Since we have a reasonable idea of what the Security Officers are going to look like, and Sam Alcarez was busy moving this weekend, I asked Geng Gendall if he would do something special for me. One of the Broken Contract play testers is a good friend of mine named Chuck. He gets a charge out of playing as the Security Officers during play testing so I asked him via text, "Hypothetically, if you, Chuck Hickey were a fascist security officer, would you carry a baton, shock baton, arc pistol, or repeater rifle? Would you be in charge or a grunt? Strictly hypothetical." He responded: "I like things up close, and hate responsibility, so I'd be a grunt with a shock baton. :)" This is Chuck standing hard at a grocery co-op, because as we know, co-ops are the hardest. I wanted to see Chuck in Security Officer attire so I sent a brief to artist Geng Gendall who enthusiastically accepted the request. It went something like this: "He'd like to be a lo

Enforcer concept art by Oliver Zavala. The background on this site only gives you an introduction to the back story and tells you a tiny bit about Breakers and Security Officers. It is a very myopic look at a much grander storyline, and that is by design. Still, I think for those of you who are following this project, its worth giving you insight into the bigger picture. When I originally brainstormed the idea behind Broken Contract, it revolved around Breakers and Enforcers. The Breaker concept has been fairly constant, Breakers being workers who have broken their contracts with the corporations they work for by attempting to desert and flee towards a new life free of indentured servitude. The original nemesis though, was not the Security Officers, it was the Enforcers. Contract Enforcers come from private bounty hunting firms that are paid to bring Breakers back to work.Though I can think of all sorts of great story lines, cool equipment, and variant scenarios involving Enfor

Art by Geng Gendall I just added some links to the right hand side of the screen for Broken Contract on a couple of social media sites. There are now: Broken Contract Twitter Broken Contract Facebook And I'm sure some more to come. The above image was sent via Facebook to me by Geng Gendall, an illustrator who felt that the Security Officers should have more of a hard hat type design, and a light. Rather than simply describe it, he sent it in concept form, even adhering to the uniform that Sam developed. We're still sticking with the "western" hat but it was cool none-the-less, and I really appreciate him taking the time. If you'd like to contribute concept art like Geng did, please go ahead and send it. I can't guarantee it will be used for anything, but it will always be appreciated and noted! And you never know... Maybe you'll define something new? In the meantime, please go follow Broken Contract on Facebook and/or Twitter. Thanks! -Nick

We're still working to define the look of the Security Officers in Broken Contract. Sam has come up with a variety of looks and we're trying to nail down the one that both defines them and makes them interesting for others to eventually paint figures of and play in the game. I happened to notice that Sam has been using consistent posing while we've worked on the look, so I came up with the idea of making paper dolls of his art so that I could combine elements and find what works together. Standing in FedEx Office I printed out his art and then broke out the scissors and got cutting.and pasting. This was a new piece of art Sam provided to me after the last blog post. The goal was to define a much more fascist looking Security Officer. He looks like a loyal boot boy for sure with his high boots, high collar, fitted uniform, and clean cut hair. I was concerned he didn't look rugged enough though, with the horrible working conditions and disparity. Also, the diagonal s

Security Officer concept art by Sam Alcarez. The other day I had a great meeting with Sam Alcarez, the new artist working on Broken Contract. One of the most important parts of developing a game like Broken Contract is defining the look and feel of the game. There are so many ways to depict security forces in the future, and they can go to differing extremes. You can go for completely tooled up, heavily armored cops with the greatest in technological advancements like Robo-Cop, some sort of mech, or just a heavily armored "super soldier" sort of look. Then there is the other extreme, like the stripped down, lightly armored but precisely uniform fascist looking peace keepers in The Hunger Games. Of course, in a sci-fi western like Broken Contract you can envision any manner of "space cowboy." So there is a huge variety of looks and feels we could go for. Katniss being led away by peace keepers in one of The Hunger Games movies. Its the future but they aren'