head.

This is an acoustic version, quite different from the radio version. And it’s free to download—-> here

So now you have the soundtrack of my working days in the late October of 2008.

// Linda

I left you with a heap of old pictures last Friday. No important stuff, no news, hardly anyhing game related what so ever. What a bad blog poster I am. Shame on me. But - it’s kind of fun showing you the people of this office as well.

I wonder how you imagine this place to be? What we all look like, what we talk about over lunch, what colour are the walls, what hair styles we find ourselves in at the moment, who’s the coffe maker, who smiles the most, who talks loud and who’s the quiet type..? Then again, you probably don’t waste your time thinking about it. You’re busy as it is, living your own life, right?

But if you would be curious of anything to do with the making of Power Soccer, Power Racing or just game development in general on a make-a-living-basis - let me help. Don’t hesitate to send me the Bat signal in the sky, I’ll make sure to answer.

(come on come on come on come on - I need inspiration for my next post!)

/L