Since moving to our new offices back in September Spicy Horse has been limping along on a REALLY SLOW Internet connection. It’s felt sorta like a tin can connected to a guy in Mongolia who’s using smoke signals to relay packets to a shoddy Russian satellite. That’s on the days that it worked.
But those days are nearly at an end. Behold, the fiber line:
Ok, maybe not that exciting to the rest of you. But in our eyes this jackhammer trench across our parking lot shines like the Holy Grail.
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 a year over the course of the service’s two-year life.
Head over and check out what they have on offer…
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 his team have been working on Grimm, a retelling of some of the best-known children’s fairy tales. Action adventure Grimm will be coming in 24 episodes, initially released for the PC on the GameTap digital distribution service and follow an episodic, TV-style format, complete with cliffhangers to keep gamers downloading. Fairy tales getting the McGee treatment will include Rapunzel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White. The first episode is due in spring 2008.
To read the full article and see a bit of exclusive Grimm art, head over to GameSpot UK.
My head spins to think about everything that’s happened in the last year. On this date 1 year ago I left Lamma Island, Hong Kong and moved to Shanghai. The intent was to help my buddy Xin start his outsourcing company Vykarian, and to launch a new game studio of my own called Spicy Horse.
Both goals have been achieved, and many more. Looking back, I’m impressed by how much has been accomplished in such little time. Spicy’s core development team is now at 26 people, being supported by 19 artists from Vykarian. The Grimm project has gone from fuzzy concept to solid reality at an amazing rate – thanks to a great team and good technology. And most importantly, the people involved in these ventures and projects are happy and full of excitement for the future. It is truly a good time to be in China.
For this next year it’s my hope that the studio will pick up another production. Ideally, we’ll continue using UE3. And this time around, I wouldn’t mind working on a larger-scale console project. Episodic production is challenging and uniquely satisfying, but playing titles like Bioshock gets me excited about the possibilities for a large-scale dark fairy tale action/adventure on 360. We have some concepts out there, and I’m hopeful… besides, it’s a beautiful morning in Shanghai…
