Agni

Tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen! Tomorrow, our video game gets released to the public, and BWAOSHIT you guys are HUNGRY! Checking out the latest gaming blogs, we are everywhere. I wake up this morning, and saw three buses pass by my bedroom window, each one carrying a full-side advert for our game.

We put in our last haul this weekend, getting everything tweaked, ensuring the best gameplay experience we can deliver. It's impossible for a team of a hundred to properly simulate the gameplay experience that will be had by millions, but that doesn't stop us from trying. It would kill me if in the first 24 hours a group of elite gamers concocted the perfect combination of weapons and perks to become unstoppable murder machines in Online multiplayer.

Thus, on the artistic end, I have been pushing harder than ever with everyone around me to guarantee that the game is balanced, fun, and a riot to play. Have we succeeded? Who knows? I can't wait to see what you think.

This morning, I grabbed my Treyarch dev team jacket, and hit the 405 in my usual fashion. In front of me was the red line, the express bus that cuts through the Sepulveda pass. On the back of it, a banner advertisement for the game. My jacket felt a little warmer, a little softer, my soul lifting with pride and confidence we created a monster of a game. I smiled, eventually slinging around the bus into a faster lane. The morning radio news started a human interest piece about our game, paralleling it to Microsoft Kinect as the must-have gadgets of the season.

It's everywhere now. While hunkered down all those long nights, those days where I witness two sunrises in a single waking period, I must have missed the transformation, the blitzkrieg of interest our game has generated. I'm aware people have been eagerly anticipating it for several months, even the slightest teases stirring a frenzy of hype and guesses as to what it's about. But if any morning made me feel like I wanted to go to work, it was this day. The day before. The one where we breathe the sigh of relief, spend the morning to read what others are saying about us, smiling at the elations penned by our fans, and hoping to curb the expectations of our skeptics.

Whether the game is good or not, well...that's not my call. That's not our call. It's all up to you. But do we have confidence in it? Pride? Love? You bet.

"Go home," chirps our Emails. Tentatively we rise from our desks, one head at a time. Some finishing up their multiplayer match, some wrapping up that last single player mission, some soldiering through one more wave of zombies before putting down the controller. We slowly shuffle out, looking back at the double glass doors, its clanging hinges a final bon voyage to the game. There's nothing left to do.

Nothing left. Nothing...except for seeing you guys online.

I get home, and waste no time to do what I've been wanting to do for the last six weeks of crunch time. I opened up Photoshop, hit the tablet, and cranked this one out.