 STEVE'S GAME DESIGNING PAGE
(Hollyware/Accent Media) (9 CD-Rom's/630 page script)
|
 |
| FILMS: 25 features completed from my scripts since 1992 (out of 40-50 sold) and I co-produced BACKFLASH for Dimension Films (I also wrote a few uncredited early drafts of the script) - the border to the left includes a few examples of my films, but you can click here if you want to see my screenwriting page).
POSITION DESIRED: (Also open to internal dialogue and/or manual writing contracts) |
 |
Electronic Arts' BATTLECHESS
and Interplay's CHECKMATE
"There is a darkness over the battlefield. The wind sighs gently and there, in the distance, comes the flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder. With a sudden gust of wind, your warriors appear: The King, the Queen, two Bishops, Knights and Rooks,and before them all, a row of Pawns. Waiting, your King turns to you, ready to order his servants forward to their deaths in your battle to rule the field. Yet you hesitate. In that moment, you hear the clank of armor as the wind grows stronger, and somewhere nearby, there comes the sound of metal upon metal as one of your warriors draws his blade, impatient for the coming slaughter. Suddenly the thunder crackles overhead and lightning flashes shadows upon the checkered board. The storm is upon you, and so too the battle. You make your choice --- a Pawn marches forward against the darkness opposing you. And here, the battle begins . . ."
I wrote that. I also wrote the actual text of the manual (although I shared the writing credit with my best friend, Bruce Balfour, his contribution was in setting up the deal in the first place, and then inputting the chess games used as passwords back in those pre-CD Rom days, while I did the main body of the manual)(of course, even at that time, he had already completed his design for the award-winning NEUROMANCER game for Interplay, and would eventually go on to design the best-selling OUTPOST game for Sierra, among others). That manual, to this day, is still the ONLY document in the world that can teach you ALL the basics of chess PLUS guarantee that you won't fall for a "Fool's mate", and do it all in under 25 pages. Which means I'm kind of proud of this one (which would subsequently go on to be used as an Appendix in Interplay's CHECKMATE manual, which I also wrote, albeit uncredited, but the BATTLE CHESS manual in the appendices is kind of a giveaway as to authorship).
Another thing I'm very proud of is my design for BLUE FURY . . .
Hollyware/Accent Media's BLUE FURY
BLUE FURY (Hollyware/Accent Media). This was a VERY unique first-person shoot 'em up that took the player along as a partner with a special agent/super cop (intended to be portrayed by one of the top "A" action actors) on an all-out street war against the Columbian drug cartel as they move to assume total control of the streets, here in L.A. (said actor, by the way, was originally intended to be Chuck Norris, which is why I've got that picture up there, and this was announced a number of times in the film trades like the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER --- a quick search of their back issue archives will come up with the appropriate articles).
Designed way back when, it incorporated elements of strategy and police crime solving with the more traditional first person shooter view of the world, giving the player a unique and intelligent game that required some thinking and planning along with the expected hordes of bad guys (a few hundred of them, to be exact) that you would have had to blow away en route to victory.
Some of the other unique features of BLUE FURY included a computer within the game (accessed as a videoterminal from inside your specialized, souped up sports car) that allowed you to link up to police headquarters in order to access criminal records, analyze information, etc. (subsequently, Westwood Associates came out with something similar inside their BLADE RUNNER game)(*sigh* So much for our innovation).
Of course, the whole business of working side-by-side with a major Hollywood action star in itself was rather unique, but even better was the plan to actually film the project in 35mm and use actual filmed footage of both locations AND the bad guys instead of the usual computer generated stuff, literally giving you a look just like reality (how we were going to do this, of course, I can't tell you, but my dual background in film and computer games kicked in here to come up with something totally different).
The biggest problem with that approach was that video of that sort takes up an unholy amount of space on CD's (we calculated for about 74 minutes of video per CD) plus there was a perception that this was one of those "interactive movies," which it most certainly was not (again, if comparable to anything, BLUE FURY was intended to be a completely unique and intelligent first person DOOM III variant that had a LOT more features than anything that had ever proceeded it, including strategy elements, a chance to interact with a major movie star plus the opportunity to help him blow away something in the area of 200 bad guys, and that used actual live footage as opposed to computer-generated animation).
The end result of the video storage problem was a design that called for nine (yes, nine) CD's (it would have been about two or three DVD's today) and a script that came out to 630 pages (which would have made it the largest videogame in history at the time). The final projected budget was in the area of $6-10 million (which was kind of high for a videogame back then), and that kind of budget ultimately became one of the bigger factors in stalling the development of the game (and the company getting into financial troubles itself didn't help much either), all of which kind of motivated me to get back into films when the game didn't really go much further. That said, however, I'm still very much open to the gaming side of things, so . . .
I'm always open for another designing gig, either in-house or as an outside contractor, and I'm also open to internal dialogue and/or manual writing contracts. My preference, when it comes to games, is obviously the first person shoot 'em up (again, think DOOM III, QUAKE IV, a gazillion others), not only from the design perspective, but from the playing perspective --- I've collected nearly every first person shoot 'em up ever made, and I've played most of them all the way through (after wading through ten or fifteen thousand levels of first person videogames, plus completing a design for what could have been the largest first person shoot 'em up ever created, I kind of have a feel for the genre). My extensive film background (again, just click here to see those credits) also can obviously be of a huge benefit to some designs (for instance, the BLUE FURY design absolutely could not have been done without my film background) . . . and, almost needless to say, I'm also intrigued by the idea of simultaneously creating a film and videogame based on the same concept at exactly the same time (an obvious possibility that was discussed when we were working on BLUE FURY, and, completely separate from BLUE FURY, I've been working on other film/game concepts that could be developed at the same time - ask me about them).
So if you think you or your company might find someone with my skills to be useful, do please drop me a line by clicking on the email right here: 
I'll be looking forward to hearing from you.