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Welcome to Godzilla: Unleashed
By Shelby Stair Wills
Producer, Pipeworks Software
Hey everyone, this is Shelby Wills. I’m the producer on Godzilla: Unleashed for the Wii here at Pipeworks in lovely Eugene, Oregon. We’ve teamed up with Atari once again to bring you the third installment in our Godzilla brawler franchise. This time around, we have created everything from scratch, designed everything specifically for the Wii, and we’re really excited about all the new technology and techniques that we’ve been implementing for this game. I’ll be updating this blog about every two weeks to give you guys some insight into the development team, our game development processes, and to give you some behind-the-scenes looks at what’s going on with Godzilla: Unleashed.
To get started, I should tell you about our office, because it really reflects how we like to work here at Pipeworks. Game development is really an extremely collaborative and creative process, and so we like to keep a really open flow of communication going. To accommodate this, we have a very spacious, open layout. All of our developers work together in one main room, with no cubicles here! The few dividers you’ll see are there to reduce glare on the artists’ monitors, not to keep wandering producers away – or so they tell me! 
And, of course, nearly every wall and every desk at Pipeworks sports some Godzilla memorabilia. We have action figures everywhere; we have posters; we have concept art; we have Sunday morning cartoons that reference Godzilla posted on our refrigerator; we have a giant plastic lizard torso stuck on the wall above the bathrooms. This is what really struck me on the first day I walked into Pipeworks’ office two years ago – it is really apparent that everyone here has a passion for Godzilla, for making games, and for working at Pipeworks.
Pipeworks’ love affair with the King of All Monsters started back in 2001, when we teamed up with Atari to create our first Godzilla brawler, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee. At that time, we all knew of Godzilla of course, but we had no idea how we would come to know and love the Toho universe over the course of creating our three Godzilla games. Some of us (I’m looking at you, Simon) can now recite, in detail, the back-story of each and every monster, whether they have appeared in our games, or not. We shipped Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee in 2002, and went on to ship the sequel, Godzilla: Save the Earth, in 2004.
Along the way, we have become aware of the huge and very dedicated Godzilla fan-base that exists out there. The interest and dedication of the fans is really a tremendous gift to us. It’s so gratifying to work on a project that people are actively excited about.
Here’s one excerpt from a fan letter we received last month:
“I would like to start off by saying that you guys should all be very proud of yourselves! Your involvement with the two Godzilla games was AMAZING (as well as many of your other projects). In fact, I bought the Gamecube because of the first Godzilla game alone... and that’s no joke. When I saw that game, it was like a childhood dream had come true. So... BRAVO, PIPEWORKS!!!!” Thanks, Ryan! The fan letters we receive with encouragement, feedback on our previous games, and suggestions for our future ones really give us motivation to strive to make the best Godzilla games that we can make.
We have always tried to integrate Godzilla fan feedback into our game development process, and we’re getting the opportunity on this game to do that in more ways than ever before. The fans speak to us via many channels, including letters, fan websites, and forums, which Pipeworks and Atari actively read. For example, Godzilla’s weapon node position has been tweaked because of forum comments on early Godzilla: Unleashed screenshots.
During the course of creating the three Godzilla games, our partnerships with Atari and Toho have become stronger and stronger. Toho has been extremely supportive and enthusiastic about each title, and has expressed approval for how we’ve faithfully portrayed their characters in the games. We are honored that Toho has come to trust us enough to allow us to design two totally new monsters for our game that will join their cherished and legendary cast. We were able to use this as another opportunity to allow the fans to influence the game by running a really fun event on IGN letting the fans choose one of the new monsters that will appear in Godzilla: Unleashed. So, who knows, our new fan-chosen monster may just end up on the silver screen in a future Godzilla movie!
Atari and Pipeworks are planning even more of these awesome reveal events from now until launch that I think you guys will definitely be excited about. This blog is for you, and I really encourage you to comment and post questions. I have to warn you ahead of time, though, that in order to not ruin any upcoming surprises, I may not be able to answer all the questions you have.
Over the next few months, I’ll rope some of the other team leads into writing entries for this blog. Some of the people you may hear from include:
Mark Crowe, Creative Director. Mark is a 24-year veteran of the games industry, having authored or directed over 30 titles. As half of the legendary Two Guys from Andromeda design team, Mark was responsible for co-creating Sierra’s classic Space Quest. Mark also co-designed Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, Godzilla: Save the Earth and Godzilla: Unleashed. Interests and hobbies include: drawing/painting, the great outdoors, sci-fi movies & games, toy collecting, hanging with the family units and, of course, dreaming-up new game ideas.
Robert Caracol, Art Director with nearly 20 years experience in the computer gaming industry. Hobbies and interests include drawing, miniature sculpting, animation, comic art, sci-fi movies, board games, and toys. His personal heroes are Superman and Ah-nuld, The Governator.
Simon Strange, Lead gameplay designer. Simon has been working as a designer for 9 years, shipping games for the PSX, PC, PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, PSP, and Wii. Since joining Pipeworks in 2001, Simon has focused on developing fighting characters - designing and implementing all of the playable characters in many titles, including Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, Godzilla: Save the Earth, and Godzilla: Unleashed.
Solomon Sliwinski, Lead Engineer. After touring the West Coast and parts of the Midwest in his band, Sol decided to hang up his musical spurs and join the games industry in 1998. During his career at Pipeworks, he has been integral to many projects and has created many key pieces of our technology, including developing the fighting system, the Monster Editor design tool, and character-based AI for Godzilla: Destroy all Monsters and Godzilla: Save the Earth, as well as physically-based water, cloth, inverse kinematics, as well as the new version of the fighting system for Godzilla: Unleashed. Sol admits that he may have a chess-playing problem, but he has managed to reduce the number of bullet chess games he plays per day to around 10.
Armando Wilderman, Lead Animator. He's been with Pipeworks since Godzilla's last incarnation three years ago. As a proud member of the Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture he spends almost as much time playing games (across all mediums) as working on them. He also maintains at least 30% more facial hair than any other current Pipeworks employee.
Robert Daly, Studio Head/Executive Producer. Robert started his career working on Wargames and the original gold and silverbox titles for SSI in the mid ‘80s. He still plays in a Pen and Paper Traveler campaign that he joined in 1983 - Long Live SOC! Robert’s other interests and hobbies include hockey, hockey, playing hockey, hockey, Electronic Engineering and MMORPGs. Did we mention that he likes hockey?
Shelby Wills, Producer. Since joining the Pipeworks team in 2005, Shelby has used her talents as a Level Designer, Scripter, and Producer on several projects. She may be one of the girliest gamers that you will ever meet, and her hobbies include RPGs, Adventure games, casual games, MMORPGs, playing with her 2 cats and 1 dog, and hooking new people on Sci-Fi’s Battlestar Galactica.
 The entire Pipeworks Godzilla: Unleashed team. Yes, we’re really that cheery in the morning.
Well, that’s about it for this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into the ongoing relationships between Pipeworks, Atari, Toho, Godzilla, and the fans! In the meantime, keep an eye out for new Godzilla articles around the web. For example, have you seen TohoKingdom.com’s recent interview with Simon and me?
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