Back To Meet The Devs

1. What is your name and/or nickname?

Natasha AKA Mad Hatter AKA PenDragyn

2. How did you come to work at Turbine?

I saw this preview in PC Gamer for some online game being worked on by some company within public transportation distance from me and ignored it. I saw a job listing on GamaSutra for some company called Turbine and ignored it. After Thief was done, I submitted a resume and then ignored it. Then I bumped into a Turbine designer at the Game Developer's Conference, but my ignore flag was broken...

3. What other jobs have you had?

Um... Corner store candy counter clerk. Stockroom work for a mall store. Cell phone clerk. C++ programmer. PERL programming intern. MIS for a financial company. Play tester on Thief: The Dark Project.

4. Do you work on anything else besides AC (and can you tell us about it)?

Isn't working on AC enough?!?! But seriously, every now and then other things do come up just nothing so far that requires as much of my time as AC.

5. If you could add or change one thing in AC, what would that be?

I'd say this is the trickiest one to answer. It's about dead even between overhauling magic, getting more connection between the world itself and the characters in it (i.e. more direct consequences good and bad for character (in)actions), or just about anything that divorces character advancement from the monster killing treadmill (i.e. titles, allegiance wars, tradeskill robustification, etc).

6. What's the most amusing or embarrassing death you've had or witnessed in AC?

Any of the numerous death-from-above divebombings inflicted on me by the kamikaze drudges in starter quest dungeons.

7. Are you in an allegiance and do your allegiance members know you're at Turbine?

I am in an allegiance that contains a bunch of other Turbine employees. To the best of my knowledge, the allegiance as whole doesn't know our dirty secret.

8. Have you played any other MMORPGs and are you looking forward to any upcoming ones?

I've played on several of the old school MMORPGs, better known as MUDs. I'm looking forward to the horror-related ones in general.

9. What's the current in-office LAN game?

They've been running LAN games. . . ? Sigh. I'm always the last to know.

10. Favourites:

Repsectively: Progressive/Psychedlic rock. Dune. Homemade. Pro-Wrestling. Toss up between any Moneky Island Game or Gabriel Knight 1.

11. What was the first computer game you played?

It's was either a tetris clone or Future Wars by Interplay depending on how you define computer game. If console games and coin-ops count, coin-op centipede or Pong on an Atari 2600.

12. What would you like appreciative fans to send as gifts?

Chocolate, computer equipment, music, t-shirts. Did I mention chocolate?

13. Did you get your pre-patch Greater Shadow Armour in time?

No, my main character was and still isn't high enough level to tackle crystals of any sort. Besides, I had my eye on the pretty red shadow armor.

14. Fasten and then zip or zip and then fasten?

Varies.

15. Because of the lead- and asbestos-lined walls at Turbine's offices, you all survive the apocalypse - who'd get voted Supreme Leader?

The answer is of course the cardboard cutout of Cartman hanging up in the QA room because Cartman knows all, sees all, and watches over us as we sleep.