…as disembodied cartoon heads!

Kwok’s added the final few faces to the team icon gallery (my glorious mug being one of them), which depicts the whole doublesix team as they might appear in All Zombies Must Die! If you’ve met any of the guys in the flesh, you’ll realise how eerily accurate these icons are.

A preview for All Zombies Must Die! has found its way onto the pages of Destructiod. This is the first of many due over the coming days, and hopefully indicative of the rest of the media’s thoughts. (Read: they liked it!)

“All Zombies Must Die hopes to offer a few laughs and multitudes of zombies to kill come this fall when it officially releases. Developer Double Six has pledged continuing support for the title through numerous DLC and considers the game a long term proposition. AZMD looks to be a fun little title to burn the midnight oil with and in all honesty, it plays quite brilliantly.”

For more on AZMD – including photos from events and musings from the team – ‘like’ the official page on Facebook.

I’m a shiny new person here at doublesix, so thought I’d take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Benjamin – or Jamin – Smith, and today is my first day as Community Manager for doublesix games. This is that obligatory introductory blog post where I wave a big virtual hand at you through your computer screen. Hello!

Before joining the studio here in Guildford, I was a journalist over at VideoGamer.com. It was my job to furnish the site with reviews and previews, as well as throw cleverly worded questions to game developers with the intention of squeezing a news story or two out of them. One of my last articles for the site took the form of a soppy blog post looking back at my time with the company, so if the life of a games journalist is something that interests you, do have a gander.

Jumping the fence to the development side of the industry is an opportunity for me to flex new muscles. Having studied computer game technology at university, I have a keen interest in the process of bringing a game to fruition, and am looking forward to playing a small part in that here. As I sit here typing up this post, actual game development is going on behind me. There’s been QA meetings, conference calls and the phrase ‘vertical slice’ – a personal favourite of mine – has been thrown around on several occasions. It’s all very exciting.

As Community Manager, you’ll be seeing a lot more of me on the blog from here on out, and hopefully not just in text form, either. When I’m not updating the blog or badgering the team for new information, chances are you’ll find me running my mouth on Twitter.

Well, that about wraps things up. Thanks, and see you around!

Sam’s best cake ever!

Some photos from our comic relief costumes. Congratulations to all who took part for your creativity and effort!

After a rather heated bout of Street Fighter IV over lunch, Kwok (one of our beloved artists – who was also featured in one of our podcasts no less) unleashed his wrath via photoshop. Specifically, one of our coders – a Mr. James Gilby – likes to use Blanka and “chip” away at his opponents. As a result, Kwok’s photoshop riposte produced the following…

Following on from the Dev Diaries for South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play posted by Pete and Nadar, comes the mighty mumblings from both myself here as well as the Lead Coder on the Project Lukasz ‘Wisent‘ Ziolkowski and Coder Kingsley ‘I suck at Left4Dead’ Pratt here.

For some reason I thought there was a 300 word cap on the dev diaries so mine is but a mere morsel (an unbelievably tasty morsel) compared to Lukasz and Kingsley’s vivid insights.

Anyway Enjoy my D6 Brothers… and Sisters

As part of BBC Four’s ongoing Electric Dreams season, a recent drama about the 80′s computer boom in the UK was aired a few days ago. Called Micro Men it featured the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry. Considering that the vast majority of the people making video games today in the UK is a result of the fact that both these men enabled children to get access to personal computers, the legacy of hardware like the ZX Spectrum and the BBC Micro is almost palpable.

If you missed the drama first time around, then you can still watch it on iPlayer (if you live in the UK).

The indomitable Charlie Brooker did a one off gaming special last night in the same vein as his acerbic Screenwipe series. Naturally, it was similarly insightful and adroit as well as being refreshing to see gaming covered without it being painfully ignorant and/or hysterical. The show had some decent guests espousing their take on games too, including the chirpy chaps from Consolevania. You can watch it here (if you live in the UK).