![]() It was 1999, he was 20-years old, but he already felt like he had hit a wall. His first real job was a production assistant role at Disney, where he worked on movies like Tarzan and Toy Story 2. If things broke differently, Krankel might be a film producer today. Generally you wouldn't have be the face of the whole thing." "They had me dress up in some stupid outfit and go on the Home Shopping Network to sling copies for The Grinch on PS1 and Dreamcast, and there are people behind me-both full-sized and not-doing backflips, while I'm trying to talk about the 'Seussian architecture' in an intelligent way," he says. Nothing really tops the comical misfire of the 50 Cent games, but every licensed game is weird, and funny, and exasperating in its own special way. Krankel spent a huge portion of his career working in the licensed games slag mines, and if you get on the phone with him, or scroll through his credits, you'll find a profound litany of questionable commercial tie-ins-The Scorpion King, Desperate Housewives, The Mummy, The Chronicles of Narnia. 50 Cent: Bulletproof is really just the tip of the iceberg that is his strange past in licensed game development. They're now one of the most exciting indie developers around-Night School's next game, Afterparty, is about literally drinking your way out of hell-but once upon a time he had to morph the forsaken Jim Carrey Grinch movie into a sensible video game. Years later Sean Krankel would co-found the indie studio Night School and make Oxenfree, putting them on the map. ![]() "We'd be doing these sessions at 3 am, eight people checked to make sure that there wasn't anyone there to kill him, and then we'd record," he says. Krankel, who is close to the opposite of how you might picture a rapper, watched as a small team of bodyguards scoured every nook and cranny. There was also that time, for instance, when 50 Cent arrived to a subterranean Vivendi soundbooth to record his portion of the script. Krankel told that story on Giant Bomb's E3 night show, regaling the stream with highlights from his time working on 50 Cent: Bulletproof, a licensed game that was difficult to reconcile in 2006 and only feels more dreamlike now. Our guys are not coming to the BET Awards unless they have the vests on.' Another guy in the room is like, 'We keep living this fuckin' lifestyle man.' I'm in the middle of trying to pitch this dumb videogame! There were a lot of those moments over and over again." " like, 'Look OK, they gotta wear the vests. "He's like, 'How many of you are felons?' And like, two-thirds of the room raises their hands," remembers Krankel, noting that it is technically illegal for felons to own combat vest. Once upon a time, Sean Krankel had to morph the forsaken Jim Carrey Grinch movie into a sensible video game. This was the night of the BET Awards, and the police didn't want G-Unit to wear their trademark kevlar body armor on stage. ![]() In the middle of Krankel's speech, Iovine received a phone call from the Los Angeles Police Department. His goal was to create a video game with a fluid, dynamic combat system that would take the player through interior and exterior environments, as 50 tracks down the assailants who famously shot him nine times. ![]() Sean Krankel was sitting across from famous music producer Jimmy Iovine, on the exceptionally debaucherous set of 50 Cent's "P.I.M.P." music video, pitching G-Unit his vision.
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