Monday, November 08, 2004

FrauenPower


Major Rachel Rutherford
Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault
PC game


Check it out -- I'm immortalized. I first found this character, named after me, about a year ago. There are only two game designers in the world who would do this: Ben Palmer or Gregor Whiley.

Or possibly, one of the guys at Beam who worked with Ben years ago, when I gave everyone toy guns as consolation-prizes after Microsoft cancelled our game. The guns were incredible -- about four feet long, intricately made out of heavy black plastic, with big blunt foam-tipped bullets and a handle you could pump ten times to maximize how far they'd fly. They were strong enough to fly eighty feet -- down a hall if the ceiling was high enough, or across one of those field-like, 60-desks-in-one-open-area rooms. We took them down to the parking garage to have wars.



I bought fifty of these guns at Toys R Us, during the Computer Game Developer's Conference, then enlisted help to fly the 4 hockey bags of armament back to Australia where I, and Beam, lived. Ahhh, yes, the days when I spent my salary on weaponry instead of theatre props. Not much has changed.

Anyway, I appreciate the homage. Here is where I found the image.
====================================
Several hours later

At the time, these toy guns were the perfect gift. They made us laugh, gave that little "ooo" of a good toy, were an outlet for disappointment & grief, and became legendary. Now, though -- in light of Iraq and our wretched political situation, suddenly it doesn't seem so amusing to see a little drawing of a gun in an American's blog. :(

I comfort myself, however, that Ben is English and Gregor is Australian. I have evidently left some positive imprint of Americans.

3 comments:

Just Me said...

Brilliant! You could beat Laura Croft any day!

Rachel Rutherford said...

My own philosophy is, "Walk softly and live by your ethics." A person of integrity is respected everywhere.

It was heartbreaking, to have that game cancelled. We had all the rare stars aligned -- a brilliant game designer, an equally brilliant 3-D engine guy, two hot & aligned producers, and a publisher with the funds to build it. It's like picking up your cards and finding a royal flush.

But then Microsoft decided that every game had to be X% more profitable, and ours didn't make the new cut. We needed a mourning ritual.

And, to take a little more responsibility -- I think by my living in Australia, I wasn't at home at headquarters in Redmond to protest and defend the game, so it was an easy game to cut early.

Requiscat in pacem, Mustang.

Scott said...

Now I'll have to see if I can find the game for sale...