Joe Martin – Product Marketing for Startups

Update: Unlimited Hyperbole is no longer available. There are two episodes preserved by the Thief community on Youtube which are linked in the episode index, however other episodes have since been lost to time.

One constant in the games industry is that any one success necessitates a sequel. It was true for Zork in the 1980s and it’s true for Dishonored now too; the law of the franchise.

Professor Brian Moriarty has bucked this law throughout his entire career however, leaving titles such as Loom, Wishbringer and Trinity as standalone hits rather than sprawling series. He’s also worked on a staggering number of unreleased or cancelled games, including unseen Indiana Jones and Star Wars games. In this episode, Brian discusses why he left those titles and the industry behind.

Unlimited Hyperbole is a short podcast about videogames and the stories we tell about them. The show is divided into seasons of five episodes, each with a precise topic. This time we’re talking about ‘The One That Got Away’ – but to find out more, read after the jump.

So.

This is the season I’ve been wanting to make almost since Unlimited Hyperbole started, if I’m honest. One of my big frustrations with games journalism has always been that there isn’t more of an effort to properly explore the past – we get the occasional retrospective, but usually we’re more focused on what’s coming soon than learning about what went before. Those who don’t understand the past are doomed to repeat it, etc.

On that topic, here’s a self-aggrandising plug for my old pieces on Eurogamer, by the way. Ahem.

Much as I could easily slip into games journalism manifesto mode, that’s not really the purpose of this blog or these liner notes. Instead, I’ll just give you some links in case you want to do further reading about cancelled or unreleased games, then remind you to tell your friends about this show. There are four more episodes to come over the next four weeks and at the end of it the show’s future will have to be decided!

• Images from Brian Moriarty’s The Dig
• Rogue Leaders: The Story of Lucasarts
• Cancelled LucasArts Games
• The Cutting Room Floor
• Unseen 64
• The UT Videogame Archive
• The Big List of Postmortems
• What Went Wrong? – A Gamasutra Special

It’s good to be back. Tell your friends.