Gearbox Publishing Blog 4: The Escape Clause


Hey everyone,

Happy New Year! We’re getting back into the swing of things after our holiday break, but we thought we’d fill you in on a little of what happened in December!

  Steve – Head of Publishing

Wrapping up the year with Fortnite and Hello Neighbor releasing around the world was really pretty exciting, as we continue to learn more and try to get better at this “being a publisher for other people” stuff. To be just a bit more than a year in as a publisher for developers outside of Gearbox – and seeing two Gearbox Publishing titles in the top 10 for Xbox One at retail – was not a thing I expected to be possible.

Having a not quite ironic #trucksandboxes channel on Slack also isn’t really a thing I thought would exist in my life, but there it is.

In 2018, we’ll be publishing for digital and retail many more titles, including some of our first Nintendo Switch stuff! I’m really not sure what could be possible for Gearbox Publishing in 2018. Seems like just about anything?

Communications

  Jeff – Brand Manager

Yo!

December was a super busy and productive month for us!

One of the most interesting things I did was visit the facilities where we’re making our We Happy Few Time Capsule. We’re at the stage where everything is prototyped, and production crews are creating the first production samples of the mask and figuring out the most effective way to streamline the production pipeline. Now that I’ve gotten my hands on the stuff, I’m super excited and confident about the quality of the Time Capsule goods.

Here’s a sneak peek from our visit, and keep an eye out on the Compulsion Games Weekly Journal and We Happy Few social channels for more this month!

  Meredith – Community Coordinator

Hey y’all!

Gosh, what did I do in December? I remember seeing The Last Jedi three times, but everything else is a blur…

Oh, right! This month, I worked with my usual conspirators (Nicole and Elisa, plus Naila from Compulsion Games) to create some festive holiday content for We Happy Few! Highlights include creepy paper snowflakes, creepy holiday cards, and a totally not-creepy, normal holiday greeting.

Just a totally normal holiday scene. 

Outside of producing social content, I spent a lot of time in December getting acclimated to my shiny new social program! This program is designed to help community and social media coordinators plan, schedule, and publish their content. As Gearbox Publishing grows, this will make it easier for me to manage my channels more effectively. It’s already made a huge difference in my workflow, and I hope to keep improving throughout 2018!

Oh, one more thing. Elisa, Nicole, and I unleashed the crown jewel of the Publishing department on the world last week:

You’re welcome.

  Elisa – New Media Manager

¡Feliz Año Nuevo, y’all!

December is one of my favorite months, and not just because I get to celebrate my birthday a couple of days after Christmas. Double presents. None of that lumped together nonsense. How did you spend the last couple of weeks of 2017? I spent mine dipping my toes into Stardew Valley, pouring hours into Minecraft, and winning a couple of Fortnite Battle Royale matches. Felt pretty good!

This month marked one of my more silly yet important endeavors for Gearbox Publishing: the Desert Bus Accolades video. It was my first time making such a video, and I got to add new skills to my resume in the process. Mainly, putting explosions in things. Timed to music. Steve wanted explosions, so I gave him explosions. This is his fault, really.

With such a critically-acclaimed and well-reviewed title on our hands, it was hard to sift through the praise, but I think we ended up with some choice gems.

I try not to let some arbitrary date on a calendar determine when to set goals and expectations, but I can’t help but be swept up by New Year’s resolution hype, so here are a few of mine for this new year:

  1. More explosions timed to music.
  2. Read all of the Harry Potter books and watch all the movies. I know. More like 20-LATE-TEEN, am I right?
  3. Create more weird, wacky, awesome new media things for Gearbox Publishing.

What are your resolutions? I’d love to hear them!

Marketing

  Mike – Creative Director

Hello Everyone! My name is Mike.  I am the Creative Director of Marketing.  I spend my time leading and collaborating with artists of many specializations to bring marketing content to life. You may have already seen my work – the We Happy Few Re-Announce trailer was the first trailer I directed since joining the team in June.  You can also find me for a split second playing a guitar in the Trailer Audio Behind the Scenes video.  Fun fact: They used that clip in reverse, so that’s me playing… but backwards!

On to the update – Whew! Fun break!  I hope everyone had a fun and safe end of the year.  December consisted of a lot of planning, writing, printing, meeting, pitching, note taking, re-writing, re-pitching, plan adjusting, post-it-note-sticking, coffee sipping, idea scribbling, prank-on-Jeff-playing, and video conference chatting; all of which helped prepare us for the new year.

With December planning finished, we have eaten our pre-production “vegetables” on several marketing assets, and are well prepared for the best part of the process – MAKING COOL STUFF.  I can’t wait to turn these paper ideas into something you all can see.  2018 should be a fun year!

  Nicole – Marketing Artist

Hi, everyone!

Hope your holidays were merry and full of cheer (and/or drinks)! I had a great break, and most of what I remember doing before the time off was social asset creation celebrating the end of the year. I also helped internally with holiday party cards and such. Other than that, it was mainly supporting marketing with its various needs and catching up on all the games I forgot to play.

Bring it on, 2018! I am ready with fisticuffs and pragmatic optimism!

  Sean – Chief Bro/Web Designer

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, hey friends!

If you’ve been paying attention to past updates, you may have seen me saying that I was working on some updates to our publishing presence on the internets (hell, I even posted a camera-phone shot of the code). Well, that update was completed at the end of December with a new refresh for gearboxpublishing.com (no seriously, go check for yourself, it’s pretty baller). This included creating/hand coding a custom component for whenever we add new games, multiple pages, testing for responsive design issues, the works. I’m pretty happy with it, and hopefully it will be a much more pleasant and streamlined browsing experience for you and yours moving forward.

Packaging also featured prominently in the work-load this past month once again – revising our templates that we get from first party, streamlining, and generally making it so that we have more time for making things more awesome.

You may also have heard that we, like pretty much every other company out there, have an annual holiday party where we can come together, turn up, get some sick presents, and have a wonderful evening surrounded by friends and loved ones. We’ve made sure to put up a selection of images taken from the evening in our galleries, shown here.

In order to pull off such a great evening, we rally help from all over the company – hosting duties, creative design for cards/photo backdrops/etc, even music. As you may have heard in the past, we wear MANY hats here at Gearbox – if there are skills that you have outside of what your actual job description is, they’ll absolutely get used at some point. Since I’ve been here at Gearbox, I’ve handled DJ’ing duties for the Holiday party every year – I’ve been dj’ing and producing music for over 15 years now and I absolutely love it and jump at any chance to do-so.

This year I thought that I would let everyone who wasn’t able to be a part of our Holiday party check out the music to give you an idea of how we do things. If YOU want to be a part of the festivities, please head over to our careers page, and maybe we’ll see you decked out in your holiday finest next year.

Without further adieu, here are the mixes – I hope they start off your year in the best way possible:

Mix 1: https://drive.google.com/open?id=11_81GNzUo9X1nSEwRN5k2J1A3HHeeEwj
1: ODESZA, WYNNE, Mansionair – Line Of Sight
2: Shallou, Wales – Begin
3: Mazde – Wicked Winds
4: Zimmer, Fhin – Lost Your Mind
5: Bag Raiders – Friend Inside
6: Birocratic, Flamingosis – Look Both Ways!
7: Cool Company, Jean Tonique – Beneath the Lights remix
8: Point Point, Denai Moore – Hands
9: Mansionair – Astronaut – Something About Your Love
10: Darius – Espoir
11: Miguel – waves – RAC Mix
12: Two Another – Keeping Me Under
13: Toro y Moi – Rose Quartz
14: Mike Taylor – Electric Feel
15: Classixx – Faraway Reach
16: Slow Magic, Kate Boy – Mind – Tomggg Remix
17: PREP, AlunaGeorge – Cheapest Flight remix
18: Moon Boots – Sugar – Original Mix
19: Washed Out – Hard To Say Goodbye
20: POWERS – Closer
21: Roosevelt – Montreal
22: Moon Boots, Nic Hanson – Keep The Faith
23: Electric Guest – Dear To Me
24: Gigamesh, Gavin Turek – I’d Do It Again
25: Aeuroplane, Purple Disco Machine – Sambal
26: Haywyre – Do You Don’t You
27: KAASI – Maybe Monday
28: Luces, Amtrac, Plastic Plates – Geronimo
29: Moon Boots – First Landing
30: Crazy P – Like A Fool
31: Lapsley – Operator – DJ Koze Radio Edit
32: Aeble, Tom Aspaul – Better By Your Side
33: HONNE – Just Dance
34: Marcus Marr, Chet Faker – Learning For Your Love
35: Mighty Mouse, Monarchy – In Front Of Our Friends – Disco Mix
36: Amtrac – Informal Disco
37: Moon Boots, Black Gatsby – Power
38: Jesper Ryom – Apolune
39: Justin Jay, Josh Taylor – What Do You Want – Radio Edit
40: Phantoms, VERITE – Just A Feeling
41: Kidnap, Leo Stannard – Moments

Mix 2: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VAQa9hy7p_FxoJDCW1cyBwshVSe22Kat

WARNING: CONTAINS EXPLICIT LYRICS
1: Ice Cube ft. Mack 10 and Ms Toi – You Can Do It
2: Method Man, Redman – Da Rockwilder
3: Ludacris, Shawnna – Stand Up
4: Busta Rhymes, Diddy, Pharell – Pass The Courvoisier Pt 2 Remix
5: Too $hort – Blow The Whistle
6: Q-Tip – Vivrant Thing
7: Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg – The Next Episode
8: Paula Abdul – Straight Up
9: Ed Sheeran – Shape Of You
10: DJ Snake, Justin Bieber – Let Me Love You
11: Maroon 5, Kendrick Lamar – Don’t Wanna Know
12: Sub Focus, ALMA – Don’t You Feel It
13: Fatman Scoop – Be Faithful
14: Pras, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Mya – Ghetto Supastar
15: Naughty By Nature – Hip Hop Hooray
16: Leikeli47 – Miss Me
17: Too $hort ft. E-40 – Money On The Floor
18: Pharell Williams, Gwen Stefani – Can I Have It Like That
19: Missy Elliot – Work It
20: Eve – Tambourine
21: Lil’ Kim – The Jump Off
22: Joe Budden – Pump It Up
23: E-40, Keek Da Sneak – Tell Me When To Go
24: J Balvin, Willy William, Beyonce – Mi Gente
25: William Singe, Jonas Blue – Mama
26: Starley, Ryan Riback – Call On Me Remix
27: Ja Rule, Case – Livin’ It Up
28: Bruno Mars – 24K Magic
29: Mr. Cheeks – Lights, Camera, Action!
30: Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Kelis – Got Your Money
31: Digital Underground – The Humpty Dance
32: Salt-N-Peppa – Let’s Talk About
33: The Notorious B.I.G., MA$E, Puff Daddy – Mo Money Mo Problems
34: LL Cool J – Around The Way Girl
35: Montell Jordan – This Is How We Do It
36: Fabolous – Young’n
37: Bell Biv DeVoe – Poison
38: The Weeknd – Can’t Feel My Face
39: Michael Jackson – Billie Jean
40: Justin Timberlake – Sexyback
41: Young MC – Bust A Move
42: Daryl Hall & John Oates – Private Eyes
43: Diddy, Keyshia Cole – Last Night
44: Lil Jon, Pitbull – Culo
45: Sean Paul – Temperature
46: Modjo – Lady – Hear Me Tonight
47: Diddy – Dirty Money – On The Floor
48: Tag Team – Whoomp!
49: Quad City DJ’s – C’mon N’ Ride It (The Train)
50: Bruno Mars – That’s What I Like
51: Ludacris, Shawnna – What’s Your Fantasy
52: Cardi B – Bodak Yellow
53: Future – Some Commas
54: Big Shaq – Man’s Not Hot
55: Waka Flocka Flame – Grove St. Party ft Kebo Gotti
56: F.L.Y. – Swag Surfin’
57: Demi Lovato – Sorry Not Sorry
58: David Banner, Lil’ Flip – Like A Pimp
59: Soulja Boy – Turn My Swag On
60: Lil’ Flip – Game Over
61: Petey Pablo – Raise Up
62: Big Sean – Moves
63: Lloyd Banks – Beamer, Benz, Or Bentley ft. Juelz Santana
64: Jibbs, Chamillionaire – King Kong
65: Falcons – Want Your Body
66: Wiz Khalifa – Black And Yellow
67: The Chainsmokers, Daya – Don’t Let Me Down
68: Taylor Swift – …Ready For It?
69: Trey Songz – Bottoms Up ft. Nicki Minaj
70: Missy Elliot – Get Ur Freak On
71: Major Lazer, Mo, Justin Bieber – Cold Water
72: The Chainsmokers, Halsey – Closer
73: SWV, Teddy Riley, Franklin Grant, Allen Gordon Jr. – Right Here – Human Nature Radio Mix
74: Snoop Dogg – Pharell Williams – Beautiful