Year in Review
I started to write out lengthy paragraphs regarding the roller coaster ride that was video game development in 2007, but I’ve decided for the sake of my ADHD and the ADHD of my readers, I’ll sum it up in a quick bullet list w/ pictures:
- Game Informer “Most INTENSE first person shooter we have ever seen” Reveal
- Microsoft Press Conference “We’re going deep and we’re going hard”
- Beta Announced. Charlie.com dies. Activision.com dies. Me @ studio till 7 am.
- Major Nelson @ Microsoft’s Viceroy party
- Open Bar + Me = Scary pick of Peter Moore and I
- Gamespot Interview @ Santa Monica Pier where host called me Brian
- Interview Make-up = Instant Black mail
- Staying up till 5 Am w/ DKo5 recording Perk Videos (earning 10m+ Gt.com award)
- Personally sending out over 600,000 Beta Invites till wee hours of the morning
- Many sleepless nights…
- Blowing myself up with the Javelin LIVE @ E3 on G4 Live interview
- Gamefest in Seattle: “How to Engage your community without enraging them”
- Call of Duty 4 First to Play in Hollywood, CA (Venue’s network crashes…. YIPPIE!)
- Call of Duty 4 event in San Francisco, CA (late night achievement whoring)
- Call of Duty 4 event at Gamestops across the country (I was at Universal Citywalk)
- Becoming #1 Gamertag on Xbox.com (thank you BETA!)
- Over 3.5 million emails to work account, thousands a day to hotmail + blackberry
- Call of Duty 4 Launch Party in Vegas
- After Call of Duty 4 Launch Party in Vegas (I’m sleeping behind those)
All in all…. it was one crazy year full of amazingly long nights and lessons you can only learn by falling flat on your face, but in the end we pulled out a game I couldn’t be more proud of.
The Consoler (available for your viewing pleasure here)
A site I decided to create in Early 2007 (the background story here) as a hobby to satisfy my google / wiki tangents of wanting to know everything about anything in video games and wanting to document my ever growing video game collection. I got hooked and eventually ended up scanning in every cover of Nintendo power from the first issue in 1988 to today, as well as breaking down the contents page of every issue and making an article for each, complete with the included fold out poster, cover art, and editors note. (compulsive anyone?). Sadly, I took the site public around the same time all my free time was sucked away by Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. One day little Consoler, one day I will give you the attention you deserve… (see new year resolutions)
For some reason I thought this list would be longer, but it seems the majority of all things in 2007 for me revolved solely around the game. Regardless, I can say this has by far been my most successful, busiest, most amazing year to date. I have grown and learn so much over the past 365 days (as of new years) and I’m anxious to see how 2008 plans on even coming close to this year…. good luck 08, 2007 is a hard act to follow.
Now for the RESOLUTIONS (Many will be made, few will be followed through), as with every new accomplishment, comes many new vices:
New Years Resolutions
- Blog More - I apologize, you deserve better. I’ve gotten in a bad habit of only blogging when there’s a major announcement, forget why I started blogging about work so much in the first place. I’m going to start blogging more often, with more personal insider updates, and not just the major Press worthy tid bits.
- Answer EVERY Email - This has always been my motto, ever since I started working professionally I made it my first priority to answer every email or message I ever received because I’ve always felt that anyone that takes the time to write you deserves the same attention in return. With the success of Call of Duty 4 my inbox and private messengers exploded, before I knew it I was receiving thousands of emails a day to all my accounts. Over 1.5 million in my work accounts (thanks beta), and thousands a day to my hotmail (personal), blackberry, and other accounts. Not that I’m complaining nor mind, I love getting email, but I hate when I can’t reply to everyone. I try to get to as many as I can, and I honestly read everything I receive and make sure it’s used as intended. However, I admit there we’re moments when I simply couldn’t get to them all, but NO MORE. With things winding down a bit, it is my goal to get back to answering EVERY message I receive, whether it be email, IM, comments or other.
- Create a more functional blog design - I’m never happy with the blog, I mean the basics are all there, but I think I really need to do some redesigning and add some functionality. I may move over to some paid professional blogging software to get what I need (community server perhaps), which I think will help a lot in the organization and communication of my first two resolutions.
- Take more Photos + Videos - One thing I’ve never been is a picture person, don’t know why, but I rarely take photos of anything, which I regret. So I’ve decided to make it a priority to document more through photo and video, I’m gonna be picking up a mini-cam in JAN to help with this and will hopefully be providing a more visual look behind the scenes of what it’s like to work in video games, go to the events, meet the people, and just live daily live in the city of Los Angeles and at Infinity Ward (the greatest company around). What do you guys think? Is that something you’re even interested in seeing? (comment if so)
- Become even more accessible - I’m always looking for new ways to interact with you guys, the public as a whole. I mean I consider myself pretty accessible already as I heavily make my contact information available, and for good reason as you can’t make a good game without the influence and input directly from your community. I strongly believe that, and in the ingenious words of Kimya Dawson “I’ll ask you what you think, because your thoughts and words are powerful”. I couldn’t name any other developer whose AIM, MSN, Hotmail, Phone Number, Blog, Myspace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and just about any other means of communication is ready available for anyone with the fancy to use it may, but I’ll find even more ways to keep you guys updated more detailed, more personal and more frequent.
Well… as my iPod starts to die and demand to be recharged and my thoughts start to become less and less coherent as the time rounds 1:30 AM I’ll call it a night. Just a few more days left in 2007 and I plan on spending them working towards the aforementioned goals and aspirations… I return to California on Jan 6th and I’ll see you all in 2008!!
Words of Wisdom:
Never blog without music
Always go with your first draft
Always publish without proof reading
Its more honest…
7 responses so far ↓
jlalexander // December 29, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Wow, COD4 is a great game - congratz!
If you ever need anything related to Community Server, please don’t hesitate to contact me at jalexander [at] telligent [dot] com. Meanwhile, you might check out our latest product at http://graffiticms.com - it may be a better solution for you, for a single blog/publishing platform.
Take care,
-Jason
CTO, Telligent
OneDayZero // December 29, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Sounds like some good resolutions. As far as documenting with more pics/video… as Borat would say, “Very nice!” “I like!” or “Great Success”. On a personal note, I haven’t had a chance to play any of the IW people on XBL. Could there be more frequent events where you and the dev’s play in the lobbies and we get to play some TDM or Domination or what (ever with you guys. I’m sure you guys would whoop are arsses but it’d be hella fun. Also, any way that IW/Activision/Whoever could do more work with game stores (i.e. GAMESTOP/EB, etc.) that would bring like a traveling IW Road Show. Stop in like 20 Cities and have like some networked games going on during like a friday/saturday night in-store. Or at least you guys can travel from your LA offices down to the likes of Orange County. That Universal City Walk is a hike and a half. I dunno… just some thoughts to through out there. Good luck on the Conselor. One of my friends out in San Bernardino is a huge retro gamer, particularly NES titles and their japanese counter parts… he helps with a radio show at the local college there where they bring him on to talk about and discuss “retro games”… I’m sure he’d love to have you on the show and talk about what you’re doing or when you have it up and running.
Happy New Year FZT
Dogfood Killer
Fourzerotwo // December 29, 2007 at 9:46 pm
@jlalexander: Thanks for the heads up Jason, just checked out Graffiti CMS via your link, looks great. Expect an email from me when I get back to California on Jan 6th about implementing it.
@onedayzero: Good news, one step closer to meeting the “more photos” resolution, as I just bought a new digital camera off Amazon!! Woot.
volcomkidd911 // December 30, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Yeah i really would want to see what the life of being a dev has to offer as i want to be a dev someday (maybe) i think it would be cool to see what you guys go through on a daily basis.
Michael // December 30, 2007 at 9:35 pm
If you are planning on migrating to a new content management system, I would highly recommend Symphony. By far, it was one of the most extensible and W3C standards compliant content management systems out there. I am by no means affiliated with the people who make it.
It’s free to use too. And here is a lot that can be done with it and a good community following along with it.
The link for it is http://symphony21.com
Check into it. If you need help, get back at me.
goon360 // January 2, 2008 at 4:39 am
I wanna see how you guys literally made COD4 so awesome. (Particularly the sound in the game…so amazing).
Infinity Ward documentary ftw!
Endlessfps // January 2, 2008 at 11:33 am
Hey Robert. As you probably know from talking to me, I plan to get a job at Infinity Ward someday, and work on the development team. I have browsed YouTube and only found some things from Mackey on there when you guys were doing the Call of Duty 2 BETA, so I have already tried to see what life around Infinity Ward was like. I would absolutely LOVE for you to take footage of what people do inside Infinity Ward, particularly film some of the programmers doing work so I can see what kind of environment I am looking at being in. I love programming, and I would absolutely love to help make the next greatest FPS. Talk to you on AIM next time you get on.
- Jacob Foster
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