In the early days, when McPhat was still a 'young boy', I always figured that making a good (looking) product would be enough. We'd reach enough people, sell enough packs and take the Flight Simulation world by storm all while doing what we love doing best: Making beautiful graphics..

Boy, was I wrong.

In the past couple of years the harsh reality hit me. You can make the most beautiful product in the world, but if nobody knows you and knows where to find you, you're left out stranded. It'll be just you, your good intentions, great ideas and your product..

So much for 'If you build it, they will come' right? Thanks for nothing, Mister Costner...

Fast forward to today, I can honestly say : 'Long gone are the days that I spend my time solely on what I do best and nowadays my hours are divided between running McPhat Studios and making an occasional texture here and there, when.. IF I find the time'. Something I wish was the other way around. With 'running McPhat Studios', I really mean keeping taps and track on our Facebook page, our Twitter account, our YouTube channel, blog, newsletter and just today yet another, new social media outlet hit the mainstreams:

Google+ brought in the brand pages!

For those of you not familiar with Google+, it's basically Facebook, but less clouded with a million features that change every fortnight. It also gives the opportunity to share with 'circles', which is basically a hipster name for self made groups of people who you can then choose to share only relevant information with. Great if you want to reminisce that night of mayhem with your buddies, but don't want your Chief Pilot (or your mom) to get the wrong impression of you (if she hasn't already). 

While I was eager to try out Google+ privately, I am not jumping up and down in sheer happiness about the implementation of the new brand pages. Like our Facebook fan page, it gives us a way to communicate with our users and customers, without them having to come to our website, check out our forum, our community page or our blog (do come back though), saving them time...

More convenient for you, the user, but more work for me, the guy who has to update all those pages, mostly on a daily basis.

Do me a favour though okay?

Join our Google+ brandpage, so me updating it, at least has some sort of a purpose...

CLICK TO JOIN!

I can still remember the days when me and my pc (including screen, joystick, speakers and what not) would hop on the train for a 3 day, long weekend Flight Sim fest at my buddy Kevin's house. Three hours in the train, packed with my 'nerdgear' (I tried, there's no sexier name for it), ready for some serious on-line flightsimmin' and with 'serious', I mean : SE-RI-OUS. As in all-through-the-night-long-haul-kinda-serious. The real deal. At least, you know, virtually...

We would sleep for a few of hours a night -on the couch- just a couple of feet from our roaring pc's, cause you knew that when that dreaded 'beep' sounded it was 'IVAO' and we best be ready to answer... in a non-sleepy voice. The days were long. Planning the flight, staring at my screen for hours at a time with my headset on, landing and whilst the engines were spooling down, thinkering were to head on next.

After each and every landing, I would 'hit replay', usually in slow motion (who doesn't like slow motion), 10, 15 times. We always had a blast, cause flightsimmin' was IT. I am not afraid to say I sometimes left my pc on, while sleeping cause there was something soothing about hearing perfectly good running jet engines in the background.

Those days are over though. One could even say : Long gone. Girlfriends (there's something really confronting about a woman's disapproving and loathing look when she looks at you 'talking to another geek at the other end of the world, 'asking for permission to 'taxi') , flying for realsies and the X-box basically killed the Flight Simulator 'game'. But the true reason for not flying is none of the above. 

It's 'McPhat'.

I don't have time to fondle around with FMC's, flying for hours, enjoying REX generated clouds, or any of ORBX' sceneries while on final. I still fire up FSX, hell, I would even say at least 20 times a day, but only to make screen-shots, check bump & specular effects and  to align textures. Flight Simulator has become all work. No play.

That all changed last Thursday. Like every sane person in the FS community, I was eagerly waiting for PMDG to release their NGX. I wouldn't go as far to say that my index finger and F5 button were best buddies, but I checked. I checked plenty. Robert told me to buy nothing, to wait for him to supply us with the model and paintkit, but on friday, Nicolas and I  pulled our creditcards : four NGX licenses. One for each participating NGX project member, but most importantly : One for me.

The past couple of days I found myself inside FSX. Not to check the DC-9 VC textures, or to make last minute changes to the PMDG 747 HDT fuselage, but to take the NGX for a spin. Landing, replaying, flying circuits (or like you Yanks like to call it : Traffic Patterns), checking out the great modelling from all sides and angles, listening to the CFM's ref up and down. As a long time PMDG customer owning all but the J41, including the FS9 models it was like being 'home' again.

Firing FSX, just for the fun, joy and thrill of it...

The last time I did that, was right before I started McPhat Studios, three and a half years ago....

We ended 2010 with a bang, started 2011 with a (although slightly smaller) bang and now -halfway on our way to 2012- there's still 'banging', but this time mostly in the form of hands, shaped like fists on my door and on my desk...

The year has been hectic. Although we wheeled in some new talent, 'old' talent also left. People whom had been with us for years left and the toll it has taken is apparent. Yes, some of the new guys (and girl) are just as talented or perhaps even more, but you take a hit when people leave, who know the company inside and out and we took the hit alright. Hard. Right on the nose. Twice.

Where our frontliners (Texture Artists and a handful of painters) used to solely focus on the core of our business (that would be Textures), supported by staff who lead the company, most of them now have dual roles. From basic overhead, to project management, from creating Youtube content to research and from Marketing to Support. Because this change happened gradually, over time and because it was a necessity (as is the mother of invention) opposed to being planned, along come the 'challenges' of all us getting comfortable within our new roles.

The last couple of weeks I've seen my attention shift from the frontline to -almost on a daily basis- talks, meetings and discussions with my team. Some lengthy, some exhaustingly lengthy, some ridiculously lengthy.

And if that isn't enough, with the DC-9 3D development phase nearing its end and with four 3D Artists on the team (and another 2 joining soon), guess what has to happen? Indeed :  talking and discussing our next steps with the ones on board, and creating, shaping, explaining and enrolling with the ones who are about to join.

All and all, there's been a lot of talking lately and although it apparently is part of my job description, I hope I can soon get back to 'work'...