The Running With Scissors team on Postal III
Feature
The Postal series has been widely regarded as one of the most controversial videogame series out there. We got in contact with the Running With Scissors team and asked them about the upcoming Postal III
Hooked Gamers: Hi! Thanks for participating in our interview. Can you introduce yourselves to our readers and tell us what your job is on the team?
Vince Desi, CEO and Executive Producer at Running With Scissors
Mike Jaret, Producer and Marketing Moyle at Running With Scissors
Steve Wik, Lead Designer and Senior Malcontent at Running With Scissors
Tim Wambolt, Gay Webmaster, Queer Mapper and Cinematics Homo at Running With Scissors
Joe Cerniglia, Concept/Marketing/3d Texture/ugly Postal Babe retouching/Anything else that needs to be done Artist at Running With Scissors
Jon Merchant, Multiplayer guy and Community liaison
Hooked Gamers: The Postal games are known to have some of the strangest use of weapons and objects in any game. In Postal III, you're looking to improve upon that slightly dubious honour. Where do you draw your inspiration from to do all this totally fun but incredibly whacked stuff?
Vince Desi: It’s a combination of real life experience in our youth and our different places of upbringing, some of us come from Tucson while I’m from Brooklyn, NY. Of course we must give homage to the influence of media –TV, music, comics, movies, and porn, sex and violence in the news :)
Mike Jaret: Personally I am from Tucson but my family is from Brooklyn as well. I have had a crazy background as far as shit ive done and shit I have seen....When I throw in ideas, I tend to draw on some of those crazy memories.
Steve Wik: A lot of it comes from wanting to make the player laugh and trying to give them experiences that other games haven’t.
Tim Wambolt: Most of my inspiration comes from playing a lot of video games, watching a lot of movies, sucking a lot of cock, and coming up with creative ideas and unique play mechanics to separate our franchise from all of the monotony in the industry lately.
Joe Cerniglia: I was dropped on my head as a kid.
Jon Merchant: Pretty much we all sit and ask ourselves 'what do we want in games that on one else would dare to do?' and go with it. Of course the bar just keeps getting higher, so we need to piss higher to clear it.
Hooked Gamers: What kind of whacky items or tools can we expect to be able to use to rain terror and devastation on the unsuspecting population of Postal III’s game world?
Mike Jaret: We have the Badger Saw...and the lab monkey....as well as a ton of other fucked up weapons...maybe youll see em someday!
Steve Wik: Don’t forget the killer bee hives and HIV cats! For some reason we have a lot of animal based weapons this time. The Dude is becoming sort of a psychotic Dr. Doolittle…
Tim Wambolt: POSTAL 3 if full of double sided dildos, strap-ons, buttplugs, gerbils and naked men speadeagle and cum stains on every wall. No wait, I’m sorry, I’m thinking about my bedroom.
Joe Cerniglia: Unbridled sarcasm...the most lethal weapon of all. Although I’m pretty fond of the monkey’s skull-f&^k move.
Jon Merchant: And for those that get off on electronic sucking devices, there is the Shop Vac that gives us an excuse to abuse the physics engine.
Hooked Gamers: We saw the game in action in Leipzig in 2008 and what you demonstrated there seemed to already be quite playable. Since then, things have been a little quiet around the game. What have you guys been up to in the mean time?
Vince Desi: Jerking off and helping the Obama administration work on health care reform, so pretty much we jerk off, and in between meaningless secret meetings in the White House we work our asses off on making sure that POSTAL III is the best it can be.
Mike Jaret: We didn’t show the game at Leipzig 2008....or wait maybe we did? Cocaine is a hell of a drug....
Steve Wik: I walked out of the health care meetings because I couldn’t get “O” to put in a medicinal Meth provision. And apparently Mike is from 1987 with his “cocaine” talk. LOL Next he’ll be telling you that we’re working on an Intellivision port of PIII…
Tim Wambolt: Mike Jaret does so much Cocaine that I get high just from blowing him!
Joe Cerniglia: Trying to pick the lock on my cage, eating questionable foods, and drinking heavily.
Jon Merchant: Waiting for more games to emerge so we can steal their ideas as above said drugs kinda hinder planning true game mechanics.
Hooked Gamers: So, we're not looking at an imminent rebranding of the title to 'Earl Postal: Forever' are we? Do you have a time frame for when the game will be finished?
Vince Desi: PC and 360 this year.
Mike Jaret: Mark my words....POSTAL III will be out when its done, which should be this year!
Steve Wik: LOL you guys crack me up. I’m sticking with Christmas 2013, one year after the world ends. Blame the Incas.
Tim Wambolt: I have no idea about any release dates yet, but as soon as Mike has an official one I’ll come out from under his desk to find out for you. And to spit.
Joe Cerniglia: Whenever the voices in my head stop.
Jon Merchant: If it's not out by the end of this year I'll leak a beta or something.
Hooked Gamers: The original Postal was played with an angled top-down view and Postal 2 was a first-person shooter. Why did you decide on a 3rd person view for Postal 3?
Vince Desi: For a lot of reasons, but mainly boredom and desire to do something new and different. For us POSTAL is an evolution in fun so we feel an obligation to deliver a product that will make you enjoy playing by yourself and with your friends, laughing your ass off and pissing in your pants, thats what i want for our fans and i do believe we will have many new fans when we offer this experience on console.
Steve Wik: yeah, partly because we wanted to do something different, and partly because we thought it would be cool to actually SEE all the insane shit the Dude is up to. But nothing is permanent, nobody’s saying we’ll never go back to First Person. Frankly, I’d like to do a classic-style 2-d sidescroller, 8-bit style some day.
Tim Wambolt: I like that old school cartridge idea Steve! Because like a console, I can only be turned on when something is inserted into me!
Joe Cerniglia: No idea. But I like soup.
Jon Merchant: Because I lost the vote in the office to have it first person! Although after playing the early betas, I was sold on the idea. Also, having it third person offers us some more scope for game play that would have not worked as well in Third person.
Hooked Gamers: This is the first game you make for the consoles. How has that influenced the design process and what difficulties have you had to overcome because of it?
Steve Wik: Surprisingly this hasn’t been a major problem so far. We’ve run some builds on the 360 and they’re looking good! We’ve encountered more issues trying to rework Source’s FPS weapon-targeting code into third person.
Tim Wambolt: Speaking of Valve, is it weird that I am turned on by that dude with the drippy faucet on his face in their splash screen?
Joe Cerniglia: None really. And Tim stay away from the back of my head.
Jon Merchant: Only in positive ways I think, having to make a game for a more casual market using the ideas that gave Postal 2 a pretty hardcore cult following seems to be paying off so far. Steve worked some magic in to the original design to make the more interesting stuff more obvious to players that don't wanna go pixel hunting and experimenting. I played and modded for Postal 2 for years before I found most of the hidden shit, and I'm still not sure I've seen it all.
Hooked Gamers: There are mixed messages going around about a PS3 version of the game. Will there be a PS3 version and if there will be; how will it be different from the PC and Xbox versions? And if there won’t be; why not?
Vince Desi: We want to have POSTAL III on all platforms, for sure we will be on 360/PC, and I personally want to see it on Wii as well as PS3. I don’t see any major differences between platforms, but of course anything is possible-could you imagine pissing in green or blue?
Steve Wik: I want to see PIII on Intellivision.
Tim Wambolt: PS, my Wii is micro soft.
Joe Cerniglia: If we do a Wii ver it’ll have to have questionable wii jock strap. “Wii-Pii” anyone?
Jon Merchant: I hope for a good, solid PS3 port that matches the framerates of the 360....