Independents Day

Well, time flies as usual. With so much going off, I hardly have any time to catch up with the blog - so many updates via Facebook, now bloody twitter and so many emails.

This week saw the eventual release of Worms 2 Armageddon for XBox Live Arcade and it's proving to be quite the hit. We never had the sales stats for the first Worms game so we can't compare it's sales profile, but we're advised that its doing very well after 3-4 days on sale now. We're hoping too that the first game hangs on to its top-10 spot and we can maybe see two worms games in the top 10, even if it's just for a week, that'd be quite cool.

We know there's a lot of very good XBox Live titles coming over the summer, so we just hope that we can stay in the charts during that period. Worms also arrives for iphone later in July. Review wise, W2A is scoring pretty high (mid 80's average) with user scores even higher.

We're also getting ready to start showing Alien Breed, which we're very excited about.

Tweeting.

Well, i've finally bloody sorted this Twitter thing out. I swore I wouldn't do it, but I've decided to in terms of promoting the company and what we're up to. So, if you use it, follow 'team17' and you'll get news and updates.

Am just back from 2 days at the Game Horizon conference in Newcastle, a city that grows on me every time I visit, although it does help staying in a nice hotel down on the Quays, opposite the Baltic Flour Mill & Sage centre, which is where the conference was.

On the first day, once I'd got there (I almost didn't as I was flagging whilst driving and almost fell asleep at the wheel) I bumped into a ton of friends and eventually got lured out to lunch in the sun with Gareth of Ubi/Reflections Newcastle, Rich Sturgess, Phil Elliot (Gi.Biz) and later Mick Morris. Suffice to say that the rather fantastic lunch at 'La Tasca' rolled on until late in the day, with a few people passing by and we finally finished about 7.30pm... all pretty merry. I, however, was completely shattered, what with the erratic sleeping patterns so not only did I check in at the hotel, but I also fell asleep at about 8.30pm, waking at 3am to find that I'd missed not only the charity poker, but also the main conference party. Still, I'd had a decent sleep - and it was ironic that given a bunch of people had banged on about it 'being a big night' because I was around (to which I'd tried to play down).

The second day was much better, got off to a great start with a fantastic breakfast from a dodgy looking kebab shop that myself and Sturg found, then I went into the conference and attended the sessions, with my own session (part of a panel regarding self publishing) going on from 2-3pm. I think it went ok, I got a few comments, mainly for dissing 3rd party publishing and got a few laughs by suggesting that 'astro-turfing' (some phrase for seeding viral marketing) was 'something you'd expect George Michael to be up to'.

I left promptly at 3pm, giving Jamie Sefton and Craig Albeck a run back down to Leeds, with Craig managing to actually fall asleep in the car, in the back, with the roof down - pretty incredible. I got back to T17 in the nick of time to do a phone interview with Larry Hyrb at Microsoft (more commonly known as Major Nelson). We seemed to spend more time talking about Amiga's and iPhone's rather than Worms and Alien Breed but never mind.

Speaking of Worms, the new game for XBLA ships next Wednesday, July 1st for just 800pts/$10 and judging by the online reactions to date, it should prove very popular. News about the game's release is hitting online game sites now. We were very sensitive about the pricing of the game and at that price, it should be a no-brainer in terms of entertainment.

At Game Horizon, I also showed a video of the new Alien Breed for the first time, we do not plan any other public releases of footage until late July, but it was nice to finally show it, even if the video looked a little choppy on their system.

Well, full, busy day in the office today with a stack of stuff to chase up, then it's AC/DC on Friday. Let's RAWK :)

Doghouse vanquished.

Well, I finally managed to pull clear of the doghouse by booking the family holiday. I'm not sure how much fun the kids got out of Ireland (mainly due to the weather) but I've now booked us 2 weeks in Florida, on the Gulf Coast, away from the throngs of folk at theme-park central (since my kids prefer water based stuff - and there's a water park fairly near).

Am hoping to get a day or two in the Everglades/Florida Keys (we're staying on Sand Key, Clearwater) and do some kayaking in the Mangroves just north of where we are... Alligators and Manatee's excepting.

It's fathers day today and I've had nice cards, a Match of the Day music compilation (?!) and a box of Thornton's Special Toffee - not sure if that was for me, being diabetic, but the kids (and the dog) have already been into it. About to walk the dog down on the meadows and hopefully have a chilled out day, despite having a bit of work to do on some presentations for later in the week/next month which are due in now.

Better end to the week considering I've had a couple of unexpected big nights (one on the wedding anniversary), a trip to the house of commons and 2 stints in the doghouse.

There's a bit of travel the next two months; Newcastle this week, then London for AC/DC, then up next is Develop in Brighton, then Seattle/Bellevue (via Vancouver) and onto San Diego. A few weeks after that it's Gamescon in Cologne, then the holiday. We've got 2 game releases in that spell and then build up to the bigger one; Alien Breed - can't wait to show people it...

Great response... Great times.

We released a trailer for the new XBLA Worms game, "Worms 2: Armageddon" (which is released very soon) and it had a fantastic response pretty much everywhere, so I'm really looking forward to that going live. We're also just about done with the iPhone edition of Worms and that should be predictably well recieved too.

On other matters, Alien Breed is at the code & content complete stage, with only minor balancing/tweaking and polishing left to do (not that it isn't super polished already!) and I really cannot wait to get videos out for that since I can't imagine seeing much on XBLA that looks visually better, it really does look beautiful.

Had an odd week this week, spending the day at the House of Commons on Monday, getting drunk with Andy Eades (on my wedding anniversary, which went down well - cough) and then out with Tom Gluckmann on Thursday which ended in furore again, mostly because I coincidentally ran into good friends from Rockstar Leeds when I was out in town... and it was a mess at the end.

So, a quiet weekend is in store - particularly given that I've a ton of work to do (presentations for numerous talks) and a video to put together for my spot at Game Horizon in Newcastle next week. Also off to see AC/DC and I'm quite excited about that.

Back on it.

Well that's about the most neglecting period for my blog ever, largely due to Facebook which I keep updated due to the ease of it. 

Anyway, since last time I've been out west again (3rd time this year) to E3 in Los Angeles, which was a good old jaunt and I also, for the first time ever, managed to not suffer massively with Jet Lag. 

How did I do this? Well, I think it was a combination of taking it easy for a couple of days when I got there (on the booze) and also stopping overnight in New York both going & coming back - the trip back meaning just a 6.5hr direct flight rather than a very long and tedious day with layovers and other travel. I got back and felt fine rather the near death as usual. 

E3 was pretty good and back to pretty much it's flashy formal self. I didn't really spend too much time around the event as most of my meetings were off site, but Beatles Rock Band looked amazing, can't wait for that.

The trip had its fair share of parties, including the Noridic in Figueroa Hotel and we spent a fair bit of time there on other days, liking it's mix of non-pretension and locality to the conference centre. We stayed in Santa Monica and had a couple of nights out there, with the lads from Sony and on another night, Gordon & his lads from R* San Diego as well as a bunch of marketing & bizdev girls from Microsoft - we had an awesome dinner and the waiter wore the horse-head, job done.

On Friday we drove through the Mojave and to Vegas, which for me was pretty uncomfortable as I had a rollicking hangover, the 12hrs we had in Vegas were ok, spent most of it in Centrefuge/MGM with a bunch of Lucasarts fellows and had an early night at 3am given we had to be up at 6am to fly to New York.

We had a good walk around New York and I took a bunch of snaps (on Flickr/Facebook now) and I really love the place. Met up with friends from Sega in the evening and ended up in  Greenwich village Karaoke bar until 3.3am... but wasn't so drunk. We'd had a spectacular room upgrade too, having an enormous suite at the Hilton for a paltry sum (I'd booked an offer on a room ages back). The next day we flew back at 10pm, so had plenty of time for sightseeing and a bit of shopping, before the straight forward flight & return home almost jet-lag less.

Back at work and there's tons on, with the new Worms for XBLA (Worms 2: Armageddon) launching shortly, iPhone Worms nearing completion and Alien Breed nearing Beta & entering the formalities of it's certification process... and with 3-4 other projects in various forms of undress, it's meant a very business period for all at T17.

Tomorrow (Mon 15th) it's our 13th wedding anniversary and I'm somewhat controversially spending it in London at the House Of Commons, part of a meeting to represent the games industry to the UK Govt. I'll be meeting Lord Puttnam and a bunch of the other MP's, moat-filling, expense-grabbing buggers that they seem to be.

Wednesday is Jack's 12th birthday and we're out to Leeds for a meal. Thursday evening Tom Gluckman is over to discuss some concept work on a couple of projects and the week after is both the Game Horizons conference in Newcastle (I'm talking there) and later in the week, the AC/DC concert in Wembley... woot. Busy times...