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Sunday, August 19, 2007

Visitors in the office

Steve Cole report: From time to time, we have visitors stop by the office. Rarely, these are game business people; mostly, they are gamers. The office is 3 miles from I-40, a major east-west corridor, and millions of people pass by here every month.

Today (Sunday) we had a gamer (who is also a staffer working on our card game series) stop by, tour the office (not much to see, but hey, it's a free tour and most gamers have never seen a game company), discuss some upcoming projects, and chat for a while. (We aren't usually all in the office on a Sunday morning, but we made it a point since Richard Sherman is a friend we had never met.) A few days ago, an F&E player stopped in, and we got an Email that another gamer would stop by in two weeks. That's a lot of visitors for us; we probably average four a year.

Anyone is welcome to stop by, take the tour, and chat for a bit. We cannot (as some have asked) take the day off to play wargames; we just have too much to do.

One tradition of such visits is "the pinata", a shelf in the warehouse where all of the "dinged" products (and parts of products) go. The rulebook with a torn cover, the ship card with screwy lamination, and so forth. We keep all that stuff to use for samples, reference copies, and so forth. Say an artist wants a book to study to do a cover, or say a new printer wants to see what the old printer did. Visitors are welcome to help themselves to a freebie or two (or three) out of the pinata. (Why do we call it the "pinata", which is a Mexican party game where blind-folded kids try to break a pottery animal stuffed with toys and candy? Because once Leanna and I watched a short-lived TV show about computers, and they were always getting freebies to review, and they gave them to callers and other viewers for no end of kooky reasons. We needed something to call our "pile of junk" other than "pile of junk" and...)