Simon Hurley News

Gamezombie.tv just uploaded a Borderlands interview video from last year's E3. Not sure whether this just went up, or I just never saw it before, but...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9cz0e_exploring-borderlands-with-simon-hu_videogames?from=rss

April 14, 2009

With Borderlands nearing completion, I have been asked to take the reins of another project in development at Gearbox. This franchise is a personal passion of mine, and as much as I have invested heart and soul into Borderlands for the last three and a half years, I can't turn this project down.

Ridley Scott's Alien is the first rated R movie I ever saw, and it scared the crap out of me as a kid. Jim Cameron's Aliens was the first R-movie I ever saw at the theater, it had a huge impact on my imagination and was my favorite movie for a long time. Alien³ was the first movie I ever saw on my own, because no matter what my friends said, I had to go see it. The Alien franchise is of huge interest to me, and I've read all the comic series, all the books, and seen all the movies - so I'm proud to say that I am now the Senior Producer on Aliens: Colonial Marines. It's gonna be huge!

Here's the original Game Informer announcement of the game from March of 2008.

Game Informer (Mar 08): [cover] [article]

April 12, 2009

Borderlands new art style announced, along with the 4th character class - Brick the Berserker! I was pushing for both these changes for some time, so it's really great to see them finally come to light.

http://www.destructoid.com/borderlands-on-pc-gamer-cover-just-holy-sh-t-son--128256.phtml

March 31, 2009

Someone sent me a link to a review of the Computer Game Conference that I spoke at back in 2007. The CGC (held annually at UTD) is where I first met people in this industry, including some of my current co-workers and friends, and I have happily spoken at the conference every year since I started working in the game industry.

http://abunchofshortguys.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=107:computer-game-conference-2007-part-2&catid=927:news2007&Itemid=91

For 2007, I did two sessions - one with Patrick Deupree titled Breaking into Professional Game Development, and one solo titled Game Development at an Independent Studio. (The PowerPoint files are linked here in case anyone is interested.)

January 19, 2009

Just found that one of the Gearbox crew posted a video of the final 3 minutes of the TF2 developer studio tournament finals from last year. This video was taken in the conference room where there were about 30 of us in spectator mode watching the tourney on the projector. The final round, the match, and the tournament were decided in overtime at the end of the last round - talk about a nail-biting ending! When the smoke had cleared, we had quite literally beaten Valve at their own game. I gotta say, I have never been prouder to be a member of Gearbox than I was that night!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwqWKXitLrs

January 1, 2009

Happy New Year, everyone! Just watched the ball drop with my wife - it was great to see my man Bill pushing the button (if only we could elect him back to office!).

Here's to 2009 being a great year for us all!

November 21, 2008

"The true relevance of the story will actually be irrelevant until we release our next game, at which time I hope there will be a lot of interest in what we've done that can produce such results." A sad day.

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=18523421#itemanchor_18523421

http://kotaku.com/5096520/rumor-gearbox-lays-off-26-drops-aliens-colonial-marines-+-update-gearbox-president- responds

November 11, 2008

A link to Escalation Studios, which was founded by Shawn Green and Tom Mustaine. They did the Samba de Amigo port for Gearbox and have also released Dr. Awesome for the iPhone. Shawn and Tom are good friends and truly gifted developers - I'm so excited for them!

http://escalationstudios.com/

September 23, 2008

At last - Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is out! And the Wii edition of BIA 1 & 2, entitled Brothers in Arms: Double Time, has been launched as well. AND Samba de Amigo came out, too! What a day - go get 'em!

http://brothersinarmsgame.com

http://www.sega.com/sambadeamigo/us/index.html

September 17, 2008

Here's an interview I did at E3 2008 (sorry about the music!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x8JXSrVCHQ

Also, here's an interview on Gamasutra about co-op gameplay in Borderlands:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20125

September 1, 2008

This is the season 1 finale episode of the Jace Hall show, where they show our offices and talk to several of my co-workers, show Borderlands, and you can see a little sneak preview of Aliens. I have more game consoles than Randy, BTW :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE3-9rGdk0s

August 8, 2008

Here's a Borderlands interview I did for Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/08/08/interview-borderlands/

July 19, 2008

Here's game footage from Randy, Marc and I playing Borderlands up on stage at the 2K E3 2008 press event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOwjobQv-AA&feature=related

July 18, 2008

Here's an interview I did at E3 for a game site from the Netherlands. I love it how the first frame of the video shows my with my eyes closed...

http://www.gamer.nl/doc/46824/Gamer-nl-E3-video-Interview-met-producer-Borderlands

July 17, 2008

This is the first interview I saw come out of E3 this year on Borderlands, and it happened to be mine. Funny how the one random question they asked me at the end of the interview became the primary focus of the article...

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19464

June 7, 2008

I will be speaking about Game Production at the Game Education Summit at SMU this week - 2:30pm on Tuesday, June 10.

http://www.gameeducationsummit.com/ges_program_synop.php?ind=9

May 17, 2008

Here's a quick article roundup of articles about the Borderlands announcement last year:

Game Informer (Sep 07): [cover] [article]
Games for Windows (Nov & Dec 07): [cover] [games to watch]
PC Zone (UK): [page 1] [page 2] [page 3]
Joypad (France): [cover] [page 1] [page 2] [page 3] [page 4] [page 5]

March 13, 2008

Here's an interview with Randy on GameReactor about Borderlands, I think from the Sony event - he gets into some details about the game story we've been writing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Zp4cw4YaE

January 11, 2008

I did a follow-up to my Wii blog on Gearboxity:

http://www.gearboxity.com/content/view/300/38/

December 9, 2007

The Borderlands trailer we created for the 2007 Spike TV VGA award show - I especially love the gun rack corridor.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/28752.html

August 16, 2007

And here's the official press release:

http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/press/2k-games-to-publish-gearboxs-borderlands/

August 14, 2007

Borderlands is finally announced!

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200708/N07.0814.1539.08013.htm

February 8, 2007

LOL! A satirical blog entry I did for the new Gearboxity site ended up getting more hits than the rest of the site combined after it got picked up by the online press. The blog is here:

http://www.gearboxity.com/content/view/171/38/

One of the online articles can be found here:

http://gonintendo.com/?p=15511