Well okay. It's actually a little embarrassing actually. On Friday morning Obsidian included this post on their Kickstarter site:
Quote:
Over the next five days we have a lot of fun things planned to wrap up the Kickstarter campaign. First, crowdfunding and Kickstarter has allowed us
to open up our doors to you, literally. Today you can spend a few hours with me at the Obsidian Office, and you will get an inside look into a development studio. Check out what an atypical day is for me at the office (running the Kickstarter is pretty atypical for a game developer). I promise to wear pants!
Emphasis added by me.
I read this post while I was rather exhausted, after working 16-17 hour days all last week to meet a major deadline. I didn't notice that at the end of that post was a schedule of events, some of which included a "livestream" link next to them. Maybe if I had been less tired I would have realized that the livestream link was most likely an indication that Obsidian's comment about literally opening their doors was just poor wording on their part (they actually meant they would open their doors, virtually).
I also thought it strange that they included no address, but I'm resourceful enough to find that. At the end of the day, they are only 30 minutes away from me, and I needed some fresh air after delivering on my deadline at work. So, I hopped in my car after the lunch hour, and drove to their office. I had no problems getting into their parking lot. The parking attendant was very polite, in fact. I had no problems getting into the lobby of their building (it's a large office in Irvine CA, shared by numerous companies). I easily found that Obsidian was in suite 200 by looking at a large legend in the lobby. I went up to floor 2, and sure enough, I was looking at their reception area. I was already feeling a lot like a stalker at this time, as there was absolutely nothing to indicate that Obsidian was expecting company, but I had come too far just to turn around.
The receptionist, not surprisingly, had not heard about any public invitation. I showed her the Obsidian post on my iPhone, and she seemed to agree with my interpretation. She made a couple of phone calls. I'm not sure who the first was to, but the second was to Darren Monahan, their CIO and one of their founders. I heard him laugh as (I believe) he reread the post I was talking about, and soon after the receptionist simply apologized, telling me that a literal visit hadn't been their intent. Given no other option, I turned around and left.
I was angry, frustrated and embarrassed at my experience. When I got home, I proceeded to share about it on the Kickstarter site. As you might expect, I had a number of people backing me up and saying that it was shameful of Obsidian not to at least come out and say hi to me, and a number of people who were flaming me for not understanding the intent of the post to begin with. After about 15 minutes of fairly heated chatting back and forth (much like a bar fight, my "supporters" and my "opponents" began arguing with each other), Darren Monahan popped in and apologized, and invited me to come back next week for a tour with Adam. Shortly after that I believe Feargus (he's the only one who doesn't sign his name when he posts using a shared Obsidian account on KS) also chimed in that he was sorry about what happened, and that he was looking forward to having me come by.
Once Darren and (most likely) Feargus said their peace, all the Kickstarter posters were happy, agreeing that Obsidian is a great company to take care of a fan like that, even a misguided one.
So I just need to contact them with some proposed times next week and see what we can work out! This will be far cooler than what I had originally expected, as I never thought I'd get this sort of 1 on 1 attention. If I end up doing it, I'll certainly share about it.
But yeah, in the wake of my 75+ hour work week I managed to miss the VG Revolution interview with Josh Sawyer for a few days. I actually DID update Sagani's name last night in the "Companions" section of my guide. I neglected to update the caption next to some game art, which is likely what you saw today. I updated that too this morning, however.
