GameSetWatch: Inside Schadenfreude's 'Deutsche Woche' Takeover

Author: by Staff

Last week, famed German game developer Schadenfreude Interactive (Accordion Hero, Nazgul Thunder) took over editor blog Game Set Watch, for a series of disconcerting guest posts - we round up their look at development life in the Black Forest here. The posts, which made up 'Deutsche Woche', or 'German Week' on the site, were specially commissioned from the veteran European developer, which presented a postmortem of Accordion Hero on Gamasutra in 2006. The full set of ten guest posts are available for viewing en masse, but some of the 'highlights' of the week include the following: - 'All Squeezed Out' - in which it's revealed that the Accordion Hero franchise is at an end: "There is an old story often quoted in blog posts and game reviews that goes, “if a shark stops moving, it dies”. When people ask me, why will there be no more sequels to your hit game Accordion Hero II? I say, because my company, Schadenfreude Interactive is like a shark. Perhaps not in a cunning predatory way, but in the way of that bus Sandra Bullock drove in Speed." - 'Something Offal' - analyzing the God Of War II launch event controversy from earlier this year: "It is a strange industry we have, where serving food out of a dead goat on a buffet is part of your average game marketing plan. Is a buffet really necessary to sell games, anyway? I purchased World Of Warcraft despite the fact that Blizzard never offered me a buffet. But now, every time I visit the Burning Steppes I think of those delicious tiny corn-on-a-cob and all-you-can-eat crab legs you have in America, and I feel somehow cheated." - 'Crispin's Interniversary' - celebrating a decade for Schadenfreude's very own unhired help: "My name is Crispin Frosch, and today, I will have been an intern at Schadenfreude Interactive for ten years. There will be a small celebration later. Ulrike (our VP of sales) has a special cake planned. Hopefully I will not even have to stay late to make up for the time spent at my party, or the time spent writing this blog post because Karsden is busy today." - 'Spear & Magic Helmet' - a mini-postmortem of Schadenfreude's karaoke survival horror game Nachtmusik: "Otto also designed a high-level weapon called the Pitchfork, but it was too violent. In Germany, we are not allowed to have very violent games, and apparently singing opera while running down a hallway pitchforking mutant swans was too much for the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (our game ratings board). The Tannhauwitzer, thankfully, remained in. I think much of the violence in this game was made it past them, due to the game's opera theme and supposed educational nature." The editors of GameSetWatch.com thank Karsden Mörderhäschen, CEO of Schadenfreude Interactive GmBH, for his fine work in presenting a view inside his company, and are hoping to retain him for further special reports on his company's past, present, and future.