Media Consumption: Neversoft's Brian Bright (Tony Hawk's Project 8)

For this week’s Media Consumption, a column that looks at the media and art diets of our favourite industry personalities, we spoke to Brian Bright, project director at Neversoft for Tony Hawk’s Project 8. The game – the eighth title in the popular skating franchise – was released to positive reviews in mid-November. Bright notes that the time just prior to launch was somewhat hectic for the development team, with the high profile title attracting attention from numerous media sources. “Before the launch we had a few Sony events to go to as well as interviews; we did a few studio tours for CNN and another for MTV2,” he says. Things have calmed down for the team since then, though, he adds. “Last week we had our Christmas party at the Palms in Vegas. We go to Vegas every year for a combined wrap party and Christmas party.” We spoke to Bright to ask about the multi-vitamins in his media diet at this point in time. Sounds: I buy a ton of vinyl and listen mostly to rare disco, funk, old school electro, synth pop and acid house. I tend to collect the beginning of genres in music. The early underground disco sounds of the Loft, Summer of Love, acid house, mid 80s Chicago house, late 80s industrial, post punk, synth pop, etc. For current trends in music, I do appreciate the mark that electroclash made on modern rock. The return to 80’s synth in bands like She Wants Revenge and The Faint are reminiscent of my old favourites: Joy Division and Secession. Moving Pictures: I am a fan of goofy 80s teen flicks, but my favorite movie of all time is Rocky 3 or maybe Yor, the Hunter from the Future. I also like all those cold war 80s films: Red Dawn, Meteor, Rocky 4, etc. The last movie I saw was An Inconvenient Truth. This movie was inspiring and actually made me consider - even for a brief moment - going into politics to make a difference. Words: Right now I’m reading Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell and Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979. I enjoy books on music and right now I am into the underground disco movement of the early to mid 1970s. Games: My favorite old school games are, MULE, which was the first real time strategy game I played on the C64, Archon, an awesome strategy/action hybrid for the C64, Commanche, a chopper game looked awesome on my 386 computer. We used to play Doom during lunch on the network. I’d bring my friends to work after hours to show them what networked multiplayer was all about. Quake 2 and 3 had awesome multiplayer deathmatch. I spent a lot of time on both of these games. Today I’m playing a ton of games; I’m a major achievement fiend! Oblivion was great, Gears of War is fun. Same with Viva Piñata, Lego Star Wars 2, Dead Rising, Wii Sports and all of the old school Xbox Live arcade games.