Angled Whiteboards

The final countdown:

And speaking of the future, last night I did something in beta that was so cool, so currently impossible, and so not announced yet. Got me REALLY fired up about this whole thing.

Now go beat Pyramid Magic so you can quick beat Pyramid Magic 2 so you’re all set to spelunk some NEW tombs as Lara Croft next week.

New games:

• Besieger
• Championship Kendou
• Chip Shot: Super Pro Golf
• LEGO Chess
• Pyramid Magic 2
• Qix II: Tournament
• Space Harrier II

New on GameTap TV:

• GameTap News: Half-Life
• A Quick Hit: DragonForce
• Play This Game: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
• Sealab 2021: Chalkboard Jungle

Until he morphed into a strategy guide.

[thanks, Josh!]

• Hyrulian Tri-force Shards
• Trifectas
• Triple Kills
• Hat Tricks

In sports and gaming, good things always happen in threes. So, what kind of gaming company would GameTap be without leveling up its IA staff to a Power Trio for Three Dot Oh?

All the wonderful things you’ve heard (and not yet heard) about 3.0 took an outstanding amount of thought and effort. So a little over a month ago, I joined the team to help make this dream happen. Needless to say, I’m unimaginably excited and honored to be a part of this endeavor!

I know 3.0 isn’t even here yet, but I’ll let slip there’s more exciting stuff coming from GameTap sooner than later this year. In fact, I’m heading up a wee bit of awesomeness that I really wish I could give you more to read about. There’ll be more to come on that and many other things in the following weeks and months.

So, until we meet again … howdy, I’m mixednut, and I bid you good day!

This weekend, the GameTap developers take on the beta testers in a challenge play smackdown! Why? May 31 is approaching like a fast train, and we’re giving that new release a real workout.

Question is, who will win? My vote? Tell ya on Monday.

So, in January we submitted GameTap to the Horizon Interactive Awards in the Entertainment and/or Video Game Category.

The Horizon Interactive Awards is a prestigious international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media producers. The awards showcase the best web site design, cd-roms, dvds, video, kiosks, video games and other interactive media.

Anyway, knowing they were going to notify the winners on May first (and having heard nothing), last night I thought I’d go and see who did win (since we hadn’t). I google the url, get to the home page, look for the category link, and…

Wait.

What’s that? Why is there a screen shot of us right there in the page? In that side-scrolly winners area? We won? We won? We won! We won best in category!

This post is dedicated to the fabulously talented and creative people I work with here at GameTap, who every day bring their best to work.

It’s nice to win.

Okay, we’re a couple months in now — I guess we should explain the title of the site. We’ve detailed bits and pieces of our design process from whiteboard to production. So the “whiteboards” portion of our name is pretty self-explanatory.

But would you believe our working conditions are such that our whiteboards are NOT completely 90° perpendicular to the ground? And that we’re not talking about that loosey-goosey flip-over portable kind? That instead, we work on whiteboards that are permanently inclined? ‘Cause we do.

Design and architecture-wise, the GameTap offices that we moved into last summer are new, fresh, and funky. So much so that certain workspaces have these supertall, lean-y walls. Both Dinah and I each have one of these lean-y walled offices. And on our lean-y wall is our gigantic whiteboard:

But here’s the catch: these particular ice-cube tray offices adjoin at the inclined wall. So one person gets the 100° angle and the other the 80°! To pull it all together, Dinah has to make sure she doesn’t jump up excitedly or risk ink on her face. And I end up with bits of erased detritus all up IN my sleeves. Design is DANGEROUS. Don’t stand up too fast. Don’t let your sleeves dangle: