Having finally signed the deal with Eidos, we could now take possession of our new office just in time for the New Year. We’d been stuck in a serviced office in Cricklewood for six months and we were ready for a change of scenery - any scenery in fact. ‘The Cave’ had served us well, but you can only work without windows for so long.

We’d decided that we wanted to be based in Camden in North London. It’s an unusual place, unlike the rest of London and has a very distinctive vibe. Imagine a chunk of Glastonbury permanently based in London and you’ll know what I mean (without the mud thankfully). There’s a great energy to the area and it’s slightly weird at the edges, so we thought it was somewhere we could fit in. Unfortunately, there’s a serious lack of good office space and Joe had spent the autumn trawling the area for something decent without much luck. Just before Christmas, he finally found something.

The new office is set back from the road, between Camden High street and an adjoining road, two minutes walk from the tube station. Whereas the last place was about 800 square foot, this is 3000. In other words, there are 12 of us in an office for 30 or 40 people. All of which means a couple of desks huddled in the corner of an aircraft hanger. We’ve temporarily resolved this by creating a basketball court at one end. With stripped wooden floorboards and skylights, the contrast with the last place couldn’t be greater. The morning I took everyone to the office for the first time was a great moment. I really took pleasure from seeing the excitement on peoples’ faces. It was a taste of what we‘re working towards.

The building is owned and shared with the Variety Club, a charitable organisation. We got very excited when we heard that of their 30 employees, 20 or so were women. Middle-aged women as it turned out, which was a bit of a disappointment. I think they’re a little bit scared of us. It reminds me of a story that used to run in the comic The Eagle, called "The Thirteenth Floor", which involved an elevator and a door to another world. Our version of this involves a twin-set-and-pearls type accidentally stumbling upon a dark stairway leading to a shadowy hallway. Walking in, peering through the gloom, she sees twelve blokes cheering another as he attempts to climb from one side of the office to the other along one of the rafters. It’s not the Variety Club, she realises, as she edges nervously towards the door. I suspect they think we’re up to something vaguely subversive or possibly worse. Of course if we were programming spreadsheets or doing something really dull we’d instantly be ‘respectable’. We seem to be in breach of the law that dictates "though shall not have a fun job".

We’ve been adding people to the team at a steady rate. Unfortunately, that’s only been about one every two months. The industry as a whole is undergoing a period of tremendous growth and there simply aren’t many good people around. We’ve added two more people in the last few months, both of who are female which in this industry is a rare thing. I was hoping this might have a knock-on effect on overall office standards of personal hygiene, to no avail, but then perhaps some things in this industry really are sacred. Sue Chapman’s job is as Office manager / Mother Hen and having her on board has really helped the running of the place. I was a little concerned that she might find our humour too ‘robust’, but was relieved to discover that her command of schoolboy innuendo and downright filth is as good as the rest of us. Our other new recruit, Vicky Mann, is a programmer with a difference, having taken a degree in Psychology. Our initial games will use a lot of Artificial Intelligence, and having her experience will, I hope, give some really interesting insights into this area.

The next few months are a critical time for us. The time for delivering will shortly be upon us and not surprisingly, we’ve got our noses to the grindstone. Over the next few months or so we’ll be showing a prototype of our first game to the press. It’s an anxious time for us right now and the nights seem to be getting longer. Tim and Dave appear to be enjoying themselves so much that they’ve decided to live here. Those cool autumnal Starcraft sessions have become a thing of the past. Nothing in life is ever guarenteed when you’re doing something creative. Everyone who does something like this has to passionately believe that it’s going to be great, otherwise they won’t be able to do it. But you’ve also got to be objective and critical about your own work. If you aren’t, then you run the risk of producing something ill-conceived like "Manilow sings Sinatra" or "the Avengers" – wonderfully self-indulgent, but creatively and commercially pants. You can’t let this scare you off (the challenge that is, not Barry Manilow), but you’ve got to be duly respectful. When the time comes, I’ll be taking you through the game in detail and describing everyone’s role in this process. In the meantime, you must excuse me as another one of our neighbours seems to have wandered accidentally into development hell.

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