TAG ARCHIVE: LOS ANGELES

Greed Corp US press tour: Final day in LA

Tuesday, February 23, 2010DevelopersNo comments

Getting to Los Angeles from San Francisco by plane was easy, getting to our hotel was a little trickier. Instead of using a rental car, we ended up getting a cab. It took us to one of the most extravagant hotels in LA, but because we had to get up early and were pretty tired, we didn’t spend much time admiring all its peculiar details.

There was only one appointment for which we had to leave the hotel the next morning. So after a crazy taxi ride, including a Burnout-like near miss experience, we arrived at the studios of G4. They have these cool ‘ON AIR’ signs, including spinning red lights. Unfortunately we were not going to be in their television or web show, so we moved on to the capture room to once again play a match against an Expert opponent for recording. It’s really cool that all the playthroughs we had, including this one, resulted in some very diverse matches with different outcomes. Replay value is one of Greed Corp’s greatest strengths and I think that really shows in all the videos that have appeared up until now. Brian from G4 could certainly see that as well.

With the last on-site meeting now out of the way, we had to prepare for the last presentations in our hotel room. We asked the cab driver to stop by a supermarket, to buy some drinks and snacks. While Marco and Chris, our PR contact, went inside to get those things, I kept an eye on all our equipment and experienced an awkward eternity of silence between me and the cab driver. With way too many soda cans and bags of crisps, we went back to our eccentric hotel to set everything up. Up until now, everything went pretty smooth technically, but the hotel’s philosophy of form over function caused the first obstacle that could ruin our clean run. The televisions in our room were placed inside a large glass container, looking like a large reflective box until you turn on the TV. There were some input connections on the side, which were routed back to the TV itself. Unfortunately, the cables were apparently broken, so all connectors were failing.

Getting closer to the time of our next meeting, we called upon the help of the hotel’s technical department to get our Xbox 360 test kit working on the TV in the living room. We also had one in the bedroom which was operating perfectly, but despite our previous experience with demoing in bedrooms we thought it would be more professional to not do it there. So in came two engineers and their manager, to remove the entire glass facing of the designer TV casing. We confirmed that the connectors of the television itself were working, but the casing without its cover was not a pretty sight, with all the wires and such. Some very smart man fortunately added a hole to the bottom of the casing for occasions such as this one, so we were able to hook up the Xbox 360 directly to the TV. We did have to call the same guys in again to remove the plate once more, so we could get our HDMI cable back.

The setup was done just in time and we welcomed GamingEvolution to our not so humble hotel room. Those two guys had some nice questions about the game and other things, which resulted in one of the longest articles to come out of this press tour. When they left, we went straight on to our last appointment of the day, with nFamous, Coin-Op TV Live and GameTrailers. It was a nice meeting with an informal feel to it and everyone responded very well to different aspects of the game, the world and its characters. It was one of the best meetings we had during the entire tour and we went on with GameTrailers to shoot a video walkthrough of a match and an interview with me. Because of the practice we had with earlier recordings, everything went pretty smooth and you can find the very informative videos now on the GameTrailers website.

And that was it. Three days of hard work and three days of less hard work, checking out San Francisco and Los Angeles. Just like the one in the UK last year, this press tour has been incredibly rewarding. We met some famous reporters and saw some of the biggest TV screens you can get. The rain we got during our stay must have been some kind of record, but it was a nice trip none the less. All the responses have been nothing but positive and we’re hoping that will translate into some nice reviews and sales numbers. As the game will be released tomorrow, we won’t have to wait too long to find out.

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Greed Corp featured in Coin-Op TV Live episode 327

Friday, February 5, 2010NewsNo comments

Robert Welkner, host of Coin-Op TV Live, visited us in our Los Angeles hotel room during the US press tour a while back. Episode 327 of the show features the gameplay trailer of Greed Corp, after which Robert shares more information on it and tells you what he thinks of the game. He then goes on to explain how he experienced his visit to the strange but cool hotel where we set up shop, which is mostly in line with our own perception of the location. The Greed Corp item starts around 9:00.

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Greed Corp US press tour: Preparing in San Francisco

Monday, January 18, 2010DevelopersNo comments

Another year, another press tour. First it was the United Kingdom, now the United States. After the success of our visit to London, Bournemouth and Bath, I was really looking forward to showing Greed Corp to the American press as well and seeing how that audience would respond to the game.

It was a busy week before the start of this tour. So busy in fact, that I could hardly think about how cool it was going to be to visit San Francisco and Los Angeles again and get the chance to do this. On Friday, Marco and I left a little early from work to be able to pack, because we would be leaving the next day. Even though we would fly just before noon, we still had to get up early. Security checks are strict, so you have to be there a few hours before departure. Fortunately the trains were all running on time, getting on the plane went fine and the trip itself didn’t seem that long. We had a direct flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco, which took about eleven hours. It gave me the chance to watch The Informant and also the successful Dutch movie called ‘Komt een vrouw bij de dokter’, while Marco was having a laugh watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory. After the smoothest landing ever, we took the BART to our hotel right in the center of San Francisco on Market Street.

Because we got here on the weekend and work doesn’t start until Monday, we had quite a lot of time to do some sightseeing. Of course we started out with some Starbucks coffee and a cookie, while walking around the Financial District and Union Square. Having been there before, I convinced Marco to check out the Metreon. He described it as a tacky amusement park and I must admit that it’s just not the same without the PlayStation section and the specialized board game store that used to be opposite the arcade. From the Metreon, we followed the Bay Bridge to the coast. Then the jetlag set in. Our feet were done, we were tired and hungry. So we set out to get a quick and not so healthy meal, after which we went back to the hotel to play some Dominion. If we would’ve gone to bed before that, we would certainly have been wide awake again at three in the morning. Dominion is a pretty cool card game. Marco taught me to play it and I just barely lost the first match. We played another match just now, with some additional cards, and I was able to beat him.

Today we did some additional sightseeing in the city, starting at Fisherman’s Wharf. We walked there and then took the bus through Chinatown back to Market Street. Marco marked a couple of specialized gaming stores on the map, so after checking out the nearest GameStop we took the Muni Metro to West Portal to visit Just Awesome, a store full of popular and obscure board games and space to play them. Marco was especially looking for Thunderstone, which was supposedly not available or hard to get at home. Even through our Dutch, the guy running the store noticed Marco was comparing it to Dominion. Even though it might become a problem to fit it inside our luggage, Marco bought Thunderstone and the shop owner gave us some of his brand new logo stickers. We then traveled back to the hotel to rest a bit and to make sure the equipment we need to demo Greed Corp was working. We brought an Xbox 360 test kit from work, which has a European power block with a voltage to high for an American outlet. So to be able to even turn on the Xbox 360 and run Greed Corp, we had to bring a specialized, heavy power transformer. Fortunately, it all works perfectly!

I’m a pretty big fan of games like Catan and Carcassonne and playing Dominion and visiting the board game shop made me realize I should try out more board and card games. Greed Corp was inspired by a couple of these games and still has a similar look and feel. I really enjoy playing it myself, not just because I worked on it. Much like other board games I admire, Greed Corp continues to surprise me with new layers of depth and strategies I discover. I think it’s that quality that will interest people, with the land collapsing mechanic as the added value of Greed Corp being a digital game. Up until now, I think the press that played the game really got that and I’m confident we’ll be able to communicate that this week to the American press, starting tomorrow.

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