Finally, Moving Day! On August 31, 2007 we packed up our computers, took pictures of our notes on the white boards, and stacked our kitschy toys onto our desks. One by one we rolled our stuff into the service elevator and ascended. No longer would we be sharing a small windowless closet that barely fit four desks and four chairs that we have been in since April. It was the first tangible change since we got funding, finally I could back up my chair and not bump into anyone.

Upon opening the door of our new space, golden rays of sun poured through the door and into the room as if the gods themselves were welcoming us to Mt Olympus. I’m sure if we were quieter we could have heard the herald call of an angel choir, but in our giddiness, we drowned out any other sounds. The back wall is an entire window that looks westward toward Central and Harvard Sq. The other walls are modern with aluminum and glass while the loft like ceiling provides much head room for the taller members of the team. Could this space BE more perfect?

Well, it turns out that, yes — it actually could. What became apparent nearly immediately was that that we had already out grown this space and we hadn’t even been in the office for an hour. The next 3 hours could only be described as company-wide battle Tetris with 10 desks, 10 chairs and a ridiculous number of filing cabinets. For some reason the CIC folks continued to bring us a couple filing cabinets every few minutes.

To add insult to injury, the CEO of the company next to us stopped by to tell us that “You guys will be able to hear us as much as we can hear YOU!” Was this a “welcome to the 14th floor or were those fightin’ words?” Chill out guy, we’re moving in. What’s more is that Linden Labs, creators of Second Life, are two doors down and they have TONS of room, however we rarely see more than a third of their chairs filled at any one time. In fact, there have been times when we have walked by their offices in the middle of the day and don’t see ANYONE in there. Where are they and why are they hoggin’ the office space?

Well anyways, we have been in our new space for 2 weeks now and our tenth hire starts tomorrow. We are all pretty psyched. Over the next couple months we will ramp up the new hires, dive into production and look for a larger office space. Until then, the office chairs will continue to crash into each other, elbows will be rubbed, and some folks will have to suck it in to let others pass by.

Intruders.TV came by the offices here in Cambridge and sat down outside our kitchen to chat about Conduit Labs. Strangely, they don’t have embeddable video (they’ve heard of YouTube right?) but the link is below.

Hey guys, David Newton here, one of the recent hires at Conduit Labs. I’ve been a art guy for the last six years, working in print, web design and illustration for social networking sites and such. You can check out more of my work over at paper raincoat. My intro into gaming kicked off four weeks ago when I joined Conduit as the Senior UI Designer.

Nabeel thought it would be a good introduction to the game industry to drop me into the Austin Game Developers Conference and wander about confused for three days in 100% humidity. So here’s my fish out of water impressions of AGDC.

Basically, the whole online gaming industry seems to live in Blizzard’s shadow, and they wasted no time reminding everyone. Michael Morhaime’s keynote launched the conference discussing problems few companies will ever deal with - organizing worldwide simultaneous expansion pack launches, leveraging a brand so customers buy your game sight-unseen and of course - scaling problems best described in scientific notation. Or more succinctly, a quote from Anchorman:

“I don’t know how to put this, but I’m kind of a big deal. People know me.”

Consequently, you couldn’t throw a cat without hitting world-building kits, sci-fi MMOs or WOW clones. Morhaime’s keynote was packed to the gills with aspiring orc-bashing simulation designers while web-based games (like Sulka Haro on Habbo Hotel) had crickets playing while he spoke about how to monetize virtual furniture or providing assets for roleplaying minimum-wage jobs in the virtual food service industry. That’s a shame really… Sulka’s presentation was excellent. I’m strongly web biased of course… but come on. Habbo’s users are creating their own gameplay while a small army of designers at Blizzard struggles to get enough content out to keep their players from killing each other. Literally.

So, an upcoming generation of MMOs are taking their cues from World of Warcraft. What I fear is that ALL games – console games, first person shooters and upcoming social networks will be making WoW 2.0 a.k.a. “Facebook with elves”.

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