Game design can be such a roller coaster ride!
By the time this post publishes, we will have announced Za and our Valentine’s Day update. We have been working toward this for months, and I have been keeping it under my hat.
Don’t get me wrong: I am still super excited about Za, and I am still super excited about Valentine’s Day! Za is our second in-game virtual dance partner and instructor, and he represents such an important step forward in making Trip the Light into the app we want to make. Of course, the in-game partner Za is based on real live person: Za, who is a blast, and you can hear from him in this video.
I have been watching the Za and the Valentine’s stuff develop for weeks, and I was so looking forward to the moment we were ready to lift the lid so I could talk about it.
But…
Right now, all I want to talk about is choreography.
I obviously have the attention span of a butterfly. Maybe we should rename the blog The Dev Diary of a Wallbutterfly.
No. We should not do that. That’s terrible.
This week, I got to sit in on a development meeting wherein we were choreographing a new routine.
I love how Dark Arts Software is such a small, cosy team. Everyone wears multiple hats. Usually, though, when someone says, “Everyone wears multiple hats,” I picture a bunch of people doing extra work and jobs they don’t want to do, but it is just the opposite here. Creativity, dance and music flow through everyone on the team, giving us all an opportunity to be our whole selves. No one is just a software developer. No one is just a marking expert. No one is even “just a musician.” In that complexity lay the wonder and joy of working here.
I got to see our producer, Alissa Brodsky, standing at her desk, doing the robot as she walked one of our animators, Kira Shinoda, through the new choreography. This was a new and delightful thing for me.
If you don’t know, the producer is the nerve center of a company like ours. She keeps the schedules, tracks work progress, and maintains the spreadsheets. She’s the one who reminds us where we have to be and when, and makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. Understand, it is not that I did not know she was a fun, creative person who danced. She has puppets for goodness’ sake! But watching her talk about John Travolta while doing a disco point as she choreographed an upcoming dance routine was an absolute blast.
People make games…whole people, people who do the paperwork AND do the electric slide. There is nothing corporate about our corporate environment, at least there is nothing….baige. There is nothing taupe or grey or harmless or simple here at Dark Arts. We all dance. We all laugh. We all feel the beat. We listen for the music, and we hear it. We hear it everywhere—in the office, in our homes, in the streets, and on the dance floor. We listen for the music, and we feel it in our bones.
Check out Za. Learn about our upcoming Valentine’s Update on our Instagram. Pick up a copy of our early access app if you have not already, and become our partner as we continue to develop the Trip the Light. Listen for the music, keep your body moving, and dance with us!