Category Archives: Projects

Midget = Good

3/19/2008 American 3 Comments

Every good game, movie, or entertainment product should have a high percentage of midgets. Just because. Obviously, Grimm is himself a “man of small stature” – more a dwarf than a midget, but in the same ballpark. “Little” characters like dwarves, midgets, trolls, and gnomes are found throughout fairy tale stories. This “Spear Midget” is a good example:

This guy appears in one of the Grimm tales simply to help a hero past a tough obstacle. Said hero is later murdered by his brother, negating the midget’s assistance… but hey. Little People often appear in fairy tales (and fiction/imagination) in order to explain the unexplainable, perform magical tasks, or to help/hinder a hero in a way that requires predictive knowledge. This guy just gives away spears.

Some days I wish a magic midget would appear and give me a spear.

General, Grimm

Naked = Evil

3/13/2008 American 6 Comments

When building episodes for Grimm our design team is faced with the constant (and enjoyable) challenge of dreaming up light/dark ideas for everyone and everything Player will encounter in the game. Things like grass, trees, dogs, houses, windmills, and fountains – all must be imagined, then rendered as conceptual images in a light and dark form.

When Grimm runs around the goal is: Make everything dark! And when everything is made dark, the story itself turns dark. Scenes are introduced when Grimm relates the particular story point we’re visiting – for example:

“LRC encounters a Wolf in the deep dark woods. No wonder sheâ€™s not afraid. I have cats that look meaner, and more dangerous.”

This is how Grimm sets up the scene where Red Cap meets the Big Bad Wolf for the first time. Player’s goal is then to convert the scene and the setting into their proper dark version.

Sometimes these conversions are obvious, other times they stretch the imagination a bit – and often they are downright hilarious. But then we also get the odd ones:

Naked is bad? I don’t agree, but then many (especially in the US) do. I suppose we’re reinforcing the concept by having “darkened” characters that are naked versions of their light selves.

Many have commented on the topic of nudity vs. violence in video games. Why is it OK to gun down armies of terrorists, bad guys, and aliens – but decidedly NOT OK to flash a nipple? Given a choice between real-world streets filled with violence or ones filled with nipples – I prefer the latter (it’s called Bangkok, btw).

Images like the one above are interesting because they’re likely to test the boundaries of “acceptable”. Were the image a concept for a children’s toy, would it generate ire amongst the conservative nipple police? Being a concept image for a video game, I suspect the tolerance for nipple-action is much lower. Note: The female character is stripped of her nippletastic badges of honor – but I’m sure she’ll still do psychic damage on the overly sensitive.

If the next GTA featured a photo-real naked Barbie doll would it be tagged as pr0n and pulled from store shelves? Likely.

Then again, give Ken a ‘gat and he simply transfers to the “action toy” section.

Grimm

Baby Roast

3/7/2008 American 2 Comments

Strange, it seems the Chinese government has suddenly un-blocked flickr. I guess those Pirate Children did the trick! Go evil children!

When playing Grimm you’ll likely notice an underlying theme of “animosity” towards children in the dark versions of the tales. Children are run over by carts, fall to their deaths, crushed by church bells, trampled by animals, drowned, burned, and otherwise mangled, mashed, and murdered in almost every episode. Case in point, a campfire that transforms into a roasting baby:

“Why?” you likely wonder. Well, one core concept of Grimm is that present day versions of fairy tales have been made too light. The teeth have been removed from them – effectively rendering their morals and messages mute. Until the threat is re-instated, what’s the point? And that’s Grimm’s mission in a nutshell: return overly-sweet tales to their original forms – full of harm, hurt, and revenge.

A few interesting tid-bits as example:

In the original “Pinocchio”, the character you know as “Jiminy Cricket” from the Disney version, is crushed and murdered by Pinocchio. (Yes, I know Pinocchio isn’t a Grimm’s tale.)
Alternate endings of Red Cap (Red Riding Hood) leave Red and Granny rotting to death inside the wolf. In some versions where they are rescued, the wolf is subjected to torture, mutilation, then drowning in punishment for his “crime”.
The original ending of Cinderella featured a gruesome revenge being visited upon Cinder’s wicked family: their eyes were plucked out by birds!

And that’s the thought I’ll leave you with today… treat your step-sisters/children badly, and you risk having your eyes plucked out by birds.

Grimm, Shanghai

Great Firewall of China

3/6/2008 American 1 Comment

If it seems things have been quiet around here there’s a reason. Well, a few actually. One, after returning from GDC I found myself swamped in catch-up work on Grimm and pre-production work on some new concepts. Two, the Chinese government decided to block access to Flickr via the “Great Firewall of China”. When I can’t see what I’m posting I get discouraged and don’t want to post in the first place. What’s up with that?

Well, to show my discontent with Chinese government policies regarding foreign operated photo sites, some mini-pirates:

As mean as they look I doubt they’ll do much to scare the Chinese government into changing their odd Internet blocking policies.

Grimm

Back in the PRC (2)

2/27/2008 American 1 Comment

Once again, I return home to China. GDC went great. The GameTap PR machine (driven by the very protective Wendy) lined up the interviews, and I did my best to knock them down. It seems everyone liked what they saw of Grimm – and press since the event has been nothing but positive. On top of it all – I didn’t get shot!

In celebration of the return to China, a Fire Gnome:

Bad Day LA, Grimm, Shanghai, Spicy Horse

Games For Windows – Podcast

2/24/2008 American 2 Comments

Games for WindowsÂ is hosting an audio interview they did with me during GDC:

Welcome to GFW Radio, the podcast homepage forÂ Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. Here, through the glorious magic of the Internet, you can listen to the GFW editors and occasional guests pontificate and yammer about all sorts of PC game related issues. Plus they might even break down on-air, adding an element of tension to the whole affair.Â

The Jeff, Shawn and the guys were kind enough to have me on so we could talk about things like Bad Day LA (what went wrong?!), doing business in China, Grimm, and my weird name. All in all, a really good “brodio”. You can find the podcastÂ here.Â Â