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Zombie Cow's Privates to receive extension in 2011
Zombie Cow's educational, dirty-minded twin-stick shooter, Privates, will see its rich, lore-filled universe expanded sometime next year with a free DLC expansion. Cow's Dan Marshall explained on the developer's blog, "we've decided to go all-out and make a whole new adventure, this time set inside a gentleman's bits," which may be the first and only time you'll ever hear a video game creator make that claim when referring to one of his studio's projects. Soak in this moment. Really soak it in. Of course, the expansion won't just add the novelty of its new, phallic setting -- it will also "cram in new gameplay mechanics, new enemy types, new locations, and a new player character." Keep an eye out for the add-on sometime around Easter next year. But hopefully not on Easter, because we can't imagine anything more alarming to find in our baskets than a big pile of STDs.
UK's Channel 4 kills digital innovation fund [Update: Lots of gaming still 'on the slate for 2011' at Channel 4]
The UK's Channel 4 is ceasing 4iP, its £20m digital innovation fund. The division was responsible for digital innovations like AudioBoo and Privates. Any projects currently in development will finish and the remaining 40 percent of the fund will be redistributed. We remembered that Channel 4 was funding Introversion's Chronometer, but studio co-founder Mark Morris tells us it "never got taken forward beyond the concept stage." Morris elaborated, "Sad news about C4 though, they were doing some good in the business." [Update 10/8 3pm ET: Channel 4's Alice Taylor – you may recognize her blog, Wonderland! – took to the comments to clarify how this affects some projects: "Naw. Mixup. 4iP is going, but it wasn't responsible for Privates. 4iP's closure doesn't affect The Curfew, or Privates DLC, or 1066, or Smokescreen, or Cover Girl, or Trafalgar Origins, or 303 Squadron, or Ada, or Bow Street Runner, or the 8 or so new game commissions we've got on the slate for 2011. 4iP's games: Papa Sangre and friends, they'll still turn up too. Hope that helps! It sure does. Thanks, Alice!]
Privates deemed too sexy for Xbox Indie Games
In a not-so-stunning turn of events, it seems that the battle to release Zombie Cow's genitalia-based shooter Privates on Xbox Live Indie Games has been lost. Zombie Cow announced as much this morning, saying, "The guys at Xbox have been amazing. They've been really helpful and supportive throughout, but ultimately have advised that the game wouldn't pass the Indie Games Peer Review process." Given the previous warnings saying as much, Zombie Cow wasn't exactly blindsided by this news. "It's a shame, but it's something we'd always pretty much assumed would happen," says ZC's Dan Marshall. He also assured fans that, since releasing the game on PC, the studio has been "improving it and getting it running on as many different systems as possible" as to fix various bugs. For its part, Microsoft told Joystiq, "This game has not been approved for distribution on Xbox LIVE Indie Games. We have guidelines in place that closely track requirements of content ratings boards worldwide and, among other things, prohibit the publication of strong sexual content."
Zombie Cow Studios' Privates exposed on the internet
Privates, the latest opus from British indie devs Zombie Cow Studios, creators of such irreverent adventure games as Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please is now available to download for free through the television station which commissioned the game, Channel 4. We've been playing it for a half hour or so, and can confidently say it's the best comedic, educational run-and-gun shooter set inside of a human vagina that we've ever played. In all honesty, Privates is actually a fun little game with clever touches to make it a legitimate tool for teaching teens about sex -- for instance, you have to scan enemies (HPV, herpes, sperm, etc.) to learn more about them, informing you and the rest of your squad about their real-life symptoms and in-game weaknesses. It's fun, enlightening, chock-full of humorous dialogue, and, yes, it also contains a level titled "Campaign in the Arse." [Update: Hey gang, if you've had problems running Privates, there's a big update available now. If you're still having problems, you can submit a bug report and get a free copy of every Zombie Cow game. Not too shabby!]
Privates trailer features bums, hoohahs, weewees, etc.
So ... Privates is a game about tiny marines invading the human body. More specifically, it's about invading the private parts of the human body. We've seen screens before, but now you can see it in motion thanks to the magic of video. Suffice it to say that the game, much like anatomy itself, looks kind of gross and silly. Frankly, we can see why it might have trouble passing peer review on Xbox Live Indie Games. At least the PC version is still comin... er ... will still be released.
Privates may have trouble passing Xbox Live peer review process
Though we're deeply fascinated with the concept for Zombie Cow's next quirky project, the genital-exploring twin-stick shooter Privates, we hadn't considered the hurdles this type of mature innovation might face. Seattle PI recently posited the question of whether the game would even be allowed to launch on Xbox Live Indie Games, to which a Microsoft representative replied, "we can confirm that if it is consistent with the description we have seen on the Internet, this game would not pass peer review and would not be permitted to be distributed on Xbox Live." Zombie Cow co-founder Dan Marshall (of Ben There, Dan That fame) told Seattle PI, "There was always going to be a risk it won't pass Peer Review, but obviously we'll do whatever we can to get the Xbox version out," later adding, "it'd be a shame if a huge number of teenagers missed out on some quality gaming and vital education because of some abstract, cellular-level innards and pubic hairs." Even if the game's educational nature doesn't win over the Xbox Live peer review process, the game will get a free PC release courtesy of UK's Channel 4. [Via Kotaku]
Zombie Cow Studios' new game Privates is already inside you
You may have heard by now that we're big fans of Zombie Cow, the studio behind the point-and-click genius of Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please. And by "big fans" we mean we love it so much it makes our hearts hurt a little bit. So imagine the squeals of pure childlike delight echoing from Joystiq's penthouse HQ when we saw that Zombie Cow's new game Privates, funded by the UK's Channel 4, had finally been unveiled. Straying from the adventure gaming of the Dan and Ben games, Privates is a twin-stick shooter/platformer that -- and we're quoting here -- follows "a teeny-tiny gang of condom-hatted marines as they delve into peoples' vaginas and bottoms and blast away at all manner of oozy, shouty monsters." What's more, Zombie Cow's Dan Marshall hints this journey into the body may even be slightly educational. You'll be able to find out for yourself when the game arrives for free on PC this summer and on the Xbox 360 at an unspecified time and price point. %Gallery-92757%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Zombie Cow Studios
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. To kick things off we're, unsurprisingly, turning to one of our favorite indie developers: Dan Marshall of Zombie Cow Studios. How did you get started? I started my career working in TV, and making games was my naughty little hobby on the side -- a way of expressing my creativity when my 9-to-5 was making terrible reality shows. When Time Gentlemen, Please! started to get great reviews, I took a good long look at TV and where it was likely to go over the next 30 years (with the death of the traditional broadcaster, and people on YouTube being exponentially more entertaining than most of the grot I'd been involved in) and took a good long look at where gaming's going ... and it's a pretty easy decision to leap from boat-to-boat.
