How many folks out there, who work in game dev, have ever put your bosses in the game. I ask because a great many of the avatars up for sale in Whirled resemble Daniel James, Three Rings CEO. It got me to wondering, did the guys at Bioware make up Ray and everyone up top at Bioware in the character creation? Are there some folks from Capcom’s staff wandering the mall in Dead Rising?
I’d imagine there are also bosses and janitors and office moms in games as enemies, NPC’s etc.
So, if anyone out there knows of a story like this, post a picture and a tale, eh?
Or am I insane and this doesn’t actually happen much.
There’s a lot of internal staff name references in Dead Rising. Crislip’s Supermarket, for example, was named for David Crislip, who was the localization lead on the game. Other stores also refer to people within the company.
I’m not sure/don’t think there are any likenesses for zombies or anything…
Well, I know using names or nicknames of fellow employees used to be fairly common. Almost all the classic Ultima companions and NPCs are based off Origin employees and friends, for example. Actually modeling characters after a person’s RL apperance, though, might be a more recent development given the advances in technology.
Everyone in an big name game I worked on was named after an employee. In fact, we all had to sign forms written by lawyers that gave irrevocable rights to use our names and likeness to the publisher in perpetuity across all platforms then existing or to be invented.
They even made me sign such a form on behalf of my cat, whose name was used, despite the fact that he was dead and unlikely to sue.
And then, ironically, if you refused to sign the form, they put you in anyway.
Not that I’m bitter…
Wow, so you just sign away your rights to anything when asked? If so, I have some very tedious forms I’d love you to sign, don’t worry about reading what they say dude.
It was pointless legal paranoia to keep idiots in jobs. They were worried that we would sue them if our names were in the game without a signed form. ironically, one of the coders was called james brown. We asked what would prevent the godfather of soul from suing anyway, but never got an answer to that.
Well, as much as we all hate and joke about that kind of shit, it’s all fun and games until someone goes bitter or greedy or whatever and does actually sue and screw everyone.
Like them morons EQ volunteer GMs.
Just use a bit of white-out and ensure that the form relinquishes your rights to use in the GAME and/or ports only and not for the next blockbuster movie or so some CEO can charter a plane on your name or anything.
He also does like to sue. I mean, he was the one who sued all the rappers who sampled his music to make tunes in the 80’s and established the practice of clearing/licensing of samples.
Wouldn’t you, technically, be able to sue for your name being in the credits at the end of the game if this whole legality thing were real? I mean, it’s your likeness…
While I have yet to physically reproduce friends or co-workers in any of my games - RTS titles being less than optimal for that sort of thing - I did accidentally manage to get my dog his own Mobygames page…
Sad thing is, if they included average Metacritic across all titles produced, his would be better than mine.
Game developers appear in games all the time, whether it is their likeness or just their name. Unless it’s a megahit that spawns all kinds of revealing articles and interviews, you’ll probably never know or realize it.
