On VJISP

Hey folks, I'm Joe. Matt Pierson and I run this show in association with a guy called Brian. You may know me as guy who flew Gabe Newell to Australia or guy who invented Shotgun Sunrise or guy who made a pretty good Left 4 Dead campaign.

So not long ago, the UDK came out. That's exciting. I'm excited about it.

For a while now myself and Matt Pierson (also of Shotgun Sunrise fame) have been planning a game called Velociraptor Job Interview Simulator Pro, and so when UDK came out, we basically decided to go ahead and make the game on that, instead of Source as had previously been our intention. This has the advantage of us being able to sell it when it's done - though it will not be expensive.

We've teamed up with a few guys from the Penny-Arcade forums (again) including Brian Gefrich of Blue Planet Games and we've made a pretty good chunk of progress for how long we've been going. We have our velociraptor fully modelled and being animated, our third-person camera, our Suspiciometer and our conversation system are up and running, and we're cranking out a lot of assets for the design that's been more or less complete for quite a while now. Basically, this game is going to rock your socks the hell off, so probably keep a backup pair on your person in case you can't find the ones you were wearing after the initial shockwave.

We'll be keeping the development process fairly open, and will make posts on this site pretty regularly showing our progress and keeping you guys in the loop.

Although we're planning on selling the game when it's completed, we're starting from nothing and working for free. None of us is in an ideal financial situation. If you want, you can donate to us. It would help a lot.

"Now wait a bit, if this is a commercial endeavor, what are the donations for? I mean, I'm not against commerce, and I'm not against the Internet supporting awesome people and helping them do awesome things. (See: PA nearly ten years ago.) But if you're making a profit then you're kinda asking for tiny quantities of venture capital from The Internet. Right?"

Since this is a commercial endeavour, there are inevitably going to be expenses involved. The donations will go into an Impromptu Games PayPal account where they'll stay until they're needed - for licensing UDK, for licensing whatever other apps we use that require licensing to be used commercially (Things like XSI or Max or Crazybump, for instance), setting up a website, maybe moving our SVN hosting to a better service than Brian's garage, Unforeseen Expenses, actually registering a company down the line, that kind of thing. If someone's power is about to be cut off we can talk about using money from the account to help them pay their bill. We're not looking to spend your money on hookers and blow. We're also planning on recognising donors in-game in some capacity we're not sure of yet.

The donation button, anyway, is at the top of the page.