So we hit our deadline to get everything into the DLC by Wednesday night -- and now we're taking a little longer to test and polish. Our Cert date is scheduled for October 4, and it feels like we're in pretty good shape. If everything goes smoothly, the game should be ready for download about 3 weeks after that -- maybe even sooner!

This is actually my second-favorite phase in the development cycle: You've got all your content in, everything works, you COULD ship with what you have -- and then you have just a little more time to play it, turn it back and forth, polish off rough edges here and there, and look for any and all ways to subtly improve it.

When I tell people I work for a video game company, and they say, "Oh so you get to sit around playing games all day?" -- well of course not. But this last polish phase is the closest we ever come to that shining ideal.

Of course, we still have to work with what we have and there are about a million things I wish we'd had time to do -- but I'm proud of what we've got and I think people are really going to like it.