Category Archives: General

Bad Day LA, General

Bad Day LA – Fan Site & Terrorist Weapon

6 Comments

Wow, that was fast! A BDLA fan site… and not bad looking either.
Check it out
Also, stay tuned, we’ll be launching the official BDLA website soon.

In order to help build awareness during E3 we decided to hand out “terrorist weapons”. These were nail clippers that were manufactured in mainland China, had our BDLA logo and “BDLA 9000” logo afixed to them, and then shipped to Hong Kong. (See the image below) From there I lugged 130 pounds of them to the US in my checked baggage. I had to separate the load into two bags, so each bag ended up at 65lbs. 130lbs in one bad was like trying to pull a dead body around inside of a suitcase!

In Hong Kong no one even looked twice at the two unmarked 65lb brown cardboard boxes containing the deadly cargo. Some guy slapped some “HEAVY” tags on the bags and waved me on. Once I got the to US it was a different story. After collecting luggage I passed through customs. That went something like this:
TSA Guy: You live in Hong Kong. Me: Yes
TSA Guy: You’re a game designer: Me: Yes
TSA: Guy: You’re coming to promote your latest game title: Me: Yes
TSA Guy: And what are you bringing into the country? Me: 130lbs of nail clippers.

At that point the TSA guy did a sort of double take and then demanded that I explain myself.
I felt it would be unwise to tell him the truth, that the nail clippers were used as a weapon in the game and that the whole joke was in the game precisely because of the TSA. I tried to avoid the subject, just saying they were for promotion. He was having none of it.
Ultimately he questioned me into a corner and I had no choice but to fully explain what was going on. “They are used as a weapon in our game, the whole thing is a joke on the TSA, etc, etc.”
I thought for sure I was going to end up on a plane to Guantanamo Bay.
Instead, the guy took a beat, looked at me funny and then began to laugh. He asked if he could have a nail clipper.

Buoyed by this experience I made the mistake giving the second customs guy a straight answer about my name.
TSA Guy #2: Huh, that’s a cool name, how’d you get that?
Me: My mom smoked pot.
He neither laughed, nor asked me for some pot. He just glared at me and told me to move on.

Well, at least one guy working at the airport has a sense of humor.

BDLA9000

General

One Million

56 Comments

An anonymous source at Electronic Arts just informed me that Alice has passed the 1 million units sold mark. Very cool. I wonder what would have happened if there had been a PS2 version…

alice

Bad Day LA, General

Bad Day LA – First Look

10 Comments

Gamespot is running a first look of Bad Day LA featuring an interview with me along with screenshots of the game. Bad Day LA is my latest game project currently in development with Enlight in Hong Kong. Now that we’ve made the first announcement expect to see more updates on the project here and through other outlets.

civilian damage

General

tokyo ho!

4 Comments

myself and ken wong will be visiting tokyo to do pre-production/research for a new game title. we’re looking for people in tokyo who would be willing to meet up, go out, talk about the city and its culture, and generally be our guides. if you’re living in tokyo and this sounds interesting to you then please contact me via email at (the japan trip is over now. thanks to everyone who met with us and helped us out while we were there!)

General

advergaming – super jack

7 Comments

recently game developer digital steamworks was kind enough to work on a proof of concept for a bit of advergaming called “super jack”. the idea here was simply to show a potential client what a game based on their brand might look like.

working known brands into viable video game ideas isn’t as simple as you might think. the brand has history, the brand has an identity, and these things must be protected. while i might think it funny and worthwhile to see company x’s mascot brandishing firearms and destroying bad guys, that sort of concept usually won’t fit with the image the corporation is trying to project about themselves and their product.

with a pizza chain like dominoes for example, one of the first ideas that pops into your mind is “a game about delivering pizzas!” this concept immediately creates an issue though: reckless driving to deliver pizza eventually causes destruction and death. some pizza chains were forced to stop advertising “30 minutes or less” by lawsuits that claimed this sort of guarantee wasn’t in the public’s interest.

so games built for brands like nike, jack in the box, or diesel have to take this into account while still delivering a play experience that is compelling enough to draw people away from “feature” quality games released by top tier game publishers. it seems that part of this is solved by creating smaller games (time-wise) of equally high quality. these tv commercial sized games can be played a very short amount of time, enjoyed fully in that time, and potentially replayed many times without becoming dull. i know this is possible because of things like deathmatch quake… a single level can provide hours of “repetitive” fun.

check out the digital steamworks jack video by clicking on the image below.
contact murray at digital steamworks if you want to speak to the developer that did this animation using the unreal engine.

jack

“jack in the box”, the jack image, and all related materials are (c) jack in the box inc, 2005.