Deep in Hatfield farmland, HitPoint Studios, a video-game production company, has taken root

MassLive has also covered the great article The Hampshire Daily Gazette wrote about us recently. (This version prominently features Pat’s ginger mug, and we’re quoting Dorinda’s excellent robot line for this excerpt.) Take a look over here!

One of HitPoint’s major clients is HipSoft, the firm that licenses the Build-a-lot series.

“We approached them in Seattle with a variety of pitches,” said Hake, “underwater versions, outer space versions, even a Monopoly version of Build-a-lot. Then we pitched the concept of an Elizabethan-era game. It required a bit of research – the geography of Great Britain of the times. Pat King and Tom Gale made some sketches, and we were on our way.”

Their “Build-a-lot: The Elizabethan Era” download game was in the top 10 on iWin.com and Gamehouse.com for more than a month, and it held the number-one sales spot for nearly a month on iWin.

“It’s an enormous hit with women,” said St. John.

“We pitched them a concept and created everything from the ground up,” said King. “Coming up with dialogue for Mr. Monopoly was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.”

Project manager Dorinda Bell-Upp often serves as arbiter to artists and programmers. “They don’t always talk,” she said, “that left/right brain thing.”

With ideas constantly coming to life and Rage Against The Machine throbbing from speakers, being in the middle of this beehive of imagination is never boring. But the future is upon you before you can even process the present.

“It’s such a changing industry,” said Bell-Upp. “It’s been said that six of the 10 most popular careers 10 years from now don’t even exist. I might be fetching coffee for robots.”