State of The Friendly at KingsIsle (Episode 1)

Hello readers,

So I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now, and I just haven’t really had the time to do it yet. What I’d like to do is make a post every once in a while and help give you a glimpse of my life at KingsIsle. There’s no time like the present, so here we go!

I’ve now officially been working here for two months. It’s been a crazy two-months, and I still feel like I’m on training wheels. But at the same time I feel like I’m getting comfortable with my job enough that I’ve made a dent in the enormous amount of work that needs to be done while we prepare for Pirate101 to come out.

When I started working here, Professor Greyrose sent me a PowerPoint slideshow that clearly let me know all of my responsibilities that I would stumble upon. I love Professor Greyrose’s PowerPoints! Seriously, she has helped me a ton with the ins and outs of this job of Community Management. At some point when the flood gates open and Pirate101 launches, my job’s emphasis will spotlight a lot on the forums for Pirate101.com. Currently I’m only administering a small number of Alpha players on a subset of what those forums will become. I’m able to answer a good number of questions for people there on our Alpha forums, but in the future the "Number of Messages" to "Number of One-Eyed Jacks" ratio will amp about 1,000 to 1. O.O

A lot of what I’m doing now is getting our fan sites set up, working with Facebook/Twitter/Google+, attending meetings about Pirate101, actually playing Pirate101, and getting used to all the tools we have to help administrators and employees do their job. A lot of amazing work has gone into the back end of building these games. I’m still learning how to use some of these things. Some I’m getting a lot more familiar with. Others are still a mystery. I’ll get it and understand it all--it’s just a matter of time. I have amazing powers now though! I can take screenshots of the commons from 100 feet up. :)

I’ve also been getting to know a lot of the cool people that work for KingsIsle as well. Outside of the company you always hear about the big names that drive the information, but you never get to really see the 200 or so hardworking artists, designers, programmers, web gurus, customer service reps, QA hounds, Marketing dawgz (that’s the team I’m chillin’ with), production peeps, and everyone else that make this company work so well. It works and there’s another good team making sure that team works (fear the William Haskins my friends . . . I’ve crossed paths with him at McDonald’s and know the fury of his Big Mac).

Every once in a while when I’ve been staring at the screen for a few hours, I just have to force myself up and out to take a break. Break time is a good time to meet people. :) Lunch time is also a good time to hang with people: There’s always a few good games going on in the break room, and there’s actually a Minecraft server set up for just employees. These people love their games . . . even more than I do . . . and it’s great to just be around that vibe. 

From this end of the screen, I see a lot of people getting extremely excited to play Pirate101, and I don’t blame them. It’s going to be a fantastic game that you’re going to love. Eventually this ship will launch even though to the outsider it may feel like IT’S TAKING FOREVER, GAH! Truth be known, everyone is working overtime right now to get this closer to Beta and launch. It’ll happen, and when it does I hope you’ll have a huge smile on your face like I did when I played Pirate101 for the first time. :)

Thanks everyone for all you do and for the excitement in the air. It’s really cool working here and talking with the fans.

Happy dueling!