Darknet (Galaxy Gear/Oculus Rift)

Writer

Hollywood hacking simulator Darknet was a short but incredibly fun freelance project. I was recommended to the game's developer, E McNeill, through a mutual friend, and we got things off the ground pretty quickly. It doesn't take much more than "Hollywood hacking simulator" to sell me on a concept, after all.

While the core puzzle gameplay of Darknet required little in the way of narrative, one of the more brilliant aspects of the title comes from the news stories that put your actions into context. Sure, you're just hacking a bunch of colored nodes through your neural interface, but when you succeed, you realize via your news feed aggregator that, say, a high-powered politician was just arrested for arms trafficking -- the contents of his hard drive having been leaked to the public. The job did say something about hacking into a politician's personal computer, though you had no idea why.

I wrote up all of these news stories that appear throughout the course of the game, mimicking the reporting styles of various blogs and newspapers. Completing hacks against different factions would ultimately reveal common story threads, coming together in a "boss hack" with world-changing ramifications.

Writing these news stories, coming up with elaborate crimes, and then trying to put faux PR spin on them was some of the most fun writing I've done.