Prepping For Our Press Event

As some of you know, Twisted Metal gets to be seen and played by many of the gaming press this coming Wednesday night! Along with a whole host of American journalists that we are super excited and grateful to visit with, SCEE is bringing a heaping-helping of European writers to the event as well! We all know that Twisted has never been as big of a hit in the European territories as it has been in America. Hell, has it even ever been considered a 'hit' at all over there? I really don't think so.

BUT we feel with this version of the game we have a shot at substantially increasing the number of Twisted Metal fans all over the world! And this event is a great opportunity for us to reach out to these potential new fans (as well as inform and entertain the amazing fans we've already got).

So as you might imagine, we're very excited- and a little bit nervous (which I take as a good sign...kind of like butterflies in your stomach before you go on stage!)-about the chance to present the game to all of these very important people (the press that shows up and the gamers who read the press afterwards).

Anway, I WAS going to fly out to Utah last night so today Scott, Kellan, I, and the team could sit and tune driving physics, ramming damage, weapon damage hit points, and a whole host of other valuable tweakers and sliders. However, I hung back to work with Sony San Diego on some videos we will be showing to Wednesday night's press before each level/mode that they play. Sort of like what I did here at last year's E3 breakout session:



I thought this video- which we never intended for anyone outside of the press to see- did a great job of letting people know some more of the more intricate, tactical, meaty details of the game.  I was surprised-but very happy- that Giant Bomb captured and posted this breakout session.

And that got us thinking: because we're doing three more of these types of videos/presentations for Wednesday night, we should make sure they get filmed so after the press is done reporting what they want to from the event (we ain't gonna scoop the press at our own press event! :)...) THEN we'll toss the videos of me speaking OVER these 3 new videos onto the net.  Should be good: the press (and man, we hope they like what they see and play) - along with these videos being available to those who want to watch them- should really give people a great, thorough idea of what this game is and where it stands.

Sad part is, in order to get the videos locked, it means I have to stay in San Diego and do remote tweaking sessions with the team today. Remote tuning works great BUT it's nowhere near as fun and satsifying as sitting with the team and making the changes in real time.

ANYWAY- all that preamble and set up just to share this:

This is a part of the email that Scott and Kellan and I are using today to discuss outstanding issues still unresolved for the Wednesday night build. It also has a list of things we want to tweak and tune before the doors are forever closed on this particular press build.

So I just wanted to share a little behind the scenes 'making of' stuff from my perspective.

Ok- week is gonna be nuts! May not get to chat till after the event. Will take pics and write up my impressions of the event for an end of the week post, for sure. But if we don't get to talk before: have a great, safe, fun, productive week!

Talk soon-

David