The Best Time of My Life

TLDR: I love this job, I love this game, and I love you guys (except for those that I don't).


Hi, my name is Hosun "Black Pebble" Lee, and I've been your soulless marketing guy for the past two and a half years. That's not a joke, either. I like kicking puppies, eating panda bears, and throwing water balloons at cub scouts escorting the elderly across the street.

Then I grab a smoothie and come into work.

In The Beginning.....

I've always loved video games. I had a Nintendo when I was a kid, but we couldn't afford the actual games, so I rarely got to play it, and never enjoyed Zelda. I did, however, have a computer, and I loved every single game I played on it, from King's Quest to Star Control to Wing Commander to Thexder to Curse of the Azure Bonds and more.

Not too long ago (but it was long ago), some friends of mine invited me to join them in this new MMO they were playing called City of Heroes. I told them no, no way! I've never played an MMO, but I heard about them. They were supposed to be REALLY hard, and VERY time consuming, and oh yeah....you got ganked ALL THE TIME. No thank you! Of course, I heard about this game already.....how? Well when I was taking a GMAT prep course for grad school, my instructor was a guy named Jack Emmert.....

As you can guess, I changed my mind, and I've never regretted doing so (except for the times I did). City of Heroes was my first, and favorite MMO ever. This was a game where I could rocket through the skies, fight hand to hand against GIANT ROBOTS (I LOVED Kronos Titan!), and explode in a fiery nuke that tossed 30 bad guys into the air. I have never found any game, MMO or non, that could still give me that awesome sense of being overpowered.

Which was why my first character was a Fire/Rad Controller. Back in the days when they were DPS machines and could summon 12 fire imps at a time. Before ED. Before Travel Suppression. I'd pop all the imps, superspeed and phase shift into mobs and pretty much solo anything in the game. Women, children and robots would all swoon in my presence, as they sensed the awesome presence of....ME.

Which pretty much stopped once Fire Imps got nerfed, and my heart shriveled up as I grew bitter and angry, cursing this cruel world! I haven't played my Fire/Rad since then.

And what kind of role would an angry, heartless monster follow? Marketing, of course. So City of Heroes set me on my career path (not really though).

Becoming a Paragon(er)

Many years and nerfs later, I was given the opportunity to join Paragon Studios. I was terrified. After all these years, I would finally get the chance to work on THE MMO.....the game that pretty much defined me as a gamer. Of course I said yes.

I had worked in marketing and entertainment before, but never for a large studio. I remember one of my first projects was working on the Issue 17 trailer. About 2 weeks into it, I came to a frightening realization.....I was in charge of the trailer. In hindsight, this explained A LOT....such as why people kept asking me what to do, how to set things up and if the storyboard was approved. I just figured they were being nice to me.....

I came up with the name "Black Pebble" while scouring the forums. One European player (AmazingMoo) called marketing at Paragon, "the silent Black Pebble." I sure wasn't silent, but I thought it'd be pretty fun for me to pick BP as my redname.

Then a week later, there was the BP oil spill in the gulf which caused billions and trillions of dollars in damage, and I really wished I picked a different name instead.

Best Memories

• I think one of the best memories I have of Paragon was getting my name in the Going Rogue manual. I was so excited about it. In my mind, it meant I accomplished something. My mother, however, didn't agree. She was convinced that I was risking my soul by working on something so obviously satanic. (Little did she know that I had no soul to risk!)
• I loved going to conventions. My first San Diego Con was great, running around setting up computers, managing interviews (and watching Matt curse as Jesse beat him out for an interview on G4TV), and getting to meet our players for the first time. My big contribution that year was coming up with the Facepalm t-shirts.
• One conversation during the Going Rogue launch party was particularly memorable.
  "Hi, I'm Hosun. I work in marketing. You probably hate me." - Me, as I shake ANONYMOUS PLAYER'S HAND.
  "Oh no, we don't hate you. We just hate that Black Pebble Guy." - ANONYMOUS PLAYER WHOSE NAME I ACTUALLY KNOW.
  He didn't get a costume code card.
• The Three Wolves Shirt to promote the Animal Pack. The challenge was I had no idea what Three Wolves were or what memes were. But it worked, and people thought I did it on purpose.
  
• The Flowbee contest for the first Pummit (as well as convincing everyone to call it Pummit instead of FPS like Andy wanted....). That came from a conversation with our PR team, where I was trying to come up with random ideas that could get us press attention, and at one point I suggested, "Why don't we have Matt cut someone's hair with a Flowbee?" That somehow blossomed into a full-fledged costume contest where we ended up flying the winner out to attend the Pummit. Of course, the winner was bald so we did the next best thing....cut Matt's hair instead.
  
• There was also the time that Keetsie "Tunnel bRat" La Bamba Dazunga Lagrange Mazinga de Oobeoobe assaulted me. Which I think was actually every day.

• I love generating assets (screenshots and trailers). Most people don't know this, but I am a pretty hardcore demorecord user. With Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney and Ryan "No Redname" Roth's help, we even figured out how to do awesome stuff like Depth of Field. I even had a python script that stripped out most VFX so I could make the screenshots cleaner. Most of my screenshots were layers where I outputted the characters, backgrounds and effects separately. That's why you'll notice that in any screenshot I personally made, you see almost no buffs or debuffs on the characters (those really made my life a pain). In fact, most of the large group shots were done by me editing the demorecord file on one computer to make it look like we had 6+ characters interacting at the same time. I was even able to sneak in a major improvement (actually two) to demorecord for Issue 24.....
• My favorite trailers I worked on were the Freedom launch trailer, as well as the Issue 22 trailer. The former because I got to do my dream shot, which is of 30+ heroes flying up into the air. The latter because it was the action-packed story-driven trailer I always wanted to do. When I say I worked on a trailer I mean I actually worked on them. In most of the trailers, I'm either the camera or one of the many "actor characters." It was pretty crazy and stressful, but totally worth it. I remember freaking out some beta testers during the Freedom beta testing, because I spawned a bunch of NPC's and a Goliath Warwalker in the middle of Praetoria. That's right Makofan, that was me!!!
• WST's. That was my idea, which Tim figured out how to implement.
• The Rocket Board (with Colin's help).
• Killing Statesman (It seemed like a good idea at the time).
• My Wall of Hate Mail/Posts. Whenever I got a message or forum post going on about how much I suck or demanding that I be fired (and there were A LOT), I'd print it out and stick it onto my wall. It was a good reminder to always have a sense of humor.

• There are too many other people to thank. Ross and Brian, who took a chance on a seemingly spastic guy, seeing the potential that others didn't, having the patience to work with me, and having the humor to listen to my wild ideas.
• Colin "No Red Name Again" Brown and I were notorious at coming up with crazy things to do in the game, from the Facepalm emote, to the Rocket Board to SOMETHING WHICH I CAN'T TALK ABOUT.
• Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney, aside from being the smartest guy I know whose only ever made one mistake (in his words!), was my partner in crime in getting Woofers into the game.
• Keetsie and the "cough cough" "leaked" auras.....We had a great war going on every day of the week, always trying to 1-up each other. (Though I won....ask her what her screen saver says!)
• Matt "Television" Stults and Rob "Where's Me Lucky Charms" Anderberg, both COH tech leads who dealt with my harassment far too gentlemanly.
• The entire QA team, including Alpha Wolf, Arbiter Curry, FireMan, TheNut and more (including my "son"...who is actually older than me). I like to think I was pretty good at finding and documenting bugs, and I was an honorary member of the QA team. They tend to think otherwise.
• The art team, from David to Bill to Cheryl to Eric to Don to Leo to Gilbert to Ray to Nelson to Aaron and so on. All of whom listened to me more than they should have.
• And the rest of the dev team such as Protean, who liked my idea for having a story arc called "50 Shades of Crey." Or Sean, who did the impossible on a daily basis. Or Ryan, who was like Sean but sane.

fparn!

Thank you, BP, for everything - up to and including that massive spawning in AP Saturday night. Keeping a sense of humor after all the crap you took can't have been easy. I admire you for it.

fapporn!

(wtf is fparn and why would any sane person use it)

This is a cool story. But I gotta ask - you were in marketing. Didn't you just twiddle your thumbs all day and occasionally eat the heart of a kitten to break up the monotony of doing nothing? :P

It seems like every time another PS member posts one of these threads i get dust in my eyes again.
*sighs*

Et tu, Black-ey?

Black Pebble, you are one of the best marketing people I have work with in the game industry.

I will always consider you as part of the Paragon QA team.

I hope to see you at lunch tomorrow.

-Alpha Wolf

I thought the marketing was awesome in this game.

Doesn't really add much to the conversation, I just thought it was.

Black Pebble, we Only hated you because you actively kept stuff from us and making us wait. We disliked the secret keeper that so, now you know how to be liked...

Seriously, thank you for all that you did for us!

--Rad

That is really awesome stuff to know.

And I'm also sad about demorecord stuff that is now never to be. Not Samuraiko sad/livid, but still sad.

Thanks for all the stuff. I also though the marketing was good. I naturally wished it could get a wider audience in more media, but understand why that might not have been feasible.

No one here hates you.

Especially if you give us the demorecord secrets!

I will miss our silent, awkward stares when we passed by each other.

Well, until we go get lunch tomorrow. You're the coolest Black Pebble I know, and yes... we did appreciate your bug reports.

FPARN!

Wow my first (ticks of line of my bucket CoH list)

Who doesnt hate marketing? It is a dirty job but somebody has to do it though and from the looks of it, you did a better job then I knew about. Of course your mistake was to never visit Europe game conventions (just saying that because I would have liked a meet and greet)

Thank you Black Pebble for your newly discovered humor and your efforts to attract enough people to have kept this game running so long. ALso thanks for tyhe hoverboard, I absolutely love that one!

Wow... That's a way to start monday morning off. Thanks for sharing, Black Pebble

I probably made it onto your wall of (in)fame(yness) thingy. I was pretty vocal and not maybe your biggest fan. Whether or not I did, I want you to know that it's not cuz I hate you at all - far from it. It was frustration.

As a player I have been captivated by this game from the first day zapped my first bad guy. It was fantastic and let a comicbook geek like me live out my childhood fantasies. I've been playing games since I had a spectrum when I was 18 and this was the best game I ever played without a doubt and I couldn't understand why the message wasn't being broadcast across the universe at full volume. I guess it's like sport - easy to be wise as a spectator but not so easy as a player.

Best of luck in your future.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

That was a great read Black Pebble and I was never someone who hated the marketing engine at all. I know the importance of it. I know what it takes(been there, still kinda doing along with other things). So thank you so much for loving the game and getting to work on the development team for your first MMO. That was a dream of mine that I was working towards but as it turns out, a little too slow getting there.

Also count me in the camp upset about the demorecord improvements, was that on beta too? GRRRRRR. I am guessing beta is down for good now? I was trying to get in there to get some shots and just get ques now. So frustrating to have so many improvements so close and never get them to live.

So I know Sam and others such as myself are trying to work through our videos, will you be doing any parting videos as well? I thought this one in particular was the best video from you guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0DKo...8&feature=plcp

Godspeed my friend and thank you for everything! Hell of a ride!