Grimm Sites Go Live

Two awesome websites go live today: The Official GameTap “American McGee’s Grimm” site, and the Spicy Horse Games’ “Grimm” site.

Gamasutra Talks to Rick Sanchez

Mmmm… burgers…

Gamasutra has a great line in their description of Grimm, and it’s one I wish I’d written myself (it’s so cute):
“… In between those tellings is an unexpectedly gameplay-driven experience that is reminiscent of Katamari Damacy in its dynamic - except, instead of rolling a ball around, you are (apparently) peeing on things and [...]

2404 - Grimm Interview

Recently I did an interview with Gareth Von Kallenbach over at “2404 - PC Gaming”. We talked about Grimm’s game play, challenges faced during development, and the episodic model production and distribution model.

GameInformer Grimm Preview, Q&A

Screenshot from Red Riding Hood

Jeff Cork over at GameInformer has a nice preview of Grimm along with a quick Q&A session where myself and Ken Wong answer a few questions. A preview of the preview article:
Playing as a horrible little dwarf named Grimm, players run around a fairy-tale land and ruin everything in [...]

Interesting Take on Digital Download

In this thought-provoking opinion piece, industry commentator Matt Matthews suggests that artificial scarcity of digital games - only making them available for limited times - could be a way to get the public excited about games.
Check it out here.

Exclusive Grimm Trailer/Intro at IGN

The Meat Box!

IGN is hosting a bunch of cool new Grimm content: videos, images, and screenshots!
In the videos you can see the latest Grimm trailer and the intro cinematic that starts each new episode. The intro cinematic has a great little song to go along with it, sung by Grimm himself. And the [...]

Countdown to Episode 1

I placed a countdown clock on the site to track the number of days until the release of “Grimm” Episode 1. July 31 2008 EST is the official time set by Gametap. Be sure to check the Gametap Grimm Site for updates in the coming weeks.

The Beginning of the End

Matthew Razak over at That Video Game Blog revealed in a post today that the new episodic game Penny Arcade Adventures has set a record for being the highest grossing debut of an Xbox Live Arcade game. The article says:
It must be good to be the PA guys. Not only are they basically nerd [...]

Grimm Outdoors

Flickr friend Static Eddie kindly sent along this photo of a Grimm outdoor billboard. This was spotted in Atlanta, near the Gametap offices. Nice to see Grimm getting some spotlight in the “real world”.

EA CEO: PC Gaming Growing

I’ve written a few times regarding my feelings about the “death of PC” as a gaming platform. It seems that every other interview I do I’m asked to comment on the health and future of PC gaming, and the PC as a gaming platform. Tired question. The math is simple. There are more PCs and [...]

Teddy Bugs = Hugs

Still cranking away on Grimm production here. The Chinese Government forced everyone to take a 3-day holiday at the end of last week. Actually, just a 1 day holiday on Thursday, then a “fake” day off on Friday - and here the whole country is back at work on Sunday to make up for that. [...]

Burnt Blacksmith

Today I’m working on the script and “scene listing” for a Grimm episode based on “The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was”. So I thought I’d post a bit of artwork related to that episode. Here you see the light/dark version of a blacksmith worker from the opening scene of the episode. [...]

My What a Big Mouth You Have

When writing design scripts for Grimm episodes we’re constantly challenging ourselves to present the most interesting characters, items, and locations. It’s sometimes frustrating how many generic “castles” appear in fairy tale stories. But we’re excited when a tale offers us the chance to explore a truly unique location, as is the case with this image:

This [...]

Roger Jackson - The Voice of Grimm

At the start of the Grimm project I had the idea that we’d manage to record 99% of our voice over work in-studio. Our office has a dedicated sound guy, a beautiful sound recording room, and everything else necessary for the task - except one thing: voice talent.
The team tried a few times to capture [...]

GameTap Hits 1000

GameTap just hit a major milestone: 1000 games on offer. News from Kotaku:
We knew it was coming, and now it is finally here. GameTap has reached the 1,000 game milestone, with none other than Sid Meier’s Civilization IV taking the honors as the landmark title. For those keeping track, that’s an average of 500 games [...]

Grimm on GameSpot UK

Emma Boyes over at GameSpot UK has put together a nice interview piece where we talk about Grimm, digital distribution, and life in Shanghai. From the article:
In 2006, McGee moved lock, stock, and barrel to Hong Kong and then on to Shanghai, where he set up his development studio Spicy Horse. From there, he and [...]

Grimmy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from GameTap!
To mark this dark day, they’ve launched the official placeholder for the official “Grimm” site. Check it out here.
And they’ve prepared a spooky Halloween card for everyone:

Life has been crazy busy, hence the lack of updates. Spicy moved into a beautiful new office. The Grimm project has been humming along. The team has really gelled and is cranking out beautiful work. And today we get to announce the technology we’ve been working with:

 
SPICY HORSE STUDIO SIGNS MULTI-TITLE UNREAL ENGINE 3 LICENSING [...]

The “Grimm” Logo

Behold it in all its glory:

The process for choosing a logo can be weird and painful. There’s conflicting opinions on the value of a product’s logo and packaging in general. Would “World of Warcraft” be any less successful if it shipped in a brown paper bag with “WoW” scribbled in crayon on the outside? Would [...]

Mainstream Download #2

Just yesterday I posted a note regarding the reemergence of downloadable content - and the relationship of this to casual games. Today I read the following news on Gamasutra:
Telltale Gets $6 Million In Investments
Sam & Max developers Telltale Games have announced the closing of a six million dollar round of investments from Granite and [...]