FPS Friday! Greg Hastings Paintball 2 Interview with Greg Hastings!

Coffee Beans:
     If you missed Part I or Part II of the interview about Greg Hastings Paintball 2, you can read them HERE and HERE.
     In Part I and Part II, I interviewed James Thrush the President of Super X Studios which was behind the development of Greg Hastings Paintball 2.

     As the title for this post says, the questions below were answered by Greg Hastings himself.  I'll keep it short with four questions this week, and some more next week.

Interview Questions and Answers with Greg Hastings - Part I
CoffeeWithGames:  First, thanks for taking the time for the interview.  Can you tell the readers a little about how you got started in paintball, and how that lead to pitching the idea for creating a paintball video game?

Greg Hastings:  The same way many have started.  A friend took me to play back in 1987 and the adrenaline rush was immediately captivating!  I was playing Kelly Slater Pro Surfer with my buddy Stephen 10 years ago.  I knew the participation of paintball and was mad that no one [had] taken our sport serious enough to make a console game supporting it.  Shooters were hot from the word go, and hello, paintball IS a shooter!  I got on the phone with a friend who knew about finance, since every idea cost money to get going.  I landed in Seattle a few weeks later and started the franchise.  It ramped up over a year and before we knew it, we had enough money to finish the game and publishers contacting us.


CWG:  What was it like working with Super X Studios and Majesco during the development of GHP2?  Do you recall wanting any feature in the game, that they mentioned was perhaps giving them trouble getting it into the game?

GH:  I am always the dumbest guy in the room when making games.  The programmers, artists, etc., are so well trained and have a particular thought process that is hard to keep up with sometimes, but I learn something new with every dev team I work with.  SuperXStudios, led by James Thrush, was no different this time.  We had a small team, all in one room.  Very tight knit and it was a pleasure getting to know them and working with them.  We even hung out in town on occasion in Seattle, so it was like working with friends.  These guys were just up to any challenge and miracles were made everyday.  It is so hard for fans to really understand what it takes to make games.  As for Majesco, it has been a great pleasure to have a company treat you with respect and honor.  A first for me!  They were incredible and I hope we can work on the game together [in the future]!!

CWG:  Did you help with writing the script in the game, or by providing feedback on it?  Were there any lines you refused to say, and changed?

GH:  Well, James [Thrush] wrote a bunch of it and we used many of those lines, but when I was in the studio at SOMOTONE, you just gotta let it loose!  Imagine being in battle on a paintball field and bark it out!  I was the coach/director in the sound booth.  It was tough, since I had to bark out all the lines 20 times each, at least!!!  Every voice actor(paintball player) was different, so we focused on lines they did the best.  Believe me, we recorded tons of stuff that could not get past ESRB.
I have to say that was one of my highlights in making this game.  I think some acting is in my future.  Not.

CWG:  The players/teams in Greg Hastings Paintball 2 are all real-world paintball players, correct?  What was the process of deciding which real-world players/teams made it into the game?

GH:  I traveled all around the world for the last several years and we set up photo shoots at events and simply took pics and signed people up.
I am sooo upset that a bunch of players, who were excited to be in the game, never got in.  Since we had thousands of players signed up, some got lost in the shuffle.  I will make it up to them on the next game for sure!!  We used real players because it was another layer of authenticity to the sport of paintball.  That simple.


Filtered Thoughts:
     I think it's interesting that Greg's playing of another video game, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer, is what caused him to wonder why there were no paintball games, and ultimately led to the Greg Hastings' paintball games getting developed.
     If you missed my post, "A PS3 FPS Release Date Confirmed - Move Support, 60+ Maps...", from a few weeks back, Greg told me that Greg Hastings Paintball 2 is(or was) scheduled for a PSN release on May 10.
     With the PSN being down, I have sent a few emails just making sure the game won't be delayed IF the PSN is back up by this coming Tuesday.  I was going to include the Q/A in this post from Greg about the release, but with the PSN issues I wanted to be sure the release date hasn't changed.

     If you're wondering how much content the PS3 version of the game should have, the video below is an in-depth preview I did of the Wii version of Greg Hastings Paintball 2, and it should give you a good idea of the content you can expect when the game releases:


Question:
     Have any of you played paintball in real-life, or do you perhaps play regularly?
     I used to play quite regularly in high school, even owned my own paintball gun.  My friends and I would play in some woods behind my grandparents' house, and we had a blast.  One of my best friends(then and now), is now the owner/operator of a paintball field.

If anybody is interested in Greg Hastings Paintball 2 on the Wii or Xbox 360, you can see prices on Amazon.com linked below, as well as a PSN card...better to be safe than sorry moving forward with PSN purchases: