Friday, October 19, 2007

Livin' in a Mario World



I think we all remember the 8-bit awesome that was classic Super Mario Brothers. Most of us in Developer Ops have spent many hours immersed in the pixelated world of question marks, mushrooms, coins, and Koopas. So, when the cube decorating contest (the theme was 'Games') was announced, the course of action seemed obvious.

I recruited a few lieutenants and we had some brainstorming sessions -- complete with design docs sketched out on a whiteboard.



There would be two main areas - the classic Level 1 terrain and an underwater level. We took on this task with typical Google vigor -- 15 yards of blue cloth, 5 rolls of saran wrap, 10 pieces of posterboard, foam, lots of color printer toner, and a few afterwork hours/weekends later, here are some of the results.









They say that a good work environment increases productivity. Where better to seek inspiration than the hardest working plumber ever?

Living the dream.

Stephanie Liu
On behalf of the Developer Operations team

P.S. In case you were wondering, we came in 2nd to Analytics (their theme was Jumanji). They had a motion sensor box that triggered a tiger roar when you walked by though. It was pretty cool.

3 comments:

  1. Oh my, that is marvellous! <3 Mario. At my desk (open-plan office) I have to settle for sticking up lots of French poetry; Baudelaire helps keep me sane as deadlines pile up!

    I hope you had the Super Mario music playing on a loop too. Koji Kondo is a genius.

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  2. OMG. I want this at work. I have to settle for talking about Mario- http://www.convergentstreams.com/cgi/wp/?p=42 - I'm sad now.

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