Launch Thanks

By Mike / On / In Personal

We’re about a week into our ongoing soft relaunch of Lemurs Chemistry: Water, and we’ve finally gotten to the point where people are starting to notice. There were quite some murmurs yesterday about our press page, which I appreciate, and while I could easily point to my experience as a journalism major for providing some kind of savvy, the reality is, I can hardly take credit for it.

First and foremost, all we really did was our best implementation of what Chris Phin asked all App Makers to do in his talk at NSConference 5. Our “perfect press release,” was literally just a point for point copy of the ideal press release from his talk, which I hope nobody will mind me sharing here.

Chris Phin's Press Release Format

Our press page is just the stuff he asked us to make available, like a bunch of full resolution screenshots, and a short trailer, together with the extended “Let’s Play” videos that we put up as a way for people to experience the game without having to buy it first. In particular, I didn’t even know what a reviewer’s guide was before his talk, and ours ended up turning out really nicely.

A lot of credit for that, and for the press release, goes to my brother, Hernan Pelassini. He started working on the press release when we were still writing code, and he harped on the reviewer’s guide and the Phin format from the very beginning, even going so far as to send me a copy of the video to make sure I watched it before writing the final draft.

Despite being quite hard at work half a world away, and even after I messed up the time zones and called him at 5:30 in the morning, he proofed the release and the reviewer’s guide, and made crucial changes. We rarely get past the last 80% of polish without guidance from the outside, and on a deadline, availability is everything. Hernan is always there when you need him. That’s why we all love him.

Speaking of people who are always there for you, there are a couple of folks I almost never mention because they’re so close to me, they’ve become part of me, and talking about them feels like talking about myself. Klaas Speller and Judy Chen are two people who always make sure I keep going, who reign me in when I need reigning in, who give me criticism when I need criticism, who offer support when I need support.

These are shining examples of a class of people I have been blessed to have cultivated relationships with in my life. The credits page of the game is a tribute to that. My whole career has been a tribute to that. Where I have been tough, and shown grit, it has been to chew and swallow the big problems I bite off for myself, but where I have succeeded, or even exceeded, it has been thanks to people like these.