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An Introduction
Todd Slepian
Alone in the Dark Producer
Atari
Hi, I’m Todd Slepian, the North American Producer for Alone in the Dark working for Atari in New York City. The game is being developed by Eden Games (360/PC/PS3) and Hydravision (PS2/Wii), both of which are in France. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty of work for me to do here in the US.
It’s my job to help the developers and the European producers Nour Polloni at Eden Games and Maxime Loppin at Atari Europe with anything they need, from helping to coordinate game submissions and milestone dates with Cecelia Hernandez in our California office, providing build feedback, helping cast, attending and conducting voiceover recording sessions with my Boyz at Heavy Melody Music and Sound Design, working closely with our unsung heroes in internal QA (Hi Jason C., Jason G., Paul P. and Joe T.), liaison with Marketing, Sales, PR and Legal, to conducting demos and interviews with press and retailers, just to name a few of the things that I do to get the game released here in North America.
It’s been pretty crazy here lately, but we now see the light at the end of the tunnel and can’t wait to get the game in the hands of all you gamers out there.
For those of you who have been, if you’ll pardon the pun, “Alone in the Dark,” Infogrames released the first-ever version of Alone in the Dark in 1992, thereby creating the survival horror genre, and the title to which most other titles in the genre are compared. Hailed by critics around the world, Alone in the Dark forged a new genre of gaming, revolutionizing PC games in terms of both technology and gameplay. Since then, there have been three other versions on both the PC and on consoles, the last was released in 2001.
Our studio, Eden Games, wanted to resurrect the fabled and beloved Alone in the Dark franchise and had a few ideas running around in their heads. A few years ago their lead game designer Hervé Sliwa was in New York and he went for an ill-advised stroll in the park one night which left him scarred for life! So when Eden started putting together the design for Alone, there was really no alternative but to use Central Park for the setting. Also, they wanted to violently disrupt a well known and normally tranquil place, as this makes for a heightened sense of unease and dread in the player, and on top of this, it’s a massive area containing lots of different type of environments, making it a game designer’s paradise.
Once they started digging into the park's history they found a load of strange myths and legends surrounding it that convinced them that they'd picked the right spot. You can read some of these things at www.centraldark.com – there's new stuff going up there every week, some of which Eden stumbled on when they were doing their research.
From a design point of view the park is a city within a city with ice rinks, a museum, castle, boating lake, police precinct, and lots of untamed areas, so there was lots of great gameplay and environment potential for the designers to play with.
The park was mapped using GPS satellite data to an accuracy within 50cm, using the same remapping system used in Test Drive Unlimited. Then Eden visited New York and took thousands of photos of everything from the buildings to the lampposts, which their artists used to recreate the park in exacting detail, but adding an unsettling Alone in the Dark ambience to everything – taking the familiar and twisting it.
Well that’s about all I can tell you for now. I gotta get back to work! Check back in the upcoming weeks for more info about the game, the episodic structure and DVD chapter select feature, the technology, the main character and the story. Talk to ‘ya then!
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