Written by Paul Vardaris

Previously, I had wandered into the thick of gaming development while criticizing the process in their midst. Thinking that I, as a critic and observer, had a "big picture" to bring to the table, I was ready to turn cheese into gourmet dining to improve the standard, once I had gotten the tour and welcome mat.

This goes beyond arrogance and lightly traipses into the fields of insanity.

But, as I sat with Sandy the HR girl and the Butler in the break room, I couldn't help wonder why the business wasn't centralized more. Sure, the people who do these things are brave enough to crack into the mosaic of codes, design, development and testing, working with the tried and true while striving for the bold and new.

This takes deeply individual, independent type-A personalities. To expect them to want to accept the gaming industry's largest production corporations just isn't realistic. When you want to break the mold and be noticed, or even if you want to make some money by doing what's been done better and shinier, you cannot rely on the corporate machines to do what you want your way.

It is just this conversation which heats up the break room now, late night with doughnuts, caffeine, fruit-cups and energy drinks. We sit at a large table, much as King Arthur's Knights must have sat, discussing the Holy Grail and how to win over peasant support and protect their freedoms, perhaps making religious jokes. While we didn't have hogsback roast and prowling dogs at our feet for the bones, we certainly matched those centuries past with our heated debate.

"Some of us want more than money, Mister X!" declares Sandy, with an earnest gaze and authoritative tone. Right after meeting her, I was suspicious. Something about people who work only for human affairs makes me a bit nervous. I think of myself as a humanitarian, but then I suppose most people do.  The old line of "people for people's sake" sounds like a sales pitch, to me, which is of course exactly what marketing wants too. Call me a cynic, but I feel that there's something a bit greater going on than just people, when we can create concepts that span ages upon ages and leave indelible marks on our earth.

I bring that up to her, gently, with the following."Sure, we want to leave our mark. Sure, we want to be famous, or we want something a bit nobler to make entertainment reasonable in," and here I pause for dramatics with a lower James Earl Jones tone, "a universe which holds your heart in the fist of the Empire." She scowls, and I deadpan, "Your lack of faith in the power of the Force is disturbing."

She chucks a doughnut at me while Butler shakes his head. "Even the most hackneyed and over-marketed concepts and products were based on an ideal. It may be true that hardly anything is original, yet that cannot dissuade us from the pursuit of those ideals. This genuineness is what makes independent developers just as valuable as combine corporations; they need one another. The competitive spirit gives the industry its value and keeps it alive. If you are here to merely mock our roles, then you will quickly be spending most of your time in research, preferably at Hoth Station."

I frown while nodding. "So, you're a butler, right? The reality check of the wild and wacky?" I look at him critically (naturally).