Startup Anonymous: Part 2

 

It's 4pm on Friday as I type this, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling a little bleary... There were lots of goings on this week.

 

For starters, we had our company's official kick-off party Monday evening at a local restaurant, which included signing all the pertinent paperwork, some presentations from Zeus, Hercules, Scotty, and myself, and a truly epic cake decorated with our company logo. About 20 people were in attendance, including our team members, most of the Advisory Board, and several family members – invited to give them an insight into what their loved ones will be working on for the next several months. And what an insight they got:

 

Zeus laid out the entire business plan for them to see (NDA's were signed, of course), and they got a little taste of some of the games we already have in the works. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive from everyone, and there was a lot of genuine enthusiasm. Hopefully, if any of the younger employees parents had any doubts about their li'l darlings being involved in the Big Bad Startup right after graduating college, we've erased them now.

 

There was one slight discordant note to the evening, one person conspicuously absent: the junior designer, my assistant Minion. While even Artist 2 was able to take some time out of her finals to attend the mandatory meet-up, Minion not only didn't show, but also did not inform me that he wouldn't be there. I'm trying to cut the kid some slack – I understand he's under a lot of pressure, finishing up his senior year of college – but he hasn't even come in to set up his computer yet. 

 

Back in the office, we've been blasting through our workload already. Programmer 1 makes it in most days in the afternoon after his classes, and Scotty and Programmer 2 are here full-time, as is Artist 1, who is doing an admirable job of handling all the art production until Artist 2 can start coming in. It's a good thing too: Our first game has just about quadrupled in scope since its first inception, and between that and the day-to-day operations and random tasks that come along with starting everything from scratch, in addition to my actual work, have me pretty bogged down already. So I can't handle as much of the asset creation myself as I'd intended. It's nothing I can't handle, and I've got no complaints (and the game is looking awesome), but its a little weird finding myself relying on others to get the work done. All part of this new journey we're all on, I know. Hercules is in the office fulltime now too as of yesterday, and every extra person makes things that much easier. 

 

So speaking of Game 1 looking awesome... it's, well, looking awesome. I've declared the first round of design closed until we have a playable prototype of version 1 ready to go, which I'm hoping to have in my hands by the end of next week. Fingers crossed! At least we've got plenty of fuel, since Zeus stopped in to drop off a months worth of groceries for the office: Chips, PopTarts, Hot Pockets, soda... oye! I insisted on keeping something remotely healthy in the place, so we've also got plenty of dried and fresh fruit as well. At least this way my conscience is assuaged if somebody keels over at their desk from too much junk food.