The Battle of Marathon

Kratos is coming to the small screen in a big way come March and I had a little something to do with it as part of my new venture Short Short Super! I formed Short Short Super back in October 2007 with the intention of working as a design consultant and my first client was Ready At Dawn on God of War: Chains of Olympus. It always feels great to ship a game but this one was a little more special since it was the first along my new path in the video game industry. Big thanks to Ru Weerasuriya, Eric Koch, and Allan Becker for putting their heads together to make this happen.

The only thing better than finishing my first consultant gig would be great reviews and that is the case with a current average of 9.4! Perhaps this will help my client list grow but hopefully not too much, I do enjoy a little sleep now and again…

Congratulations to everyone at Ready At Dawn on an amazing game and continuing the God of War franchise, Dana, Mike B, Mike D, Max a.k.a. Code Bug, Tony, Derek, Phil, Jeremy a.k.a. Captain Cuddlesworth, Garret, Jerome, Carlo, Marc, Ru, Melissa, Jo, Nathan, John, Rachid, and everyone else I am forgetting, thanks for making my time down there amazing and good luck on the next great thing from RAD!

All while I was working on GoW:CoO, I was training for the Los Angeles Marathon. So each night after tucking Kratos and pals into bed I would be running the streets of Irvine at around midnight to get in my training miles. Oddly enough the city of Marathon is represented in the game so I had Marathon on the brain day and night. Well my fiancée and I will run 26.2 miles of Los Angeles City in our own little Battle of Marathon at 8:15am this Sunday!

Oh yeah GDC happened last week as well and it was my first time going because I am usually knee deep in the development process. Most of the time I hung out with people that I have not seen in a long time so that was cool but I was cheap and did not attend the sessions so I guess I missed out on the real GDC experience, maybe next year.

Derek and I got some one on one time with SF4 and that was pretty cool, even got to speak to Ono-san via translator/producer extraordinaire Ben Judd. We told Ono-san how Kratos has a lot of Street Fighter in him and he laughed wildly then said something like “Capcom needs better lawyers” which made us all laugh. The game is beautiful in motion and promises to bring back what has been long lost. I played a lot of Zangief and that was my GDC highlight!

Derek playing Ono-san, nice photo Seth!

Citizen Cupcake was my fuel while running the Embarcadero at midnight, marathon training never ends. Seriously I had so many cupcakes up there the girl remembered me and even gave me some on the house to bring back to April the last night of GDC. When in the Bay go eat some cupcakes, lemon was my favorite!

And the winner is...

Good job Will!

So it's official no one reads this thing, not like that was a big surprise! Due to that sad fact the judging was quite simple because there was a single entry.

Valentine's Day Contest!

Ok kids here is your chance to win a limited edition God of War: Chains of Olympus T-Shirt (pics below for the impatient) made exclusively for the Ready At Dawn team members, well at least they told me that anyhow. The guys were kind enough to give me one for my help on the game but it is a little too big for me so I figured what the hell let someone win it!

What does it take to win you might be wondering, well it is simply. Create a Valentine's Day Card using God of War as the theme. The Card must be in JPEG format and must be received by 11:59pm PST on Thursday February 14th. You can enter as many times as you wish!

Send all entries to iheartkratos@gmail.com

The judging panel will be myself and a signed glamour shot of Cory Barlog!

The winner will be announced around 11am PST on Friday February 15th.

I know the time frame is short so no complaining because we all know you slackers work best when under pressure. Plus think about it you can use the card to hand out to those loved ones in your life as well, it is a gift that keeps giving. Good Luck!

DISCLAIMER: The contest has no affiliation with SCEA or Ready At Dawn Studios.







p.s. click pictures to make them all big and stuff...