The Stochastic Game

Ramblings of General Geekery

Project Hot Tub: Remembering Some Cool Cancelled EA Game I Worked On

IGN has a very nice article and video about Project Hot Tub, which I worked on a bit as a Frostbite engine developer. I was part of the Frostbite cinematics team but at the time I was mostly working on the camera system (which got used on a couple projects like Anthem and one of the later Plants vs Zombie: Garden Warfare sequels… can’t remember which).

Hot Tub was gearing up to be a really fun game to work on. The kind of AAA-level game with a kid-friendly tone that you typically only find on Nintendo consoles. Remember when the most famous games were supposed to be fun, and not some gritty hyper realistic violence fest? Anyway, I was pretty sad when it got cancelled, especially given the circumstances outlined by IGN. This is the kind of stuff that happens in big corporations. Cheers to old friends who will probably get a bit nostalgic from seeing the game again.

By the way, you can see me and many other engine devs in the many shots IGN took from this Frostbite hiring/marketing video! Good times. I’m famous.


Current writing progress:
“Intramuros” (Delta Green) 6k words
“Tales of the Lizard Wheel” (RuneQuest) 50k words
“The Bloody Banquet” (RuneQuest) 4k words
“Survey on Mount Seton” (Call of Cthulhu) 4k words


People: “Open-space offices are so noisy, it’s so hard to focus and get anything done”
My house: kids running and screaming, dog barking, someone vacuuming the dog’s hair, neighbours mowing the lawn, 3rd eBay TTRPG delivery of the day at the door. “Yeah this is so much better”


Big thanks to those maintaining the many TV series fandom wikis, from the dumb people like me who are bad with names and need to look up pictures and backstories every now and then to figure out who the fuck is Jared Whatever again


I’m buying too many 1-page dungeons and system-less idea-prompt pamphlets because they look so pretty and have random tables, even though I’ll most likely never use them, please send help


Filming set for the Spiderwyck TV series… a stone’s throw from the Secret Benedict Society school…


I haven’t found the rulebook yet but here is a sourcebook for In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, a satirical and irreverent (if not childish) French game of angels and demons. Here are the stats (and some terrible flavour text) for Jesus!


And the worst quickening scene on the Highlander TV Series so far goes to… this one! Featuring a nice view of 1990s Vancouver!