It strikes me ever so often: I love my job. I feel genuinly happy coming in to the office, seeing the people, the weird drawings, pictures, messages everywhere (we sort of collect those and tape them to walls and desks), my best friend: the coffee machine, the small talk, the news, the community, the games. It feels like home.

Today’s release made me feel more proud than ever working at Power Challenge. And it’s not so much to do with the graphics or AI, goalkeeper improvements or career mode.

It’s all about the people.

The ones I work with every day, as well as the ones out there: our fabulous community.

I think it’s safe to say this was our best update and most spectacular release so far - and that’s great. But even greater is how unbelievably fantastic I feel when I’m surrounded by the Power Challenge People, all helping out, pulling together. Friends and colleagues, as Patrick would have put it.

Do I sound religious? That’s ok. Who wouldn’t be a believer on a day like this?

/ Linda - more coffee heading her way

People. If you’re trying to log on to the site right about now, you’ll see something completely different - and need I point out fabulous/gleaming/fresh/stunning/beautiful/superb - from what you’ve ever seen on Power Soccer before.

The biggest update ever is taking place at this very moment. If you were here, at the office, you’d feel the excitement in the air. Exhausted but optimistic game developers everywhere, whos bodies are filled with  Management by Milkshake milkshakes, code around the clock coffee and please-stay-awake-cake. Everyone has done everything within their power to make this a successful release, to make this the biggest day yet in the history of Power Soccer.

So stay tuned. It’s going to be a great day.

/ shaolinda, heading for another cup of coffee

So it has been a whirlwind week for me…left North Carolina on Thursday morning, arrived at Arlanda Airport (20 minutes out of Stockholm by train) on Friday morning, and then on to Linköping Saturday morning.  You don’t want to hear about travel though, you want to hear about Power Challenge, so I will start with my arrival in Linköping.

Saturday-Arrived in Linköping at 16:00, stepped off the train and was greeted with open arms (ok…figuratively) by Mr. Powdersnow himself.  From there I got to do what ever Power Soccer player has dreamed of doing since first starting to play the game…Grocery shopping with Powdersnow!  Then I was treated to a traditional Swedish dish, Tacos, at the holy shrine of Power Soccer, Pow’s home (too be fair they WERE Swedish tacos, which are actually quite a bit different from American tacos).  Of course dinner turned into a three hour discussion about Power Soccer and all things related to it.  Eventually it was time to go home and get some sleep, one more day until my first day of work.

Sunday-Went for a scenic bike ride around Linköping (A Beautiful day and a beautiful city) with my Dad for the Summer, one Mr. Magnus Z.  In Linköping you get around by bike, any other way is just inferior.  Bikes dominate the roads and provides a pleasant break from the SUV hogged streets of the US.  Had some dinner at Magnus’ and then proved US supremacy in Table Tennis by winning a hard fought match against the Swedish representative 11-9 9-11 11-9.  Tough life so far.

Monday-WORK…bright and early, well bright doesn’t really mean much here in the land of eternal sunlight, but early anyway.  The PC office is in the heart of Linköping’s downtown and it is a very nice little office.  While I adjusted to my new work place, I got my feet wet by writing some test cases to ensure that all the different parts of the Power Soccer webpage are working and if they weren’t that we would know immediately what the problem was and could fix it before anyone even notices!  Surprise, surprise, the rest of the crew that you don’t see so much turns out to be some pretty nice people.

Tuesday-SIICCCKK grr…anyway…More Work!  Did all sorts of things for all sorts of people, many of them work related!  Sadly I had to leave work early for a very important meeting in Norrköping (~40km north of Linköping).  This meeting involved paintball guns and took play in a field outside in the beautiful rain, also it was a rather competitive meeting, pitting Power Challenge against Opera.  Power Challenge won the meeting 4-3 and remains undefeated in these very work intensive company meetings.  Also, don’t ever drive in Norrköping is you don’t have to, just trust me on this one.

Wednesday-STILL SICCCKK…grr…work work work…More work on improvements for the next patch.  However I am having trouble working due to the terrible sounds coming from the common room.  Those sounds would be some of the crew trying, and failing, to play Guitar Hero.  As you guessed, all work and no play for us here in Linköping =)  It is OK though, we are all working overtime today!  Outside…at a BBQ.

I apologize for lack of pictures, I didn’t bring my camera cable to work, but don’t despair, I will have some up soon!

One thing I have yet to figure out is why the crew seems to make these weird noises all the time.  Sometimes it seems like they are making them at each other, very odd, I hope I find out what is wrong with the crew soon!  I don’t want to catch whatever it is they have.

/Frogodo

All of you somewhat familiar with Power Soccer know that there is a guy called Frogodo. We’ve all heard his name but not all of us actually knew HIM. Well that’s about to change. Cause as of today, and for the next ten weeks, he’ll be part of the development team here in Linköping.

Frogodo - or Jake as he also may be referred to - will join forces with Magnus and Krzysztof, performing some heavy technical operations stuff.

So, let’s give Frogodo a warm welcome to Linköping and the magnificent headquarters of Power Challenge. And, of course, a big congrats to the contributor account on this blog…

/ L

Ok, so I shouldn’t read too much into this, I mean, I’m fundamentally crap at PS, I never fix any bugs, I don’t produce any hot graphics, I’ve never created, started or killed a demon, never once programmed a game server… so basically I’m not essential to this game at all.

Still…some people consider me being their favourite crew… ME!?

look how shocked I am:

I knew you wouldn’t believe me. But look for yourself, the truth is out there. In the forum.

Many people, smart people, has always claimed that the simplest solution is always the best solution. Previously I have been cautiously dubious whenever someone has said that to me. However, after my experience with being in the midst of mouse control development for Power Soccer I will cast future hesitancy aside and proudly proclaim: “Simplicity is rocks!”

How did I get to this stage? It all started right after summer when we stumbled upon a Wii and looked at its controls and how it was transferred on to the screen. Shortly after one of our developers, if I remember correctly, finalman (aka Per Larsson, Perl etc) said something in a Skype chat along the lines of “Why don’t we do the Wii thingy for our game but with the mouse”. And the rest is, as they say, history. Okay, so history and some hard thinking, fiddling with tech demos, more internal discussions and brainstorming, conceptualization, user testing and feedback. I am truly amazed with how taking something and breaking it down to it bare essentials, a mouse and left-clicking, made the gameplay, at least for me who has keyboard “issues”, more deep, gave me a feeling of total control and responsiveness.

I also hope that the community will embrace and appreciate the hard work we have put into the mouse control. Until next time nanoo nanoo. Take care!

/Michael

Something just dawned upon me. Call it an epiphany or just the brain catching up with what is actually happening these days when doing our best to take the Power Soccer gameplay to another level. I was searching for words to describe what we are doing and how it will improve. Making it better just sounded flat. So I contemplated, “huuuuuuum”…(it actually sounded more like “whooooosh”).

Now I sit here refreshed and with the realization that we are improving on all aspects. The core and the tempo is the same, which is comforting, since that’s what we all love about Power Soccer. The layer we have added has made the game more dynamic, unexpected and varied. Much more like real soccer. And the mouse control, let me tell you, I am in love. I even loved it before Powdersnow, honest.

Less words, more video? Here’s a gameplay video of me playing with the mouse. Please note that mouse and keyboard will work equally well and you can go back and forth how often you like. Check out the vid:

Gameplay Video Time. Not Hammer Time.

Eager to try it? Soon my friends, really soon.

Michael, the product guy

EDIT: Vimeo made it disappear. Awesome.

It struck me, looking through the Power Soccer forum like I always do a couple of times a day. Found a thread started by Powdersnow called “Presentation thread” where he encouraged everyone to write about themselves, age, occupation, favourite food and tv-series and colour, name and whatever else that anyone might want to know.

And I started reading through the answers, page up and down with people gathering, communicating. There was a 10 year old from Hong Kong, someone named George from Greece, Sipwell of course, a 12 year old from Tirana and hundreds of others. Seven pages, 340 replies. Everyone so eager to share, to get the chance to learn more about the friends and co-players of PS.

I got to think about my son Lewis and how he, the other day, with great pride in his voice shouted that his post was “post of the day” on his favourite forum. Needless to say he’s an active member and this forum is like the centre of his universe. “Everyone will read this! It’s the top post!”

The topic of the thread itself might not be that important, but the look on his face, his self esteem boost… not to mention his improved social skills and English vocabulary… that matters a lot.

Imagine that. Being able to write something you care about and innumerous people around the entire world will be able to read it within seconds. Everywhere. Suddenly it doesn’t matter where you live, how old you are, what you look like, how fast you run 100 meters, if you bother to cut your hair or not, what sneakers you wear…

That was when it struck me. Internet sometimes has the ability to make real life matter less.

In a good way. You can be whoever you want to be.

It lets you find friends who share your interests. It lets you be the person you really are. It patiently waits until you got the time. If you’re shy no one will see you blushing. If you want to write you write - and get published! If you like flamingos you’ll find others just like you and you can start a flamingo club.

To me that’s what online gaming and communities are really about. Friendship. Communication. Mutual understanding and support. Finding friends no matter what happens in school, at work or at home.

So besides all the great lol cat pictures and cookie dough recipes, there are other ways in which the internet is fundamentally cool.

Making people grow. Making the friendless socialise. Letting the quiet speak up. Allowing the wannabe to BE.

God save the internet.

And just a quick reminder that you can still follow PS on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/powersoccer

Anyway, I realise we have to work on ours. Some of the comments made here sort of put Power Racing next to Bigfoot, Shangri-La, El Dorado, Nessie and other believe-it-when-I-see-it objects of our imagination of belief.

However, Power Racing is very much less mythological. I’d say it’s about one hundred percent real.

The reason you haven’t heard from me (or anyone else on the team) in ages is this: we’re constantly working on building the game. And I mean CONSTANTLY, all day, every day, all the time. Believe me, the game is there and it will be released. At this stage there’s a huge amount of time spent on meetings, planning, estimation, retrospections and what have you. I know the guys on the team much rather just get to work, get the code written, the problems solved, the details nailed… bascially do their job. Still they need to put quite a lot of effort into the plan-and-design-process, to come up with some preliminary scope and dates. And if I wasn’t there myself I would never believe how difficult it is and how long it takes.

There are several reasons we haven’t been communicating more regarding release dates, development status etc.

One is uncertainty. We can’t be sure exactly what to release on a certain date. Either the scope or the date has to be flexible. We can’t make any promises, we can just provide estimates based on reality so far.

Another is politics, or marketing strategies. When would be the best time to release this game? Why? How? Business, pure and simple, which is not my cup of tea and someone else’s decision to make.

As this game, product, is being built from scratch we face problems that we don’t have to deal with in Power Soccer. The children’s diseases that only strikes while you’re young. Growing pains, if you’d like. Power Racing doesn’t exist as a product yet, but the game itself does. The people working on it are extremely dedicated and passionate about this becoming the best online racing game ever. This means having opinions on design, how features should be implemented, what solutions would be the best… Discussions and decisions. An entire game has to be thought through, nothing left out. The product managers have to tell us enough but not too much.

Information is a tricky thing. If you have too much it limits you and restrain the creative process. If you don’t have enough you can’t really move forward either.

So, in trying to get the right game out in as short amount of time as possible, we’re walking a thin line that takes us from our product manager’s vision, the producer’s interpretation of it and the developer’s final creation.

And as always I ended up lightyears from the initial subject: is Power Racing just a PR stunt? No people, it’s very much real, happening and coming your way.

It would be nice to show you some new screenshots or an in-game video or something soon. And I know the team would really like to show you our work in progress as well. It’s just a matter of time. So, let’s see shall we, if I can get one of the guys to put together some PR pics or videos soon. But - no promises, just my most sincere intentions.

Do what George Michael would have done, have some faith…

Sincerely yours

/ Linda