Community Update February (Thursday, 15th February 2007)

Late January a group of five noble game developers got on a plane and flew to Seattle; to meet with their colleagues at Microsoft Game Studios and talk about games and communities.

I had never been to Seattle before; expecting snow and temperatures well below the freezing point I packed my warmest jumpers and shirts. It turned out that the snow they'd been experiencing the last couple of days had melted as soon as we touched ground; the sun was shining bright and it was gorgeous! I'll run you through our three days of meetings, dinners and well...more meetings.

Getting ready to fly back, with the impressive Mount Rainier in the background!

The scope of my visit to the MGS HQ was the future of the Lionhead Studios' community and a summit organized for all the community officers at MGS to sit together. We've always had our finger on the pulse if it comes to our own community. Driven by our games it started in 1997 with Black&White, all the way up to the present day in 2007 with Fable 2. With the arrival of 'Web 2.0' (you can't open a magazine or newspaper nowadays without reading about YouWeb, YouVideo or YouBlog) we thought it was time to drastically update our community website. And now being part of Microsoft allows us to do some wicked stuff too!

Our trip to Seattle started on Sunday 28th January with a first day of meetings on Monday 29th. I will highlight and mention the meetings that are of importance to you; the Lionhead community and of course the wider gaming community. First up was a Fable 2 Website meeting. As most of you are probably aware, www.fable2.com launched in May last year and saw the release of our teaser trailer and the option to subscribe to a newsletter. We've been receiving a lot of messages from you, asking about the website and newsletter, thus this meeting was ideal to flesh out our ideas and get all the different people involved, on board and up-to-date.

This is me posing with Dee (who’s wearing sunglasses) in front of the car in which Dee took us from the hotel to the MGS campus every day.

The following day I made a visit to Bungie Studios; in case you've spend the last couple of years under a rock or on Mars; these are the guys working on Halo 3. Arriving at the studio I was faced with a dilemma: a big, strong security guy asked me for my badge and wouldn't let me in before I did. Was I going to do my crane-pose, breaking the poor chap's neck, or was I going to comply and make myself known? I choose the latter option, simply because he was well endowed in the tri- and biceps department. Sadly though, it didn't get me anywhere and I wasn't allowed any further then the reception area. Apparently someone playing the Halo 3 Alpha leaked some images and videos on the web, resulting in the highest security alert ever to face a development studio!

This is the big, scary security guard in front of the main entrance to Bungie Studios. They were on high security alert.

Jonty Barnes (formerly the Head of Black&White Studios) is now heading the production over at Bungie and it was him that I was visiting. I've been playing the Alpha myself for a couple of months now (I'm lucky and privileged to be able to tell you this) and loving every single second of it. I'm sure once the Public Beta starts those of you who managed to get their hands on a key, will agree with me and love it too. Frank O'Connor, Jonty Barnes and I went out for lunch to talk all things community, Halo 3 and Fable 2, life in the USA compared to life in the UK, butterflies and both our game studios. I'd love to break the rules and tell you how excited I am but that wouldn't be appropriate, so I shall keep quiet about it...

It says “open” but it really wasn’t, I tried but got pinned down in the process by two security guards!

On Wednesday the Community Managers Summit took place: where the web and community team from MGS and the community managers from the different studios (including Lionhead Studios) sat together during a marathon meeting! I loved every single minute of; since it's not very often in my field of expertise that you get to sit together with people who think alike. Everyone introduced their own community, how it worked and how it was being managed and what changes are coming up considering the games that are going to be released in the near or distant future. One of the people I met was Che; the community manager for Forza Motorsport and the upcoming Forza Motorsport 2 (http://www.forzamotorsport.net/). I have to admit that I am not really a racing fan; in fact I don't even drive a car or have a driving license! Either way, their community is quite different from ours, but at the very same time there are also many similarities. While there's no chance I'll be elaborating on the specifics, rest assured that Che feels passionate about the Forza 2 community and has got some really nice tricks up his sleeve!

“So what about the latest Fable 2 milestone?”, I can hear everyone ask. Well, I'm afraid I won't be talking about that in this update, you'll have to wait until March's update to hear about the progress that's been made...But just in case you missed it yesterday: here is a small news item from the Fable 2 team!

- Sam - (who is working on some rather cool things for you all...)

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