Heaven Games Invades Big Huge Games

Day 2 (Mar 19, 2004) - The Battles

Having Lunch at Local Hangout

After a rather long day on Friday, we decided to meet Graham for lunch at the BHG office. So shortly after noon, Graham arrived and we went up to the BHG to check our emails, and make plans for lunch. John Fitzgerald and Zero "Jimmy" Dean (artists at BHG) happened to also have showed up at the office, so the three of us from Heaven Games plus Graham "Thunder" along with the two artists all went to lunch at a local pub. During lunch, we had a lot of good discussions on a variety of topics. The artists were very interested in our impressions of the game, and what we thought were lacking. We did our best to put forth some of our own pet peeves and the common complaints we hear about on the forums. Some of the ideas we emphasized were a closer zoom, better scripting and mod support, covering each age in more details.

Graham and Socvazius playing pool

They were also interested in what the three of us at Heaven Games did in "real-life", and what our other hobbies were. We found out in the course of this conversation that John Fitzgerald is a big movie buff, and also into rock climbing along with a others at BHG, while others were into martial arts. He claims that the staff at BHG is probably one of the fittest game development companies in the industry. Maybe we will see a Game Developers Olympics one of these days after someone else reads about this claim.

During much of lunch, Zero Dean was playing text messaging tag with what seemed like his legions of female worshipers. His nickname being "Jimmy Dean", the 50's actor and heart-throb, seems appropriate enough!

Gaming in the "War room"

After lunch, John and "Jimmy Dean" went off to do their own thing, while Graham and the three of us returned to the BHG office for some serious gaming. We decided to pair off for some 2v2 action. Since Socvazius and Zen had the least experience with the expack, we decided one of them would team up with Graham, while I (One_Dead_Angel) teamed up with the remaining Heaven Games guy. We had 3 games in a row, and each time I got Graham on my side of the map. First, it was me and Socvazius against Zen and Graham. Next it was Me and Zen against Graham and Socvazius, then again back to the me and Zen against Socvazius and Graham. This turned out to be a big mistake on my part! Graham being a fairly good player (He did beat Brian Reynolds at E3 before the game came out) and a rusher, proceeded to rip me apart like a pitbull on an old rag doll! All I can say in my defense is that at least I am carrying on the tradition of previous RON Heaven webmasters getting thrashed by the BHG staff. Zen was surprizingly good for the lack of experience he had with the expack, while Socvazius found that the Romans seemed quite to his liking in the expack compared to the original game.

Socvazius Happy About the Win

Next we decided we might try a Barbarians at the Gate game. Graham played the "civilized" nation, while the three of us played the "barbarians". Graham started one age ahead. Again, Graham starts attacking me first. This time only because he happened to scout me first, but since he had to worry about the other two, his attack wasnt as bold so it didnt succeed. Eventually he was being attacked by the three of us from all sides. He managed to hold us for for a bit but in a lop sides game, if he couldn't take one of us out early, it was an eventuality that we would win. This is the only game Graham lost all day!

ODA perplexed

Then we decided to take a break from the expack, and tried our hand again with Battlefield Vietnam. If you're into first person shooters, I would recommend this game. We played within the company LAN, over the speaker phones in the offices against the computer with a 5 to 1 odds against us. It was crazy and fun, but sometimes on some maps impossible! After a few hours of this we decided to return to some RoN expack.

ODA, Socvazius, Graham and Zen

Knowing better then to challenge Graham again. We decided to play some 4 vs 4 against the computer opponent. We set it on 2 tough and 2 moderate, but that was too easy. We played again, and tried another game with 4 tough AI's. We still managed to beat the computer, but by this time it was getting late, so we decided to go around the office to take more pictures before we wrapped things up.

BHG Office Building

Graham showed us around each of the BHG staff offices and we took pictures of anything that looked interesting and said something about each of the development team. We said our good-byes and walked back to our hotel. Graham said we can come visit anytime, so I hope we will get a chance again soon. But if I knew that early I would've just got a tent and just camped out at their parking lot! :)

Stayed tuned for the details from the interviews. In the next weeks, we will have transcripts and downloadable sound files of over 4 hours of interviews!

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