Why? What for?
Well, in many businesses, things slow down as the holidays approach. For most of you who work in offices, you know that that usually happens informally without any stated company policies as there are vacations, people taking time off, kids visiting the office, holiday shopping, office parties, ... Additionally, many software companies actual have policies which freeze software releases around the holiday season. I was formely a Senior Manager of a major global bank data warehousing systems. Across the entire bank worldwide (80,000 employee) as of December 1st., all software releases were frozen (even for transaction oriented front office systems). Those of you who subscribe to regular Internet virus/spy and other security products will surely have noticed that daily security updates for these products for this past week were relatively smaller and simpler than usual.
And then you have AGE Studio and in particular Monsieur Pocus who was worked without pause to put out a special update right before the holiday. This is contrary to how much of the industry operates (yes, there is a rush to release new titles before the holidays, but patches for established titles is not a big thing).
So, I wanted to take a moment to point this out to the players and particular say "thank you" to Pocus who due to his individual efforts makes us, Age Studio, stand out from among the crowd. Pocus, you are the gifted one. The one who advances our hobby and make new players discover the joy of the strategy genre; the one who raises the bar on what a strategy game can be in terms of a clean clear interface, the one who in never puts his creation down and continuously improves it while all the rest rush to the next project for the next dollar/euro to be made, the one who loves his hobby that despite having a gift for design and programming starts his own risky venture instead of just taking a lucrative position at some bank/brokerage/exchange/consulting company to be earning the big bucks, the one who codes Christmas patch/enhancement gifts while others go to parties and shop, ...
Here is to Pocus ... Happy Holidays ... Thanks for making the Studio not simply a place whose business is games, but rather as place where magic can and does happen on a regular basis!!!
PS: To all our customers, thanks for being our customers and Happy Holidays!
Merry Christmas to all and thanks for your continued support Mark!