Welcome to Wrestling Gamers United Newsletter #353
1) Level Up 2) Talking to Pirates 3) Salvage
1) Level Up **********************
Our programmer Bill is going to be a happy guy. He's had really big plans for over a year now to do something special regarding levels in wrestling games and it looks like he's going to get the chance to explore his ideas. This new side project I've been talking about is moving ahead quite smoothly and a big part of the budget has to go to level related design and programming. This is good news for PWX because all of the technology we develop for this side project is perfectly portable to PWX as well. It's really developing into a huge win/win opportunity for us on so many levels. Just this last Monday I sent in the formal proposal I prepared (with some nice grammatical polish by Eric) and to say it was well received would be an understatement. I got a call right away the next day from the people guarding the permission gates for the proposed project and they loved it. They say it's been the talk of the organization and that we should have no problem getting the green light to go ahead.
This whole thing is coming together so perfectly that it's hard to believe.
2) Talking to Pirates **********************
PWX Uprising will ship no drm. Why bother? Other indy developers are starting to think the same way:
http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html
We barely have the resources to make a game let alone monitor and stamp out piracy. There are other software companies that gave up on anti-piracy measures and none that I've spoken to have regretted their decision. One company even sells their software on the honor system for crying out loud. They'll give it to you for free if you promise to pay for it within 12 months. How cool is that? Do people abuse the policy? Sure. But so what? People are going to pirate and steal games no matter what you do to try and stop them (Spore anyone?).
3) Salvage ****************************
Two of my favorite games of all time had no licensed characters but the people who made the games went to great lengths to create the most unique and interesting characters that they could. Those two games are the fighting game Eternal Champions for Sega Genesis (Jetta for X-Division!) and the car combat game Vigilante 8. In fact, if you have a 360 check out the newly released Vigilante 8 Arcade that brought a tear to my eye when I heard it was first in development. Now if we can just get that rumored No Mercy update for Wii. Anyway, my point being that if you care enough about something you can make it special. I'll take Vigilante 8 over WWE Crush Hour any day. Hell I'll take a chipotle enema over Crush Hour.
That being said we hit the mark with some characters (Tirador, Troop, etc.) and maybe have room to improve with some creations (Canadian Destroyer, G-Rush, etc.).
Chipotle Enema...
In the meantime and in-between time, that's it. Another edition of Wrestling Gamers United.