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.

Hello Fire Hose friends.

Perhaps on Halloween you stumbled across an article on Kotaku about how you, yes you, can play BioShock Monopoly for free. If you did not see it there you might have seen it on GamesRadar, GamePro, or The Escapist . There are other sites that it is appearing on as well….

As it turns out this board game was not made by a 20 something art student in Canada, as some sources are reporting, but was actually created by your’s truly.

It may be hard to believe but I like BioShock.

This is me, dressed as a Little Sister, holding onto Songbird while standing next to Delta across from Elizabeth.

Before coming to work at Fire Hose I taught at a charter school called The Renaissance School for the Arts. There I taught a class about the art of video games. We studied video games and their place in Ludology. As an assignment I asked students to create their own board game versions of video games. The board circulating around the internet was my example to them.

The board was made both for the purposes of my class and in conjunction with a challenge issued by some members of the 2K Forums.

To make the board I spent a lot of time playing BioShock. I wanted to make sure that this was not just Monopoly with art plastered over it, but an experience that would remind players of Rapture. I started by looking at how Monopoly was set up, with the least desirable properties at the start of the game board and the prized tracts of land situated at the end; I sought to mimic this.

People that look at the board will notice that the first properties are BioShock 2′s Limbo Room and Sinclair Deluxe both of which are found within Rapture’s skid row; “Pauper’s Drop.” As you travel the board the properties become more valuable based on their fictional in game location or fan popularity. Some concessions were made, (I wanted Monopoly’s Marvin Gardens to be replaced with Arcadia due to the garden theme), but for the most part the game board mimics the original as far as property values are concerned.

The railroads have been replaced by various scientific ventures. Now you can buy Fontaine Futuristics, Ryan Industries, Sinclair Solutions, or Tennenbaum’s Safehouse.

Waterworks and Electric Company have also been replaced by Raptures two favorite vending machines: Circus of Values and El Ammo Bandito.

No more Chance or Community Chest– now it is Power to the People and Swami. The sites that featured the game board on Halloween mention that there are no cards to go with these spaces….

But I beg to differ. 

The jail space features the officer splicer Ducky, and free parking sports a Bathysphere.

I may have been very thorough with my game board.

Even the money was given a BioShock treatment.

And that is how the BioShock Monopoly was made. It was made by a chick that works here at Fire Hose games.

It took me several hours to make (I would rather not admit how long) and I am very pleased to see that after being on the internet for quite some time people are still enjoying it. ^_^

**Getting back to those Swami and Power to the People cards… The cards clearly do exist and we are going to be posting them on the Fire Hose blog in the very near future!**

Let me introduce myself, my name is Kate and I am the new Community Manager and resident Gal Friday at Fire Hose Games. What does that mean for you? That means that you will be seeing more updates, more exclusive Fire Hose games information, and more interaction between Fire Hose and their fans than ever before.

The party has started and it is here.

There is so much that I want to talk about– Slam Bolt Scrappers is more than likely the best tower strategy meets brawling match up I have ever played and there will be lots of news about that title coming up soon. (Speaking of which if you haven’t played SBS yet why not go ahead and fix that over at the PSN store? ^_^ ) Go Home Dinosaurs is ridiculously fun and educational. (Did you know that dinosaurs were, in fact, made of bacon? True story.)

For my first post though I just want to say hello and tell you a bit about myself… By which I mean I will provide a quick rundown of the games I am playing that were not created by Fire Hose. ^_~

I am currently playing RE4 on the XBOX 360.I am also dabbling with Atlus’ Catherine and am looking forward to both 2K Games’ XCOM and BioShock Infinite from Irrational. I am also a big fan of Twisted Pixel’s Mr. and Ms. Splosion Man. I am especially fond of Ms. Splosion Man singing bits of Spice Girls songs. ^_^

Everybody loves to splode.

I enjoy several different types of games from platformers and RPGs to puzzle and FPS style gameplay– if there is a controller or a computer screen involved I will more than likely play for hours on end ignoring all basic human needs for nutrition until I have gotten all endings, achievements, trophies, or other spiffies.

I am also relying on video games to get back into shape and am currently moving and grooving my way to a better me using Harmonix’s Dance Central as a key piece in my exercise strategy. (Hey, did you know that Dance Central is actually part of the Fire Hose portfolio? It’s true!  …. maybe I can get someone here to fix it so that Poker Face shows me loosing 6,000 calories per round…. ^_^ )

There may or may not be footage of me on Youtube dancing around to Maneater with a blindfold on.

So, that is a bit about me. I look forward to getting to know all of the Fire Hose fans out there and providing you with heaps of news, exclusives, pictures, videos, the works! If you have a question or comment drop me a line or find me on the Fire Hose Facebook Page or the Fire Hose Twitter. ^_^

Egg on our face time!

I’ve gotta own up. Last week at the post mortem talk about Slam Bolt Scrappers I misspoke and inadvertently misrepresented the current state of Gamebryo. I said that it was dead, which is not the case – in fact it the engine is very much alive and is still in development thanks to Gamebase Co., Ltd. What I should have said during the talk was that the uncertainty of the future of the Gamebryo engine is what had us concerned.

I apologize for the confusion that my misstatement caused. Working with Gamebryo on Slam Bolt Scrappers was an absolute pleasure and Emergent (and more recently Gamebase) went above and beyond in terms of being a good partner for our studio. I’d definitely recommend the engine to any devs looking for a great cross platform solution for their game.

Whew! I feel better. Time to go play some Mrs. Splosion Man. That game is awesome.

The one man powerful enough to make video games develop themselves, Ichiro Lambe from Dejobaan, needs your help. He’s been involved with some shady business lately, and as of yesterday afternoon, I think it’s finally caught up with him – he’s completely disappeared. Was it the mob? His secret dealings with shadow governments? An alien abduction? Friends, I believe it may be much more sinister than that.

Ichiro’s been keeping me posted on the Valve PotatoFoolsDay ARG, which has mysteriously involved a few of his games (The Wonderful End of the World, Aaaaa!, and 1 2 3 KICK IT).  I’ve gotten plenty of updates from him over the course of this ARG (or is it real?) as he continually linked me to sites reporting new discoveries in his games.  Yesterday, things finally got weird.  He sent me a link to this confidential document begging for help.  I was all, “Go on…” and Ichiro followed up with, “Right bef,” and that was IT. THAT WAS THE LAST I HEARD OF ICHIRO.  Needless to say, I’m very concerned.  He was obviously saying, “Right before…” but right before what? WHAT WAS THE END OF THAT SENTENCE?

Intrigued? You should be.  Jon Myers and Darren Torpey have done a MUCH better breakdown of the whole situation on the Boston Indies site, so have a look and figure out where Ichiro is hiding (or has been taken).  Remember, tweet with the tag #whereisIchiro so I can follow all the developments on Tweetdeck without actually searching for anything.

And we’ll be at Boston Post Mortem tonight so come say hello if you see us.

Hit the jump for a collection of all the Ichiro related image memes I’ve seen on Twitter today (Warning: There is a potentially offensive Bear Grylls image meme, so proceed with caution).

Hey Scrappers,

So, we’ve been getting a bunch of fan mail. Pretty awesome, right? The post office actually sends a second mailman to our office each day with an entire truck full of letters just for us. Well, some of them are probably bombs, so we open 25% then throw the rest into the Charles River to be safe.

Getting fan mail has been really eye opening. People have made a few suggestions (*cough*onlinemultiplayer*cough*) about SBS and I wanted to see if their ideas generally ring true with the rest of you, so I’m going to post one of our first pieces of fan mail. Let me know what you think about these suggestions in the comments below.

To the dudes at Fire Hose games:

Slam Bolt Scrappers is really, really fun. I downloaded the demo on Tuesday the 15th, bought the full game almost immediately after, and have been playing it ever since. So first and foremost, I want to say THANKS for making such a super fun game!

My girlfriend and I have started playing a version where it’s 1 on 1, and you aren’t allowed to attack the other player; we are having a great time with this variation, and it’s given me a couple of thoughts:

1. The “monster” (green ninja) powerup is waaaaaaaaay overpowered in regards to being able to decimate your opponent’s tower in seconds.
But more importantly,
2. The game itself would also be incredibly fun if you could turn off the brawling, and just let it be “my tower vs yours”.

Thanks!

Tyler

Thanks for the letter, Tyler!  So, what say you, dear readers? Is the monster power-up unbalanced? Should we add a mode where players can turn off fighting? We crave your feedback, leave it in the comments.  Before you do that, though, I stumbled across this gem earlier today:

WHERE IS MUSE FOR SLAM BOLT SCRAPPERS??

-Eric

I’m not sure what he’s asking for, but you can find the music video to Knights of Cydonia by Muse here.

So, there you have it, folks.  Is the green monster power-up overpowered?  I’m particularly interested in this concept of playing without fighting.  Do you guys want that?  Would that mode make the game better?  I haven’t tried it myself but I think I will now.

Remember, we also love hearing from you by email (info@firehosegames.com), FaceBook (http://www.facebook.com/FireHoseGames), and Twitter (@FireHoseGames), so go ahead and talk our ears off!

As Alec noted last week, Issue #1 of the new FF series (the successor to Fantastic Four, now that Johnny Storm has been killed, penciled by Steve Epting) shows Franklin Richards (son of Reed and Sue) playing a video game he has just lost, and that game is Slam Bolt Scrappers!

The shot is from SBS circa Fall 2010 (after PAX Prime, when the health bars were vertical instead of horizontal, many months before release).

Here is the actual image they found on the web and used!:

And here is a side-by-side of the comic art and the original:

As far as we can tell, they set the Hue (in Hue/Saturation) to 180 and then the Cutout filter was applied (before the non-SBS text was overlayed).

In the process of unraveling this, I started playing with the Cutout filter and the Hue/Saturation of other shots from the game. Here were some of my favorites. What do you think? Any of these worth a spot in the Modern Museum of Art?

And the ultimate question: Are the results as cool when this is tried in other games, or is it only in the splendid chaos of Slam Bolt Scrappers?

–Jason

P.S. Hey Steve Epting: next time you are in Boston, come visit us!

Hey readers! Now that Slam Bolt Scrappers is out on PSN (didn’t you hear!?), a lot of fascinating, new stuff has been happening at Fire Hose. To quickly touch base with everyone, I decided to pose a simple question: “What’s something you learned today?” Responses were pretty interesting and varied, so they seemed worth posting here. Without further delay, here are a few things people at Fire Hose learned yesterday.

Eitan: No matter how cool it looks in video games, motion blur pretty much always looks terrible in still screen shots. And Amazon web services has a free tier if you want to try out cloud hosting for free: http://aws.amazon.com/free/

Ethan: I learned that putting stars in a level makes it more fun for the players and the developers.

Jacques: Thinking ahead. Organizing and Prepping files for fast turn around, for projects that may be due the same day. If you carefully think ahead, and take the time to know the ins and outs of your current project, you can save your self time and headaches that occur when not being prepared for a deadline.

Alec: TIL that if you have any doubts about how well an image “reads,” you should trust your instincts and take action to improve the clarity of the image.

Jeff: People are doing some interesting things with smart cameras, like the Predator:

Sharat: There is a walking quadruped robot called BigDog:

So, that’s what we learned. What’s something you learned today?

Back to the controversy! Jason flips the book open to a page where the FF crew and some alien children are gathered around a TV playing a game. They are losing. OBSERVE:

ZOOM.

ENHANCE!

This does, in fact, appear to be a screenshot of an early prototype of Slam Bolt Scrappers – probably the build we showed off at PAX Prime 2010. I’ve highlighted a few items for my case in the picture below.

The first thing to jump out at me was the HUD on the left side. That is almost exactly the same as the HUD we had in the prototype we showed off at PAX Prime 2010. On top of that, there appear to be many different colored squares. Furthermore, in the bottom right, there is a T shaped piece of colored blocks, which is quite common in SBS. And if you really look closely, on the lower right side, there is a green circle in the middle of a square shooting a line at the other blocks. Looks a lot like our purple laser guns… but green! IT’S SBS I TELL YOU!

So, there you have it. It looks like a trendy artist put an image of SBS on a TV in a Marvel comic. Heck yeah! #WINNING.

EDIT: I found this old screen shot from PAX East 2010 (courtesy of SpawnKill) that shows our old HUD. Looks pretty similar to me!

While we’re obviously ecstatic about the release of our game, there’s some serious stuff going on in the world that is probably a bit more deserving of attention at the moment. By now I’m sure you’re all aware of what happened in Japan the past few days (and what’s going on now with reactor worries). There are some great game led efforts to raise funds going on, and they’re worth a look.

Cat from N4G has put together a good list of sites you can donate to that are doing relief efforts now. Brian Crecente from Kotaku is putting together a concert/auction/party type fundraiser in Denver in a few days too, and we plan on donating some SBS stuff for the auction as well. Definitely a great cause.

Let’s move on to some more fun news now. Our friend Jason McIntosh (the Warbler’s Nest) wrote a great piece about us scrapping (get it? get it?) the early designs for our game here, and it’s a terrific read.

Also, next week I’ll be posting a 5 part series on the design process behind SBS, with each day Monday – Friday exploring in depth a different iteration of the game, what we cut, and what we kept. If you care about game design at all you’re going to love it, so be sure to come back next week! We’ll have videos, images, and lots of details on the tough choices we had to make.

Finally, did you know that there is a fantastic twitter account for Professor Farnsworth? Apparently it’s just a bot that retweets any tweet that starts with “Good News, Everyone!” and it’s awesome.