Wednesday 8 October 2008

A good excuse to drink

At last a reason to have a celebratory drink instead of a sad old man on his own drinking to dull the pain drink...ermm not that I'm doing that you understand!

My most recent DS project, UbiSoft's How to pass your Driving Test has finally been given NOE approval, so it should be on the streets in November.

No really I just drink red wine for the taste.

Am really pleased about this, as it was a very nice fun simple project but the approval process took forever with Nintendo's usual approval process being somewhat swamped at the moment.

Then, rather than supply a list of defects or issues then sending back (which Ubi's QA really should have caught before submission), they have a tendancy to find one thing then send it back for a fix and resub. So the whole process can take a while.

It's not as if I'm drinking every night...well not a whole bottle.

This time it took 3 attempts...well 2 and 1 request to waive. But it took over 2 months to get final approval. Thats the longest I've had to wait for an approval in years and it was really annoying the hell out of me.

Its just a little pick me up after work, or dinner or whatever.

Thanks to the guys at Route One for hiring me for the gig and for their really quite excellent production and managment approach. Its nice to meet a company who deal with issues so calmly and easily, even the normally frustrating repeated submissions were handled with calm and manners not often seen in a developer chasing a tight deadline.

I mean you get a deposit back on the bottle right, so its like saving me money?

Right, time to set up the next project, there's a few in the air. But I have to be careful to choose the right one. Since I have considerably less time for development now I'm teaching. hopefully I can work with Route One again soon but they tend to need fast turn around times and I'm not sure I'll be able to manage that on 25-30 hours a week.


Oh its not that kind of bank, they don't pay for the bottles? Maybe I'll wait till the weekend before I have that drink.

Ahthankyew

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do these jobs pay a fixed fee or royalties Brian?

Boring old Fart said...

I usually go for a fixed fee split over monthly payments. Royalties are a myth, I've never seen one..have you?

Anonymous said...

I'll take your word for it, you are the lecturer after all.