Really Moving to the "Other Side"

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things..."

Along with the recent second anniversary of the game, I'm rapidly approaching my third anniversary of joining The Matrix Online team. I began working on the game in May 2004 and immersed myself into the world of the Matrix. Now it is time to pass the community torch.

As of today, Monday, April 2, I became an official producer on an unannounced title here at the Seattle studio. I will still be overseeing production of MxO, so I'm not going away completely. However, I'm handing over the reins of community management to someone you already know: Joel aka "Raijinn Thunderguard". He'll be handling the forums, website updates, community events, and all the other things CRMs do for our games. I hope you all make him feel welcome.

It's been a long-time personal goal of mine to become more involved in the production side of games, which is one reason I took over as acting producer for MxO last year. It's been quite a learning experience and I've got two great teams to thank for that--the CRM team and the MxO dev team. Now I get to take what I've learned and use it on an upcoming game.

As much as I'll miss being the main face of MxO, this is a positive change for the game. (Pause for derisive comments about putting a smiley face on things. Done now? ;) ) During the past year, I've had to divide my efforts between community duties and production duties. Both are important, complex jobs and I always found myself wishing I had more time to dedicate to each. Now, even though I'll be spending a lot of time on the new game, my focus will be entirely on the production side while Raijinn will be the dev team's eyes and ears on the community.

There's not much I can say about the game I'll be working on. (Not yet, at least.) I believe we're scheduled to become public this summer and I think it's going to be a game that appeals to a lot of folks in this community. It's a great team to work with and I'm looking forward to being a producer who can bring the community perspective to development. I'm also excited that I'll be part of the team when we bring on our own community manager, where I can help him or her integrate with the dev team.

It's fitting that this change should happen so near the second anniversary. Looking back over the past three years of my time as community manager for MxO helped me realize exactly how far we've come. We've certainly had our ups and downs, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. No matter what's been going on with the game, this has simply been an amazing community to be part of.

So, this is the final edition of The Other Side of the Looking Glass. Raijinn will be doing his own weekly feature from now on, which is only appropriate. In my continuing role as producer for MxO, I'm sure he'll be bugging me for producer letters and other development content, as all good community relations managers do. I'm still hoping to make events like the Block Party and Fan Faire, but we'll have to see how things unfold. In any case, this is far from the last time you'll hear from me.

I'd like to thank the entire MxO community for being such an outstanding and interesting group of people to be involved with over the last three years. Your passion for this game is what makes all the headaches and long hours worthwhile. When the new game is ready for the public, I hope to see many of you again, helping us to make as amazing a community for it as we have for The Matrix Online.

I'll see you all on the other side.

Sincerely,
Daniel "Walrus" Myers

PS--No, you can't have my stuff. :P

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