Shrapnel Games Blog

Hello and welcome to the Shrapnel Games Blog. I am completely new at “blogging” (my 14 year old says I live under a rock) so please bear with me. I thought first I’d tell you a bit about my role at Shrapnel Games and then talk about the question on everyone’s mind, what’s happening with All American: The 82nd Airborne in Normandy!?!

When I met and fell in love with Tim Brooks in the summer of 2000, I knew nothing about pc gaming, let alone war game publishing. But Tim quickly corrected this glaring flaw in my character, and by winter I was helping out with Shrapnel Games Customer Support. We married in 2001, and I continued “helping out.”

In January of 2004 I finally succumbed to the relentless temptation of a glamourous career in the wargaming industry, gave up my day job and came on board full time. My official title is “Director of Reseller Relations” or something like that. To that end, I work to establish and maintain relationships with independently owned game and hobby shops who carry our games. If you know us well enough to have found your way here, you probably know you won’t find our games in the big box retailers. But you will find them in the types of stores which are devoted to gaming, and I’ll take this opportunity to say, “Please support your local game shop!” They are a vital part of our industry and have taken a beating from the discount retail chains. But that’s a topic for another blog.

Anyway, when I’m not doing that, I’m doing whatever else I can to help Tim and his beloved right hand, Richard Arnesen - answering the phones, coming up with great ideas which are impossible to implement, asking a bajillion questions and fetching donuts. Sometimes I just sit and stare at the wall or surf the ‘net or wait for someone to crave donuts (which is why we don’t have web cams in our offices, SJ and David).

Okay, I know you’re only plodding through this to get to the good stuff, WHERE IS 82ND???!!!! Shrapnel Games came into being with the primary intent to publish this great game. But very quickly, Tim was thrilled to learn that other great indie developers liked his business model and wished to sign up. Shrapnel’s first release was Dave Erickson’s Horse & Musket: Great Battles of the 18th Century, proud recipient of the coveted Charles S. Roberts award. Other great games followed, including another CS award winner, a game ranked in the Top Ten of 2003 by Computer Games Magazine, and a slew of titles which have received accolades like “Editor’s Choice” and “Top Pick.”

The biggest, and most likely the hardest, lesson Tim has learned while growing this company over the past 6 years is that it’s difficult to be the lead designer of a game while meeting the daily demands of presiding over a high energy company - a very common challenge for indie game developers. Tim has made a commitment to put the needs of our customers and developers ahead of making progress on 82nd. While we have what I think are the most brilliant and dedicated people in the industry on our staff (present company excluded), there aren’t that many of us and there are times we all turn at once, look at Tim with mouths gaping open and say, “Uh Oh, what do we do now?” Couple that with the other challenge facing small development teams (real life sometimes gets in the way) and we can now demonstrate first hand how a one year project can turn into a five year project.

Please know All American is very alive and very well. We are quite aware, and not happily, that projected release dates have slipped time and again. We remain fairly quiet about it because we don’t want to make empty promises nor make excuses, not to mention the updates come from Tim who we have now placed under lockdown. It is coming, and it is close. If we all hold our breaths, click our heels three times… and if the development team members will stop doing things like getting married, divorced or sick, having babies, accepting job promotions, etc… and if I promise to do my best to cut down on the daily distractions Tim faces, bring food and water to his desk and forbid him from sleeping more than 3 hours a night until it’s done - then it will be sooner rather than later. Actually, the rest of the greatest of all development teams and our wondrous beta testers are anxious and ready to add their final touches to the game - it’s in Tim’s corner now. We are all chanting…A-L-L A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N, A-L-L A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N.

In the meantime, please accept our most sincere appreciation for your patience and support. We’re quite proud to be a part of this community and are honored you have invited us into your homes and given us the opportunity to bring you fun and challenging games. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you!

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. In the meantime, feel free to write me anytime at annette@shrapnelgames.com.