Tales from the Binge

There’s a sort of inevitability to SHOTZ! occasioned both by recent media attention on the “problem” of binge drinking, and the fact there’s an independent games distributor out there called Blind Drunk.

I’m not sure the Boots and I have ever interviewed William Liability sober. Him or us, I mean. It’s almost as if the more I drink, the more I’m likely to run into that small, smelly and slightly desperate man.

Anyway, for the first time in what seems like a year, the Boots and I are summoned by pre-Edwardian faxola to the infamous Hills District of Sydney. We’re to meet with bold start-up developer Sir Osis of Thuliver, a catchy trademark if ever I heard one.

Sir Osis is hard at work on its debut title SHOTZ! Basically, it’s a drinking simulator.

Unsurprisingly, most of the ground floor of the modest townhouse the Boots and I eventually convince our blind cabby to drive us to has been remodelled into a convincing facsimile (nee faxola) of the infamous Marble Bar. There are mermaids whose full chests are positioned just right for you to rest your manly boot upon, in the manner of a foot-rail.

The bar itself is topped with pink marble that looks a little like pressed brains. The lead programmer is slumped at the far end, head down, pale hand curled protectively around a half-full (he’d probably say half-empty) glass of pale ale. The Boots and I never learn his name.

The designer and project lead is a thin and wasted looking youth, who goes simply by the name of Ingredient X. Apparently he used to be a white rapper.

“Is that how you got the scar?” I ask.

“Forget the cosmetics man,” he says angrily. “Too much in gaming is about cosmetics. How good are the graphics. How hot is the player character. How compelling and interesting is the setting and the actual gameplay.”

“Those are the parts I like,” I admit.

Ingredient X, who is standing behind the bar with full access to the massive industrial fridge full of alcopops, aggressively wrenches-open one huge door, grabs two brightly-coloured bottles, slams them on the bar, picks one up, almost tears off the screw-top lid, and chugs back half of the concoction, all without breaking eye contact.

“Oh God,” he says, spluttering for breath. “This stuff is disgusting. But we need to drink as much of it as possible while it’s still tax free. That’s what SHOTZ! is about, man. Standing up to the dude. Saying no. Saying this is who we are.”

He throws back the rest of the alcopop and then tosses the bottle casually over his shoulder. The crash makes the comatose lead programmer at the far end of the bar twitch once, but he doesn’t raise his head.

I glance back at Ingredient X’s desperate, rolling eyes.

“I think you lost me when you started suggesting this game about getting really drunk is actually part of a social manifesto,” I say.

“Are you going to drink that?” Ingredient X indicates the remaining cruiser. “Because it’s tax free man, you can’t let it go to waste.”

“Do you even understand how tax works?” I ask.

“The thing with the game is it’s about social drinking,” Ingredient X says. “It’s about building virtual relationships and achieving relationship goals, by using hard liquor to get NPCs, well, liquored up.”

I have to admit it actually sounds kind of interesting, especially given the recent hilarious success of being drunk in GTA IV. Funniest parallax manipulation ever.

“We’ve spent months perfecting the physics modelling on the vomit,” Ingredient X goes on. “You just don’t realise until you get heavily into a research phase how much there is to vomit. There’s the vomit you have as soon as you eat something nasty. There’s the viral gastroenteritis vomit. There’s the dry heave. The I-just-drank-way-too-much-milk vomit. And none of these compare to the very special complete and utter expurgation you get from being totally pissed.”

Unfortunately, Ingredient X has produced a laptop running a very graphic PowerPoint presentation to illustrate this last speech.

“You can tell a lot about a person from their vomit,” the project lead says. “You can tell how old they are, the kind of person they are, who their perfect soulmate is going to be…”

“Plus what they had for lunch,” I offer.

He pauses, staring at me like I’m some kind of idiot. Perhaps I am.

“Anyway,” Ingredient X continues, “SHOTZ! is basically the Sims meets a virtual fortune teller, plus you can use the Wiimote to stamp the Booze Board with different things, like a Crash & Burn or a DFO - that’s drunk and fell over - or Sleep Over.”

“Just a second,” I interrupt. “Did you say the Wiimote?” I finally crack the screw-top on the cruiser and lift it to my parched lips. The fluoro-orange liquid looks almost palatable.

“Yeah, Wiimote. SHOTZ! is being developed exclusively for the Nintendo Wii. Because of how it’s such a social console.”

I pause, cruiser to lips, then lower the bottle.

“But I only write for a PC gaming magazine,” I explain.

Ingredient X snatches the bottle back from me and slams the lid back on. He looks outraged.

“PC?” he cries. “Only PC? That dead-end platform? And I was about to let you drink tax free!”

And when the lead programmer lifts his head, eyes still closed, and spews copiously all over his end of the bar, that’s when the Boots and I finally lose interest.