Category Archives: Events

At this year’s Child’s Play Auction Dinner Fire Hose Games was pleased to donate the oppurtuinty to have your name placed into our game. This was accompinaned by a framed piece of artwork created by our own Jacques Pena.

We are happy to announce that the winner of the auction, with an impressive personal donation of $300.00, was number 520, Don F.

We will be in touch soon, and will share updates on the blog!

For more information on how you can donate to Child’s Play please visit their website.

This holiday story belongs to yours truly, and it is less of a personal tradition than it is a story of a time honored ritual that I walked into, unknowingly, when I took up a job at the fine dining establishment known as Hillbilly Junction.

I worked as a server at Hillbilly Junction, a combination gas station, gift shop, banquet hall, buffet, steak house, and eatery when I lived in Willow Springs, Missouri. It was a mystifying place and a rather magical time in my life. A time of change, a time of reflection, a time of half off bacon cheeseburgers during any evening shift.

Yeah, that’s me rocking a Hillbilly Junction apron. Hillbillies Holla!

But never was Hillbilly Junction more entertaining than at Christmastime. Right after Thanksgiving, Jani, the manager, would pull out boxes upon boxes from the storage/liquor closet and open them with care.

Dust,  and tiny bits of yellowed Scotch tape filled the backroom like an allergen blizzard as Jani went through each box gingerly removing the holiday decorations. There really was a feeling of joy and astonishment as the restaurant, usually decorated in a “Tex-Mex” style, was transformed into a winter wonderland (mostly by putting hats and wreaths atop the wild game on display throughout the place.)

This is my first Christmas in Massachusetts, and I doubt that I will find any Christmas taxidermy to make me feel at home; but a girl can hope.

Nothing says fine dining like taxidermed animals. Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like covering those animals with poinsettias.

If you find yourself in Willow Springs, Missouri this holiday season, or at any point in your lifetime, be sure to stop by Hillbilly Junction; home of the John Wayne steak and a heck of a great staff.

The holidays are fast approaching, and with them come days steeped in tradition.  There are plenty of time honored rituals that demand reverence… this is not necessarily one of them.

Instead we will look at the home-spun tradition of Adriel; Fire Hose Programmer and resident Unicorn Tamer.

About ten years ago Adriel’s step-mother thought it would be keen to have her family create Christmas ornaments from scratch. Gathering up glitter, glue, construction paper, and other craft essentials, the family made several ornaments including some terrible looking reindeer, an awful angel (the angel’s head is a gatorade bottle cap with a smiley face drawn on), and some ‘actually pretty decent’ snowflakes.

Enraptured in the merriment of ornament creation, and more than likely tapping into some sort of Martha Stewart magic, the family soon came to the inevitable conclusion that they would construct a paper taco.

“We combined our efforts to create tiny little strips of green for the lettuce, red for the tomatoes, yellow for the cheese, and all sorts of other ingredients.”

-Adriel

The result was a thing of beauty: the Christmas Taco. Every year it is placed front and center on the family Christmas tree.

A teenage Adriel places the angel atop the tree directly above the awesome Christmas Taco. This is an actually old photo. No Instagram here. Photos just used to look like this after they were developed from ‘film’. Weird, right? 

We will be looking at some other Fire Hose staff traditions over the next few weeks. Do you have a wacky holiday tradition that you would like to share? Tell us about it on our Facebook page or send a tweet our way!

The Child’s Play Charity Auction and Dinner is happening on December 8th 2011 in Seattle, and Fire Hose has a pretty sweet set of items for the auction block.

Before we tell you about that though, how about a bit on Child’s Play?

Child’s Play was started in 2003 by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins (you may know them better as Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade fame) in response to the media’s negative portrayl of video gaming culture and of gamers themselves. The two called the gaming community to arms and asked them to donate to the Seattle Children’s hospital during the holiday season.

In that first year the charity raised over $250,000 worth of toys, games, and other gifts; the charity has raised nearly 10 million dollars to date.

The goal of Child’s Play is to positively impact the life of a child through the power of play. Tonight you can bid on items donated by people throughout the gaming community the proceeds of which will go to Child’s Play.

Last year we auctioned off a limited edition poster signed by the dev team and the oppurtunity to name one of the characters of Slam Bolt Scrappers.

This year we have donated the opportunity to immortalize yourself in our game, Go Home Dinosaurs! The winning bidder will get to see his or her name as a dinosaur, on a store sign, on a badass weapon, or something so cool that we have not thought of it yet.

The winning bidder will also be given a one of a kind drawing from Jacques Pena as well as a copy of the game.

Not going to the auction? No worries! You can still donate to this great cause by following this link.

People attending the auction tonight will have a chance to bid on this ridiculously awesome piece of art penned by Jacques Pena!

“ As an artist, there are creations that fall under a greater a message, and this one was a major one. Out of anything I create over the next year, this one will always be special.”

-Jacques Pena

Fire Hose Games artist, Jacques Pena, has just returned from Autodesk University, the annual Autodesk conference in Las Vegas. It was at that conference that the Art For Hope exhibit made it’s debut.  

Artists from all over the world were asked to participate in the project. One of the participating artists is our very own Jacques! (we imagine his lack of bragging is due to jet lag)

VIZ Media announced the project several months ago. In a unique collaboration with Autodesk, the Art For Hope project is a limited edition digital anthology which features forty pieces of original art. A selection of the pieces were displayed during this year’s Autodesk conference.

The anthology will be available for a limited time, from December 1, 2011 to May 31, 2012, for $4.99 through VIZManga.com and the VIZ Manga App for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. 100% of the proceeds go to fund Japan relief efforts.

Jacques created, “Love,”  the stunning piece shown above, using Autodesk SketchBook. You can read more about his process on his blog, here.

The digital book made its debut this past week and is available now for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, or for web browsers.  It is on sale through the Apple App store and through VIZ Manga.

Buy it here: App Store | VIZManga.com