Hey folks, James Stevenson, Senior Community Manager here. Over the last couple of months, the burning question amongst all of our fans out there has been, “what’s going on?” As far as I can remember, this is the longest stretch of time without Insomniac having announced a future project, leaving many of you wondering what exactly we’re up to in the walls of our Burbank and Durham studios…

 

…Unfortunately, this blog will not necessarily address your questions. If you’re hoping that I will announce a future title here, you will be disappointed. That will not prevent me from telling you that we are busy working here on some really cool stuff that we can’t wait to show you.

 

What we will tell you is that after the launch of A Crack in Time, there was some well-deserved time off for folks. We began to ramp up on other projects, and are currently underway on more than one game right now (which will be no surprise to anyone who knows how our production pipeline works). We’ve been trying to evolve our production pipeline to give us more time for iteration, as well as better efficiencies along the way.

 

My favorite part about the past few months though has been the initiative our NC Studio and project managers in Burbank have taken to keep everyone updated on what’s going on each week with the titles. We hope to eventually be able to share some of these tidbits (when things are farther along), but it’s pretty awesome to see a bunch of e-mails on Friday detailing new progress, with art, screens and video to show off what’s going on. It’s been really exciting to see our future projects take form.

 

Another big effort around here is to get everyone’s hands on the game a bit more often. We’ve been running weekly playtests to get companywide feedback on our titles. Things are shaping up really well, and it’s pretty incredible to think of where we were in December versus where the games are now.

 

 

 

In December, Director of Brand Development Ryan Schneider and I flew out to Durham, North Carolina to visit Insomniac’s not-so-brand-new-anymore-but-still-has-new-studio-smell office. Despite the fact that we got lost on the empty floor that the elevator deposited us onto, we did eventually find Chad, Shaun, Dave, Greg and the gang who are hard at work on their own game.

 

 

One of the fun parts of that trip was heading out to the Michigan State vs. North Carolina basketball game. As big college sports fans, it was pretty awesome to see a game at the Dean Dome. Ryan and I got there way early, and geeked out over all the history and team photos. The interesting part of the night came when we tried to find a cab back to our hotel. We ended up walking a couple miles along a highway in the dark and cold, while it was raining, before finally getting to a gas station and calling a cab. Folks who follow me on Twitter may remember my plea to call the police if I didn’t tweet within half an hour, as a really sketchy van pulled up with a couple big guys driving it. Fortunately, we made it back to our hotel in one piece and managed to convince the front desk to hook us up with some of the warm chocolate chip cookies.

 

 

All in all, it was a great trip to visit the studio, which is smaller right now than Insomniac Burbank’s smallest wing. Their conference room seats six comfortably, so company meetings are powwows around a nearby T.V. We’re looking forward to showing you more of their studio when we get to the point that we can reveal the game they are working on.

 

 

That’s all for today – I’ve got a second blog coming up soon about the future of the Insomniac Full Moon Show – as well as where you can run into us in the month of March at various conventions (GDC and PAX East!). So stay tuned for that – and be sure to comment below, in the forums, or on Twitter!