Alltern8 were recently granted an exclusive chat with John Johnson, the Creative Director and CEO of Smoking Gun Interactive, here we get to learn a little more about this exciting project.
 

Alltern8: Tell us about Smoking Gun Interactive? What has the core team worked on before and what are you currently working on?

 
John Johnson: Smoking Gun Interactive was founded in 2007 by Drew Dunlop, Angie Pytlewski, and me. Since then we’ve grown and many of our senior and lead staff in the studio were also with us at Relic where we worked on Company of Heroes. That said we have also brought in quite a number of talented people from a variety of studios around the globe that has really filled out the team nicely.

A8: We were really blown away by the graphic novel. What are your plans for future content? Will new content be released regularly online and do you have any plans to release the book as a physical product?

JJ: We actually just did our final drop of the preview on Monday (Nov 16) – you can check it out at www.exoriare.com. We plan to produce a series of graphic novels that will expand the story and characters of X as we continue to develop the property and core game further. The novels will all be available in print, with some special content included in each, and we have some fun ideas on how we can expand the Darknet further with these. Look for the first one to be released in early 2010 (information on how to order the graphic novel online is at www.exoriare.com).

A8: How did author Douglas Rushkoff get involved in the project and how will he be working with you in the future? Can you provide some details on how this relationship works?

JJ: We wanted to find an experienced, well versed novelist as the team had limited expertise in that space. We also wanted to find someone that would really get what we were trying to do, and how we were tying to expand beyond just the games, and use new forms of media. We plan to do the entire series with Douglas as the main writer, or editor if we have guest writers. He is fantastic to work with and he produced an amazing first story that builds these characters and sets the story for what’s to come in the future. Douglas worked very closely with our creative teams to understand the universe, back story and constraints and then just ran with it.