Sunday, May 20, 2007 2:01:09 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Introductions

The day finally came and I was pretty excited. It was a bit weird travelling down south and 'skipping' Reading as a station but that was ok - today's goal was Guildford and Lionhead. I was going to be meeting a lot of people; some I already knew quite well and some were going to be new, all I really knew was that at some point I was going to be drinking and having an absolute blast.

I was not disappointed and so the story begins with me, the main protaganist in this tale of drunken debauchery and geekdom, leaving the station at Guildford and meeting up with The Kaiser and ProfYaffel in the nearest pub. We had 30 minutes before we had to head to Lionhead and we were going to make the most of it.

A couple of pints later it was time to get in a taxi and we were running late. While we were in the taxi I actually missed a couple of phone calls from somebody at LH asking trying to find out where the hell we were. I was too hyper to notice however and this is where the fun began.

Lionhead Studios.

We waltzed in making a loud and spectacular entrance. Well... I say we, but mainly it was just me being loud, hyper and bouncy. I feel sorry for the people who hadn't already met me because I probably came off as a most insane individual. I feel sorry for the people who DID know me because they couldn't pretend they didn't.

Once we'd settled down and apologised for being late, it was time for meet the people organising this little outing, so we got to meet a new face, a lovely Claire Hedley. Turns out she's been at Lionhead since the dawn of time under a multitude of titles but today she was the internal community pet. She makes sure that the Lionhead staff are happy by providing them with social events and toys, or something.

Anyhoo, Peter Molyneux(my idol) and Cathy(my hero) turned up once we'd introduced ourselves and it was time to go around the table and do it all over again.

Present at the meeting along with the blurb that we inevitably had to give about ourselves:

• Wout Hennekam - Assistant Community Officer/Pet
  
• Sam Van Tilburgh - Community Officer/Pet
  
• Claire Hedley - Internal Happiness Coordinator
  
• Cathy - Lionhead PR (Peter's boss :P)
  
• Peter Molyneux - The Boss
  
• fel64 - The Lionhead fansite - Loinhead
  
• Maggot - Came from the land of the danes, that's dedication
  
• Crosbie - Moderator and English teacher to the unwashed masses
  
• Roger - TMOA Radio Host
  
• Satansmunchkin - Obligatory TMO Noob, Somehow made it to High Karma by just being nice O_o
  
• Madfruit - Official LH Oldbie, Moderator and as we found out later, a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde type fellow
  
• ProfYaffel - Drunken Hanger On, holds the noob poking stick on the forums
  
• Derobrash(Me) - "I write a lot of code and then don't release it, just to piss people off" I believe was how I introduced myself
  

Munchie, Roger and Madfruit.

fel64, Maggot and Crosbie.

 
Claire, Sam and Woody.

As expected of any official community meeting, there was some free stuff to be had, so a thanks to Lionhead for providing a signed copy of Fable (not Fable 2 :() Also, probably a mistake as they soon realised, they provided us with flashy Lionhead Yoyos. I immediately broke the first one they gave me by being the only one who was actually excited to have a yoyo. I receieved another and went on to break that too on our way around the studio much to the relief of everybody concerned.

Oh yeah, about the studio...

The Studio Tour

We were incredibly honoured to have Peter Molyneux himself giving us the guided tour of the Lionhead Studio. He's a very busy man and for him to take so much time out of his schedule to acommodate the community visit goes to show how much he cares about the community as a whole.

We started off by just walking down the corridoor and peeking into the server room, I could smell the computers and I think my source-sense was tingling. All the way down to the meeting rooms I started noticing how much the entire building is geared to the thinking types. Nearly every wall is a whiteboard. Seriously, they've got some really awesome wallpaper which has gone up nearly everywhere to create giant swathes of drawing space for anybody who needs to scribble something down. I couldn't help but turn green with envy, we have some whiteboards at work and I thought we were pretty blessed. I've never seen anything like this.

Obviously, there was sensitive information on a lot of the whiteboards but because I've signed my life away I can't go into any detail, suffice to say that somebody has some really neat whiteboard handwriting skills, it was all so neat and tidy =O!

We popped in to see Russell Shaw, who was hard at work in his own special sound proofed room doing something with sound. He's been at Lionhead since the dawn of time and was working with Peter back in the Bullfrog days. Things have definitely changed since then from his single electronic keyboard to an entire array of gorgeous sound systems and impressive looking equipment. I wouldn't have minded coding in that room and just using it to listen to music. I have a feeling it would have been most splentastic.

It must be pointed out that all throughout this, I was literally bouncing off the ceiling from the mixture of caffeine and sugar I had gorged myself on, on my way down. I was impressed that nobody had kicked me out yet

We headed into the Fable 2 floor to something really quite special. The room was filled with people busy at work creating a game that might actually end up being one of the best RPGs ever. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself there, I think it's infectious).

The artist's area was probably the most interesting, I've never seen so many action figures in one place before. I'm not sure who they belonged to, but they certainly made the area look impressive and I can see that they'd certainly add to the creativity of the art guys.

Nearly everybody had two monitors and it looked like a really nice working environment. One of the guys near fran at the end had 4 monitors, including a proper many many many inch widescreen Dell thing. Again with the envy, I'm beginning to wish I'd kept up with the idea of working there . I don't think they'd take me anymore though because by now I was still bouncing off things and everybody is probably terrified of me by now :D.

Cathy was a hoot throughout the tour, physically jumping in front of things we shouldn't really be seeing and preventing Peter from saying anything he shouldn't. I've always enjoyed watching the battle between Peter and her for control over the output of information to the masses and this day was no exception. There is a secret project going on upstairs which is so far from even being announced it's unreal. Nevertheless it didn't stop Roger and fel pushing for information at every chance they got.

We did end up hearing some rumours towards the end of the day once enough alcohol had been applied, but once again there are those pesky NDAs that we signed, so you'll just have to wait until Lionhead releases some official information. MWAhahaha.

And Breathe

The rest of the tour was very interesting, but to an outside perspective probably much more of the same. We managed to corner Dene Carter near the photocopier and disturb Neil Wakefield who was hard at work, but other than that it's probably time to move onto the cafeteria.


At this point, fel64 and Roger had organised some interview time for their communities (TMOA and Loinhead) and it was time for us to go drink some coke and sit around in the cafeteria. The first thing I noticed when walking into the cafeteria was the giant, and I really mean giant beanbag. I did what any self respecting guy would do and belly flopped right into it. I got a few weird looks but the comfort experience was totally worth it.

Once I'd had a relax, I started making a tit of myself again by talking about stuff I shouldn't have and then 'landing' outside to bug Neil and a few other guys. Satansmunchkin and I also played a game of Table football against Crosbie and Madfruit and it's safe to say that we lost quite badly.

Claire then provided us with a serious selection of sugary objects and I proceeded to wtfpwn my stomach with sugar. Mwahahaa. We all had a go playing some racing game on the (sssh) PS3 on the projector but I wasn't overly impressed and it was now time to go watch some exclusive never seen before video footage.


Videos

We kicked off the second half of the Lionhead portion of the day by watching the unreleased Video Diary. I can't say anything about it, but it was quite informative and very professionally done. I'm looking forward to seeing where they go with the next ones.

We then had a discussion about the community in general and where everything is going. They have plans, big plans, and they have a date to implement those plans by and they're already working hard towards it. We saw what they were doing with the site and they have some really exciting ideas about how to bring the community forward.

Lionhead is built around the community and it's one of the things that makes Lionhead great. It's brilliant to see that there is some genuine recognition of this from within Lionhead itself. I can't say much more, but keep tuned to see some real changes coming soon!

We also watched a random video Sam made about the move to the new building, which I don't think is gonna be made public (in its current form anyway), but it was still interesting nonetheless.

BEER BEER BEER BEER BEER

Ah, the whole point of the entire day. A chance to go and get wasted in the local. Inside was a bit crowded so we all headed outside so Sam could get some video footage of the drinking action. Claire had organised some rounds to be paid for by the company and we took full advantage of it. Having said that, I think I probably spent nearly £80 on beer and food last night so it wasn't THAT cheap .

I stole some wifi from a nearby house and headed to the forums to see if any of the HK members who didn't make it were jealous yet. Turns out they were stalking us via the comfort of their computers on the LH webcams. Popped in to make them a bit more jealous, pinged Dave Gower and let him know we were at the pub and commenced some more drinkage.

My arse on webcam.

I met Jenny from IRC while outside and it turns out she's now working at Lionhead, it's a small world to be sure.

Once sufficiently inebriated we headed inside where it had quietened down a bit. Clare left and I gave her a big hug to say "thanks for putting up with my crazy" =D.

Spent the evening wandering around talking to as many different people as I could, managed to corner Glen Watts and had a chat about the games industry and B&W2, had a chat with Sam about The Movies Modding stuff, and then decided to piss Madfruit off by disrupting his "game" on some brunette he was trying it on with.

I am so intensely desirable you see, that she instantly fell for my charms and Madfruit was left in the cold. We had a nice chat about cars, life and the universe and before we knew it, it was time to bugger off. Pity I wasn't interested and I was only doing it to spite him. I am such a malicious bastard :D

I asked Sam what we were gonna do after the pub and it was agreed that heading to Sam's house was a cool idea. So with fel, Maggot, Sam and Woody + A few others we started off down the road to the source of more beer. We quickly realised we'd left a, by now, very drunken Madfruit behind so fel went to go drag him out whilst we re-grouped.

Sam's house was a laugh, he has a really nice place. We set about finding more alcohol and found it in the way of random pink cold stuff and Gin & Iced Tea (A surprisingly good combination).

Sam has the Halo 3 beta so we all had a play of that. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to just pick up and play. I even managed to kill some people before Sam decided to take the headphones and start hurling abuse at the other people playing. (Bless).

Sam playing Halo 3.

Anyway, the rest of the night at Sam + Woody's place involved playing with his giant wooden cock, getting completely smashed and watching Madfruit make a tit of himself. Eventually he fell asleep but not before he'd trashed the living room and called us all a variety of interesting names.

At 4am, fel and I decided to call it a night and we went off in search of the TravelLodge. It took us 30 minutes to find the place, and another 15 minutes to work out that actually I hadn't booked a room there, I'd booked a room at the Travel Inn just down the road :$.

Some sleep and breakfast later, we headed off, content in the knowledge that the night was a job_well_done.