Last part of the games page update. It seems to be entirely up to date now - for the first time since 2009! 

While I was at it, I update the about me page, and my CV. Now I just have to update the career page, and I'll be able to move on to the games industry list. Which I'm not looking forward to, because that's just way too much work...

Part two of the games page update. It had been out of date since the end of 2009, so I've had quite a bit of work to do - and still have a lot more. Currently, I've updated it up to the end of my work at Vivid Games, but not including outsource projects that I worked on for other companies while employed at Vivid.

Incidentally, while I was at it, I did a quick count - it seems that I now have 35 published or to-be-published games under my belt. Including the two mods, Standoff and Unknown Enemy, I'm up to 37. If, on top of that, I include all the cancelled projects, I'm up to at least 40.

Wow. Forty games. And you know what? I can't think of a single one that anyone will remember in a few years time. The only possible (and very questionable) exception are the two Wing Commander mods mentioned in the paragraph above. Fans definitely still remember Unknown Enemy, and the tenth anniversary of its publication is coming up this October. Standoff is even better-remembered. But that's amongst Wing Commander fans, a community of a couple of thousand people at best, who also will eventually forget. The rest of the world already doesn't care. I suppose if I had worked on some huge, AAA bestseller like StarCraft (1997), people would care for longer - but look, even StarCraft is now forgotten, with the release of a sequel! Call of Duty (2003) was great once, but as the series spawns more and more sequels, people only really remember the latest one...

The lesson to draw from that? Memento mori! If you work in the games industry, don't fool yourself into thinking you're making some great piece of art that people will remember for decades. That's a lie, it's bullshit that we tell ourselves to feel good about working overtime. Of course, if you especially like a particular project, you should feel good about working overtime anyway - because you're creating, and that does feel good. But never lose track of the big picture. You will die - and no one will remember you for your games. Who will remember you, and what for? Your family.

Back in 2010, there was a lot of talk - not just in the games industry, but in the mainstream media, too, about Brian R. Wood, the Company of Heroes (2006) designer who died in a car accident. He'd swerved his car at the last second, exposing the driver's side to the oncoming vehicle - killing himself, but saving his wife and unborn child. The last Company of Heroes game (well, expansion pack) was published in 2009, and everyone has forgotten it by now - his wife and the daughter he did not get to see will never forget him.

Though it may not seem like it, this website is in fact alive. The last update was back in January 2010, and with good reason - my life has been nothing but constant change since then. At the time, I was freelancing, but looking for a new full-time job. The job I eventually got, at Vivid Games in Bydgoszcz (one of Poland's finest mobile game developers - a fantastic place to work!), required me to move cities, which I did in March 2010. In July, our first (and only - so far) daughter was born - in fact, tomorrow will be her second birthday!

I worked at Vivid Games until January 2011, keeping very busy indeed - as a producer, I shipped four titles during this time. Then I... ended up back at City Interactive. I had continued to work as a freelance writer/consultant for City almost all the time since I left the company back in 2008, and now they offered me the opportunity to come in as the creative director for a new multi-platform air combat game, Combat Wings: The Great Battles of WWII. That sounded pretty exciting, so I took the opportunity. I remained at City until April 2012; by then, my work was basically done, the project in its final stages, so we parted ways once more. Surprisingly, however, the game remains unpublished - and, at least under that name, it will remain so. The company decided to rename the title at the last minute, to Dogfight 1942, as well as changing its distribution from boxed to digital, and implemented a slew of changes to make the game more arcade (to better fit the Xbox Live Arcade, naturally).

This leads to an interesting question - can I still claim credit as the creative director for the new, renamed and altered version of the game? :) I guess so, the bulk of the game is still my work, even if the end result is different to what I wanted.

What have I been doing since leaving City Interactive? Currently, I'm working primarily as a consultant again, and the next few months will determine what's next.

In the meantime, I'm hoping to gradually bring the website back to life. I don't dare to touch the industry list just yet - last time I worked on it, about a year ago, I started a major revision of the list's format, and I'm not even done updating the existing contents to the new format. However, I do very much keep up with the Polish industry news - now more than ever, in fact, since it's become a crucial part of my work as a consultant.

Today, I'm uploading changes to just two parts of the website - the games page, and my CV.

As seems to always be the case, a major update must be followed the next day by another small update-of-the-update. And so, I added a couple more photos to the wedding page.

I've also gone ahead and added another three pages to the industry list, ever-so-slightly reducing the still-too-huge backlog of pages to be added. The new additions are all independent sound & music composers - Maciek Dobrowolski, Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz, and Waveforms (Jacek Dojwa).

Three changes - firstly, I've added a link to my LinkedIn profile on the sidebar. So, if you're interested in contacting me, that's another way you can go about it. At this particular time, I'm especially interested in job offers - whether they be freelance writing gigs or full-time project management and/or design jobs.

Secondly, I've added a photo page about my wedding, which took place in August last year.

And finally, I used this opportunity to knock another couple of companies off the industry list backlog update list :). This includes one very small change to an existing entry (AdAction - I added the link to their blog, AdGames), and three new entries - two game developers (Mass Creation and Sleepwalker Games), and one subcontractor (Catalis). That last one needs to be described in a bit more detail - Catalis is actually a large global company. They do not have a presence in Poland. Their subsidiary, Testronic Laboratories, however, does - so, it's Testronic Labs Warsaw that's the real subject of this addition.

Another small update to the page layout. As you can see, precious little has changed - still the same ugly colour scheme and virtually no graphics :). What can I say - I'm very conservative in that regard. Besides, I've never claimed to be a good web designer or graphics artist. I make games :).

That having been said, the page had been designed in 2004. Back then, I figured there's still enough people out there using 800x600 resolution monitors that I should make sure the website fits on their screens. And I loved the idea of having black bars on either side, so consequently, I had to limit the website to less than 800 pixels in width. I've now increased the width by a few hundred pixels. I've also added some padding, so that the text is no longer just one pixel away from the borders - makes quite a difference.

By the way, I just came across Pix's blog. I don't know who Pix is, but his blog is amazing - apparently, he decided to play through every single game Origin ever made, and blog his progress, day by day. He did it - he finished Ultima IX: Ascension (1999) on Day 212. But the really fun thing is, after going through all the Origin games, he eventually ended up posting similar playthroughs for our two Wing Commander: Secret Ops (1998) mods - after all, the Wing Commander series was made by Origin. As is only to be expected, he wasn't that impressed with Unknown Enemy. Rightly so - I mean, Unknown Enemy is as good as we were able to make it back then, but it was our first effort, and this very, very much shows through. Standoff, on the other hand, is a far, far more polished piece of work, and made a far better impression. Yay!

I've made some major changes to the website this week. As I worked on updating my portfolio (proudly out of date since 2006 :) ), I decided to cut the page down a bit, removing the various old samples of my work, basically changing the portfolio into a page about my career - a description of my career goals, strengths & abilities, and a description of my experience in the most important areas.

However, with this change, something was lost - because I wanted the page to be a (relatively) brief summary, there was no room for any samples of my past work. And I'm pretty darned proud of my past work - yes, even the most budget of the budget games I worked on had something to be proud of :). To this effect, I created a separate My Games page, where I showcase all of the games I have so far completed in my career - not just the ones that might be of interest to a future employer, but the older stuff, too. I've worked on a pretty diverse range of games over the years, and while most employers won't much care about things I worked on a decade ago, showing all of them together gives a good impression of my career's progression over the years.

So, would you like to see a trailer for one of the games I've developed? Head on over to the games page. For each game, there's a (very) short commentary, usually more about the development history than the about the game itself - the trailers speak for themselves. And that's obviously the other thing you'll find over there - using YouTube, I've managed to find and embed a trailer or fan-made movie for most of the games I have worked on. For example, here's a fan-made movie about Standoff. Just check out those HDR effects in a game engine from 1998, ain't it great? :)

...Incidentally, I am actually working on a Standoff trailer at the moment. It's going to be a while before it's done, though.

You may also notice that the Games Development page has vanished. After adding the career and games pages, I came to the conclusion that this page was simply no longer relevant - it said the exact same things that the career and games pages say, only in different wording. Not so useful...

By the way, while making the games page, I came across something very surprising regarding The Roots, the game I worked on back in 2005 at Tannhauser Gate until the company was shut down. The company's website has been long, long gone, and I've always assumed the websites for The Roots and The Roots: Gates of Chaos (2005) were also gone. Not so! Amazingly, both websites are still up, after all these years. You can check them out here (The Roots) and here (The Roots: Gates of Chaos).

Finally, I've made some slight, mainly cosmetic updates to the industry list - specifically, I sorted out the entries for Tannhauser Gate and Cenega Poland (and all other Cenega-related companies). In both cases, the companies are owned by someone else. Tannhauser Gate, of course, no longer exists - but its owner, ASSA - Tannhauser Gate does appear to still exist. Just keep in mind, ASSA is actually a building construction company, the connection between them and Tannhauser was that Tannhauser's founder was the son of ASSA's owner. This change also resulted in Tannhauser Gate jumping waaay up the list, what with ASSA being much earlier in alphabetical order than Tannhauser Gate used to be ;). As for Cenega, they have been owned by 1C Publishing since 2005 - I had mentioned this, but I never bothered to structure the entry properly to mark Cenega's status as a subsidiary. This is now also fixed.

Made a few small updates to my CV a couple of days ago.

Apart from that, a small industry list update. You wouldn't believe how many things I still have waiting to add - whenever I find a new company, I usually note down the web link somewhere, and then forget about it for a few months. Today I attempted to clear at least a few of those to-be-added companies from my list. And so, in the developers' section, I've added Nitreal, World-Loom and Wydawnictwo Dagiel. In the subcontractors section, I've added LocWorks - obviously, a localisation company. Finally, one company has been added in the indie section - Pastel Games.

Apart from that, I've also made a few small updates to existing companies. Today, I mainly tried to deal with the changes the CD Projekt group has undergone in recent months. First up, I've added info about the announcement they made in October, that CD Projekt would be purchased by Optimus S.A. It's a weird deal, since Optimus is probably, all things considered, a smaller company than CD Projekt. But, Optimus is a public company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. This is something CD Projekt had been planning to undergo as well, but in the current economic climate, it would be virtually impossible - so essentially, they're planning to enter the stock exchange by becoming a part of a company already listed there. The current owners of CD Projekt are not going to really lose control of their company, either - in fact, they'll be given a 50% stake in Optimus. I hope this somehow helps CD Projekt solve their financial difficulties, but in all honesty, I doubt it. On the plus side, CD Projekt also announced a few months ago that they would become the exclusive distributor of Disney's DVDs and Blu-Ray discs in Poland - and that deal is definitely a good thing for them.

Other changes in the CD Projekt group are as follows - Metropolis is essentially no more. I don't know if this studio still formally exists or not, but most or all of their employees are now either gone altogether, or working on other things at CD Projekt. Metropolis' last project, They, seems to be dead in the water. Hopefully, once the economic situation improves, CD Projekt will take steps to rebuild Metropolis - it's a really, really old brand amongst Polish developers, and it would be a shame for it to disappear. Another change is that the CD Projekt Localisation Centre is now called Porting House. Although the company is still affiliated with CD Projekt, it seems they are now a more or less separate entity. Finally, I've added Good Old Games - CD Projekt's online service that sells classic games from all over the world.

A few more changes to bring the website up to date. Games modding has been updated to note the fact that Standoff is finished. I also updated a few of the other pages. Finally, a small industry list update - I've finally added  Vivid Games, Flying Wild Hog and ComAngle Interactive. I've also updated several entries - Frontline Studios, Vivid Design, EvoWare, Psychosomatic Software, and New Desert.

A small, but very overdue update. This time, mainly personal notes.

First up - on August 29th, Karolina and I got married. Everything went smoothly, the wedding was great, and the honeymoon was even better. We went to this place in north-eastern Poland - and it was absolutely fantastic. Half an hour's walk to the nearest asphalt road, an hour's walk to the nearest store of any kind... in short, it was just as secluded and isolated as you'd want your honeymoon to be. We spent two weeks there, and then we went to Lithuania for another few days - in Vilnius, to be specific. Vilnius is a very special place, and for the Polish, it's hugely significant - without going into too much detail on the complexities of Central European history, let's just say that this city, even though it's always been the capital of Lithuania, is one of the centre-pieces of Polish culture. Even to this day, about 20% of its population is Polish.

Another piece of news is about my work - so far, I must say, my foolhardy attempt to set up my own studio has not been going well. Two or three months ago, my business partner decided to pull out. Being busy with wedding preparations at the time, I shrugged and pretty much suspended the whole thing. The action plan now is to get back to working for someone else, and rebuild my finances a bit - I can try again in a few years. 

Next up, Standoff is finished. We finally managed to complete Episode 5, releasing it on August 10th. It was something of a rough release - a few nasty bugs slipped in at the last minute, and it turned out that most of our players could barely even play through a single mission without the game crashing. By now, the bugs are all fixed, and the game is stable. And finished - after... what, how long has it been? Eight years? Something like that. Let me tell you, after the fiasco of my studio attempt, it sure was great to finish this thing. Without a doubt, Standoff is the single biggest project I'd ever taken on, surpassing by a long way every one of my professional productions, too.

And that's it for this update. No significant industry list updates this time, I'm afraid - it'll have to stay out of date for a while longer.

Another industry list update. Going through the list and checking company profiles, I've gotten as far as the indies - but there's still a lot to do, especially since I've also got a bunch of new companies to add.

First up, I've added the French mobile phone developer  Playsoft and their Polish subsidiary, Playsoft Polska. Three other new additions, this time in the subcontractors section, are Animatic Studio, Midori Brands, and Midori's partner company, Madwands Media. 

Other profiles that have had significant chunks of info added are the developers Very Nice Studio, Exor Studios (which used to be the indie DIPRIP). In the former case, their website has finally become more informative, while in the latter, I've been able to find out a bit more through LinkedIn.

Finally, smaller changes have been made in a bunch of other profiles - the developers Tate Interactive, Team 57, Teyon & Destan Entertainment, Artifex Mundi, Reality Pump, and Xofto; the publishers Ads'n'games and Manta Multimedia, and finally, the subcontractor MultiDesign Group (aka Media Design Group).

Steadily advancing with the industry list update, going through the existing profiles and adding new info.

Bigger changes today include Appendix Games, Nawia Games, and Frontline Studios - Appendix and Nawia had previously been listed as Frontline's subsidiaries, but since they are in fact independent studios, they've been separated into their own entries. In addition, I've received quite a bit of info about both companies, so their profiles are more informative now. Other big changes are Gingerbread Studios and Mirage Interactive - Gingerbread's website has finally gone up, so I was able to add quite a lot of info about them. Mirage Interactive, although obviously there's nothing new going on there, has also been modified to take into account their history with Gingerbread Studios (or more specifically, Gingerbread's history before they became Gingerbread).

What else? Moonrise Interactive also has some new info. Prominence has been moved to Techland's profile (although this has not been 100% confirmed, I have every reason to believe Techland's "new" studio in Warsaw is in fact the formerly-independent Prominence, whose website is now offline). I've also updated slightly the profile for Nicolas Games, and Nicolas Intoxicate - whose website, worryingly, has disappeared. I've seen on LinkedIn that the project manager for Nicolas Intoxicate's flagship product Afterfall no longer works there - I hope this doesn't mean the project is dead. I mean, I'm no fan of post-apocalyptic RPGs, but... :)

Other entries that have been edited with smaller changes are Vivid Design, Ganymede Technologies, Illusion Games, Flying Fish Works, In Images, L'Art, MCS Studios, and Orchid Games.

Finally, I've added the company SoDigital, although precious little is known about them at this stage.

Another minor industry list update - trying to catch up with the companies already listed, and occasionally adding something new as well.

I've modified the entries for CD Projekt (also adding their subsidiary CD Projekt Localisation Centre), City Interactive, Cube Multimedia (moving them under Infinite Dreams, since the two companies have merged), Drago Entertainment (yes - apparently they are still alive, just rather unproductive), Eeezee Products (another one of those presumed-dead companies, still alive after all), EvoWare (still relatively new, but definitely worth tracking because of their Game Incubator programme - Inkubator Gier).

Finally, The Farm 51, who have just released their very first title, the WWI FPS NecroVisioN (2009). It took a while for them to find a publisher for it, but it looks like their patience paid off in the end. Congratulations, guys! Even though the game has the player mainly fighting demons or something like that, I think I may still take a look at it - FPS titles set in WWI are a rare breed...

Minor industry list update. I've made some slight changes to a few entries (BLStream Group & Gamelion, Calaris Studios, Can't Stop Games, Metropolis Software). Since Breakpoint is now owned by MNI, I've added the latter company to the list, and moved Breakpoint under MNI as a subsidiary.

The last addition deserves a more detailed mention. Someone recently asked me about California Dreams, and I had no information to give him. This bothered me - a lot. California Dreams is a hugely important part of the Polish games development industry (pre-)history, it was important to me personally (their Blockout (1989) was the first Polish game I ever played), and I knew nothing about it? Well, after spending an afternoon prowling through through the internet, I found out more or less enough to add an entry for California Dreams :). This entry, however, is not under "C" - it's under "K". Komputronik, to be precise. Komputronik owns a majority stake in Karen. Now, I'm sure if you ask anyone at Karen, they will say their company never had anything to do with computer games. But they would be wrong :). Karen was originally a subsidiary development studio for Logical Design Works, and they published their games under the label California Dreams. It's just that Karen was also a computer importer/manufacturer, and around 1991, they ended up focusing on that part of the business. Their ancient background as a games developer was entirely forgotten - until now :).

I know, this particular entry is very convoluted, due to its loopy nature (Komputronik->Karen->Logical Design Works->Karen... again?). I could have omitted the connection to Komputronik and the present-day Karen, limiting the entry to LDW and the old Karen. But I like to be as complete as possible... :)

Another very minor update. Following the last update, the website went down again, and so I ended up re-uploading it to another server. The old address should redirect to this site, but the site can also now be accessed directly at http://www.majewscy.net//jakub/index.html. Also slightly updated my CV again, while I was at it.

I am planning to start updating the industry list again in the coming weeks. Today, I've made a start with a very, very small update - I've added the subcontractor Seventh Tear. They're a rare breed amongst Polish subcontractors (who, admittedly, are a rare breed in general), in that they work on engine components rather than graphics.

A very minor update today. Something seems to have messed up the website, and I had to re-upload all of it. Spent a few minutes updating things like my CV.

The industry list... I know, I know, it's desperately in need of an update. As usual, I've received quite a bit of information over the past few months, and I haven't had time to do anything with it. It's just that I've been going through quite a lot of changes recently. Having at last finished up everything at City, I've been working on the next step. Which will be a new development studio - if it succeeds. What with the worsening economic crisis and all that, it might not be perfect timing ;).

On a personal front, I also recently got engaged :).

Day two of a major industry list update. Ok, I shouldn't say "day two", since that implies I'll be continuing this on a daily basis, and I'm sure I won't ;). Anyway, today I've added a lot of stuff that's been waiting for ages on my to-do list.

New additions in the developers section - Avantgarde BEE 3D (a long-dead game developer), Cube Multimedia (a presumed-dead game developer), Orchid Games (casual games, also known as DreamHard), Team 57 (an indyish game developer), Looksoft (mobile phone advergaming), the developer Artifex Mundi along with their parent company ZSK Progress.

New additions in other sections - Marcin Przybylowicz (subcontractors - music & SFX), Start International Polska (subcontractors - dubbing), Trinity & Hobi (subcontractors - computer graphics, animation & motion capture), MARIA (publishers - a long-dead distributor/publisher), Gameon and their parent company Blue Media (publishers - internet distributor), and DIPRIP - a fun-looking Half-Life 2 modding team.

Apart from that, there's also a few modifications to existing profiles. I've updated Wasted Studios (new games released - this indie is starting to get professional), Frontline Studios (company history update), Calaris Studios (who have been moved back to the main list, because I've been told that they are not a fully-owned subsidiary of Frontline after all), Infinite Dreams (the company's not dead after all), Heaven X (I've added a second company attached to them - Rat Square. I believe that Rat Square is actually a successor to Heaven X, but I can't be certain), Nibris (added their pseudo-subsidiary, Bloober Team), FreeMind (added their localisation team, Internetowe Biuro Tlumaczen FreeMind). Finally, QubicGames - yes, they were dead yesterday, but evidently they got better :P. I've added NoWay Studio - a DS developer that appears to be somehow related to Qubic Games.

Industry list update. This is only the start of another round of updates - for the time being, I'm going through my mailbox and adding info that I'd received via email. Apart from that, I've seen more than a few new developers mentioned at Warsztat, so I'll naturally be adding them, too. Then, there's the very interesting initiative called Inkubator Gier (the Games Incubator)... all in all, lots of interesting stuff to add. But not all at once ;).

In the developers' section, slightly modified City Interactive, updated QubicGames (sadly, the news here is that the company is dead), added the small developer Twin Bottles, an ancient and non-existent developer called Crazy Computer Confederation, mobile game developers Xofto and Rivia, Then, in the indie section, I've added the one-man indie Zielok.com.

Finally, I've added Virtual Magic in the subcontractors section, and the Polish subsidiary branches for Sony and EA in the publishers & distributors section. Note: yes, I have heard about Codemasters and Ubisoft setting up Polish subsidiaries as well. And Emergent (the people behind the Gamebryo middleware engine), too. I have not added them, however, because apart from press releases, I have not seen anything that would indicate their presence on the ground just yet. Codemasters certainly does publish their own games in Poland to some degree, but this may still be handled by their German branch.

Just a small update for the time being, though it will likely be followed by a bigger one later today or tomorrow. I haven't done much work with the industry list since the end of June, and in the meantime, a number of new companies have leaped out of the woodwork. So, I'll be aiming to add them as soon as possible.

On a more personal note, I am currently preparing to leave my current employer, City Interactive, so there are updates to the CV page and other such places. I will still be working with them for another two months (albeit no longer full-time, but instead as a sort of freelance consultant). What's next? Can't tell you yet... :P

For the record, I spent nearly three years at City, and it's been a really great time. I've watched the company grow from thirty to three hundred (ok, I admit it, there's actually less than that - I just like the way thirty to three hundred sounds :) ). It hasn't always been pretty, and the past year in particular has been exhausting, as most of the time I found myself leading one project, and helping out with one or two others. Be that as it may, I have no qualms whatsoever about recommending City to other people - if you're new, and looking to get into the games industry in Poland, City is a fantastic place to start.

The industry list update saga goes on - I really must avoid getting so out-of-date again, because it's a pain going over this thing for days and days just to catch up. Stage four - adding new companies - continues. One area I'm particularly trying to catch up with, are the subcontractors. Many of these companies have nothing at all to do with games, but they provide their services to games developers as happily as for anyone else. They're worth listing, if only for the benefits of other Polish game developers looking through this list.

The first of today's new additions is Studio Kobart. These folks have nothing whatsoever to do with the gaming industry as such - they're a film production company. However, they are on occasions used for things like voiceovers - so they qualify as a subcontractor. Another new subcontractor is LSM Studios - they deal with sound and music. One final addition in the subcontractors section is 4Planet Media - another film production company. Somehow, though, I don't think I'll be adding too many more film production companies - film is a far more established medium, and if I were to add all the different companies that can handle your voice & video needs, the subcontractors section would easily surpass the rest of the list...

In the indie department, I've added Psychosomatic Software.

Meanwhile, there is also several additions in the developers section. Firstly, there's two completely new studios - Very Nice Studio, and Gingerbread Studios. Neither of these actually has anything to say just yet, though. Another new addition is AdAction - the advergaming specialists. Ostryga Entertainment is a second advergaming specialist. Then there's Twistbox Entertainment - an American mobile gaming developer with a studio in Poland. Another addition - and an odd one at that - is Chaos Works (aka xLand Games). This company does not exist, nor did it exist at any point during the lifetime of my industry list. However, after keeping them on my list of "things maybe to be added" for several years, I decided it simply has to be here, for the sake of historical value - just about anyone in the Polish games industry will know what Electro Body (1992) was!

Finally, in the publishers & distributors section, there's Ads'N'Games - and frankly, they probably shouldn't be there :). I have nowhere else to put them, though. An agency to get publishers, developers and advertising providers together? Hmm.

Meanwhile, the industry list update continues, and I've completed stage three of the update - Developers section, letters F to Z. Only stage four is left now - new entries to be added.

Some of the bigger changes include - Gamelion, Inc (now listed under B, as they have merged with BLStream, Ltd.) has set up a second Polish subsidiary in Bydgoszcz. Flying Fish Works - I've added the entry for their parent-company, Implix (this is not a change - it's merely something I should have done back when I added this company to the list back in 2005). Frontline Studios - a lot of subsidiaries added - companies I never even knew existed. Also, it appears Calaris Studios is now their subsidiary as well. Another change is the addition of Epic Games to the list. No, Epic did not turn Polish all of a sudden :). It's just that they acquired People Can Fly last year. Finally, I've added Carrywater Consulting (aka IT Experts) - again, not really a change, just an adjustment to bring Tequila Mobile in line with the rest of the page (previously, Tequila Mobile, although it has always been a subsidiary of Carrywater Consulting, was listed by itself).

Needless to say, there was also a lot of smaller changes - I don't think there's more than one or two profiles that went unaltered.

While I was at it, I made a small start at stage four :). Three new companies have been added - the developer Can't Stop Games (founded in 2007, by Artur Jaskolski, who had previously owned Tannhauser Gate), and the subcontractors LocalSoft (an older company which I simply hadn't noticed before - they work on game localisations for various publishers) and Audio Orange (they seem new, and they do music). Three down, plenty more to go...

The most important changes are for CD Projekt and City Interactive (in both cases, including their subsidiaries), since these two companies have grown the most - it would not be out of place to claim that the two companies in question are #1 and #2 publishers/developers in Poland (though in which order? That's debatable - City Interactive is certainly bigger at the moment, but CD Projekt may well have similar or higher revenues). Both profiles have been fully updated to include all their latest acquisitions (for example, Metropolis Software is now a CD Projekt subsidiary, while the new arrival Fresh Chicken Studio is a City Interactive subsidiary).

I did, however, quite intentionally leave all the other changes from the Developers section until next update - I'd get it all done this evening/night, but I'd hardly get any sleep, so... :P

One thing I really need to figure out now is what to do with all the defunct companies - as time goes on, there's more and more of them. Should I establish a separate Dead Companies section? :)

A small update to my CV, as well - now that City Interactive has announced Code of Honor 2, I've added it to my CV. There's a tiny little lie in there, though - I mentioned the game as being published in 2008, though in fact, it will not be published for a little longer. However, this way, I won't have to update my CV again for a few months ;).

I'm very, very happy with Code of Honor 2. Truth be told, I think it's the best FPS game developed in Poland so far. Though, of course, as the project manager, I'm as far from impartial in this matter as I could possibly be... ;)

In the meantime, though, my CV urgently needed an update to take into account my most recent projects at City Interactive. First up, there was Battlestrike: Force of Resistance (2007; aka Mortyr III: Akcje Dywersyjne), which we finished up in July 2007. This happened to be the last project on which I worked as a level designer in any capacity, because for the next project, I was promoted to Project Manager. The game, called Terrorist Takedown 2 was City Interactive's first project using the JupiterEX engine (as seen in F.E.A.R.). It took quite a bit of work to get it done, particularly since the project's timespan was no longer than for our company's other projects. Anyway, it took a lot of overtime work, a few weekend marathons, but we made it, and are now working on... the next project ;).

...You know, I remember when I first added City Interactive to the industry list and mentioned the original Terrorist Takedown, I wrote something along the lines of "I hope the game is better than its title would suggest". Well, I probably shouldn't say this as a City employee, but I still think Terrorist Takedown is just aweful as a game title (ugh! Alliteration! :P )... but at least for Terrorist Takedown 2, I can say with a completely clear conscience that yes, the game is better (much better, in fact) than its title suggests :). Looking back, I think there's a lot we could have done better (even taking into account the usual time & budget constraints), but as far as first projects on an unfamiliar engine go - I'm most definitely happy.

Incidentally, City Interactive also took another very significant step forward as a company recently, making the transition from a privately-owned firm into a public corporation - so, we're no longer City Interactive Sp. z.o.o., but instead, City Interactive S.A.. It's only been about three months since we made our debut on the stock exchange, but already the effects are starting to show. The point of going public was to secure funds for further growth, and growth there certainly has been - apart from a continuing increase in numbers here in Warsaw, we've set up overseas offices in Britain, Germany, and a new development branch in... Peru. I think it's safe to say we'll be growing a lot this year.

In other news, on the modding front, back in September we also managed to get the fourth episode of  Standoff released. That one kept me awake a few nights as well ;). One more episode left - after that, I think I'm done with large-scale modding projects for a while. They're a little difficult to combine with full-time work...

Anyway, I do promise I'll update industry list soon. Really. Many, many thanks to everybody who continues to send in information even when I don't update the website for months on end - thanks to such info, I've got about four or five more companies waiting to be added, and many of the existing entries are going to be updated. 2007 has been a very interesting year for the games industry in Poland - City Interactive going public, People Can Fly being acquired by Epic Games, CD Projekt finally publishing The Witcher (which, incidentally, seems to have garnered some very good reviews - I haven't played the game myself yet, but clearly the end result of those five or six years of CD Projekt's pain has been worth it :) ), and more...

Other news - I've updated the industry list again. Hopefully I've remembered to include all the new stuff I've found out since November. Apart from going through the list site-by-site and updating all the entries that needed changing, I've added a few new entries (the most interesting being the indie developer Undead Society). As always, many thanks to all the people who contacted me with new information.

I've also updated my CV. Yes, I am still working at City Interactive, and no, I haven't been sitting around doing nothing since Combat Wings: Battle of Britain was released :). I still need to update some of the other sections, especially my portfolio - but since I'm not looking for a new job in the foreseeable future, I don't really mind the portfolio staying out of date for a while yet :).

In any case, the website's been moved to my brother Borys' server. On the bright side, the URL is much easier to remember... the disadvantage is that it's a bit of a homebrewed server, so it's slower than the UMK server had been. At any rate, the important thing is that the website is accessible at all.

In the meantime, reviews have started appearing for Combat Wings: Battle of Britain. Most of them have been fairly positive (with scores varying from 60 to 80%). The main sticking point, particularly in German reviews, has been the quality of the voiceovers and the translation - sadly, it turns out that the people who translated this game into German weren't especially competent, and the voice actors who recorded German voiceovers were downright awful. A pity, given that Germany is our main market :P. Oh well, I just hope this game actually gets a release in the UK or the US (the last one didn't...).

I'm very pleased with how this game turned out, actually. You can still tell that it was developed by a fairly small team (...well, fifteen is small by today's standards) on a very tight schedule, but the final product is, in my rather un-humble opinion, one of the finest flying action games in the last few years.

By the way, I will be at the Leipzig trade show on August 24th and 25th. Hopefully (given that Leipzig is the biggest games trade show in Europe, pretty much our equivalent of E3), I'll be able to hunt down a few Polish developers there. 

Also, something I forgot to mention in the previous update - if you're looking for industry jobs here in Poland, Gamelion Studios is certainly not the only option. City Interactive is also  looking for new people. This is one company I definitely won't hesitate to advertise - the atmosphere's great, the people I work with are great, and the company is very stable (or rather, very unstable, but only in a positive direction - since I arrived six months ago, about ten other people have already been hired, and the company continues to grow). So, if you're interested, send your CV to Michal Sokolski.

In the past two months, I haven't had much time to do any comprehensive update for the game industry list, but I hope to take care of that at some time in the near future (most likely next week). Stay tuned!

Oh, and since I didn't have Gamelion on my list before, I've added them there, too ;).

...So we get a second update, it seems :P. Just one addition, this time - an indie developer called Aazero Interactive. They're an interesting one, though - it's a very big team for an indie developer (28 people), and they're working on two rather ambitious projects at once.

...And a third update, too. A productive evening - by accident, I came across a Polish game development (well, programming) portal called Warsztat (which is the Polish word for "workshop"). I'll admit, I was actually thinking of registering the domain name they're using (I'm hoping to eventually grow my industry list into something more complex, and www.gamedev.pl sounded like a nifty domain name for it), and went there just to check if somebody didn't have it already. Grrr :P.

Be that as it may, it was a good find, because it allowed me to locate a few more companies - Micazook, a British mobile phone game developer that apparently has a studio in Poland, and a whole lot of confusing post-apocalyptic indie stuff. At this point, it seems that there are at least three, possibly four such projects in development. I'm not a big fan of post-apocalyptic worlds (or rather, the Fallout (1995) variety where the whole world is a wasteland - I don't mind post-apocalyptic worlds where humanity has suffered but nature itself is relatively normal, but sadly none of the projects in question belong to that variety), but I still hope that at least one or two of these projects will ultimately get somewhere.

In the meantime, on January 9th, I started at my new job, at City Interactive. I'm the lead level designer on a new (unannounced) title - yes indeed, lead level designer!

Notice the dates, by the way - on Sunday the 8th, we released episode three of Standoff, and on Monday the 9th I started at the new job... it was a busy weekend, needless to say, and a bizarre re-run of what happened in 2004 (released episode one on December 23rd, had two days off for Christmas, and started at Tannhauser Gate on the 27th). Given that episode five of Standoff will probably be done somewhere around the end of the year, I just hope that doesn't mean another job change... 

Over the past few weeks, I've gotten a bit behind on updating the industry list. This update should fix that - hopefully, the list is now fully up-to-date once again... and quite an update it turned out to be. I lost track of how many new entries I added, but there must have been about a dozen of them. Most are relatively uninteresting (a few indie developers, some mobile phone developers, etc.), but then there's one or two like The Farm 51 - definitely a developer worth keeping track of.

I've also updated the other sections of the website, though the changes there are much smaller - just the usual "got a new job" updates.

I also made one tiny change to the list. It seems I'd made a mistake the last time I edited it, incorrectly attributing WWII Sniper: Call to Victory (2005) to City Interactive. In fact, the company only localised and published this product on the Polish market - the game itself was made by the Canadian studio Groove Games.

On a side note, a quick count reveals that I've now got 46 developers, 2 subcontractors, 4 indie developers, and 14 publishers/distributors. Makes for a grand total of 66 companies. This count doesn't include subsidiaries, but does include all the dead companies... so all in all, we're looking at about 60 companies currently active in the Polish games industry. And to think that when I had 30, I thought there would be no more of them to be found :).

The subcontractors section of the list is new, by the way. I will be listing there all the companies that work in games development, but have not (as far as I know) made any games under their own name.

Apart from that, I am also planning to implement a minor re-organisation of the list - more specifically, I'm going to split off from it a list of dead companies. The purpose of this is simple - I want the industry list to focus on the companies that are currently active. Judging from the emails that I get, this list (unsurprisingly) is used mostly by people who work in the industry - and for such people, it is the functioning companies that matter, not the dead ones. At the same time, however, I want the list to remain as comprehensive as ever, and that means I need some place to dump the profiles of the companies that died over the past year. And hey - as an added benefit, once I'll have a separate list of dead companies, I'll be able to research backwards and add some profiles for companies that existed and vanished in the days before I started working on this list... did I mention that I have an interest in all things historical? ;)

In the past few weeks, I have not yet found the time to update the Polish industry list again - however, I've received and collected a fair amount of new data, so you can expect an update soon.

Also, Standoff's second episode was released as planned on August 10th. Everything went as planned, there was some five hundred downloads on the first day (which is a lot, when you consider that the mod only appeals to the fans of a series which hasn't seen new games since 1998...), and everyone seems happy with it. Two episodes down, three to go...

Four days until the second episode of Standoff is released. It's strange, when we released the first episode, I barely had time to do anything other than Standoff in the days immediately prior to the release (which, at Christmas time, sure was fun). This time, everything's under control, and - provided all the music is done in time - there's not going to be any trouble. Neato.

It's funny - I always thought the idea that you could be overqualified for a job was fairly silly. An overqualified employee should do even better than a qualified employee, right? But it turns out to be absolutely true. I can say without too much arrogance that I was overqualified for my job at Techland... and as a consequence, I really sucked at it. How's that for a paradox? It makes sense, though - when you've spent years developing a wide range of skills, it's really frustrating to be reduced to using just one of those skills (and not even that... my job wasn't really level design, it was level implementation - I was basically the interface between the real level designer and the level editing software).

A lot of people have been telling me I should be patient and try to stay until the end of the project at least. Of course, this wasn't possible, given that my employer was just as unhappy with me as I was with them - but even if it had been, it would've been stupid. There's just too many opportunities out there to waste your time working in the wrong job.

Standoff's second episode, meanwhile, is set for release on August 10th. The episode is still not entirely ready, a lot of the music is still missing, but we should be able to make it.

And as for Standoff... well, that's one reason why I was just a little bit disappointed to get this new job so quickly (the other reason being that it's summer, and I could use a vacation). I had been hoping to use the unexpected increase in spare time to push things forward a little more. Still, it seems like everything is going well, and an August release should be within our reach. Actually, not much I could do to speed it up now anyway - about all I can do now for this current episode is yell at our musician (who's getting a bit tired of me yelling already ;) ).

Unfortunately, one of the companies that needed a profile update was my (ex-) employer Tannhauser Gate. As that 'ex-' bit indicates, a lot has changed since the last update. On the one hand, The Roots: Gates of Chaos (our RPG for the Nokia N-Gage), has been completed and published. It even got some pretty good reviews. But then, on the other hand, at the start of this week we were informed that the company has to suspend work on the PC/XBox version of The Roots due to some... difficulties. And so, pretty much the entire development team has been laid off. Guess it's time to look for a new employer :P.

Meanwhile, Standoff continues at an unsteady pace - unsteady, because there isn't that much you can do when you can spare only a few hours a week for a project. Nonetheless, we have reached the point where really only the music and a few pre-rendered cutscenes need to be finished in the second episode, and so we hope to release it some time in August. 

On a sidenote, I didn't mention in the last update that, on the 24th of December, we released the first episode of Standoff. It was a very tight finish, but I must say we were all extremely pleased with the result - everyone that played it seemed quite impressed. Since then, we have been working on the second episode, which should hopefully be released in a month or two at the very latest - although I've been slowed down a bit by my new job, everything seems to be well on track. It is worth noting that any delay for episode two is not necessarily a delay for the entire project, because we are simultaneously going through a strange kind of production/pre-production period for the later episodes - finishing up mission outlines and cutscene scripts, as well as arranging for voiceovers. With episode one, were were slowed down a bit by the lack of voiceovers - this will be avoided in the future, because at the rate we are going right now, episode three voiceovers will be ready even before episode two is released.