DChocbucks

A fairly humorous misunderstanding came to my attention today.

Yesterday, Digital Chocolate announced yesterday that we are releasing a new product line called Cafe, which basically adds a layer of community on top of a suite of casual games. Trip mentioned (or perhaps was misquoted) as drawing inspiration for Cafe from Starbucks. Then, this morning, one of my coworkers sent me this link:

http://mobilegames.blogs.com/mobile_games_blog/2007/05/mobile_gamers_u.html

Starbucks better watch out.

Movin’ On Up

Well, I got promoted. My previous title was Principal Engineer, up from the Senior Software Engineer title that I started with in August 2004. My new title will be Game Development Lead. I will be supervising and leading the efforts for our game development. Another team member was promoted to head up our technologies team, which will concentrate more on backend tasks that will support our efforts as a company, but aren’t directly tied to a particular title. My new responsibilities were outlined to me as follows:

• Manage day-to-day development of social games
• Lead implementation
• Supervise and task developers

We’ll see how this goes, but effectively I have been acting in this role without the title for a while now, so I should get the hang of it, plus a few new responsibilities, soon.

Takin’ Care of Business

So I guess I should post something about my job, since I haven’t discussed at all up to this point what I do. I am a Principal Engineer at a mobile games/applications startup company called Digital Chocolate. I don’t particularly like our name, but it is what it is. The company was founded by Trip Hawkins, founder of EA and the less successful venture, 3DO (a.k.a., SMSG). I work on the server-side framework for developing our apps. I was the first full-time server engineer hired here. There was a contractor that left shortly after I started that laid the initial foundation. Of course, we have a bigger team now, but for a long time, I was still the only woman on the team. I don’t mind though; I enjoy feeling somewhat like the matriarch. I think being the only woman on a team always leaves you feeling a bit like the mommy. It’s not really that bad here, but at my first job, I was the only woman in the company with 10 other guys and most of them were fairly disorganized, so I definitely had the role of keeping the place clean and running smoothly in some ways. Given that I don’t like or want kids, it’s interesting that I don’t mind that role. Probably just the fact that I’m a neat freak and putting things where they belong and general supervising relieves my anxiety about the unpredicatable nature of the world. : P A few months ago now, we hired a recent female graduate, so now that barrier has been broken. However, the place of seniority I have on the team just from having been here the longest still leaves me with that matriarchal feeling. I don’t think that I’m overbearing about it ever, at least, I certainly hope not. We have some pretty strong personalities on the team, so I think I would have heard about it if I was. We definitely keep each other in check, but are a close and fun loving group. Certainly one of the most fun and relaxed environments I’ve worked in. There has to be a balance between serious discussion about mistakes and flaws and light hearted jabs about people’s quirks (and their mothers). ; ) The other nice thing about this team is the most genuine feeling of code sharing I’ve ever seen on a team. Generally, no one considers any part of the code *their* code or gets upset if someone else goes back later and changes or fixes something. It’s a nice atmosphere to work in.