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Here we are: the Xmas season, and with it comes a flurry of impulse purchases and the usual holiday rush of games when we've spent the past few months with few releases to draw our interest.

Up until now, I've briefly mentioned in interviews that Gravitronix (our upcoming WiiWare game) will feature hand-drawn characters to represent the players on screen. While character selection will not influence game play, your character will react to your performance in game. As such, characters might seem like a "fluff" addition, but the significance of these characters lies in their origins...

Watching a group of programmers performing their art is something that I find fascinating. They speak of incomprehensible variables and other bits of computer subtext. Then something is compiled and something is on the screen which wasn't previously there. It's magic, and I suddenly feel less like a project coordinator directing individuals to tasks and more like a feudal lord enlisting summoners. It's as though I've employed them to bring something mighty and massive through an interplanar portal and into reality where it previously only existed in imagination.

"I need it to breathe fire," I say. "No," one says, shaking a finger laden with mystic rings, "we haven't the proper components for that!" "Hold," says another, "we do have the emberstryfe talisman." "But..." says yet another, "does that talisman have a BSD license?" I'm telling you, it's almost like that.

Overhearing the discussion of world states, vertices and classes awes me at the fact that so much of importance is being said and I'm mostly oblivious to it. I say "mostly" because sometimes the discussion will dip to the level where I can understand it and I'll put in some input or recall a technical document which might aid the situation. Then the train leaves the station without me as they're off again.

I'm going to be able to show off the work done by my artists (possibly sooner than later) and that gives me a chance to push their work into the foreground where it belongs. But the same is just not possible with programmers. Obviously, the entire game and its structure are testaments to their abilities, but the grim truth remains that seldom do players stop to think about the hours of labor, toil and coordination that went into bringing these games to fruition. I'm a gamer of 20+ years and I don't think I've ever caught myself pondering the labors of the codesmiths responsible for my hobby.

We admire the painting for its artfulness but seldom the workmanship of the frame.

Maybe I'll figure out a solid means to give the framemakers their due credit (and no, I don't think watching their names scroll by in a credit roll suffices)...