Join me in congratulating Mark Stephen Pierce as he is promoted to the position
of Game Design Supervisor!  

We are forming a new Service/Support Department: The Game Design Group. We will
publish a formal written plan for the department within a week or so. Just
briefly, the desire is to formally recognize the need and value of game
designers and to provide a way to nurture and develop game design as a
discipline in itself.  Traditionally, the Project Leader/programmer has served
as the game designer on a project. This is well and good and we expect that to
continue. In fact the Project Leader will continue to have the game design
responsibility as well as the authority to delegate the responsibility.  On
some projects, project leaders have solicited help with game design. They have
had no place to turn, but instead have drawn on the talents of interested
people who volunteer to do game design on top of their official duties as
animator or mechanical engineer for instance. Without a formal department to
service the need, our approach has been ad hoc. The Game Design Group is being
established to address the need. 

As an adjunct responsibility, the Game Design Group will also supervise our
playtester staff. Our playtesters will serve as one source of future game 
designers. We will use other sources as well.  We will be starting small
and growing to as many as 3 game designers and 3 playtesters in a couple
of years.

Mark will be reporting to me.  He will be moving to the hardwall office
next to Ed Rotberg.

I am very excited about this new direction. Rich, John and I have discussed
the need for quite some time. I formally proposed the formation of the new 
group in January, 1991, and I was very pleased that Mark stepped forward to
take on the challenge.