Company Dev Journal - Year of the Snake Celebration Party

A celebration for Spring Festival (also known as Chinese New Year) party to be precise! Every year around this time, just before everyone goes home to celebrate with their families, we hold a company party! Let’s share a bit of the fun and dire silliness we had, or as some some might say, ‘endured’.

A room, about the size of a smaller diner, with a stage and big square tables was filling up with people wearing mostly white hoodies (you know the ones we mean) and a smile on their face. This would be a night filled with food, drink and Vaudeville theater. After everyone got to their seats and had a moment to relax and settle in, Joey and Dave, our fearless founders, started off with great speeches that almost reached Bill Pullman levels of rousing inspiration (we’d follow them to the deepest pits of Beryl’s Folly, we would!).

Then came the first act of the evening, a beautiful duet between Dave and Vanessa. Just look at the two lovebirds beaming at each other!

Every department, coding, design, art, admin and marketing had their moment in the spotlight, and boy did they pull out all the stops! Songs, dance, theater and live in-game re-enactments made it quite the memorable evening. Everyone displayed an amazing bit of teamwork (especially considering the little amount of time we had to prepare!).

[Top Left] We saw Coding’s matchmaking skit, and it’s apparent that our Coding department could use a female or two… Though Steve pulled it off fantastically! (Guess we can look forward to more “FemSteve” from now on?)

[Top Right] You may have seen this from a previous Picture of the Day, where Jeff, Brian and Ian told the story of a man seeking ways to interact with NPCs. Apparently it works best if they have a quest symbol in their head! You should try it sometime.

[Bottom Left] Design got together again later in the evening to sing “We All Work on a Game Called City of Steam” (to the tune of “Yellow Submarine”). It was perfect for everyone to sing along, as we’re sure you’re doing yourself right now!

[Bottom Right] The Marketing team‘s dance was one of the high points of the evening, a hilarious and unexpected turn from their initial skit. Can you spot Ethan and Dorian in the back there…?

We also had a P2W song by everyone’s favorite cross-dressing developers, Gab (FemGab) and Andrew (Yunk)! Gab playing the guitar like a champ and Andrew singing his little heart out, it was moving to say the least (well, as moving as 2 guys flaming each other online can be, anyway).

All in all, the performances were great, some of the flukes made it even better and everyone had a great time, but now that the party is behind us we’re going to take a little break. From Feb 9^th till the 16^th Mechanist Games is closing up shop (remember how we don’t get a Christmas holiday here? Well at least we get Spring Festival!). It's a mandatory holiday here, so don't worry, we're not leaving you all for this long on purpose or anything! Many of Mechanist games’ employees will return to their families, take time to relax, play a few games and maybe even travel somewhere. We still keep a modicum of activity on the forums, of course; we need to keep an eye out! See you all again on the 17^th when we’re back to our regularly scheduled madness!