Dev Box Interview: The Jackie Button’s Creator Jackie “The Joke Man” Marling

Normally in our Dev Box interviews we profile someone that worked on the development of a game, but this week we are making a departure from that on all fronts. This week we are going to feature one of the creative minds behind an iPhone App – “The Jackie Button.” While it isn’t exactly a game, it had to go through a very similar creative and production process at Bolt Creative (”Pocket God”) as most video games, and Jackie “The Joke Man” Marling was the driving creative force behind the App. You may know best for his work on The Howard Stern Show, but he published a number of books, and cds. We tweaked our standard Dev Box questions to try to get inside the head of one of the best known comics around. Find out what he had to say about his career and “The Jackie Button.” [Continue Reading]

PS3 Episodic Comedy ‘Rat Race’ Comes Back From The Dead

It’s not often that a game comes back from being canceled, but it looks like that’s exactly what’s happened for the episodic comedy game “Rat Race.” The game, which was announced in late 2007, quietly faded into obscurity when the president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, was quoted as saying it was canceled at last year’s E3. However, “Rat Race,” which is being developed by Super-Ego Games, may be about to come back to life. Last week I spoke with Bo Lasater, one of Super-Ego’s co-founders, and asked him whether or not “Rat Race” was dead, and he responded with, “Is Rat Race dead? No, it is not dead. Is it 100% alive? Maybe the patient is coming out of a coma.”

So, if one of Sony’s studio presidents declares your game dead, and you say it’s just in a coma… where do things really stand? In terms of “Rat Race”’s future, things look pretty good, so much so that the first episode of the game could come out next week. But it won’t. Aside from being in the queue at Sony for certification, the game technically has no has yet to announce a new publisher to release it (”Rat Race” does in fact have a publisher), since it’s no longer a first party Sony title. [Continue Reading]