Donald Harris Joins Torque!

Our booth design for Game Education Summit

The last few weeks have been really busy and really fun. I’ve been having the time of my life and I can’t think of a prior job that I’ve enjoyed more than my current.

I like to work hard. I called in sick on Wednesday and still found myself taking two trips to the office. One trip to offer ice cream to anyone in the game studio willing to help us do a web-site usability test; the other visit was to pick up my laptop power cord that I left in the room we were using for the testing. Anyways, it goes without saying that I enjoy working hard and my day "away" from the office was very productive. Twelve to fourteen hour days are the norm for me; but I’m not complaining –they feel like three hour days and I feel extremely lucky to have the opportunity to spend that time in the Torque division.

I like to play hard too. After our quarterly executive offsite meetings last week I was ready to blow off some steam. My wife’s cousin happened to be celebrating his bachelor party in Vegas and so the stage was set for a great weekend. One of the interesting parts about living in Vegas is that anyone who you may have ever met, even if just for a second, feels inclined to invite you to their Vegas bachelor party. I have many highlights that I could share, but what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, and unfortunately my only means for keeping these stories local are IP restrictions. I’m betting we have a higher percentage of visitors that know how to spoof an IP so that’s not an option. ( BTW, my wife lives in Vegas as well, so for me, the only real option is acceptable behavior ).

I did get to play black jack with the “man your man could smell like”. That is a shareable story. I told the dealer, “one of us was on Ellen” and asked her to guess who it was. She just smiled ( and took my money ) .

Another benefit of living in Vegas are the beautiful pools. That’s where we decided to have our company picnic. It sounded like a good idea, but a handful of pastey white programmers in the pool with their shirts on doesn’t do much to help to promote tourism. On Sunday, I spent some time at the Mandalay Bay pool. But when it’s 110, the water is a necessity not just a luxury ( I know it’s a dry heat..but seriously )

Where is all of this leading? To my conclusion: Don’t schedule a flight to pick up a new employee at 10:00am after a Saturday night bachelor party.

You may have noticed our new employee Donald around the forums for the past month. That’s because I made him jump through a bunch of hoops in a month long interview and he wanted to show how interested he is in the job and community. He is very talented and we are extremely lucky to have him. Donald will be running the majority of outside sales and social media marketing. He embodies and understands indie development. Donald has the ability to telepathically send out Twitter announcements which makes him perfect for the job. He’s masterful. I asked him something once and his answer showed up on my iPhone Facebook feed before I finished asking the question. If you would like to follow his thought process, his Twitter handle is @tallgamer. Maybe I’ll throw him a few coupons to post on his feed some time soon. Donald is 6’8”, making him the tallest person in the division. I’m 6’5” inches. We got weird looks from people at the airport when I declared out loud, “I’m so excited about this week’s horse jockey convention”. What…? did you expect me to be able to make a funny joke that early in the morning after a bachelor party? Welcome aboard Donald! This week, Donald, myself and two others are heading on a road trip to LA. First we will be hitting E3 and then the Game Education Summit. We will be displaying our new booth to the wonderful people at USC. Pretty cool, eh? If you are heading to either, I’d love to catch up and say hi. I’ll be the guy riding piggy-back on the 6’8” guy who won’t stop texting and filming Flipt videos.

Don't be confused, this burger is actually huge.

At the end of the month, Donald will be in Austin to support our promotion at the 2010 IGDA-Austin Summer Picnic on June 26th. The event takes place at Richard Garriott’s lake house. Portalarium, Richard’s company, supports us by using Torque 2D for their Facebook game Sweet Poker so we thought we would return the favor and support them. We are bringing a tobacconist with us to hand-roll cigars and help us share marketing material to the wonderful folks who will be joining our community in the not so distant future. On the 28th, I will be heading to the iPad Game Summit in San Francisco. Please contact me ( ericp @ torquepowered ) if you would like to meet. I will be going alone, but I will hold my arm in the air to artificially project the presence of Donald’s aura upon myself.

And while cabana parties, black jack, and cigar rollers all sound very opulent, I can promise you that we are spending way more on our tools and runtimes. We’ve brought on more people for documentation, management, development, and QA. I read a quote in a development thread the other day that stated, “…things are crazy productive and exciting…”. That's great to hear. We have a lot to share with you over the next couple of weeks. Expect to hear a lot from us in June.

And for my final note, I’m happy to announce that Scott Burns, our QA lead is our May Torque employee of the month. Congrats Scott!