Bryan Ekman

After making initial contact and securing financing, we proceeded to make our first demo from late January through February. We already had many assets completed, so we focused on level design and putting a package together. The first demo submitted to Fox contained the Lobby, Roof, and Computer floor with explosion and was non-playable. After about a month they got back to us two weeks before E3 and asked for a playable demo. We scrambled for a week and put together two office floors demonstrating basic hostage AI and some terrorist action. We sent the demo down ahead of our (now) scheduled meeting with Fox at E3.

Over the three days we met with our first producer, John Melchior, his AP, and Steve Bersch the President of Fox Interactive. That was when we made our first real impression and was the first step to sealing a deal. Steve is one of the coolest guys you’ll ever meet and to this day has been extremely supportive of our project, taking us under his wing. After E3 we took a break having just worked four months straight like madmen. Three or so weeks after E3, John got back to us saying everything looked good, except they wanted to see some work in a better engine. John went so far as to tell us there was competition, for the same product using another better engine. Truth be known, I think John liked us more and said that to give us something to drive us on to make a new demo.

down-below and basement. Fearing getting lost in the mail we requested to come down to Fox’s office (ironically located in Fox Plaza - aka Nakatomi Plaza) to demo the game. We spent a week in LA. Our first meeting was great, marketing, legal, Steve, John, Bruce, and some other producers and AP’s all sat down and watched us demo the game. We left feeling pretty good having received tons of positive feedback, except for one stick in the mud, which at the time was their technical director. He still felt we lacked what was needed to make a game so they asked us to flesh out the design documentation and return a few days later.

We spent the next two days in a Ramada Inn next to Highway 405 and put most of the game’s ideas down on paper. We returned, document in hand to the same crowd proving that we could design some cool stuff in a short period of time. We left Fox feeling on top of the world. And though we didn’t know for sure, strongly felt that we had a deal. We waited and waited, then finally word a few weeks later. It was a go. They asked for a budget, staff and milestone/payment schedule and we worked out the details.

Then came the dreaded silence.

We waited for the contract or letter of intent two long weeks. The day it finally came, all of us were in a state of depression going from joy to utter despair. Then after nearly giving up I checked my fax machine and there it was… the contract. In hindsight I think John and Megan (Fox lawyer), wanted to torture us so they held the contract for two weeks before sending it off. But you never know how things move really slowly in the corporate world. From that point on we found some great office space downtown, started recruiting people from Vancouver, Victoria and back east. By October 1^st 2000, we had a full time team of twelve and production moved on from there. Since then we have grown to over twenty and are in the last hours of the Nakatomi Plaza project. The future is bright and there will be some big news soon about Piranha’s next projects.

There was a shift in focus from more tactical to mass market 6 months into development, it was a difficult change, but we felt that the target audience would find a more action-oriented game more fun to play.

Nakatomi Plaza is based off the first movie only. There is definitely a strong possibility that there will be at least a second game. But that’s up to Fox.

First person generally doesn’t lend itself to hand-to-hand combat so we stuck to bullet-based weapons. There are some melee aspects like the axe and pistol whip, but that’s about it.

I’d be proud to have the mod community run with Nakatomi, though currently we have no plans to release any tools at this time.

No one has said anything to me personally. I’d hope people would see it as a way to get into the industry and look at us as a success story.

Self-direction is always easier, though things tend to take much longer. Having deadlines is really not that big of a deal as long as you hit your milestones.

Some are getting close. Russ and I have been working on Die Hard since fall of 1999 so it’s been 2+ years of analyzing the film and listening to dialogue.

You betcha… I’d fear for my life not putting it in. =)

All of the original film terrorists are in place. Plus we’ve added seven generic fodder types and several new bosses.

Our AI focuses mostly on combat, leaving a lot of the searching and such to custom events put in place by scripters. The combat AI is very in-depth, capable of dodging, rolling, sidestepping, using cover, leaning, and checking line of fire.

Better in some ways, different in others. We’re happy with what we ended up with.

Tons. We have at least one or two scripted sequences per level.

A lot of effort went into the cutscenes and some have even been cut because they interfered with the game flow.

Both. Though we’re leaning more towards the heist aspects.