Back from GDC

Fist Puncher at GDC
We made it back from GDC… somehow. We’re still decompressing, but the whole thing was a blast. We set up and demoed Fist Puncher in the GameSpy booth Wednesday through Friday (huge thanks to everyone from IGN and GameSpy that helped us get things working). We had almost non-stop gameplay going on, and we were able to get quite a bit of great feeback and a number of terrific suggestions on improving the game. But maybe the best was just jumping into a game of Fist Puncher with a crew of strangers and punching and kicking the heck out of anarchists, luchadores, and dudes with flamethrowers. Big thanks to everyone that stopped by to play. Sadly, since we spent almost all of our time demoing, we didn’t have much time to see the rest of the show. We didn’t meet Notch, weren’t able to get into a flame war with Phil Fish, and only had a few opportunities to play other games. Still, it was absolutely worth it. Getting Fist Puncher into the hands of actual, real-life gamers was incredible. For those who played, who was your favorite character? Dr. Karate, the Beekeeper, O’Grady? We’ll be posting some webisodes from GDC in the upcoming days so stay tuned. In the meantime, keep punching!

Team2Bit Virtual Trading Cards

A good motto in any type of conceptual development seems to be “stick with what you know.” During yesterday’s SafeBucks (you know, when there’s a Starbucks inside the Safeway) brainstorming session we kicked around the idea of integrating some sort of trading card scheme into our games. Like many children of the ’80s, we spent a good chunk of time buying, trading, and generally obsessing over baseball cards (heck, we even spent summers begging for stamps and packing letters full of cards in hopes of getting player autographs through snail mail). So, why not develop a fun little trading card framework that can be easily integrated into XBox games? With that being said, we are now officially working on our first set of Team2Bit Virtual Trading Cards. Collect ’em all and be on the lookout for appearances in upcoming games! And be sure to get a plastic sleeve for Dr. Karate’s rookie card.