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

We have meetings. We plan. We discuss. We talk. We consider. We reconsider. We design. We draw. We write. We agree. We disgree. We stand up daily. We retrospect.

We’re finally getting close to having all the bits and pieces we need to get the work done and the game out. Not saying it’s gonna be easy or be done in the flashes of flashes, but we have a Plan and a Product Manager. And extremely talented developers, just waiting to get the green light on Power Racing.

So. We’re one week from Christmas holiday and the focus factor is sort of aiming for zero. Well, that actually depends on how you look at it. We’re all 100 % occupied with thinking/talking/dreaming of racing, it’s just not that easy to focus on the tasks magnetically taped to the whiteboard. We couldn’t be more eager to get going than a whippet on a race track.

We won’t have any spectacular news before Christmas, but trust me, tons of work is being done even as we speak and come January I’ll definetely be able to tell you more on the details of the development.

So - keep your fingers crossed and be nice and Santa just might bring you some excellent presents this year.

I’m the earliest bird here at the office. Most days Sebastian is here before me, sometimes Simon as well. Then it’s me, then Magnus or Per, then Mikko and Jukka, Erik (most of my precious team) and then, somtime between 8.30 and 9 the rest just sort of keep rolling in… Daily scrums are holy, same time, same place, same people every day. You need one hell of an excuse not to be there. Like “the crocodile ate my bike” or “my grandmother’s Alsatian walked me in the wrong direction” or “Tomas A kept calling me all night saying funny things so I just couldn’t sleep and then didn’t hear my alarm in the morning”. Stuff like that we simply have to forgive.

Anyhow. It’s nice here at this time of the day. Completely quiet, rather dark (except for the cosy Duderö light, from IKEA, obviously - we are Swedes after all!)

That’s not a picture from our office, but it’s the same kind of lamp.

And soon it’s time to put up the electric advent candlesticks. Have no clue if that’s a world wide phenomenon, but in Sweden it’s a major happening. Come December 1st and there  are lights in every window. Stars, candlesticks, angels, reindeers… anything that looks good with a light bulb. Or seven.

This is what the Power Challenge elctric advent celebration looks like:

We got six of them, maybe that’s not enough? Maybe we need some illuminous reindeers or something… have to give it some serious consideration.

Now it’s time for me to walk out of the office, cross the street, enter Hemköp (Swedish grocery store) and buy some buns/glögg/cake/candy. It’s sprint planning day today, and retrospection, and God (Sipwell) knows we need the sugar rush.

Plus, it’s absolutely freezing in Linköping today, so we all need some warm glögg to keep us from turning into ice cones.

I’m outie. Stuff to buy, sprints to plan.

/ L