2010 at Six to Start has been marked by victories, with the multi-award-winning Smokescreen, and there were also some arrivals and departures. Lisa, the Chief of Operations, left early this year, and in June, Dan left to join Wieden + Kennedy in the US. New blood came in with Ernesto Jimenez and Matt Wieteska, respectively game developer and game designer, who joined the company as fully-fledged employees this year. Bryan Hill also took on the role of CEO after Dan’s departure.
In the middle of it all, Barteld Klasens and Nadia Elmrabet, interns in one of the coolest and innovative game/transmedia companies (of the universe), have written about their experiences at Six to Start!
Barteld Klasens, game designer
I’m Barteld Klasens, a Dutch student of Design for Virtual Theatre and Games at the School of the Arts in Utrecht. Over the past six months, I have been working at Six to Start as a design intern. The main reason for me to go for Six to Start was their focus on integrating storytelling with interactive media, and I am a game designer at heart with a great interest in storytelling. That interest was the reason I signed up to a game design course at a drama school, and that is the reason I liked Six to Start the moment I saw their website. I came in contact via a lecturer that had met Adrian Hon at a conference. A few emails back and forth, a VOIP chat, a visit to London, and I had an internship.
I began my internship shortly after New Year’s Eve. The office had to start up again after all the holiday fun, so it was a bit empty the first few days, but that quickly changed when all the projects started up again. The first project I worked on was Seven Ages of Britain: The Quest. I took my instructions from Antonio Gould, the producer, on this project. He clearly knew what he was doing.
The project was in its final stages so I helped create content for the website: editing videos, testing the questions, that sort of thing. I also learned how dynamic the company is. When there was no work I could do on Seven Ages, I would spend that time brainstorming with Adrian on new projects. Then he would let me write it up in a design document. If that document was workable, we would move on to wireframes.
These skills are important and all, but the actual fun stuff is going out to meetings with clients. Those are the things you don’t get to do as a student. The clients are diverse, from major book publishers, to games and television producer, to smaller individual companies.
The last project I worked on was for Wired UK magazine, where I helped Matt Wieteska, the producer/game designer create puzzles. I also researched raw data and then passed it on to Matt, who would then make some neat puzzles out of it, with in-character Victorian stories. A lot of people were going to answer these puzzles, but luckily there was Ernesto Jimenez (our game developer) to make our life a bit easier with some technology.
The work was fun and valuable, but what I liked most about Six to Start is its open atmosphere. Everyone is a bit tuned out when they are working. Everyone has a headset to block out the world. But when the headset comes off, the office turns into a sociable place with people sharing ideas, having a laugh, and inviting each other for a drink or event. Lunchtime has been the centre of this with the collective migration out of the office to grab a sandwich. The people in this company just make it a lot of fun.
The internship is over now and I’m back in the Netherlands. It’s back to school for another year. I’m confident however that the internship has given me the push I needed to start a company. So that’s the goal I’m working on now.
Nadia Elmrabet, Sales/Development
My name is Nadia Elmrabet and I’m also nearing the end of my internship at Six to Start. I’m French and I live in Paris, where I’m completing my final year of master’s degree in Digital Media Studies at La Sorbonne University.
I’ve been at Six to Start for three months now, working mainly with the Sales / Dev team, primarily with Dan Hon and then with Bryan Hill, who is Six to Start’s new CEO. My interest in Six to Start was related to my research paper dedicated to alternate reality games and new types of digital narratives.
I got in touch with Dan via Twitter in February and asked if he was looking for interns. It was a first time for the sales/development team since there had previously been game design interns, but no marketing interns. He also accepted to help me with my dissertation as he and Adrian have been key players in the ARG industry since their involvement in The Beast ARG (built as a promotional campaign for the movie Artificial Intelligence), back in 2001.
So, I came in April and in my first week Dan asked me to try and come up with transmedia proposals for two major franchises for a prospective client. It was challenging as I had never done that before. To be more specific, the challenge came from being consistent with the basic story at the heart of each franchises: what were the consumers expecting? How do you build anticipation for different types of audiences? Most importantly, how do you entertain them and contribute to the franchise worldbuilding? What is funny in this company is that as long as your idea is playful enough (enough that you would personally enjoy the experience) and actually brings to life a piece of the franchise mythology, then you can comfortably suggest anything, whether it involves games, webseries, tv shows, real life events, physical artefacts, etc. All these “Lego bricks” as Dan called them, must be glued together into an overarching narrative that includes each player or viewer in the story. As long as your experience is telling a story and integrating you as part of this larger narrative, then you’re on good tracks.
Besides transmedia proposals, I got to write articles for ARGnet about a French ARG (Supernatural Oddities) and promote the company’s work for ARGNet’s French equivalent, Faismoijouer.com. Dan was very open to any suggestions and he proved it when he and Adrian accepted to let Barteld and I create a Tumblr dealing with life at the office. Later on, with Dan leaving for Wieden + Kennedy, I got to work with Bryan Hill as he took over the CEO position. We focused on development and new opportunities for Six to Start.
Like Barteld I enjoyed the atmosphere in a company that is very focused and innovative but that never takes itself too seriously. It was also an amazing insight in to the game and transmedia business, that will no doubt help me develop my expertise in this field.
