October 9th To December 20th

We wanted to let you know what was happening over at Team Colorblind with Aztez. Right now (and until Dec. 20th) Matthew and I are in Sayulita, Mexico. It's in a beach town on the west coast and it's beautiful. Why are we there? Because as you know, we don't shy away from contract work over here at Colorblind because it means we'll have that much more time/money to make Aztez the best game it can possibly be. But it is also the reason there is occasional deceleration. Not for now! We realized we have an unusual window free of external obligations and decided to go into isolation paradise and really slam the axe down on Aztez. It's very exciting and I just wanted to share it with you. By the time we get back we'll have some very exciting things to show off and I'm squirming over here thinking about it.

I also wanted to talk about the financial logistics of the trip for all you fellow game developers (or anyone else whose entire work environment is in a computer).  The flight is about 900 USD round trip (from where we're at) but living there for 3 months is actually much cheaper than living where we live, even in our a relatively low cost home city. So being here in Mexico for so long will make the cost of the flight a wash. I've realized it’s more so about having a money buffer, which we’re able to occasional build and maintain. The other things to keep in mind is that some USDs become a LOT of pesos! My point is that we're not spending any more money to live than we were back at home, we've just temporarily switched positions on the map.

Getting and working here was remarkably easy. I’ve got a week of clothing, my hygiene stuff, and my laptop bag. In addition to the powerful machine I'm rocking (Unity, Maya, Photoshop, Motionbuilder, Dreamweaver, After Effects, etc.) there’s also room in the bag for a small wacom, a mouse, headphones, a mousepad, a notebook, a portable speaker, and a 360 controller. With this gear I can (and do regularly) work on my game wherever there is an outlet and wi-fi. Transitioning to here is simple, the only difference is that wi-fi is less prevalent so you'll have to explore a bit. We set up our own network here in the rental house, so we're actually set in every possible way. Keep this stuff in mind next time you're considering a scenery change!

Back to work for me. :)