Talk is Cheap

It’s day ten of being in my new position and I’m having the time of my life. I owe a lot to Torque, and paying my dues is a pleasure. We’ve been very busy. Talk is cheap, and while I could fill a blog with glittering generalities of the future, I’d prefer to tell you what we’ve done in the past ten days and let you develop your own conclusions. Simple and sweet –I’ve got to get back to work.

Strategy Team Congratulations to Matt Fairfax, Derek Bronson, and Michael Perry; they are our new strategy team. They are the best of the best, and provide a diversified balance for developing a strategy that represents what is really important to us: community, technology, and business. We had our first strategy meeting atop the tallest building west of the Mississippi -there’s no better way to think big than to view all of Las Vegas from 1000 feet above the strip.

Quality Assurance and Usability

Quality Assurance and Usability – We are proud to announce our new relationship with the Full Sail Institute for Research and Entertainment. Under the guidance of the Director of Research, Dr. Shawn Stafford, a PhD. In Applied Experimental and Human Factors Psychology, they will be providing a custom built quality assurance and usability lab that will help us deliver a higher standard for usability and quality; this will let our feature developers focus on new functionality that will help our users deliver world class games. I’ve worked closely with many of the staff and have high expectations for their work. It’s great to have Full Sail on board with our vision; and we are excited to be working so closely with another great University.

Global Game Jam To support our belief in community and outreach, we decided six days ago to participate in the Global Game Jam. Scratch that…we did more than commit to participate, we went all in. Not only will we be offering free trials of our binary engine, we are also hosting a Las Vegas location. To represent our new dedications, we decided to pick the Red Rock Casino, a high-class, high-end casino on the west end of town. Do we have the hottest GGJ location or what? To really hit the ball out of the park, we asked our CEO Lou Castle, who needs no introduction, to deliver a message on rapid prototyping. Lou embraced rapid prototyping on his last game which he happened to work on with Steven Spielberg ( name drop ). This is going to be an amazing event; my only reservation is the short notice of our participation. I wish you all could be here and build your next game in our new town. You can register for our location shortly on the Global Game Jam website.

Torque Binary

We announced in December that the binary version of Torque would be available for $100 per license. While free is nice, the price allows us to invest and provide more value to the product. We are extending the $100 price until March 31st to accommodate your push to GDC.

Managing Expectations

We will always strive to properly manage your expectations and deliver accordingly. This is easier said than done; but we will always strive towards this goal. We’ve changed some of the language on the site to reduce the farther reaching promises. We’ve set the bar high. And while there will be bumps along the way, I hope these actions represent and deliver a new sense of positive change within our community.


We have more in the works that we can’t share with you at this time, but I can’t wait until we can. So if you like what you’ve read, support us. Purchase that pack you were waiting to buy. Take the plunge to Torque3D Pro. Give Torque Binary a try. Still skeptical? No problem, we look forward to earning your support in the near future.

Regards,
Eric Preisz