Plan for Justin Mette

21-6 News

So I look up from my desk and the calendar says August 28th. What? How could that be? Seriously, where did the last 8 months go?

Hey, why not surf to the 21-6.com site to read what happened this year! Hmmm, only two news item posts for the entire year that's not very helpful (nor impressive).

In true procrastinator's form, I finally did a little research and wrote up some news items to cover our extreme "roller coaster" of a year so far. Check it out...


January 3rd, 2005
Developer Spotlight
GarageGames.com posts a Developer Spotlight Interview with Justin Mette, president of 21-6 Productions. You can read the full interview here.

January 6th, 2005
Dave Myers
One of the founders of 21-6, Dave Myers, has announced his resignation from the company. We wish him well on his new venture, Lumpy Games.

January 17th, 2005
Orbz XBOX Alpha
Orbz for XBOX Live Arcade has passes the Alpha milestone showing off basic game play using a controller along with the first cut at the user interface.

January 20th, 2005
TubeTwist Beta
For the next two weeks, 21-6 will be running a public beta test of their addictive new puzzle game TubeTwist. If you are interested in participating, please send an email to tubetwist@21-6.com and also sign up for an account on www.tubetwist.com in order to access the Beta Forums.

February 1st, 2005
Chris Brethen
Chris Brethen moves to Colorado and joins 21-6 as a full time employee. Chris has been working with 21-6 on a part time basis for over 3 years and has been responsible for level design in Orbz and GravRally to this point. He will continue his work on those two projects along with some new contract work we will be taking on this year.

February 16th, 2006
Jason Richardson
Jason Richardson joins 21-6 as a full-time employee. Jason's primary role will be as a programmer on the upcoming Orbz build for XBOX Live Arcade.

March 7th, 2005
Game Developer's Conference
21-6 attends GDC and shows off both Orbz 3 and TubeTwist to many potential publishers. The games were received very well at the conference and the trip was an overall success.

March 18th, 2005
TubeTwist Preview
Laura McMasters from GamersInfo.net got her hands on the beta version of TubeTwist and wrote a great preview to wet your appetite only a couple short weeks before the game officially launches on GarageGames.com. Check out the full review here!

April 21st, 2005
Orbz XBOX Code Complete
Orbz for XBOX Live Arcade has passed the Code Complete milestone with Microsoft. All of the features in the game have been completed and the game now enters a rigorous testing phase.

May 2nd, 2005
Jason Richardson
Due to some unfortunate extenuating circumstances, Jason Richardson has been forced to leave 21-6. He will be missed.

May 5th, 2005
TubeTwist Rights
21-6 signs an agreement with Pinoli Software for the exclusive rights to the game TubeTwist which has been co-developed by both companies over the last 18 months.

May 11th, 2005
TubeTwist Delayed
After a long beta period and some publisher reviews of the game, 21-6 has decided to delay the release of TubeTwist in order to respond to their feedback, improve the overall production value of the game, and work on the Mac version.

June 5th, 2005
Swampboat Studios
21-6 teams up with independent game developer Swampboat Studios to co-develop an action/arcade game that can best be described as multi-player Robotron with a little bit of Total Carnage thrown in.

June 27th, 2005
Orbz XBOX Content Complete
Orbz for XBOX Live Arcade has passed the Content Complete milestone with Microsoft. This milestone build includes all final content for the game including art, audio, game logic, and 5 different languages worth of user interface (English, German, Italian, Spanish, and French).

July 1st, 2005
Office Space
21-6 secures office space ... well kinda. We have rented a house, moved Chris and Dave into it, and set up an office inside. This event marks a milestone for the company in that we actually have a team working together out of the same building all week long.

July 7th, 2005
Dave Calabrese
After 2 years of working with 21-6 on a part time basis, Dave Calabrese moves to Denver and becomes a full-time employee. Dave's responsibilities include level design, modeling, 2D art, and Torque scripting. His current projects include the soon to be released TubeTwist and Dimenxia.

August 9th, 2005
Orbz XBOX ZBR
Orbz for XBOX Live Arcade has passed the ZBR (Zero Bugs Release) milestone with Microsoft meaning there are no more bugs reported in the database. This was quite a feat to achieve considering there was a dedicated test team at Microsoft hammering on the game.

August 19th, 2005
German Games Convention
TubeTwist gets shown off during the 2005 German Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany to a very receptive crowd.

August 24th, 2005
Orbz XBOX Certification
Orbz for XBOX Live Arcade heads off to final Microsoft Certification. If all goes well, the game should be available for download and purchase on XBLA any week now.

August 26th, 2005
Music For Games
Paul Taylor writes about his experiences as an indie game composer. Our own Matt Sayre also discusses his approach to writing music for indie games. Check out the full article here.


Needless to say, we have a lot of crazy stories to tell at IGC this year. I'm looking forward to the panel I get to speak on at the conference about building a game studio. We've learned a lot this year as we try to evolve and I've been locked up in the office so long I just can't wait to blurt it all out. Or something like that ...

Hope to see many of you at IGC this year!