Plan for Justin Mette

Where are they now?

It's been so long since I wrote a plan and talked about 21-6, I almost feel I need to re-introduce who we are .... and so I will. But first, I have to thank the GarageGames Grease Monkey for inspiring me to write a plan. Seeing all the other stuff going on in the community is very exciting and I felt compelled to start talking about what's going on over here as a result.

21-6 was founded back in January of 2000 and over the last 5 years has been through many wild chapters as we continue to try and figure out how to be a game company. We've been following the true "indie" path for years with a slew of part-timers cranking away after their days jobs to create games such as Orbz.

After 4 years of running pretty much the same formula things were getting difficult; causing a lot of strain on the company financially and also affecting the morale of the team. Trying to build products and a company on part-time power may be possible but we sure were struggling to figure out how.

So ... late last year we decided it was time to "crap or get off the pot" and a plan for growth was devised.

In these last few months since coming up with the plan, we've experienced more as a studio than we have in the last couple of years. The saddest of these changes was the loss of Dave Myers, one of our founders. You've probably read about it in his blog where he sums up the situation pretty well. When it's all said and done, we miss the "funk daddy" and hope he does well with Lumpy Games.

With the lows of evolution often come great highs and ours is no exception. Both Christopher Brethen and Jason Richardson have since joined 21-6 as full-time employees with Ryan Mette coming aboard this summer. It's been our dream during this entire journey to start bringing the part-time team into a full-time status and it's awesome to finally see that plan coming to fruition. With Chris, Jason, Ryan, and I spending our entire weeks focused on developing games for 21-6; it's been absolutely inspiring to be a part of.

Part of the plan for growth required us to start taking on more contract work in order to help pay the new salaries the company has to support. One nice thing about having a 5 year track record to build upon is the relationships and contacts in the industry we have made thus far. These contacts helped us find work rather quickly that not only pays the bills but allows us to continue refining our skills as game developers.

That said, we still are focused heavily on our own intellectual property including the soon to be release TubeTwist (www.tubetwist.com), Orbz for XBOX Live Arcade, Orbz 3 for the PC, and a new game we are keeping close to the chest until IGC where it will be debuted.

So who is 21-6 now? There are nine of us now including Ryan Mette, Christopher Brethen, Jason Richardson, Mike Nelson, Kevin Ostrowski, Dave Calabrese, Matt Sayre, Keith Johnston, and myself. Hey you know I just realized 2 + 1 + 6 = 9! Seriously, by this time next year we will hopefully be a complete full-time crew; cooking with some serious fire power.

We also have an extended family in folks like Logan Foster, Pascal Bos, and Nicolas Quijano who help us with contract work and our games when available. It's awesome to be part of such a thriving community of like-minded, passionate, and talented people. Whether they realize it or not, they are contributing in a big way to our evolution and we are proud to team up with them in making it happen.

Well, I have a ton more to write about like the projects we are working on now which are so darn cool and about some of the growing pains we are going through in trying to evolve the studio. However, time is short and the plate is full as they say so I must keep my plans to a reasonable length and simply write more of them!

Until next time...

PS. The only picture I have to show right now (since that's all the rave now in plans) is of the four horsemen (pictured left to right Chris, myself, Jason, and Ryan) all hard at work!