May-June are probably my least favourite months of the year. I seem to be strapped to my office desk from too early in the morning till too late in the evening, doing too much work in too little time. In the meantime, the sun is shining, people are enjoying a beer outside or go for an early dip in the still cold but refreshing North Sea. I have been feeling like Tantalus lately, whereas the writing a blog post is so imminently close but forever distant. The joy of blogging became a nightmare!

And yet there is so many to blog on. To stay within the sphere of myths and fairy tales, Powersoccer seems to have stolen some Seven-League Boots… the game has evolved rapidly into an extremely addictive, multi-levelled experience. I find myself – in the moments of “in between” chores – thinking about strategy, training on quick passing, counter attacking and curling the ball. It seems the crew over at Linköping has been watching the evolution in football from very close and has seen that the days of big men pushing everybody aside – “American football style soccer” – are over: it are the days of quick players who can dribble, pass, sprint and have a tactical mastermind. Messi, Iniesta, Fabregas, Hazard (to name a Belgian :p), Rooney even, those are the players of the future. Powersoccer is the game of the future as well. Quick passing, tactical mastermind: all are necessary to make career in this game.

This game has become fun in an almost autistic (no offence intended) way: you can withdraw in your own (mental) world, develop the ideal strategy and train to put it perfectly into practice. You basically need nobody else to have fun. Powersoccer has it all for the loners amongst us (even the ability to turn of your chat and refuse to interact with your real life opponent).

Yet, what pleases me more is to play the occasional game against other high level players and see how they cope with tactics and strategy. The philosophy of the Marx Brothers, the most important clan in PS (there Powdersnow, I said it on your home ground), is that we play to have fun and not to win. ‘You lose some, you draw some’, our clan motto, doesn’t mean that we like to lose or to draw, it means that whatever you do (win, draw, lose), you should above all have fun. With this new version, we have come a giant leap closer to the absolute ideal of the Marx Brothers. I have lost often in this new version and I have lost badly too. I am however stupefied about the tactical and strategic approach of most of my opponents. I have witnessed plain brilliant goals scored against me, through pass that cut my defence open and for which, if they happen in real life football, you would jump out of your chair and cheer about the magnificence of the attack. I have seen tackling that was so perfect you almost had tears in your eyes. In my opinion, there is nothing more beautiful than an opponent out of the blue tackling your attacker on his way to an almost certain goal. The frustration lasts for one nanosecond, the joy takes over from then onwards.

Powersoccer seems to have it all. And that’s why I hope this game will grow until it reaches the sky. Why? Because it deserves it.

PS. Am I back to blog? Who will tell?

Ladies and gentlemen,

take a look around you. Collect some friends and family around you to face the last Ordeal. The End is near. Very near. When I logged in this afternoon on the Powersoccer website, I was astonished, shocked even, to see the following image:

Shaolinda was playing a game. That must be her fourth or fifth game ever, although she was registered in April 2007. Is there any reasonable explanation… or is my gut feeling right? Is the end of the world near?

By the way: it does not surprise me though that she plays the latest patched version of Powersoccer… as it is simply brilliant, fantastic and superb. I spoke to an old chum in the game (we are both active for almost 2 years) and we both had the same feeling: this version is without discussion the best ever! The Best Ever! I will quit my daytime job just to play this game forever! I just need an internet connection and some water… a roof over my head, food, real life friends: I don’t need them anymore!

There was a new version of Power Soccer released yesterday. Normally, if you work here you can’t miss when there’s a release around the corne. The pace is far from sustainable - it’s frantic.

And that’s the number one weird thing - yesterday it was…calm. Quiet. I would say that instead of despair and grief the general mood was optimistic and cheerful.

We’ve gradually improved the process, workflow, during the last six months and I think we’re actually getting somewhere. Production- and otherwise. Meetings, checklists, teamwork, testing…it’s all beginning to come together. This has probably helped a lot with keeping people out of the stressloop.

As always- more can be done. We can get even better with our planning and estimating, stop lying to ourselves and everyone else with how much work that can be done within a sprint, we can probably improve how we communicate with our users and hundreds of other things. But still - it was a good release and I’m very proud of everyone here who’s worked hard to make it so.

I read some of the posts in the PS forum yesterday and, as always, most of them basically said “bring the old version back”. I spoke to Thorbjörn (Powdersnow, a legend in PS and now part of the crew) about it, just checking if this was normal procedure and guess what? It is. It’s like this after every release. So I’m very curious to see what the buzz in the forum will be like during the next week or so. If our users will be able to rise above the fact that we changed some of the things they were used to and try to accept, embrace and enjoy the improvements.

Because, as we all know, us humans are creatures of habit. We like to know exactly what to expect, be in control. Change can be really hard getting used to.

Hey there all our dear Power Soccer fanatics! How’s the summer been so far? Stayed out of the sunshine, staying indoors to play PS? Well, good for you! You can always get a fake tan from a bottle, but you can’t stay ahead in the game if you don’t play - right?

Kidding aside, hope you had a good time on the summer holidays with a healthy mix of outdoor activities and some gaming as well.

This is my last day of freedom, tomorrow I’m back at work and you know what? I’m actually looking forward to it. Yes it’s true. I even made a quick stop at the office on Thursday (ok, so I went there to get my computer fixed - it somehow died while I was on holiday - but still…).

I’m slightly out of the loop with what’s going on in PS at the moment, but I know it’s Beta testing time and I truly hope you’ve all taken the chance to trying some of the new stuff out. If not - hurry hurry! Soon it’s live release time and business as usual. But in a brand new way. You know what I mean.

Seeing you all next week, with an updated version of the game and a “just-got-back-from-the-holiday”-refreshed mind.

// Linda

As some of you already know, we’re heading for a new release. In a few weeks time (unless all of our web developers run of to Mallorca or the ozon layer suddenly vanishes or the internet dies or…)there will be some serious updates to Power Soccer, with a bunch of new features, improvements and fixes.

And as always, we think of you when we build this stuff. Yes it’s true! When you have a level 99 guy working at the office, there’s no such thing as messing with the users/players, not listening to what they have to say. So, even if takes a day or three to get used to things, we really hope you’re gonna enjoy the new version.

Curious? Dying to find out?

Can’t tell you much more at this point, but there will be some news on the site any day soon. There’s a certain pre-launch excitement in the air. Can you feel it?

Stuff that’s not supposed to happen always happen. Murphy’s law and all that. The “impossible” suddenly becomes “most likely” when you’re close to a deadline. But still… I really do think this will be our best release so far.

With best wishes for a holiday filled with sun (I’m off for four weeks!) and a new Power Soccer version filled with happy players

// Linda