Greetings friends,

I guess I gotta start this letter with an apology. I haven’t contributed to this page in quite a while. I know, I know, you hate me. I understand your feelings in some ways... the feeling’s mutual. I figured the most interesting kind of letter I could write would tell you a bit about what it’s like around here at the end of our 2nd project Skuyllmonkeys.

Mark Lorenzen hasn’t seen his wife and kids for three days. He has been sleeping on my couch here in my office. Louis sleeps on the couch down stairs when he doesn’t test. I’ve been going home for the last three nights in a row at 2 AM and when I leave Stevie, Tim, Mike, Kenton and Mark are still awake plugging away at the game. I came in on Sunday and the entire Backgrounding department was working full speed.

All of this guys are my pals and we’re turning into grouchy corpses. I guess I’m telling all of you this for 2 reasons.

1. for all of you who want to get into games and think it’s the easy life- you’re dead wrong. You want easy? Go do ANY other job from 9 - 5.
2. For the press who think it’s cute to give games a 1 out of 100 rating. You’ve gotta realize that even BAD games have people working on them around the clock and that this is their only source of income.

All this aside, Skullmonkeys looks great! The game is shaping up to have more like 120 levels instead of just 100. I also just got the green light from our programmer to go over my 12 minute limit for movies. Terry Taylor and I are designing a SECRET movie. One that has been shaping up to be the funniest thing I’ve ever done.

Douglas the Mayor