Neverwinter Nights familiar

Greetings! Today's post is all about achievements. First, in the literal sense, we're in the process of testing our Steam achievement system. You might see achievements for our games on Steam but be unable to access them. That's because we're still internally testing the achievements to make sure they're fully functional when they go live in the next update. We'll post again here when that happens.

Second, in the metaphorical sense, we'd like to celebrate our achievements in some recent hiring and promotions. I say “recent” but in truth some of the employees mentioned here were hired over a year ago. We've been so focused on our work that we've neglected to celebrate them properly (and there's a lot to celebrate, as there's triple-A talent here). The time to rectify that oversight is NOW.

In September 2015 we added Brent Knowles to the Beamdog team as a designer. Brent has worked for many years on titles familiar to us, including Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights. (His first project was BG2, so in a way coming to Beamdog is like coming full circle). We're happy to have him on the team.

Shawn Potter has also joined us temporarily as a contract programmer. Shawn previously worked as lead gameplay programmer for Mass Effect 3 and senior programmer for Mass Effect 1 and 2. We're excited to make use of his l33t programming skills (or should that be skillz? I'm never sure what the kids are saying these days. They're still saying l33t, though, right?)

Beambard Amber Scott received a promotion to Publishing and Marketing Coordinator. That's right, she successfully finagled a raise out of goofing off on social media. Amber will be responsible for coordinating convention appearances, managing press releases and blog updates, and running events like the fun live stream we did last week.

Thea Kent joined us several months ago as an illustrator and immediately made herself invaluable. You might have seen her work in Dragon+ magazine recently—she did the character art for Glint Gardnersonson.

In November, um, 2014, Jason Knipe came on board (sorry for the late accolades, Jason). He was the lead graphics programmer on Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights, and now works for us as a graphics programmer and a fighter-tank in our D&D games.

Finally, Tom Rhodes has taken the reins as art director as of this month. Tom worked on all three Dragon Age games as concept artist, and he quickly made his mark here drawing an awesome picture of a high-speed unicorn chase. Note: do not attempt high-speed unicorn chases at home.