October 30, 2011: Tracking Containers

One part of my weekly work here at the office is keeping an eye on all of the games that are slowly making their way from the factories where they are manufactured to our warehouse. You wouldn't think that "container watching" would be all that exciting, but when you're watching (as of this writing) five shipping containers it can be fun to track them from Hong Kong to Atlanta. Most of my time is spent eyeing the master tracking spreadsheet that I receive every week from Grand Prix International, but even that can be entertaining when the spreadsheet climbs to almost 200 entries. I know it makes me sound like a real geek, but I enjoy going back and looking at how many separate titles have been shipped to our warehouse in 2011.

The year is almost over so it's just about time for a new spreadsheet. It will be sad to close the covers on a such a robust and full year of games, but it's also cool to see that the 2012 spreadsheet is already populated: we have games in production at the factory now that aren't set to reach stores until April! Which games? That would be telling, but I can say that you should keep your eyes open for a Zombie Dice expansion in early 2012.

-- Phil Reed