Day Twelve: Whom You Admire

I could make this post twenty pages long.

 

I could rehash the bloggers I’ve already told you are some of my favorites, because generally speaking I like the blog because I like the voice behind it.

 

Then I thought maybe I could tell you about some game designers I like, but its like I would be telling you something new.   You know of my admiration for Peterson and Fantasy Flight Games,  for Luke Crane’s genius, and so on.

 

I thought maybe about going more general, outside the realm of games, after that fun little back and forth about Andrew Jackson.   But then skimming Twitter today, I saw something and realized this would be a good place to shine another little spotlight.   How about a producer/developer?

 

Basically this is what I saw in my feed:

 

 

And that, ladies and gents, is Scott Hartsman in a nutshell.  Several years ago I wrote a post raging about a poorly worded title in a Rift announcement.  Scott, who apparently on top of the zillion other things guys like him have to work on 25 hours a day, was scanning blog feeds.  He tracked down my email, apologized and promised me a spot in Alpha.

 

It would be easy to chalk that up to media wooing – but I’m not the guy who gets invited to behind the scenes jazz and press junkets.  I’m happy with the moderate traffic I get here, but I am not one of the big dogs.   A couple of weeks later, when the Alpha invite hadn’t materialized, I sent an email.  And by golly, and I got another apology, plus he dropped whatever it was he was working on and I had the Alpha launched downloading within five minutes.

 

In other words, he went out of his way to be nice for a fan.  And that tweet above shows its not just me that he goes out of his way for.   He’s honest enough to speak his mind and kind enough to offer whatever help he can.

 

To paraphrase a line from A Knight’s Tale, even if that’s all I knew about him, it would be enough.   But let’s be honest, Rift was and still is one of the best developed and put together MMO’s out there, and its launch was mostly free of the usual hiccups.   So we know he is talented and good at his job too.

 

So, if you want to know who I admire, there ya go.  I admire Scott for his skill, his openness, and his kindness.  Hopefully he can help some of those guys and gals at Trion land on their feet.