ManagerJosh
10-10-2007, 02:17 PM
Make a game. Have fun in the process. Ship the game. And hope people have fun with what you made.
That's an ideal scenario for any game developer, even if the real world doesn't always cooperate. That's certainly what video game producer Rachel Bernstein hoped for when she got involved with "Sim City Societies." The new spin-off of the famous metropolis-making game brand is designed for players to cultivate not just buildings and roads but also the culture of a town, which they can make a romantic charmer or give an oppressive, Orwellian vibe.
But Bernstein was thrown off by a twist in the development of this game.
"When I arrived at EA and saw there was someone with a BP address on my e-mail threads I thought it was a joke," she told MTV News in an interview last month. She's a Californian, formerly a New Yorker ("You can probably guess my politics," she said), and here was the oil company formerly known as British Petroleum getting in on her game. But why?
"We really were interested in entertainment with a bit of education, rather than education with a bit of entertainment," explained Carol Battershell, vice president of BP Alternative Energy, an initiative that has committed $8 billion over the next 10 years to making plants that generate cleaner electricity via solar, wind, natural gas and hydrogen power. BP wanted to help shape the interactive power grid of "Sim City Societies."
Read More at MTV.com (http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1571531/20071010/index.jhtml)
That's an ideal scenario for any game developer, even if the real world doesn't always cooperate. That's certainly what video game producer Rachel Bernstein hoped for when she got involved with "Sim City Societies." The new spin-off of the famous metropolis-making game brand is designed for players to cultivate not just buildings and roads but also the culture of a town, which they can make a romantic charmer or give an oppressive, Orwellian vibe.
But Bernstein was thrown off by a twist in the development of this game.
"When I arrived at EA and saw there was someone with a BP address on my e-mail threads I thought it was a joke," she told MTV News in an interview last month. She's a Californian, formerly a New Yorker ("You can probably guess my politics," she said), and here was the oil company formerly known as British Petroleum getting in on her game. But why?
"We really were interested in entertainment with a bit of education, rather than education with a bit of entertainment," explained Carol Battershell, vice president of BP Alternative Energy, an initiative that has committed $8 billion over the next 10 years to making plants that generate cleaner electricity via solar, wind, natural gas and hydrogen power. BP wanted to help shape the interactive power grid of "Sim City Societies."
Read More at MTV.com (http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1571531/20071010/index.jhtml)