phoenix people

Phoenix Anniversary Summary

by on May.30, 2014, under featured, phoenix people, phoenix values

We celebrated our 10 year anniversary through all of May, sharing most of what it would be moments of joy and sadness, the things we believe in as well as those production stories that usually don’t make it to the news. Everything we are, everything we do and most of all who we are.Now, we would like to summarize most of what has been shared during our anniversary month, in case you may have missed some of it.On mondays we would share from our purpose to our core values, to define who are are we thought it was only important to voice what we believe in as a team.Identifying our team purpose as: Crafting dreams with stories and hard work. Building hope and evolving through hardship since 2004. We identified our values as Belonging, Growth, Perseverance, Communication and Tradition.Sharing most of where these ideas come from, you may find all of these entries organized right here.Following on Tuesday, we would share production stories. Not many would know all the happiness and struggle each project brought into our lives. From The Silver Lining days, to Cognition, then Moebius and eventually what to expect from Phoenix in the future.In the early days we struggled with the idea of ever becoming a real company, we were nothing more than a team that shaped up from a common love from a community to a community. While not much of that has changed, we do have taken Phoenix into alegal entity which produces and publishes games.If you would like to read the behind doors stories, and all the crazy we went through, you may find all the entries right here.On Wednesday, we would share most of the team and community stories. We have got the kindest and most amazing bunch of people supporting Phoenix work in and out of the team, of course we would showcase some of these lovely folks all through wednesday with both The faces behind the story and Community Voice.For the team stories we shared Cesar Bittar and Richard Flores as our funders, then we moved on the Directive tier with Katie Hallahan, Weldon Hathaway as well as our Publishing rockstar team: Scott Steinbert and Mario Kroll. Including of course, the team of interns that we have had the lovely opportunity to work with from early days as of today.To read and meet all of Phoenix people, please follow this one link.Finally, on thursdays we would share memorable moments for us through representative artwork and quotes from our games.We shared quite a lot through the month and sometimes it doesn’t feel as nearly enough. There were so many stories we would have liked to tell, so many more moments to share but overall we hope to have been able to share as much as to allow you to get to know us better and feel the joy we feel about such important milestone for us. Say Mistage Social Media Director Phoenix Online Studios

We celebrated our 10 year anniversary through all of May, sharing most of what it would be moments of joy and sadness, the things we believe in as well as those production stories that usually don’t make it to the news. Everything we are, everything we do and most of all who we are.

Now, we would like to summarize most of what has been shared during our anniversary month, in case you may have missed some of it.

On mondays we would share from our purpose to our core values, to define who are are we thought it was only important to voice what we believe in as a team. (continue reading…)

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Taking One More Look At Our Community

by on May.28, 2014, under developer diary, featured, phoenix people

This is our very last week for our 10th anniversary celebration, and this is a closure for all blogs from the special. This has been a very important month to us, considering 10 years have gone by of struggles and joys and yet, here we are. We keep working hard towards everything we believe in and continuing to do everything we can to improve ourselves as we keep making our way towards our purpose. (continue reading…)

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Phoenix Online’s Community Voice!

by on May.21, 2014, under developer diary, featured, phoenix people

Welcome to our third week in a row celebrating and sharing stories, comments and all sort of derpy doodles. This week we highlighted Moebius, exploring all the memorable moments as well as the challenges we took upon ourselves in our most ambitious production yet. Considering it is Moebius week, we decided to progressively keep expanding those of the community we would reach. First week was The Silver Lining, so clearly they have been with us for almost 10 years and more; then it was Cognition, having some not so new faces; and this week with Moebius, it is nothing but a pleasure to be able to share some of the loving folks I have met from the Pinkerton Road crowd. (continue reading…)

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The Faces Behind The Story: Michael Fortunato and Aaron Light

by on May.21, 2014, under developer diary, featured, phoenix people

Ten years of dreams, stories and many faces and names to know. I must admit it hasn’t been easy to grasp so much in so little time. I know it is impossible to share all I want from so long in just a few weeks but it’s been quite a bit of a nostalgia to look back and find myself surrounded with such beautiful and inspiring people. (continue reading…)

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Phoenix Online’s Community Voice!

by on May.14, 2014, under developer diary, featured, phoenix people

It’s that time again to share what our community is saying about us. A quick reminder of this feature is that previously to gathering the info we selected a few members who actively interact with us and we know they know us, to provide quick info for a survey. They have shared all the good and all the bad from their point of view. (continue reading…)

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The Faces Behind The Story – Katie Hallahan and Weldon Hathaway

by on May.14, 2014, under developer diary, featured, phoenix people

Last week we got to meet Cesar and Richard’s story, the two who founded the team from early 2004 and on; now we get to discover another two faces from the team that are worth knowing as well: Katie Hallahan, whose name you’ve probably seen around because besides being a game developer she is also our PR Director, andWeldon Hathaway, who once was one of the most helpful community members who eventually became an important technical lead as Programming Director, and the guy we always run to when something breaks. (continue reading…)

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Phoenix Online Community Voice!

by on May.07, 2014, under developer diary, featured, phoenix people

When I started planning this idea, I invited the team along to give me feedback and to weigh in with their thoughts on this because it’s been a very long time that we celebrated May, and this is a tradition I most certainly wanted to bring back to life. Not every day do you get to go through 10 years of hardship and joy and simply just sweep it under the rug. (continue reading…)

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The Faces Behind The Story: Cesar Bittar & Richard Flores

by on May.07, 2014, under developer diary, featured, phoenix people

Cesar Bittar and Richard Flores are basically the reason why Phoenix exists at all. Therefore, they get the big lights, the extra font size and all the love and shiny titles I could put together. I remember back in 2002 when Cesar would bump heads with Richard, and at some point I think Richard probably disagreed with everything, but fact is these two complement each other in ways I can’t even explain. Cesar is the dreamer, the one that used to float away and think larger than life, while Richard is much more of a perfectionist - without a doubt he is someone with the most uncanny work ethic and the most talent driven person there is. Cesar is far more practical when it comes to production issues whereas Richard could take a lifetime until he would just make something perfect. It goes without saying that I have met both of them before we ever even dreamt of being where we are today. We had no idea back then that it was the start of something like this, let alone that we would ever be there for each other after all this time, whether we would agree or disagree, come hell or Vivendi. They are the soul and life of this team. They have got some sort of magic that makes things happen and they motivate all of us to always do more, to become better. Of course I was going to start with the two I simply respect the most, the oldest members, who have been supporting this dream since forever ago. Of course to write up this piece I wanted a little bit of their voices mixed in, so you can get a better idea of who they are and why we love them. Cesar’s story, as told so by himself: A while after Mask of Eternity, I was looking for news on King’s Quest IX. Of course, I never found anything official, but I did find a fan group making a fan sequel. They were looking for writers, and I joined - why not? I don’t even think “Phoenix” existed as so back then, it was just an unofficial King’s Quest IX group. Later I moved to the US, found myself with a lot of time on my hands, and started to push to get this thing done. I eventually ended up with the project in my hands, and here I am, 10 years later, running not just the team but also the company. Then I was producing the game. I was learning how to produce a game, rather. I created proper departments, named leads for each department, tried to give the whole thing some kind of structure. I tried many ways of tracking people, we went through a multitude of different systems. Some stuck, some didn’t, but it was fun to be part of it all and the most important thing, we learned something new every time. I also designed most of what ended up becoming the 1500 pages of the script of The Silver Lining (How the hell did we write that much stuff?!). I got my hands involved in everything I could, I wanted to know as much as I could and do as much as I could. Now I do probably a lot more of the same, only now I have a better idea how to do it (I think), and therefore, things go way faster. I will always miss the days from TSL where you could “live” the process. I loved to sit down and enjoy every piece of the game, bit by bit. These days, I’m lucky to see the whole game before it ships - everything happens so fast when you have a team of 30 people working full time. And you cannot hope to see it all, so you have to pick your battles. I also have this title of CEO that forces me to take care of boring business stuff. I sit in meetings and plan how to take over the world. Seriously though, I don’t think I’ve ever built a resume as fast as with the two years I’ve spent in this position. Knowing that you are somehow responsible for putting food on people’s table, that I have control over the destiny of so many people, and therefore how people are affected by it - it changes everything. It changes what I thought I was going to be doing, what my selfish side wanted out of all of this. It redefined me completely and took my sleep away on many nights. Also, in the last 2 years I’ve grown grey hair like there’s no tomorrow. But I love every minute of it. It’s exhilarating, worrisome, complex, and everything I ever wanted it to be. There’s a few memorable moments while working with Phoenix. Katie’s is a great one. I will have to say the worst one was when I received the second and last cease and desist. It was 2009, and I was in San Rafael, California. I got a notice in the mail that I had certified mail and had to come pick it up at the post office. So I went down to the post office, not imagining what this mail was, and I had a letter from the Activision legal department (which I still have in my possession). It was a letter stating that they had re-evaluated The Silver Lining and that they didn’t want to move forward with it. For some reason, I felt at the time that this letter was the end. I didn’t expect that we could pull the thing we did with Vivendi again. Also, and obviously, the Vivendi cease and desist letter was devastating - but that one moved much faster into a positive note, so it didn’t feel as bad. As for most positive moments… I’ll have to name a few because, well, it’s a lot of years: 1) December 2005: PR Director of Vivendi asking me to please do something to appease the fans and make them “stop”. I knew our community was great, but that sincerely just made me appreciate how big and meaningful it really was. Also, from those same moments, suddenly having every games outlet reach out to you for an interview was surreal. 2) April/May 2010: Receiving the call from Jon Estanislao from Activision letting me know that they wanted to let us have our commercial license back and that we could move forward with the project. Later I learned this lady had letters upon letters piled up on her desk. 3) May 2010: Roberta Williams plays The Silver Lining and loves it. Ken sent me a note with her comments, "Beautiful and fun to play." I could die happy. 4) July 10th 2010: The release of The Silver Lining Episode 1. Need I say more? 5) February 2011: Meeting Jane Jensen at her farm in Pennsylvania. Katie, Rich, Vitek and I drove down from Boston. The last 20 minutes of that ride I was so excited, so scared, it was just so fucking unbelievable. And then Jane opened her door, and we met in a hug. I was very happy. 6) The release of Cognition episode 1 and 4: The beginning and the end of our first project. We’ve done it, we created a game that people loved. As for my favorite Phoenix character, I’m going for the obvious one: Erica Reed. And especially because I know what we are planning with her in the future and that will make her such a complex character. But, if I had to step away from Erica, my favorite character would lie somewhere between the shades of grey Cordelia from Cognition, the goofy but kickass David from Moebius, or the funny Hole in the Wall from The Silver Lining. In truth, I love them all as I always put a piece of me in the characters I write. Richard’s story: I got started in Phoenix purely by chance.  After finally finishing King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity, I felt it had been long enough that Sierra must be working on a ninth installment.  Unfortunately there was no news on anything by Sierra but I did find a website for an unofficial fan game based on the KQ universe.  They we’re looking for people and I thought my knowledge of 3D animation might be helpful, so I applied.  The rest, as they say, is history. When I started, I mainly did anything involving 3D art.  I even did some of the preliminary tests using a 3D engine for the game.  That eventually grew to include managing the art team and bridging the gap between art and programming for the game which I still do to this day. There have been many great memorable moments over the years including the first real trailer for KQ9 and the first time the team met up for the voice auditions.  There have also been many sad ones like the day we were shut down.  I think one of the happier moments that stands out the most for me is the day we worked out a deal with Vivendi to bring the project back.  That’s when we discovered the level of support we truly had from the community, and I felt it was a real achievement practically unheard of at the time to get the official permission from the copyright owners to make our game. About my favorite Phoenix character, I think Erica Reed is definitely my favorite original creation from what we have made.  She has such fire in her belly which really makes her an interesting character to travel with on adventures. Terence is also another of my favorites and I hope he gets a chance to shine in the future. It is imposible to say that going back into these things doesn’t bring any nostalgia, it does – especially when we have been through so much. Also, I wanted to leave their original text so you get an idea of their personalities, you can sort of guess from between the lines. Do know that these two are the bane of our existances sometimes - they ask for the impossible and they want it for yesterday! However, it is exactly because of them that we have been able to grow, to learn and to dream. For them, a simple thank you is not enough - we give our time, our talent and our hope to them not because it’s just a job, but because we want to, because we believe in them and we care. Next week we get to review the story of Katie Hallahan and Weldon Hathaway. We’ll see how they discovered Phoenix and how they became part of the story. Say Mistage Social Media Director Phoenix Online Studios

Cesar Bittar and Richard Flores are basically the reason why Phoenix exists at all. Therefore, they get the big lights, the extra font size and all the love and shiny titles I could put together. (continue reading…)

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