I’m heading back to Shanghai from San Francisco. Sitting at Narita, waiting for my connecting flight – I saw that Grimm was mentioned in USA Today:

 If you think Shrek wreaked havoc on the Disneyized version of classic fairy tales, wait till you see American McGee’s Grimm. The former id Software designer and programmer (Doom,Quake) re-envisioned the Alice in Wonderland story in his 2000 computer game American McGee’s Alice. Now, at his Spicy Horse studio in Shanghai, he’s finishing a series of 24 episodic games, each an individual story from Little Red Riding Hood to Cinderella. 

I’m mystified by my sudden elevation to “programmer” at id – I did write minor code, but my title was never anything more than level designer. Anyway, I’m happy to see Grimm getting a positive reaction in the press. During GDC the game received a tremendous amount of positive praise. I’ll collect together more articles and mentions once I’m back in the office… 

Gamespot and Kotaku are running news of the release of the Grimm trailer. Gametap has also updated the Grimm site with new content – the trailer and some screenshots. Check it out the Gametap Grimm homepage here. To celebrate the occasion, a duck with a broken neck.     



Btw, Kotaku crowd: American McGee loves you too. 

In San Francisco this week for the Game Developer’s Conference. The trip from China was uneventful. It’s been a year since my last visit to the US. I’m struck once again by how *bright* the world is. It’s as if someone has removed a filter from the sun. I remember that sunglasses aren’t just a fashion statement – they’re a necessity. Another thing I noticed as I walked around the streets of SF today – how *diverse* everything is. People, cars, bikes, buildings, and even dogs. Everything screams, “I’m different”. As if being different isn’t different at all – it’s normal. Can one distinguish himself by being mundane? Anyway, being back in the city by the sea, I’m reminded of pirates. So you get pirates: 

  

As we’ve been writing episodes of Grimm it’s becoming clear that Grimm likes pirates. Then again, who doesn’t? They go “arrrg”, sail around on cool boats, blow things up, and get to have hooks for hands. What’s not to like? So expect more pirate stuff in the future matey.  

I’m going to watch American capitalistic pig-dog Tivo. I was really starting to miss that “boo deep” “boo boop” sound.  

Today’s image is a Hell Hound. A flaming good example of something cute and cuddly becoming evil and scary when influenced by Grimm’s dark power. I particularly like NPCs that vomit various elements – flame, puke, blood, etc.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we create a lot of concept artwork. There are a total of six concept artists currently working on Grimm. They are, in order of appearance, Nako, Yuan Shao Feng, Ben Kerslake, Tyler Lockett, Wang Shen Hua, and Ray. Together they crank out dozens of new images every week. To date they’ve created over 1000 unique concept images to drive asset production for the game. That’s enough images that I could release 2 per day for the next 500 days… even if they stopped creating art!

As it happens, we’ve just reached concept stage on our 12th episode. That means we still have another 12 episodes to produce artwork for. So there’s at least another 1000 pieces of artwork to come. By the time these concept art machines are done we’ll probably have well over 2000 unique bits of artwork inspired by the world’s most famous fairy tales.

Hmmm… makes me wonder, what sort of interesting things could we do with all that artwork? Certainly, it can help to drive early awareness of the game. But then, what? I’ve always been a fan of big, glossy “Production Art From…” books. And then there’s t-shirts, coffee mugs, and tattoos. What other good use can you think of for all this wonderful art?