Camp 16 is in open beta, available to anyone who wants to play it online. We still don’t have a clear idea on how to reach a larger player base, but it’s good that we’ve managed to fix the bugs and release the game, as there’s less and less time left to work on it. Elena and Ian have gotten jobs, and I’m currently making websites in Flash. After making a relatively complicated game, websites seem so simple, yet they are nowadays created in that same Flash.
Last night, we were at Maxim’s. Ian was talking about the server he maintains at work. The building is old and the roof leaks, so they cover the server with plastic. It looks like it’s in a tent. Another issue is that they only have one power outlet in the server room, but a lot of equipment. So, they use one power strip and plug another into it multiple times to get the ten or so outlets they need. The outlet problem exists in other rooms as well. The setup is prepared for both fire and flood. They recently installed sprinklers for fire safety, but only in certain areas; the most critical one doesn’t have them.
Ian’s colleague is soon retiring, and he was hired to replace him. There’s also a female colleague, but she’s in love. She often doesn’t come to work, and when she does, she’s not focused. She’s in love with a colleague from another department, and they rent an apartment together, spending most of their working hours there.
Ian says his job isn’t hard; everything is simple. The only lingering fear is that everyone will burn out—everyone except the two lovers who are in the apartment. Elena says there’s nothing interesting at work, and I was talking about collaborating with Tiquismiquis (that’s what we called the group of classmates who were good students and unofficially our competition). They had a good flow of websites, and ironically, after the lectures were over, I started collaborating with the competition.
We knew how we made agreements. Maxim says something completely unacceptable, and then we explain why it can’t be done. Then he gives other reasons why we should follow his suggestion. The reasons become more trivial, and the atmosphere gets a bit uncomfortable, but every word is heard, and every question is answered. Tiquismiquis, on the other hand, all speak at once. Therefore, it’s important to be louder. In such a situation, I focus on one of them, who usually repeats his proposal several times and waits for someone to hear it. If you only say something once, it seems like you don’t even believe what you’re saying, and no one registers it. I let them figure everything out themselves. In the end, everything gets done quickly, and I have plenty of time for CM, plus now there are good patches for our leagues.
That’s not sad, not at all, Elena said.
“Did I mention that there are good patches for our leagues now?”
“Yes. It’s still sad.”
“I called you yesterday to come over, so I wouldn’t have to play the game all day.”
“I couldn’t come because of the rain.”
“Why? Does the broom not fly when it gets wet?”
“Yes. So you could rot for the whole afternoon…”
Ian interrupted us. He doesn’t like to listen to arguments, even naive ones. He enjoys it when everyone is on good terms. He has that y2k1 bug, in his case, the “you are too kind” bug. When I think about it, Maxim entered his fourth year solely because of Ian’s help. Maxim has long lost interest in programming. When he has to study, he reads art history and practices illustration on his tablet. Without Ian’s help, he wouldn’t have passed a single exam. Sometimes Ian’s tendency to help too much is exaggerated and impractical. Last year, he pulled Maxim into a software project that wasn’t part of any exam. Ian was the youngest member of the team developing software for the university’s needs. He involved Maxim to help him. Soon, a problem arose—the database was missing several employees. It turned out Maxim had made an initial mistake by setting the last name column values to be unique. It wasn’t possible to input employee data if someone with the same last name was already in the system.
Ian didn’t talk much about his work, and I didn’t realize how much he knew. It was only when we started working on the game that I saw how much more he had learned than I had. He worked a lot practically and could quickly integrate new things we had to learn into his knowledge system. No task ever came up that he couldn’t solve quickly.
I thought he could probably send people to the moon if someone gave him that task. He would go through all the documentation, conduct plenty of tests, and in the end, he would somehow “send them up.” Maybe a few more astronauts would die than necessary, but they would plant the flag in the end.
All of his talent, and Elena’s as well, wasn’t enough for this phase of the game creation—promotion. For that, we needed some other skills, which we didn’t have, nor did we know who had them. Yesterday, we had about thirty accounts in the game—these were our trial users who helped find bugs. Today, we announced that the game was released, called all the acquaintances we know play games, shared links online on game forums, and in online communities we’re members of. We got about two hundred new accounts. We’ll see how the number of players progresses and, most importantly, how many will come back to play, how many will be online on the server daily.
1 Earlier used for Year 2000 bug, the expected chaos due to error in computers that use only two digits to store the year in a date.
