Going Postal: The Legacy Foretold (2025)

1. Go down to this basement.

2. Looks like it's snowed down there.

3. There's so much dust.

4. Uh, watch this wall, peeling blow.

5. I like how you keep the microwave on the stairs That's safe.

6. No, this is disgusting.

7. We haven't been down here in a while.

8. The Postal collection.

9. Take a look at this stuff.

10. Excellent, I've been looking for this for years.

11. Well, it's right here.

12. It's been right under your feet the whole time.

13. This was the, this is another one of their real posters.

14. It was like the DVD cover. Then we have our own posters

15. over here, too, that we made.

16. Nice. Gary, he's no longer with us. Vern is no longer with us.

17. Small people shouldn't work with Running With Scissors.

18. If I was a midget, I don't know if I'd want to work with us,

19. to tell you the truth.

20. Man, foof! Little fucking dusty in here.

21. All right.

22. - How we doing?

23. Now this…

24. This is a set of balls.

25. Hey, everybody. I'm Vince Desi from Running With Scissors.

26. And it's time to go postal.

27. - Come on in.

28. A new video game on the market

29. that is upsetting postal workers.

30. It is called Postal,

31. and the object of the game isn't delivering mail.

32. "Going postal" means shooting everyone in sight.

33. The game maker says it's all in good fun.

34. But the US Postmaster General isn't laughing.

35. He wrote a letter to the Arizona makers of the game

36. saying Postal is an unfair portrayal of postal employees

37. and there's nothing funny about it.

38. "Until someone boxes up syphilis

39. and tries to sell it at retail, Postal 2 is the worst product

40. ever foisted upon consumers."

41. You read the guy's review. He probably didn't even play the game.

42. There was a video game called Postal.

43. In the video game, you just ran around shooting people.

44. There's nothing funny about breast cancer and brain tumors.

45. We don't make games of those, and we shouldn't make games

46. of people being murdered senselessly.

47. This is a fun product. It's filled with humor. Adult humor.

48. Real holes meant to be bullet holes right in it—

49. We're being criticized unfairly.

50. And then, the whole industry turned its back against us anyway,

51. because they needed a scapegoat.

52. One kid who absorbs this

53. and even going out, and doing some of these things—

54. A game is a game. It has nothing to do with real life.

55. Something about being able to, uh, you know, take your friend,

56. - blow his head off. - It's mass mayhem.

57. I get under a lot of stress at work and it's kind of nice

58. to go home and just get it out that way.

59. Dozens of researchers have shown that violent video games

60. - pose a public health threat. It was ten years ago today,

61. almost to the hour, when a gunman entered Dawson College and opened fire.

62. Buy now, buy now. …hold a hearing

63. on video game violence and its impact on kids.

64. Senators Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Cole chaired the proceedings.

65. Violence and violent images

66. permeate more and more aspects of our lives.

67. And I think it's time to draw the line.

68. We must stop the glorification of violence in our society.

69. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games

70. that are now commonplace.

71. All right. Yeah. Went, went a little too dark on your game,

72. and you accidentally made something that people think

73. inspired school shootings. Sure.

74. If I had something to say, I would say to the city

75. or to the State or to Congress to eliminate these violent games,

76. 'cause it does cause things in our, in our children.

77. Well, there is a new game in town that has US mail carriers,

78. their bosses, friends, and families, shall we say, "a little ticked off."

79. We kind of accept our status as the bottom feeder of the industry.

80. I know there are a lot of people that really wish we would go away,

81. but it's never going to happen.

82. Something is going on out there with our children.

83. Is it the fact that the average TV-viewing child has seen

84. 16,000 murders on TV by the time he's 18 years old?

85. Postal was breaking the mold for sure.

86. You know, other people were trying to do that, but, uh, man,

87. they, Postal turned it up to 11.

88. Just the phrase "going postal" gives all of us a black eye.

89. - It's a real insult to us.

90. We wanted to do a game where you basically could

91. just go off nonstop and shoot, shoot, shoot.

92. - I feel it's totally amazing.

93. It's the best video game-based movie ever made.

94. Oh, my God, that movie fucking sucks.

95. Fuck you do to my game Postal?

96. I don't know what your fucking problem is.

97. Go postal. - Can we blame violent movies, music,

98. and video games as a reason on why some kids kill?

99. Joining us once again from Little Rock, Arkansas,

100. Governor Mike Huckabee.

101. Um, thanks a lot for going postal, and see you in September.

102. …anything to do with the post office anyway,

103. so I don't understand why they would call it that.

104. It is about "going Postal."

105. He says that the name of the game is insulting to his workers.

106. The game's creator says it's just in good fun,

107. and the phrase "going postal" has become a part of modern-day language.

108. My full name is Vincent James Desiderio Jr.

109. I'm known as Vince Desi in the video game industry.

110. I'm the CEO and founder of Running With Scissors.

111. I was born in 1953

112. in Brooklyn Hospital, in Brooklyn, New York.

113. I was raised in Brooklyn,

114. uh, in a neighborhood called Bedford-Stuyvesant

115. also known as Bed-Stuy.

116. My mother was, uh, probably

117. the biggest influence in my life along with my dad.

118. My dad worked very hard.

119. You know, a big treat for me would be Saturday mornings.

120. He would make breakfast, pepperoni and eggs,

121. because he worked so hard Monday to Friday,

122. he'd work overtime as much as he could to make more money.

123. My father instilled in me the whole industriousness, hard work.

124. And from my mother, I got the "fuck you," you know,

125. I-don't-care, no-bullshit attitude because my mother took shit from nobody.

126. As a youth, I mean, I was a typical New York street kid.

127. My first real income came from when I was around three years old,

128. painting clamshells from Coney Island.

129. You know, we had a group growing up called "The Rods."

130. The Rods were four of us, and our obsession was basically women.

131. As a teenager in those days, you know, it was a very different thing than today.

132. Today you, you, you people get,

133. have sex all day long by the time you're in eighth grade.

134. In my day and age, uh, being able to feel up a girl,

135. uh, something like that was a major accomplishment.

136. To go home and jerk off.

137. We were one of the first to wear suit jackets with our jeans.

138. You know, and Mom would say, "Where you going?

139. Where you going with a suit jacket on and jeans?"

140. "Mom, we are trendsetters."

141. I've always been a creative thinker, somewhat of an artist,

142. and I got involved in what was called the disco business,

143. and that was a result of me throwing parties.

144. And people would say to me, "Oh, my God, you should do this!"

145. So I made a phone call to somebody, to another club.

146. And so, I got a hold of a friend of mine and I said,

147. "Look," I said, "this guy wants to have lunch with me.

148. So you got to go there tomorrow, have lunch with this guy.

149. You could be me."

150. I said, "And then I'll, you know, I'll follow up on the business side."

151. We did this business for a year.

152. He, he, he was using my name

153. - and I used his name.

154. First one was on my 25th birthday.

155. And it ended on my 26th birthday.

156. And it was a great experience in that disco era, '78 to '79.

157. Should I say anything about when…

158. with the drugs?

159. - What am I— Say whatever you want!

160. I was very surprised

161. and— uh, when he started to do this.

162. And back in, you know, when we lived in New York,

163. he used to do parties in Manhattan.

164. That's, I guess, where he started his creativity.

165. You know, mostly him probably, he never really grew up.

166. You know, we don't want to grow old and we all have that inside us.

167. He just lets it all out.

168. That's him.

169. After I got out of the disco business, I was living in Manhattan at the time.

170. I answer an ad in The New York Times

171. on the front page of the employment section,

172. which is quite comical, and is— I'll never forget the ad,

173. it said, "Earn big bucks with $50K."

174. - I was like, "Oh, that's for me."

175. So I call up and right away I realize I'm being interviewed over the phone.

176. I get a scheduled appointment to go in the next day. I go in.

177. I thought, "It goes great!" And it's to be a headhunter.

178. A headhunter is basically, you, you're helping people find jobs,

179. not secretarial, but this was in the IT industry

180. or what they called back then, MIS, Management Information Systems.

181. Anyway, I thought I did great.

182. Tuesday comes, I don't get a call.

183. - Wednesday comes, I don't get a call.

184. I'm like, "What the hell's going on here?" So I take the subway up to the office.

185. The office was near 42nd Street, near the Ol' Grand Central.

186. And I just go in past the secretary into the, the main office.

187. I see where the, the guy is that's running the show.

188. And I just go in and I tell him, "What's the deal?"

189. And he says, "Look," he goes, "anybody that's got the, uh, the nerve,

190. the balls to just come in here like that."

191. He goes, "I'm gonna give you a chance."

192. By the end of the first year, I was one of the top billers.

193. I learned a lot about computers at that time,

194. because it was all about mainframes,

195. and personal computers were just coming out.

196. Two and a half years later, Atari had come to New York City

197. - and wanted to open an office. …from Atari.

198. I basically staffed the New York Atari office.

199. A couple of the first people that they hired were through me,

200. and that's how I started Desi Network. By placing three people.

201. My very first person was a young guy named Adam Bellin.

202. Great guy. He's like a younger brother to me.

203. There's working at cool, casual, fun video game companies

204. like Atari and Activision,

205. and there's working with Vince.

206. Any stories that particularly come to mind working with Vince

207. that you feel comfortable sharing?

208. Names should be changed to protect the innocent probably,

209. but, um, it was fucking crazy.

210. Atari actually hired me the day of the interview.

211. They already had an office in Manhattan,

212. but this was a new secret office that most people didn't know about.

213. And they took the 14th floor of the Clocktower

214. in the Metropolitan Life Building.

215. And I would walk into this marble building wearing a t-shirt and flip-flops.

216. We had this one floor that was, like, a bunch of hippies

217. working on video games. It was a unique floor.

218. People would look at us in the MetLife building

219. and not know who the fuck we were.

220. And we have 24-hour access, we'd be there late at night.

221. You know, in the middle of the night going in.

222. Yeah, it was a crazy, crazy time.

223. And then, Adam's first project after Atari,

224. because Atari was in business about another year before they went bust…

225. …was a title called Sorcerer's Apprentice,

226. which was an art utility program for the Commodore 64.

227. And then I got Adam a job. He was making a game called Bristles,

228. a kind of a Donkey Kong game,

229. with this character, which was an early Mario, if you will.

230. But then he was roommates at college with Riedel,

231. and they got the license from Warner Brothers

232. for Spy vs. Spy. The series.

233. And that's how we made Spy vs. Spy.

234. It was the first game that had a dual screen.

235. And then from there, we went and made the first WWF game

236. with Hulk Hogan, and that was pretty wild.

237. Prime Time Wrestling!

238. And All American Wrestling!

239. That was how I, I started in the games business,

240. it was no intention. It just kind of all just…

241. It was all about the right timing.

242. And for me, it made a lot of sense

243. because while working with Atari, and I was working with the programmers,

244. and back then, one programmer would make a game.

245. You might have one artist, you might have two artists.

246. And there was one audio person for the entire company.

247. And so, I found myself really enjoying it because I've got a business part of me,

248. a natural business instinct that now this gave me the opportunity

249. to be the business person I just naturally enjoyed being.

250. But at the same time, I'm with creative people,

251. creative people whom are very technical,

252. creative people that are making music, drawing, making art.

253. So it, it was a beautiful thing.

254. Anybody that may be very young or even,

255. you know, in that college age that's considering

256. getting into something like this,

257. you know, if you're good, that's not enough.

258. You gotta want to do it.

259. I guess we just accepted whatever he did.

260. He was always, I guess, willing to try something different, be different.

261. That's just the way he was.

262. He was never going to do a normal job.

263. You know, I mean, he could go talk

264. to the wino down on, uh, the Bowery

265. and yet, talk to the, the chairman of Chase without missing a beat,

266. - a— and he'd, he'd even…

267. - …eliminate his New York accent.

268. I don't know how he does that, but he can do it.

269. Throughout the '80s, we continue to work on a work-for-hire basis,

270. and I was still working as an agent, still had my headhunting business,

271. and doing a variety of other creative things.

272. So what happened though is, uh, I was…

273. I kind of felt it was time to leave New York.

274. I was turning 40. I was like, "Okay, I'm ready.

275. I've had a great life here, all is good."

276. You know, New York in the '80s, it, it just was deteriorating.

277. I, I really wasn't enjoying it anymore.

278. I had this fantasy for Arizona

279. since I was, uh, watching Roy Rogers as a kid.

280. The Roy Rogers Show starring Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboy,

281. Trigger, his golden palomino!

282. I put together an ad for programmers and artists,

283. and I ran it in a bunch of cities,

284. and Tucson had a great response.

285. So then, I put together a trip.

286. We went to Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Phoenix, Tucson

287. with my former partner, his wife, and two kids.

288. It was a phenomenal trip. And we just said,

289. "Wow, we like Tucson of those four places the best."

290. So we said, "Okay, we're gonna do it."

291. Myself and my parents, we had mixed feelings,

292. you know, having him move so far away,

293. "How often will we get to see him?"

294. But at the same time, it was something he really wanted to do.

295. It was a dream he wanted to try.

296. And we would never stop him. We just, I guess, supported him,

297. you know however we can.

298. It was a constant open hand on,

299. "Hey, you guys are new here. We're happy you're here.

300. What can we do for you? Welcome to Tucson."

301. In the early '90s, you have Mortal Kombat,

302. you have Night Trap.

303. Video games were reaching a point where you could see the violence.

304. So it was no longer just Mario

305. - butt-bouncing on a couple of mushrooms…

306. …and they disappear.

307. What happened is now that you could actually realize

308. and depict true violence,

309. people started to become a little more concerned

310. - about what was inside of these games.

311. Postal, in a lot of ways…

312. That was a turning point in video games.

313. It was a maturing point.

314. And people didn't see how firmly

315. Vince Desi plants his tongue in his cheek when he does this violence.

316. It's all Kill Bill games to him.

317. Going postal. Going postal. Going postal.

318. Going postal.

319. Like the Grinch who stole Christmas,

320. these violent video games threaten to rob

321. this particular holiday season of a spirit of goodwill.

322. In 1993, Joe Lieberman saw Mortal Kombat,

323. and he was appalled by that, which led him to look into other things.

324. And he saw a game called Night Trap, which he never understood.

325. Please, no!

326. I look back and I remember the Atari 2600,

327. and then, you had the arcade games,

328. and while they were violent, they were pixilated.

329. When you started to see consoles

330. and PCs with the emergence of the 3D graphic cards and stuff.

331. TurboGrafx-16 is about to knock video games back!

332. When they started putting more realistic blood

333. and they could do sounds that weren't just beeps and pops

334. and you could hear screams and voices,

335. I think that's where the people started to have an issue.

336. That led to the first congressional hearing on video game violence.

337. What a cynical, irresponsible way to market a product.

338. The fire on this. This is a handgun, pure and simple.

339. Mortal Kombat and Night Trap

340. are not the kind of gifts that responsible parents give.

341. And the thing that's so funny about that is

342. there they are complaining about Mortal Kombat and Night Trap

343. completely unaware that on computer games, Doom had just come out.

344. Joe Lieberman is miscast, he—

345. People just like to say that he wanted to eliminate violent video games.

346. He was more interested in making sure that violent video games

347. fell into the right hands.

348. I agreed with that completely, frankly.

349. You know, I, I didn't think that Doom or Mortal Kombat

350. were games made for six-year-olds.

351. So they asked me if I'd come on board for the video game report card.

352. I'd like to finish up our presentation by introducing Steven Kent,

353. a nationally syndicated columnist who reviews games

354. for newspapers around the country.

355. My job was not to criticize the video game industry.

356. My job was to propose alternate games

357. that maybe were more appropriate for the entire family.

358. Many parents who would gladly watch television or movie

359. with their children quietly leave the room when their—

360. when their children turn on a, a video game.

361. It was a tense time. There was a lot of anger at video games.

362. I haven't seen this advertisement, Senator Lieberman.

363. - We don't have control— Well, you, you've got it now.

364. And video games, you have to remember that the,

365. the generation of people that were parents at that time

366. weren't necessarily raised with video games.

367. So you had parents who would watch cartoons with their kids.

368. But the moment their kid turned on a video game,

369. they lost interest and left the room.

370. So video games kind of became this black box for parents.

371. They didn't know what their kids were playing.

372. They weren't willing, at that point,

373. to go play with them and learn what the games were about.

374. That, that kind of made what Joe Lieberman did more important.

375. If you've ever wondered what kind of minds produce video games,

376. you're looking at 'em.

377. These guys met in New York.

378. We were working on a Steven Seagal game,

379. and the publisher was, uh, somewhere up in Silicon Valley.

380. I don't remember exactly where.

381. So I went up there in, uh, for a meeting and while I was there,

382. I happened to meet Gene Lipkin,

383. who was one of the original guys from Atari.

384. He'd give good advice, and to his credit, we were actually here at a barbecue.

385. He was visiting Tucson, and at the barbecue, we're successful.

386. We're doing well, we're making games for everybody.

387. And he turns to me and he says, "You know, this is never gonna, is,

388. you're never gonna make anything out of this other than a job."

389. He said, "So you've got to choose. What do you want to do?

390. You can continue hitting singles. Or do you wanna go for a home run?"

391. And he said, "You, you know, at some point, you've got to decide.

392. Do you want to have your own property, your own intellectual property?"

393. That's when it just kind of hit me.

394. RSP employees may be artists or computer programmers,

395. but they're all members of a team that may take a year to produce a game.

396. You got to understand that,

397. you know, some of the folks now were with me for five years,

398. people were getting tired of making kids' games.

399. - I'm tired of this, Grandpa! That's too damn bad!

400. So that became the, "You know what? It's time for us to make our own game."

401. We then created Running With Scissors as a new company brand,

402. but we then were also supporting it by making a game for Free Willy under RSP.

403. We were doing a Sesame Street title,

404. so we were basically, taking the, the revenue from those titles

405. and we were self-funding the development of the original Postal

406. under the brand Running With Scissors. RWS.

407. And I did press releases every week for about eight weeks.

408. And that just created a whole sense of hysteria and momentum.

409. Once we made the commitment to start on our own original game,

410. we knew right away,

411. because we had this Robotron Arcade machine in the office,

412. it's what everybody loved, we liked fast-paced games

413. and we wanted to stylize it based on that.

414. The whole concept basically was just a free-roaming game.

415. It was evolving into this, this mad level of relentless shooting,

416. and at that time, the term "going postal" had become more and more popular

417. because of the shootings that started occurring

418. around the country in different post offices.

419. This number is what we call a zip code.

420. It's very, very important—

421. So the idea was, "Well, you're going postal,"

422. but for marketing purposes, I like a single name,

423. so let's call it Postal.

424. Going postal. - Going postal.

425. It's a new video game. It's called Postal.

426. None of this was a conscious effort on our part.

427. This all was a natural evolution,

428. which I really think adds to the whole flavor

429. of the unique creativity, if you will,

430. that made Postal 1 so different than so many other games at that time.

431. You know what it means to "go postal"?

432. - Really isn't very nice.

433. Oh, no.

434. May I please help the next person in line?

435. A new computer game has some people very upset.

436. It's called Postal,

437. and the game maker says it's all in good fun.

438. But others say it's really going too far…

439. So basically, when we were fortunate to agree to make a deal

440. and have a company called Ripcord as our publisher, we were ecstatic.

441. Ripcord was really a new brand for Panasonic Interactive Media,

442. which had been doing educational titles.

443. So they were gonna use Postal as their flagship title

444. to launch their own entertainment brand of video games.

445. Everybody had the same intention.

446. "Let's make a great game, let's have fun, and let's have a big success."

447. It, it was never a conscious thing about, "How can we fuck this up?"

448. This will be great.

449. Yes, we've seen Doom, but Doom is really mostly a PC game,

450. and so, we kind of think, we understand

451. the worst of the worst that could be there.

452. And then, all of a sudden, these two games

453. come out the same year, within months of each other.

454. Both games were played from the top down, from the God perspective.

455. You're in the sky and you're looking down on a city.

456. One of them was the first Grand Theft Auto.

457. And that game was a big concern

458. because you were actually running crimes, real crimes.

459. You were blackmailing,

460. you were stealing cars, you were mugging people.

461. You know, ag— again, those people were little tiny dots

462. in a maze that vaguely looked like a city.

463. And then there was Postal.

464. One day in the office, I got wind of the programmers

465. and it's like, "Well, we're trying to figure out how many characters

466. we could have on the screen at the same time."

467. And I heard. I said, "What? You can have how many?

468. Five, ten, 15, maybe 20 characters on the screen at the same time?"

469. I immediately said to myself, and I just thought "parade."

470. 'Cause a parade to me was funny, you know, a marching band.

471. The only thing anybody ever wanted to talk about with Postal was

472. that you could light an entire marching band on fire.

473. The idea was, "How can we have fun with this?"

474. Set a whole bunch of shit on fire at once!

475. And of course, who knew at the time?

476. But that would be the scene that was written about most,

477. in terms of the crazy game Postal.

478. You'd see them running around on fire and…

479. "Oh, my gosh, this is the worst thing ever."

480. The object of the game is to kill everyone you can.

481. Postal makers say Postal players

482. love playing out their aggressions.

483. Needless to say, everybody loves shooting innocent people.

484. - Wow! And when you napalm the band,

485. it keeps marching and catches the whole crowd on fire.

486. Critics are calling it one of the most violent computer games

487. that they've ever created.

488. Here we are at E3. Tremendous coverage, tremendous response.

489. And that's when CNN came to first do an interview.

490. And that wa— that was just off the top.

491. The unmistakable image of an AK-47 rifle.

492. But the manufacturer, Ripcord Games, went ahead with the name anyway.

493. It says, "The streets are awash in blood.

494. Watch victims run around on fire screaming for help

495. until their charred corpses fall to the ground.

496. Listen to victims moan and beg for mercy."

497. Now explain to me what's entertaining about that.

498. Well, I think I stick to my original point,

499. which is "this is a game."

500. I've always considered the Postal Dude to be a, a pretty calm guy

501. who was really just defending himself.

502. He just really is somebody that wants to be left alone,

503. you know, "You do your thing. I'll do mine. Don't get in my face."

504. Hi there. Would you like to sign my petition?

505. I was first aware of the Postal series back in the late '90s.

506. And, uh, as a person who is in the gaming industry,

507. it was much smaller back then.

508. There were many fewer games that were coming out at the time,

509. and we thought there were too many then.

510. Postal stood out and, uh, we all knew about it,

511. we all heard about it, and we all thought it was, like, crazy

512. and didn't know how you were gonna, you know,

513. they were gonna get it in, in GameStop and, and Wal-Mart.

514. I come from the, from the independent developer community.

515. And so, uh, we're all for each other and we want to support each other.

516. And everybody in the indie community, uh, absolutely loved what their—

517. what Running With Scissors was doing with, with creating Postal.

518. But yeah, Postal was breaking the mold for sure.

519. But, uh, man, they— Postal turned it up to 11.

520. Their whole premise is so over the top, it's so ridiculous.

521. It's, it's obviously a joke, you know, and it's not also for kids.

522. So, you know…

523. My favorite thing about playing Postal

524. was not only, like, the violence and the, and the humor,

525. which was awesome. I mean, it was very much, like,

526. akin to stuff like South Park in, in many ways.

527. But what I, what I loved about it, was the fact that it felt

528. like we were doing something that we were not supposed to

529. and we were getting away with it.

530. The first time I played Postal was, uh, was back in, I, I think, '97.

531. I saw some ads in, in a local game magazine called PC Player.

532. Back then, there were no real rules of who could buy games.

533. No one really knew, at, at least in Denmark,

534. uh, that, that there were certain adult-only games.

535. So I saw this box in a game store,

536. and it had these, you know, yellow-striped, uh, marks

537. on the top and bottom of the, uh, of the box.

538. I bought the game, brought it home. I still have that box,

539. and I opened it from the bottom.

540. So it still kind of looks like it's, it's unopened.

541. I had no idea what I was playing. I, I was playing a fun game.

542. Uh, I had no idea what the word Postal meant and where it came from.

543. I was always a fan for both, that the game was actually fun,

544. it was a good game, but also that it was a game series

545. that just didn't care what anyone else thought.

546. And that was very similar to the kind of games I grew up playing

547. and very similar to the games that we're making today where,

548. you know, they are kind of edgy, and, and we're making games

549. that are not necessarily for everyone.

550. But it, it is a game that shows that there,

551. there's space for everyone in the games industry

552. and I really like that.

553. But did you also know that video games…

554. We had bought a lot of airtime on Howard Stern.

555. And they actually paid extra

556. so Howard Stern could have a liv— do a live read.

557. Spent a fortune on these people.

558. They— it was a clown show.

559. When they had the, uh, the read for Howard,

560. where it was supposed to be client, and it was supposed to say

561. "Running With Scissors" or "Ripcord,"

562. instead, they said "Panasonic."

563. Howard reads it, starts making fun of it.

564. Panasonic goes into a, a, a crazy mode over this.

565. Immediately, we received, uh, basically from the former,

566. uh, Postmaster General of the United States itself,

567. a threatening letter, because of the word "postal."

568. I had trademarked the word "postal"

569. 'cause the post office itself was founded by Benjamin Franklin,

570. but nobody ever trademarked the word.

571. So then that created somewhat of a legal issue

572. between us and the Postmaster General,

573. which is basically the federal government.

574. And one thing led to another.

575. Senator Lieberman, on the floor of the Senate,

576. he declares three things that are bad for American society:

577. Calvin Klein underwear ads,

578. Marilyn Manson, and our video game, Postal.

579. Video games like Postal, which is marketed by Panasonic

580. in which the player is cast as a deranged gunman

581. trying to wipe out an entire town.

582. I wanted nothing to do with the post office.

583. It was nothing about that.

584. It was always about your regular, everyday guy

585. and just decided enough is enough.

586. Only my weapon understands me.

587. - Oh, yes I do.

588. This is really a, you know, very crazy game

589. for people that are crazy about games.

590. Lots of people don't see it that way.

591. The Postmaster General, for one,

592. wrote a letter to the developers of the game

593. saying this is an unfair portrayal of postal workers.

594. "Dear Mr. Desi.

595. All of us at the Postal Service have a sense of humor,

596. but there is nothing funny about your game Postal.

597. It is in very poor taste, and is an erroneous

598. and unfair portrayal of the nation's postal employees."

599. No shit. We're talking about a wacky white trash dude

600. from Arizona who goes off.

601. So I get this though,

602. and my first response was laughing my ass off.

603. The people that have died at— in the post offices,

604. it's not a funny thing.

605. There's a big web buzz right now about, you know,

606. "Should they name it that?" The post office sent 'em

607. some mail about, you know, "You can't call it that."

608. I, I have a vague memory of,

609. of the, the "going postal," uh, incidents that happened.

610. I think there were two, two or three over the years.

611. But the term "going postal" was amusing to enough people

612. that it became a slang term for anybody who's losing their shit.

613. Harry.

614. The game, after it was released in November,

615. was only on the market, on the shelves, for two weeks.

616. Then it got pulled. Once it got pulled, it's more negative press.

617. One thing led to another.

618. And then eventually, we wound up striking a settlement deal

619. with the publisher because I was like, "Well, wait a second. You know,

620. - we put all our effort into this.

621. What's going on here? You're pulling my product."

622. We were get— People were loving it.

623. But here we were, no way to sell the game.

624. - I honestly never was ready

625. or expected anything that was about to happen.

626. It was not part of a game plan.

627. We didn't do anything on purpose to,

628. you know, be, "Oh, do this just so you get extra attention."

629. None of that.

630. Once we came out with Postal and we hit The Wall Street Journal

631. and everything else, literally, the shit hit the fan.

632. Making headlines in newspapers

633. all around the country, like The Wall Street Journal.

634. The original plan to basically have a parallel vision,

635. making kids games like the Disney's and Hanna-Barbera's

636. and, and Sesame Street most of all, and making Postal,

637. that plan went to shit.

638. And we were told in person,

639. "I don't know if we're gonna be able to continue doing business."

640. Sesame Street boked and it ended there

641. because once we lost Sesame Street, which was a big contract…

642. …that meant we were all, all in on Postal.

643. And I just really tried to focus on,

644. "All right. They wanna fuck? We're gonna fuck."

645. Uh, and from our own data research, um,

646. unbelievable professionals, attorneys, doctors are buying our game—

647. I don't care if the President's playing the game,

648. I still think it has no redeeming value.

649. You know, I'm not here to tell you what you can do in your house

650. or what you can watch. So I don't want anybody telling me either.

651. I never had games like that in our, in our, in our home.

652. - It's a game. - What do they say to the family members

653. who have experienced a murder

654. that we just absolutely, ironically make a game out of it?

655. It's becoming a real bad joke.

656. The postal workers' union is encouraging a boycott.

657. I don't worry about that kind of thing.

658. …it's, like, judging everybody by one word.

659. If you get to know us, everybody seems to like their mailman,

660. I don't see the big deal.

661. It's the game that some say everyone wanted to make,

662. but no one had the balls to make.

663. So here we are 25 years later and we're still fucking.

664. I, I grew up in, in the era of people going postal

665. when, uh, disgruntled employees would show up

666. and, and, you know, bring their gun to work day.

667. But I, I also recall that, uh,

668. back in the day, Duke Nukem had a line too saying,

669. "I'm gonna go postal now."

670. Looks like it's time for me to go postal.

671. I thought it was funny the first time I heard Duke say it,

672. and then when I saw there was a Postal game

673. about a dude going postal everywhere,

674. uh, I thought that was hilarious.

675. Uh, I, I mean, "going postal," it, it's a sad expression,

676. sad commentary on, on mass shootings.

677. Oh, this is gonna piss off your viewers, isn't it?

678. - Oh, well. You wanna dance?

679. Both Duke Nukem and, and, and Postal series

680. and many others use kind of a cartoon-style violence.

681. You know, it's very over the top and it's very, very clearly

682. not meant to be taken seriously.

683. And I think that's also where the humor comes in,

684. you know, having over-the-top violence,

685. which you now see in a lot of TV series and cartoons

686. like South Park and The Simpsons and Family Guy, and so on,

687. it's, it's more what I would consider these games to be in the category of,

688. compared to games that have much more realistically depicted violence.

689. There will be kids playing this game,

690. they will have the ax, they will be holding the ax,

691. and bringing it down on their victim.

692. That's how this will work when, when played on Wii.

693. I regret nothing.

694. When I was writing my book,

695. The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2,

696. a mutual friend contacted me

697. and said, "You know, you really should interview Vince Desi."

698. At the time, I was thin— kind of thinking of including

699. in my book a Hall of Shame for the games that pushed things a little too far.

700. I, I don't think the majority of pastors in the United States

701. would raise an eyebrow at Postal anymore.

702. That leads to the other question,

703. "Did Postal make society sick?

704. Or did society's taste

705. create what would become Postal?"

706. My name is Mike Jaret-Schachter.

707. I'm the VP of Business Development at Running With Scissors.

708. I was told once that Mike had a little bit of a different personality before we met.

709. He's very passionate about whatever he does.

710. That beanie is not supposed to be on your f****** helmet!

711. Whatever phases he goes through, he's still himself,

712. but he also needs to be checked sometimes, too.

713. Any time he gets into a conflict with someone, I'll get a phone call

714. from his mom saying, "Can you get Mike to be nicer now?"

715. Mike!

716. In school, I was pretty average student.

717. I went to my classes, I did all my homework.

718. My computer class was where things got interesting

719. and ended up dictating the rest of my life, actually.

720. There was a kid in my computer class who knew

721. absolutely nothing about computers, which is totally fine.

722. But he used to tell us that his dad owned a video game company in Tucson,

723. which was like, "Come on, that's bullshit.

724. If your dad owns a video game company,

725. you should at least know how to use a computer."

726. This kid didn't know how to use a computer.

727. One day, I was leaving class, and he was sitting outside the school,

728. and he asked me for a ride to his dad's office.

729. I was like, "Well, that'll be interesting.

730. Like, let's go see this Circle K, 7-Eleven,

731. whatever, whatever place your dad works at."

732. So I drove him to the office and I was wrong.

733. His dad was Vince.

734. He's just under 30 years older than me.

735. He's basically like kindred spirit.

736. We're the same person.

737. Germany just removed all of our games off of Steam two days ago.

738. Talk about, like, Nazi regime coming back again.

739. Vince had this personality that Running With Scissors intersected with.

740. Are you kidding? No regrets. Absolutely none at all.

741. He made children's video games. Vince and Wishbone.

742. Vince and Bobby's World.

743. All these games that, like, just don't represent who he is as a person.

744. Get in fucking line if you want money, too!

745. You? Fuck you too!

746. I don't know. Maybe your generation different from my generation.

747. But we pissed on everything when I was a kid.

748. I met Mike J. through my son Vinny, and he came to the office.

749. He was loud and cruel and crude and all those kind of great qualities.

750. Obnoxious to most people.

751. I seen in him a younger self.

752. If somebody asked, "What's the recipe been for the sausage bread?"

753. Tell you the truth, it's never changed.

754. Sometimes, I'll come up with something and he makes his own version

755. AKA he fucks it up.

756. Yeah, because taste isn't subjective.

757. He's just honest and direct and most people can't handle that.

758. He came on board and he's been a treasure, and is now a partner.

759. The good news is because we've had constant income in royalties

760. from a variety of sources,

761. we've been able to sustain and just do this ourselves.

762. A bigger publisher might have said like,

763. "Okay, guys, it's time to quit this now.

764. Like, you're not making tens of millions of dollars off of this.

765. What are you doing?" And it's like,

766. "Yeah, but we're making enough to keep making."

767. The original Postal went through hell

768. from the media, the government, and our original publisher, Ripcord Games.

769. Oh, we feel very sorry for the, the families that, uh,

770. that have suffered things like that.

771. They paid us. We couldn't make a game—

772. another Postal game for two or three years, it was.

773. So we downsized.

774. You know, it was pretty easy at that point because some people left,

775. and I couldn't go back to making kids' games,

776. because all the kids' publishers

777. didn't want to do business with us anymore.

778. So there we were, figuring what are we gonna do.

779. "We're gonna do this on our own."

780. We were like, "Okay, we're gonna make Postal 2."

781. The decision was to make it completely different.

782. I had this picture of what the game was in my mind,

783. and even though we had, you know, people working on it in the back,

784. there wasn't really a game. So I couldn't, I couldn't put,

785. uh, a picture to what was actually going on in my mind.

786. So in my mind, the game wasn't, it wasn't that far off

787. of what it, what it ended up being, but it was different.

788. The original Postal was built on an old RSP engine

789. we were using for kids' games.

790. Postal 2 being first-person shooter, everything was new.

791. Just getting the areas in the size they were to run

792. at the performance they did was an uphill battle.

793. Getting the characters to move the way they did was an uphill battle.

794. It kind of all was an uphill battle,

795. and we even released the game

796. with really, really, really horrible load times.

797. Running With Scissors is an indie game studio

798. that faces a lot of indie game problems

799. that I think other studios would get praised for overcoming,

800. or would at least have recognized, like,

801. "Oh, the limitations of what they were working with.

802. Look at, look at the accomplishment of what they did,"

803. which no one's gonna give to Running With Scissors.

804. Running With Scissors has always been more like a family.

805. I mean, it's, it's definitely different

806. than any other studio I've ever worked for.

807. You feel at home here, you feel, like, you know, you're gonna get

808. everyone's honest opinion, everyone's gonna work their hardest.

809. It's not just clock in and get a paycheck.

810. Uh, these guys, they're really passionate about what we're doing.

811. It's one of the important parts of about, uh,

812. Running With Scissors, I think, is that in the process

813. of interviewing people around the game studio over the years,

814. uh, to talk about the development of the games,

815. no one ever said that they were treated less than great

816. uh, by the guys behind it.

817. They are, on paper, a really good indie game studio

818. trying their best and oftentimes, just missing the mark

819. in, in so many places for what would become a mainstream success.

820. You got to remember it's post-2001.

821. Terrorism, insanity, Catholic priest perversion.

822. This is just the way the world was evolving.

823. But the Postal Dude is an individual

824. who basically has to deal with a lot of shit,

825. just like everybody in their own real life.

826. We're naive enough to think that

827. kids are not gonna get a hold of this, so we're just fooling ourselves.

828. I regret nothing.

829. I would have never guessed in my career that I would—

830. the most notoriety I would have ever gotten is this Postal series.

831. Didn't you use to work out of a bathroom?

832. Dude, the world is my bathroom!

833. Fitting since this place is a giant shithole.

834. I didn't think it was gonna be that big of a deal.

835. I thought it was just gonna be some local thing.

836. And then, when we did Postal 2, that's when it really came about.

837. - Whatchu talking 'bout, Willis?

838. Somebody, I forgot who on the team, said,

839. "We should get, like, Gary Coleman."

840. - And I started doing a little digging…

841. …and I was able to reach Gary Coleman.

842. He came to Tucson.

843. And they say the rest is history.

844. The company Running With Scissors

845. came up with the first game six years ago.

846. Some thought it was a hit, while others were completely offended.

847. They were just so pent up and frustrated and angry

848. and having no way to release that tension.

849. So this was a good way to do it.

850. Once we had Gary in the game,

851. the whole game started to go into this new, absurd, comedic,

852. satirical, crazy kind of way.

853. Hi, there. Would you like to sign my petition?

854. Whatchu talking 'bout, asshole?

855. Man, what these game developers won't do for a buck!

856. At least, it's educational.

857. About five years after the original Postal,

858. April 2003, Postal 2 was released.

859. Did I just kick that guy

860. and cut him in half at the same time?

861. I remember just sitting there just laughing my head off

862. while I'm playing through it going, "You know, this is rough.

863. This is raw. And it's, it's definitely not politically correct."

864. And yet, there are elements of it that make you uncomfortable

865. and there's elements of it that make you just laugh beyond belief.

866. With the controversy over this vicious video game.

867. This is Postal 2.

868. It's a 3D computer game about a person who goes to work,

869. gets fired, and goes postal on the people around him.

870. I really was believing that…

871. "This is gonna get us back.

872. Okay? We're gonna, we're not gonna be banned.

873. You know, the public will love us,

874. but the media will, you know, embrace us."

875. I can tell this is gonna be an interesting day.

876. Immediate reception was phenomenal, fantastic,

877. and horrible all in one.

878. The media continue to hate us.

879. The public continue to love us.

880. It's no worse than movies or anything else in our culture today.

881. One parent we talked to says he disagrees.

882. I would not let them play it.

883. And I, I didn't understand it,

884. but we were being condemned all over again.

885. By the time Postal 2 came out,

886. violent video games were all over the place.

887. I didn't think we'd have any, any real problems

888. finding a publisher and then getting coverage.

889. And I was wrong. Game was called Postal.

890. Didn't matter what was popular.

891. We had Osama Bin Laden.

892. We had Gary Coleman, which people were making fun of.

893. - We had the pissing,

894. we had the cat violence.

895. They, they did this bit in the, in Postal 2

896. where, uh, you essentially had, uh, protesters in the game

897. protesting in front of Running With Scissors.

898. Games are bad, they make you mad!

899. Games are bad, they make you mad!

900. And, uh, and one of your missions was to, uh,

901. to kill the protesters.

902. I really liked that they kind of broke the fourth wall,

903. and they're having a fun time with, with the controversy.

904. Have a nice day.

905. I thought it was funny. I still think it's funny.

906. I thought it was inappropriate for ten-year-olds.

907. I still think it's inappropriate for ten-year-olds.

908. - Oh, that's you! I, I forgot— - Oh, I have my dick out.

909. It says "censored."

910. - Wait, it says "censored"!

911. Adding, um, Gary Coleman and, and urinating on people you killed…

912. That's the ticket. - …didn't make it any better,

913. didn't make it any worse.

914. Wasn't my kind of game, but it was a game with a sense of humor.

915. I hear a lot of, uh, feedback that, like, "This really shaped my life,"

916. and it sounds like a grand statement,

917. but a lot of people will say stuff like that.

918. It's like this, you know, "This was my childhood

919. and I can blow off steam in this game," and…

920. The game's only as violent as you are, and, um, I think that's, that's true.

921. Postal doesn't get enough credit

922. for the fact that it's— you can play it completely nonviolently.

923. You can get through the entire game without killing anything.

924. We got the first zero ever from Computer Gaming World.

925. I also compared it to an infected colon.

926. What an honor.

927. I sort of melded that into worst game ever,

928. and I thought, "You know what? We've got to stick this on the box."

929. And I will tell you,

930. that didn't go particularly well in the office.

931. Fucking shit!

932. I pretty much started hating it really, really fast,

933. but certainly once, um, all the racism started coming out.

934. So that's about five minutes in.

935. That's about when I said, "Oh, Jesus, God, no."

936. Is it for everybody? No. It's rough, it's raw,

937. it's a maverick production. Is it a masterpiece? No.

938. Is it a fun, if at times, flawed, entertaining game? Absolutely.

939. When Robert Coffey gave us a zero out of ten,

940. my first thought was,

941. "I couldn't pay him enough." And it was great

942. - 'cause we didn't pay him at all.

943. I think it's funny. I think it's satirical.

944. It's all in good humor. And if you want to get

945. your panties in a twist about that, then, you know, go ahead.

946. You know, there wasn't social media back then, like,

947. the, the words that viewers wrote in magazines

948. were, like, the fucking Ten Commandments.

949. Okay? So when people saw this, they were, like, shell-shocked, hard.

950. I do know that as I played it, I grew to dislike it more and more,

951. and find it to be really, really awful.

952. So the review is out. You've given it a zero.

953. What was kind of Postal fans' response to your review?

954. Death threats.

955. I had hundreds of death threats.

956. Against me, my wife. I had rape threats against my wife,

957. and I had death threats against my five and seven-year-old children.

958. Hundreds of them.

959. That's a terrible story you're telling me.

960. But, see, to me, again, that's a reflection

961. of people's own insecurities.

962. That's news to me.

963. Um, I'm definitely not okay with that.

964. Back then, there wasn't the internet for,

965. for talking shit about things like there is today.

966. But that's what, you know, magazines were for.

967. I don't know, I'm sorry for the stupid things

968. that, I'll call them, Postal fans said,

969. but I don't particularly find them to be fans

970. if they're threatening people's lives over somebody not liking our product.

971. If you're gonna like a game like Postal, you need to accept

972. that probably four out of five of your friends won't.

973. I stand by my review.

974. From the tears of blood that I wept as I played this game.

975. This is the same load of shit that I played 20 years ago.

976. With the negative comes, like, a bunch of positive.

977. We also got five out of five from one another media outlet

978. that was also listed on game rankings.

979. So… that led us to approach the Guinness Records

980. about giving us a Guinness record for the most divisively reviewed game.

981. And we actually were awarded

982. the most critically divisive game in history

983. because we received a zero and 100.

984. Now 22 years later since Postal 1 came out,

985. we are somehow still…

986. the most banned and blacklisted company in the world.

987. A while back, the industry took some heat in California

988. with some corrupt senator

989. that was fighting against the game industry.

990. So the industry itself took the case to the US Supreme Court,

991. and we got word that they would be using Postal 2

992. as the flagship title in defense of the industry.

993. The only thing that I found was

994. you said was clearly covered by the statute was Postal 2.

995. I mean, how would you describe in plain English,

996. uh, what, what morbid violence is?

997. Dismembering, torturing, sexually assaulting,

998. um, and those types of violence.

999. And thank God, they did vote in favor of Postal 2,

1000. and freedom of expression and the video game industry.

1001. Thank you, justices.

1002. These games are evil!

1003. It wasn't until the game was released in Russia by Akella

1004. that it really started selling big units

1005. and, and it was a, a smash fucking hit in Russia.

1006. Postal was extremely popular in Russia.

1007. It was selling like hotcakes on Christmas.

1008. We're going there to meet these guys officially

1009. and go to the, go to the offices and see them.

1010. - Right when we leave New York,

1011. this little Russian kid comes up to me,

1012. and he's like, "Postal!"

1013. That didn't happen here, like, ever.

1014. I wore my Postal shirts everywhere.

1015. And maybe at a gaming trade show,

1016. someone would be like, "Oh, hey, Running With Scissors!"

1017. But not, like, on an airplane.

1018. We're on an airplane and some little kid, "Postal!"

1019. We told him, "Yeah, yeah, we make the video game."

1020. He lights up.

1021. And he goes and tells all of his friends

1022. and suddenly, we have to, like, kind of interact

1023. with all these little Russian kids that we didn't really know.

1024. And it was kind of like, "Oh, oh, maybe more Russian kids know

1025. about this than we thought." We know we made a project,

1026. we know we've sold plenty of copies.

1027. We know that, like, people have game posters in their house,

1028. and they want to meet the people that make their game and that's all cool.

1029. But it didn't ever really occur to me, I guess that,

1030. potentially, could be me, I guess.

1031. Please welcome RWS's Mike J!

1032. This guy's fucking—

1033. We went back a few more times.

1034. And every time we would go for these things,

1035. we would sit and sign autographs for people endlessly.

1036. I mean, why are all these kids lining up to get our autograph?

1037. This is cool, but why?

1038. That also set, I would say, the business grounds

1039. for working with Running With Scissors,

1040. not just, uh, as a publisher/developer

1041. but maybe looking to, like, even a deeper collaboration.

1042. We were like, "Well, you know, this is a super-accepting country of our shit."

1043. Like, we knew where we stood in the United States.

1044. We knew the countries that we were not allowed in.

1045. This is clearly the place that loves Postal.

1046. We're working on Postal III right now for PC and Xbox 360 with Akella!

1047. We are hearing from friends who are honoring the U of I student

1048. shot and killed at the Tim Faulkner Art Gallery

1049. in the Portland neighborhood over the weekend.

1050. Six people were shot and all,

1051. including 20-year-old Savannah Walker, who died at the scene.

1052. Friends told the family Savannah pushed others

1053. out of the way when the shooting began.

1054. She always put everyone first.

1055. Always everyone first.

1056. The reality of shooting somebody in his case was blinded.

1057. It was merged. He had left playing video games.

1058. He then went home and didn't realize that his parents might be, might be dead.

1059. New details about the mass shooting

1060. in Jacksonville, Florida, at a video game competition.

1061. Three dead, including the gunman.

1062. I haven't imagined in my whole life that my son

1063. can do such a thing.

1064. This is major what's happening here right now.

1065. We're above Dawson College, Maisonneuve Boulevard.

1066. Many injured, I can tell you…

1067. September 13th of 2006, it's a Wednesday afternoon in Montreal.

1068. Dawson College is a university with about 8000 students.

1069. Outside of the school, a black car pulls up,

1070. a guy with a mohawk gets out.

1071. He's got a big trench coat on.

1072. He's got a black duffel bag.

1073. I was in Montreal.

1074. I was giving lectures, delivering papers, and so on.

1075. I saw the footage, live footage,

1076. that there is a drama that is taking place about 400 meters away from my hotel.

1077. A guy by the name of Kimveer Gill entered into Dawson College

1078. in downtown Montreal…

1079. …and opened fire.

1080. So it is Jed Kahane reporting on this, uh, terrible, uh…

1081. …tragedy in that, it's…

1082. We, we are not sure how many, uh, people are dead.

1083. We saw him take the rifle out of his truck.

1084. We just heard more shots ringing out.

1085. Someone got hit beside me right down, full of blood,

1086. and I just went into a classroom.

1087. We heard more and more gunshots.

1088. The shooter was shot in the arm and then took his own life.

1089. At 12:48 p.m., 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa

1090. killed in the rampage and 19 others injured

1091. on September 13th, 2006.

1092. Like a lot of other school shootings,

1093. the school shooter is now dead, uh,

1094. so there is not really a chance to interrogate him later

1095. about what brought him to this point, what inspired him to do this.

1096. What we do have is hundreds of pages of posts

1097. from a social media site called vampirefreaks.com.

1098. It was designed especially for the goth culture.

1099. So it was about goth music, goth clothes, their likes, their dislikes.

1100. The thing that makes it a little different

1101. from other social media blog-type sites at the time

1102. is that there is a ranking system.

1103. People can give you points

1104. for how dark and edgy they think you are.

1105. There's a gamified system here that rewards you

1106. for being more of a edgelord, more of a dark, threatening person.

1107. The goth are cool and peaceful people on the whole.

1108. When they are on the fringe,

1109. you'll find violent and very extreme fringe

1110. of the goth culture.

1111. Kimveer Gill belonged to that fringe.

1112. He was extremely violent person.

1113. So who is Kimveer Gill and how do we reach this point?

1114. Kimveer was a loner.

1115. He lived in a basement of his parents, did not work,

1116. and his world was virtual.

1117. He was not very friendly.

1118. He said he hated people.

1119. And he played games.

1120. Kimveer Gill is a huge fan of Postal.

1121. Did Postal cause him to do a school shooting?

1122. Just as much as anything else that he posted repeatedly about loving.

1123. He loved Metallica. He loved Marilyn Manson.

1124. To what degree do any of these things play into him being a school shooter?

1125. I'm scared every day,

1126. um, for my son, for his friends.

1127. They play these video games

1128. and they, the way they talk to each other and,

1129. you know, "Oh, you shot me!"

1130. And then they turn around and they kill all of them.

1131. They go, "Ah! We'll reset it and we'll play again later."

1132. That, to me, is disgusting.

1133. And it makes me think that they're becoming completely desensitized

1134. to what that actually means out in the real world.

1135. Not for all people, because millions of people

1136. are playing violent video games.

1137. But if you have susceptibility to violence and you entertain violent sentiments,

1138. it might be the, the time that for some of these people,

1139. they will go on shooting sprees.

1140. The game become part of their reality.

1141. My son can sit on the video game for six hours a day.

1142. I can't imagine how doing that for six hours

1143. doesn't affect you in some way.

1144. And when you're seven, eight, nine, even younger,

1145. it has to mentally affect you in some way.

1146. And unfortunately, you don't see those effects until later on.

1147. They're becoming very, very desensitized to what could really happen in the world.

1148. Violence, the realism that you find in games and movies…

1149. The corrosive influence of a violent-oriented world…

1150. Usually, Postal gets brought up by politicians around a school shooting

1151. 'cause it's easier than talking about guns

1152. or mental health or bullying or an individual situation.

1153. Games get an M rating for "mature,"

1154. meaning stores are not supposed to sell to anyone under 17.

1155. Why kids nowadays, um, resort to violence to, to resolve conflict?

1156. It's absolutely, um, mind-boggling to me

1157. how that is and why it is continuing in the world today.

1158. Like a lot of other pop culture things,

1159. it's an easy thing to point to for politicians.

1160. We can blame a video game that has a school shooting sequence in it.

1161. He's a complicated human being who used a website to share

1162. a lot of things that he thought were dangerous and scary.

1163. All stakeholders are responsible for the consequences.

1164. It shouldn't be on Vince Desi

1165. to have to get in front of a camera and apologize.

1166. He didn't do this and that guy didn't just like Postal.

1167. He liked thousands of things and blogged about it at length.

1168. Postal is in there, but Postal is in there for that person.

1169. It's not who he was in its entirety.

1170. There are close similarities between the Dude in Postal

1171. and Kimveer Gill.

1172. It's hard to not see the resemblance here.

1173. They dress exactly the same.

1174. The combat boots.

1175. Slim figure, holding a gun.

1176. The big jacket.

1177. It is unfortunate that it's a pretty clear line of him

1178. being a fan of this

1179. to how he chose to go about this.

1180. In his blog, Gill describe what he expected of a sequel

1181. to Postal 2, and I quote,

1182. "There should be more to do

1183. other than just shooting people for no reason.

1184. There needs to be a plot and a good storyline."

1185. Gill reflected on his feelings about the video game character by saying,

1186. and this is another quote from Gill…

1187. Much like Gill himself.

1188. A regular Joe is about to uncover…

1189. - Jihad! - …two sinister plots.

1190. Today, we do God's work.

1191. We will strike a blow against America.

1192. Postal. - Everybody should buy my book.

1193. How to Fire an Employee Without Making Them Go Postal.

1194. We had originally gotten

1195. an email from, like, an Uwe Boll fan site.

1196. Like, this kid was a huge Uwe Boll fan, German kid,

1197. and he was like, "Hey, man, I'm friends with Uwe!

1198. Uh, we want to make the, we want him to make a Postal movie.

1199. What do you think? He's interested."

1200. Blah, blah, blah, and, you know,

1201. I was pretty familiar, uh, with his body of work at the time.

1202. Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead

1203. and, uh, so I, I deleted the email.

1204. Couple of weeks later, we got another email.

1205. The more we kind of talked about it back and forth, it was like,

1206. "Well, we make a certain quality of product.

1207. We know it's not the best.

1208. In fact, we might call it the worst game ever."

1209. His reputation was that he was, you know, the worst director

1210. in Hollywood kind of thing.

1211. If anybody's gonna make the Postal movie,

1212. it might as well be the guy that's making the worst video game films.

1213. And I was like, "Well, this is a, this is perfect for us."

1214. There are other villains in the video game industry,

1215. - there are other people to hate us.

1216. - Uwe Boll!

1217. Okay, look, Uwe challenged to box director Michael Bay in the ring.

1218. - What would you do to him? - Yeah, let's see!

1219. Hello, Michael.

1220. - No, I would like to…

1221. - …punch him! Oh, Jesus!

1222. So and then obviously, there's some people on the internet

1223. that are not fans of your films.

1224. And if you look at Rotten Tomatoes, the critics aren't as well.

1225. F*** yourself.

1226. You know, there's guys that are out that, that have petitions,

1227. you know, against you making video game movies.

1228. The fight was a one-sided affair.

1229. Some speculated that Boll's decade-long

1230. amateur boxing experience gave him an unfair advantage.

1231. American audiences will have a chance to see his movies

1232. whether they want it or not proving that Uwe Boll

1233. is a force more inevitable than death.

1234. I'm the only genius in the whole fucking business. Goodbye.

1235. My name is Uwe Boll and I'm the director of the Postal movie.

1236. - You are?

1237. Oh, f***, that's great, man.

1238. What the fuck is wrong with you?

1239. A, a company came to me and said,

1240. "We have the rights to the video game, House of the Dead.

1241. What you may be know from the arcades."

1242. And I said, "Yes, I know Ho— House of the Dead.

1243. I, I played it various times."

1244. So we did the House of the Dead movie.

1245. - Action!

1246. It got horrible reviews and everybody hated me for it,

1247. but it actually made good money worldwide.

1248. - So I continued the road

1249. to make video game-based movies.

1250. This fan club said, "You should make a film out of that game."

1251. So then I dived into it, checked Postal out,

1252. and found it extremely… violent,

1253. funny,

1254. crazy…

1255. - …stupid…

1256. Oh, my God, I'm the damn gimp!

1257. …cheap.

1258. So, I loved it.

1259. He invited me up to Vancouver

1260. where he was living, and he's shooting all his movies.

1261. Great guy in person.

1262. And then we agreed on putting a deal together.

1263. We started talking about it.

1264. Put together what we considered to be our treatment of the Postal movie.

1265. It was very violent. Like Taxi Driver.

1266. Uh, I felt— "No, no, no, no, no.

1267. That, that would make it too cheap in a way."

1268. You know, there are all the rumors out

1269. that my movies are financed with Nazi gold.

1270. And what should I say? It's true!

1271. Our treatment of the Postal movie was, um…

1272. …diametric opposites from what ended up coming out.

1273. Did you know about this? - No, I didn't f****** know about this!

1274. But, I mean, it was a fun storyline. It has to do with the Krotchy Doll.

1275. You know, he had Verne Troyer, who was Mini-Me in the movie,

1276. who was really a lot of fun to work with.

1277. Dan Clark, the line producer and producer on it, uh, and me went to LA.

1278. So we hired Morman Boling Casting,

1279. - two young girls, basically.

1280. They, I shouldn't say, just started out of a little, like, shed.

1281. Yeah. And they went out and…

1282. - …invited people to read for us.

1283. So, uh, we were sitting in LA in that little shed

1284. and people came in and out and were reading.

1285. But then… uh, Zack Ward came in.

1286. I remember. I literally, I can see it in my head right now…

1287. …the audition room was pretty shitty,

1288. and I remember it was kind of, like, the middle of the day,

1289. a very hot day, and there was no air conditioning.

1290. This is a shithole.

1291. And I think I was reading for a different character.

1292. Not even the Postal Dude.

1293. He was reading as— for one of the cop parts.

1294. After he left, like, Dan and I looked at us

1295. and we felt like, "No, that is the Postal Dude."

1296. And that was really exciting. That was huge.

1297. You know, to get to star in a movie is a big, big deal.

1298. Who writes this shit?

1299. No soup for you!

1300. - No soup for you!

1301. - What? - Come back one year!

1302. And I was reading the script on a train to a charity event in Santa Barbara,

1303. and I was laughing so loudly people were staring at me.

1304. The lead character, the Postal Dude, I mean, he's not wrong.

1305. What is wrong with you people?

1306. People are just dicks.

1307. He's frustrated by it,

1308. and he's railing against a society that believes its own hype.

1309. So yeah, that was, that was really appealing with the script.

1310. I did not see it as, like, a shock movie or cheap humor.

1311. The American dream is not a dream for you.

1312. I really saw the possibility of a great social satire.

1313. In fact,

1314. - it is a nightmare!

1315. I didn't know anything about Uwe's, um, reputation.

1316. I didn't know that he was controversial.

1317. I didn't know that he, you know, was gonna fight his—

1318. people reviewing his movies.

1319. We have there a great opportunity

1320. to show the craziness of the world we're living in.

1321. Bringing Bin Laden, uh, bringing Bush, uh, September 11th.

1322. All right. Well, drop me an email.

1323. Tell me what pipe you're talking about and I'll blow it all the way to Mecca.

1324. The Taliban.

1325. The avian bird flu.

1326. And we're reading this, like, 9/11 scene on paper,

1327. and it's just not funny.

1328. - Like, are we fucking kidding?

1329. Like, we're gonna open probably one of the more offensive movies

1330. of all time with, like, the worst joke of all time?

1331. And the opening scene makes no joke about the victims of September 11.

1332. But, like, there was no talking him out of it.

1333. Like, it just wasn't gonna happen.

1334. This opening scene makes fun out of 99 virgins.

1335. - I thought that it was 100? - What's that?

1336. One hundred virgins. They promised me 100.

1337. Nobody wants to die anymore unless they get virgins.

1338. And at that point, we kind of realize like, "Well, this isn't our project."

1339. There wasn't a lot of video game movies being made,

1340. and we were happy to be one of 'em.

1341. Uh, not to mention it was gonna cost, like,

1342. something around $20 million to make this movie, and we're, like…

1343. Yeah, I, I don't have any money.

1344. "Well, that's way higher than any of our game budgets.

1345. So something cool's gonna happen here."

1346. In my mind, he's shooting,

1347. like, a bunch of kids making a high school film.

1348. The sets are, like, cardboard and just kick them over.

1349. And… cut!

1350. - Wonderful scene, Sammy. Just wonderful.

1351. This was a legitimate production. I mean, there's fucking cast trailers.

1352. - There's, uh, food and beverage tent.

1353. There's, you know,

1354. - cameras galore, the chairs… - [creaking, clattering]

1355. I mean, you know, to us, it, it was a different world,

1356. like, seeing this shit going on.

1357. We're like, "Wow, this is, this could be really fucking good."

1358. Filming was a joy.

1359. Uwe was into taking every suggestion that you threw at him.

1360. Shooting with Uwe was an adventure.

1361. Three, two, one!

1362. So my first day on the set of Postal

1363. was the one shooting the cannon gun off the back of a Mustang.

1364. As I'm getting wired to do that,

1365. they were lighting a man on fire.

1366. Uh, I knew I was involved in something kind of fucking crazy.

1367. Bring on the monkeys!

1368. You know, you, you first meet Uwe Boll, and he's a weird dude.

1369. Uwe's sitting there in a director's chair like this.

1370. He's got a laptop in front of him.

1371. He's talking to Germany,

1372. uh, either over the laptop or on the phone…

1373. - …and he has one or two dogs on his lap.

1374. And they're not little dogs, they're big ass dogs

1375. that he had found in Romania and, uh, and adopted.

1376. Which is lovely and great. But this is the pr—

1377. "Yeah, go ahead, do it again, but faster!

1378. Yes, not so slow. I want it faster. Okay, go ahead."

1379. So he's producing the next film while he's directing this one.

1380. You got to ha— be able to command a set.

1381. And Uwe does that great.

1382. With the accent and the German Shepherds running around,

1383. just makes you feel uncomfortable.

1384. The crew couldn't wait to see the dailies every day,

1385. so the crew came to the, to my video village and,

1386. like, "Show us the dailies! Show us the dailies!"

1387. And they were laughing their asses off, and so were the actors.

1388. As you know, in Little Germany, I played myself.

1389. For my role, which was small,

1390. I'm playing the Krotchy character in the big suit.

1391. But when I looked at the script, I said to him,

1392. "Look, I don't speak this way. This is not me."

1393. He was real cool about it. He was like, "No, that's fine.

1394. Say what you want." My scene is, like, I'm on stage with them

1395. and I rip off the head of the Krotchy suit and I just say…

1396. Boll, I'm Vince Desi. What the fuck you do to my game Postal?

1397. I don't know what your fucking problem is. The movie is great!

1398. Then we start fighting and I eventually, get shot.

1399. Oh, shit!

1400. One of the days I was on set, I got there the week after Vince shot

1401. in the Little Germany town,

1402. which, you know, I mean, I take it in jest,

1403. but, like, that whole area was,

1404. like, filled with hardcore Nazi paraphernalia and jokes.

1405. It's like, whatever. This is all for fun.

1406. - Are you my dad? - No.

1407. One of our things as a company has always been:

1408. we just don't include kids.

1409. It's just one of our things we just don't touch,

1410. and he clearly did not have that same opinion.

1411. He— there was just, like, droves of parents

1412. with their kids lined up outside of Little Germany

1413. to get their kids rigged up for squibs and shot on film.

1414. And I remember his, I don't know, maybe it was his assistant director

1415. or his producer sort of said to him, like,

1416. "Hey, Uwe, um, shooting kids is not funny."

1417. And, and Uwe's line was, "Yes, shooting kids is not funny.

1418. But if you shoot a bunch of kids in slo-mo

1419. and you make a montage out of it, it's hilarious."

1420. - And kind of everybody in the room looked

1421. and was like, "What the fuck, man?"

1422. When I saw the cut of the movie, I turned green.

1423. And then, at the first screening was the surprise of a lifetime.

1424. I was not happy with it.

1425. It was good, it was funny, but we're like, "It's too long."

1426. It's about 110 or 12 minutes.

1427. I would have easily cut ten minutes out of it.

1428. I don't know if I've ever seen a project change so much

1429. from what you shot to something else.

1430. I got the cut of the film

1431. and I asked Uwe if I could pass on some editing notes.

1432. And Uwe's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, go do this. This is fine."

1433. Back then, I didn't know how to edit, so I hired an editor through Christmas

1434. trying to reedit it to make the jokes land better

1435. and make the timing make sense.

1436. And, uh, wrote 12 pages of notes.

1437. Not a single fucking edit note was taken.

1438. No fucks were given.

1439. It was just a goddamn waste of my time.

1440. It was suddenly this, you know, toilet humor, shock movie,

1441. instead of the great social satire that I saw and read in the script.

1442. Not only the shoot was great, but also the, uh, the result,

1443. it's just, like, I feel it's totally amazing.

1444. It's the best video game-based movie ever made.

1445. The company that was handling the release was actually, uh, Universal.

1446. Universal had a division called Vivendi Home Entertainment,

1447. and it was kind of, like, their indie department,

1448. and they had two films at the time.

1449. They had Postal and they had In the Name of the King.

1450. Now that's a turd.

1451. Complete piece of glowing shit.

1452. Oh, my God, is that a turd.

1453. It costs $60 million.

1454. I mean, it had Ray Liotta, Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski,

1455. Ron Perlman, just, like, endless big cast.

1456. But it was hot garbage.

1457. It's the weirdest fucking movie. No one's got a…

1458. a solid accent. You don't know where they're from.

1459. Someone's, like… "Hello, my Lord!"

1460. And he's, like… "Yeah, what's up?"

1461. And you're like, "What? What?"

1462. This kingdom consumes men like a beast.

1463. - Give me the chicken.

1464. This is a direct quote.

1465. I said…

1466. He's released like three major theatrical bombs at that point.

1467. I mean, you only get so many shots at, at success

1468. and In the Name of the King came out,

1469. it got this massive 2000+ screen release.

1470. We as a team ended up going to see it in the theater.

1471. But we were watching this, like, crying,

1472. because we were watching our own movie's chances of coming out die.

1473. So that was $60 million, a ton of money spent in marketing.

1474. Nothing left for Postal.

1475. Fuck Postal.

1476. I'm pretty sure that's what the studio did.

1477. The plan was to release it on 1500 screens

1478. and in the end, we got, like, 20,

1479. because all exhibitors refused to play the film.

1480. There was a massive DVD preorder for Postal.

1481. There was a something like a 1000-screen release looking to come out

1482. and after In the Name of the King bombed,

1483. all the theater buyers and all the DVD buyers

1484. were, like…

1485. "Bye."

1486. I, I, I still don't get it how journalists could write

1487. negative things about Postal.

1488. I still don't get it. Are they blind?

1489. Do they have no clue what a good movie is?

1490. To be honest, I mean, it's, it's insane.

1491. I think it's one of the best political satires ever done.

1492. Now, some of you may be asking, "Isn't crystal meth illegal?"

1493. Technically, yes, but the US Air Force uses it to fuel their pilots

1494. when they are on night missions over Afghanistan.

1495. Fuck. Why can't Postal, like, break through?

1496. Like, why can't we just get something out that gives us notoriety?

1497. For us, this was kind of one of those stepping stone projects,

1498. like, "This is gonna be in theaters everywhere.

1499. This is gonna have DVDs on the shelves everywhere."

1500. And it just ended up being kind of, like…

1501. another, um, step back in the Postal story.

1502. The whole process of, of Postal, to shoot the film,

1503. it, it was the happiest time of my life.

1504. I really have to say it. It was the best shoot I ever had.

1505. And every day, I came full motivated to the film set.

1506. Out, out of all the video game movie experiences that I've had,

1507. Postal ranks number one.

1508. It was awesome.

1509. It took risks. It threw the bird at everything holy.

1510. I dug the fuck out of it.

1511. The fact that I got to be part of something

1512. that had such huge balls to really go for it,

1513. fearlessly, be like, "This is what I'm doing."

1514. You know, that's, that's Vince Desi, that's Postal, that's Uwe Boll.

1515. And I got to be part of that.

1516. I didn't put that shit together. They did.

1517. They're the ones who risked everything.

1518. So, yeah, it was an honor.

1519. It was an honor to be the Postal Dude.

1520. I, I, I do remember getting a copy of Postal III.

1521. I remember playing it and I remember playing through it,

1522. and there were a lot of bugs.

1523. And I would, of course, report that to them.

1524. I'll be honest, I was disappointed.

1525. I remember Vince was very excited about it.

1526. I remember him talking to me about it when they were filming the Postal movie

1527. and how he talked about the overseas team

1528. and how he was making several trips over there

1529. and they thought it would be a, a big step

1530. in the, in a new direction for the franchise.

1531. You know, "We're gonna do a third-person perspective,"

1532. that sort of thing.

1533. And, and I remember how disappointed they were

1534. when Steam took it off the store and how the game that they got

1535. was not what they had pitched or had been expecting.

1536. This is really sad because I, I worried

1537. that this was the end of the franchise at this point.

1538. Do you like the game? I think it's really important for—

1539. - Postal III Yeah, Postal III.

1540. My personal feelings about Postal III…

1541. …unfortunately…

1542. …are riddled with pain.

1543. Postal 2 in Russia

1544. - was a tremendous success.

1545. It was kind of, like, the equivalent of GTA for Russia.

1546. Kind of a wacky time for us

1547. 'cause, like, we're struggling to sell discs here

1548. and they're just dumping them there, because kids just love this shit.

1549. Sign the petition,

1550. or else I'll go to your house and kill your dog!

1551. And as a result of that, our Russian partners,

1552. a company called Akella, they approached us,

1553. and said, "Hey, let's do Postal III."

1554. - Sounds like a great idea.

1555. Welcome to Akella, one of the first companies

1556. ventured to develop and publish computer games,

1557. and multimedia products in Russia.

1558. Our main business directions are development,

1559. publishing and distribution of computer programs.

1560. My name's Andrey Belkin.

1561. I used to be producer for Postal III at Akella.

1562. Oh, what the fuck is this?

1563. Akella was quite big for the day,

1564. quite known both as a developer

1565. in the, the local publisher for Russia and CIS countries.

1566. As a developer, in fact, it was more known

1567. for working on naval-themed games…

1568. - …Sea Dogs or Age of Sail.

1569. The biggest-known title

1570. remains to be the first Pirates of the Caribbean.

1571. The arrangement was Running With Scissors would design the game in-house.

1572. We would do the character development, we'd write the script, etcetera,

1573. but all the coding and the game level,

1574. art, etcetera would have been done in Russia.

1575. You know, we wrote this design up for it,

1576. and we came to this agreement with Akella

1577. and it was just gonna be this massive co-production.

1578. The budget was gonna be significantly higher

1579. than anything we had put into Postal before.

1580. There's gonna be a really big team working on it.

1581. They're gonna put their, they're gonna start their own development studio for it,

1582. which they did, which was Trashmasters.

1583. Vision or the scope for PIII,

1584. rival the GTA universe, so to say,

1585. was really huge, was super ambitious.

1586. It was about to cover consoles, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.

1587. Make a totally new chapter in that universe,

1588. not just an add-on to the existing one, but, like— let's think bigger.

1589. We had great coordination and we had a, a lot of mutual respect.

1590. - One of our key guys went and spent…

1591. …about two, three months in Moscow.

1592. So he was in the office every day there to help

1593. with the fine-tuning to make sure

1594. that the project was getting off on the right foot

1595. in terms of keeping it on track as to how we wanted it.

1596. The game was starting to shape up pretty cool,

1597. like, you can actually find old videos of the original Postal III stuff

1598. - and it was pretty well done.

1599. Basically, the Postal Dude blew up his town of Paradise

1600. at the end of Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend,

1601. and he's moved up the road to a town called Catharsis, Arizona.

1602. This time around, we're venturing into new territory,

1603. which is the console, and we're gonna have Xbox 360 and PS3.

1604. We're all psyched. We're having a blast.

1605. It's well-funded.

1606. The people in Russia are great. Lot of support.

1607. Give me some noise! That's great!

1608. I'm proud to present today Postal III,

1609. a nominee for best console and best action game of show.

1610. Postal III, we promise to give you and deliver

1611. to our fans everything they expect.

1612. We're introducing a, a variety, a cast of celebrities.

1613. We had Ron Jeremy.

1614. We had Jennifer Wolcott, who was a Playboy Playmate.

1615. Do not f*** this up!

1616. Randy Jones, who was the original cowboy

1617. from the Village People.

1618. Yeah! Look at this city of Catharsis!

1619. So pretty!

1620. "YMCA"!

1621. I mean, we had him in the game!

1622. All professionals, great creative flow.

1623. I mean, this was great shit.

1624. The creative vision for the game was super ambitious,

1625. and so the, the business goals were also super ambitious.

1626. They were like, "Well, we've got a lot of developers here,

1627. we've got a lot of money."

1628. Everything was great for the first ten or so months.

1629. Hi, it's Vince with ShamWow—

1630. The buyout comes as fears of a global financial collapse

1631. threatens some of the world's biggest financial institutions.

1632. Banks from the US, Japan, and the European Union have pumped—

1633. The Russian economy has, has definitely been very hard hit by the global crisis.

1634. Um, and we need a big stimulus package.

1635. We need to save jobs, we need to keep people in their homes

1636. - and so forth—

1637. And I'm sure all of you are familiar with, uh, the economy tanking.

1638. Akella started experiencing financial difficulties,

1639. as simply as that.

1640. My car was out of gas,

1641. unfortunately, due to the global economic meltdown.

1642. You remember the global economic meltdown?

1643. The Russian economy, which is, like, completely oil-based,

1644. took a bigger hit than most economies did.

1645. The piracy industry in Russia is huge.

1646. I mean, like, there were video game stores all over the place

1647. and you couldn't discern the pirate stores from the real stores.

1648. Like, there'd be, like, the actual pirate storefront,

1649. and then there'd be, like, sort of the GameStop right next door.

1650. It became very easy for a, a struggling economy

1651. to go from the $3-5 store to the $1-3 store next door.

1652. So all the sales started dropping

1653. and the publishers started just losing money hand over fist.

1654. And therefore, we started experiencing difficulties

1655. with simply funding the game.

1656. Around, exactly around the end of the pre-production phase,

1657. instead of hiring more people,

1658. I actually had to lay off about one-third of the people on a single day.

1659. You're fired!

1660. So now, the project started to get diluted in terms of talent.

1661. The developers there weren't getting paid very much money.

1662. I mean, the highest salaries were, were laughable compared to ours.

1663. And there was other industries in Russia which were taking

1664. very different trajectories at the time,

1665. like, the banking industry was on its way up.

1666. And so all these high-level developers at Akella started to leave.

1667. All the programmers left,

1668. and then all the artists slowly started leaving.

1669. And, you know, Akella had hundreds of employees

1670. and so, they would just swap out.

1671. As people leave, they would just move somebody else over.

1672. Originally, it was the A-Team and it was this high-quality team.

1673. I mean, I can't promise you that the game

1674. that they would've released would have been amazing,

1675. but it would've been better than what came out.

1676. And the A-Team then became the B-team.

1677. - Everybody sort of swapped out one by one.

1678. Hello. Anyone home?

1679. I'm here about the temp job.

1680. They were publishing the game and they were funding the game,

1681. so we had to basically get rid of our developers too

1682. 'cause they were paying our team.

1683. The project itself started being underfunded

1684. and that was leading to compromises here and there.

1685. In the end, I think it, it was just way too many compromises.

1686. Oh, shit! Now there's no one left to give me my money. F***!

1687. It's, it's probably time to just kill this project.

1688. And no, they wouldn't do it. I mean, they had sunk

1689. a couple million dollars into it at that point.

1690. What the hell is going on here? Like, why are you—

1691. We're not really gonna publish this, are we?

1692. And the answer is, "Yes, they are."

1693. The fact of the matter is they had, uh,

1694. our balls by the, the Russian bear hands!

1695. I wouldn't say they were close to done, but they were pretty damn close.

1696. And so, I, I guess I understand not wanting to cut your losses

1697. when your losses are a couple million dollars

1698. and your company's falling down the drain because of the economy, so…

1699. To me, it's clear that that was the beginning

1700. of a unfortunate decline of Akella

1701. and ended up basically with Akella filing for bankruptcy some years later.

1702. I don't remember how long it was in hiatus for,

1703. but it was in hiatus for a while.

1704. We were trying to pull it out

1705. and, uh, trying to b— do the best we can to actually make it happen.

1706. Because as the project disintegrated,

1707. we weren't even seeing the development, the project anymore.

1708. I mean, the truth of the matter is, by the time the project was coming out,

1709. we hadn't seen it in maybe six plus months.

1710. We kind of felt bittersweet that,

1711. "Yeah, look, it's not gonna be the, uh,

1712. the game we were envisioning in the beginning,

1713. not, not by any means. We're gonna get some criticism."

1714. But on the other hand, it was like, "Oh God, that's—"

1715. The, the relief feeling for the time being was prevailing.

1716. Like, "Finally it's over."

1717. You know, I guess the, the directive was

1718. not make the game good… so it'll do well.

1719. - "Finish the game so we can sell it." This game sucks.

1720. We still had to sell the project, like, we didn't,

1721. we didn't come out of the gate going,

1722. "This game sucks, we have nothing to do with it."

1723. You know, we're like, "Okay, they're gonna release something buggy,

1724. but they're gonna fix it. Like, they spent a lot of money here.

1725. They wanna make sure this game has legs."

1726. So we packaged up the game here.

1727. We actually created a physical Postal III edition.

1728. We sold a lot of units, but they were fucking broken.

1729. I mean, people fucking bought the game and it didn't even boot up.

1730. Now how's that for a bug?

1731. You know, it's almost a running joke

1732. how many people actually played Postal III.

1733. I remember having copies to give out to people, which we did.

1734. I think if you asked the number of Postal fans,

1735. "How many of you have actually played it?",

1736. it would be interesting.

1737. To say the least.

1738. Akella had given us the installer disks…

1739. - …and the first installer they gave me

1740. just didn't work and they had to get me a new one,

1741. which is fine. It happens.

1742. Maybe if I had tested it better before I shipped it off

1743. to the replicator, this wouldn't have happened.

1744. - But it was just like I said, it was…

1745. - …another layer in the shit sandwich.

1746. - And on top of that, the game was broken

1747. and people were reporting to me the game was broken…

1748. - …and all I can do is tell them,

1749. because I don't have a team of guys that can fix it, "It's not my game."

1750. But we're selling it. It's got our name on it.

1751. - So at the end of the day…

1752. - …the hate comes back to us.

1753. - They put out this patch

1754. a couple of days after the game launched, it stopped the game from crashing…

1755. in the opening level.

1756. I, I remember, I'll be honest, I was disappointed.

1757. It was almost like a bunch of Saturday Night Live sketches

1758. in terms of segments thrown together

1759. that didn't have a clear narrative behind them and that was,

1760. that is not the hallmark of how the Running With Scissors games go.

1761. The criticism we got from fans directly, I also believe is absolutely fair.

1762. This is not fun. It's a f****** chore to play it

1763. and it pisses me off that this game is this bad.

1764. This, I cannot be nice about this. This thing f****** sucks.

1765. People didn't like that it was third person.

1766. People did not like the art style that we went with.

1767. People didn't like the new voice.

1768. It was, there was too much emotion. It wasn't serious enough.

1769. It just, it just wasn't Rick,

1770. and that's who they had listened to for so many years.

1771. And, like, just this is the way it is.

1772. Like Corey is the Dude now.

1773. And it's probably the brightest spot in the game.

1774. He did a really good job.

1775. I'm gonna need some money if I hope to get anything done in this town.

1776. Maybe there's some easy work to be found around here.

1777. It seemed mostly to me on the first phone call,

1778. that he was pretty sold on the tone of my voice,

1779. the, uh, the approach, the ability for me to emote in that manner.

1780. And… as the Dude character,

1781. it's got to be something semi badass,

1782. - rebellious, angry.

1783. I honestly don't think I was able to do a full review of it

1784. because it kept breaking on me and I was not able to get through it.

1785. I can't take a game that's breaking left, right, and center,

1786. and go out and tell people, "Yeah, this is great. Go and play it."

1787. Vince and me had to figure out what to do.

1788. And, and the real answer was we have to, like,

1789. publicly denounce this project.

1790. Are we going to disassociate ourselves from Postal III?

1791. Yes.

1792. We decided the best thing we could do

1793. was to cut that cancer

1794. out of our ass.

1795. This could kill our brand.

1796. I mean, and it, it probably would've if we didn't do anything about it.

1797. If we had stood by and been, like, "No, no, no, no, no.

1798. We understand that there's problems." But there was no way to do that.

1799. Like, there was no team to contact.

1800. The people that we've been friends with for,

1801. I don't know, at this point, six years,

1802. they've been our publisher, seven years, and they've been very good to us,

1803. they were basically out of business.

1804. Working on Postal III itself, like, as a whole experience

1805. is something which I would never trade off,

1806. even though not everything went perfect,

1807. - it was a great experience.

1808. Uh, I made a lot of good friends.

1809. Everybody should be, like, praying to have such an experience,

1810. because it gives you, like,

1811. a very deep understanding of a lot of things.

1812. If you're a, a chef, you want somebody eating your food.

1813. If your— if you make a game, you want to know that people are playing it!

1814. Well, when you devote two, three years of your life

1815. and the game don't come out, or even worse,

1816. it fucking comes out and it don't even play!

1817. And that's your credit?

1818. That's horrible.

1819. Postal III, thank God, it ended.

1820. But the good news is it made the way for Postal 4.

1821. I think if you look at everything that technology has brought

1822. and it's brought some incredibly wonderful things.

1823. On the most part, I think, technology, it's brought a lot of damage to sociality.

1824. You have a generation of people who really don't know

1825. how to speak in public to each other.

1826. But it's not a question of what some 60-year-old man thinks.

1827. It's a question of where things are going.

1828. - With all the holes in the system,

1829. it wouldn't make sense to look at Running With Scissors

1830. and say, "Well, you're completely guilty,"

1831. when they, when they followed every regulation,

1832. when they did everything, they were asked to do.

1833. In the end, like it or not,

1834. kids are gonna decide what they're gonna play.

1835. So you get pictures of Mike J.'s on ice skates

1836. and you get me cleaning my pool.

1837. Exactly.

1838. Would you say that there's some sort of Postal curse or do you…

1839. - …feel like there's

1840. - some lingering bad juju sometimes? - Uh…

1841. I'm not a big believer in curses.

1842. It, it almost seems like no matter what we do,

1843. no matter where we go, there's something working against us.

1844. And I don't think there is, like, an entity

1845. operating on the planet Earth, that's, like,

1846. "How can we fuck over Running With Scissors the best?"

1847. There aren't many games that have had FBI involvement,

1848. being sued by the government,

1849. condemned in a dozen countries, etcetera, etcetera.

1850. So that probably does single us out in some way.

1851. Sometimes, I say to myself when I'm watching, like, a video

1852. where I'm, like, "Oh, Postal will probably be in this video,"

1853. where it's talking about, like, significant games in history.

1854. And then, at the end I'm like, "Ah! It wasn't in there.

1855. I don't know why I expected it to be in there."

1856. But then, like, you watch a bottom-ten video,

1857. we're definitely gonna be in there.

1858. I mean, that's okay.

1859. I mean, that's, like I said, I mean, I've, I have no problem with the fact

1860. that that's where we, that's where we, uh, we live. You know?

1861. We're, we're gutter trolls, man.

1862. Come on.

1863. Here we are, 25 years later, uh, with Postal 4.

1864. Pretty f— pretty fantastic.

1865. I mean, I'm super proud of it.

1866. It's, it's pretty mind-blowing when you consider

1867. all the shit we've been through.

1868. This was after my NPC series had really started to gain traction.

1869. I decided, you know, "Maybe I should start imitating

1870. uh, NPCs from different games." I did, like, a petition one.

1871. Would you like to sign my petition?

1872. No way, you freakin' pinko!

1873. When I posted that to Twitter,

1874. uh, I got the attention of Running With Scissors pretty quickly.

1875. They retweeted it, they ended up following me back.

1876. Eventually, I was talking to Mike J. himself and I told him,

1877. "Hey, uh, I actually work in the game industry and I'm a 3D artist."

1878. And he was like, "Oh, well, let's see your portfolio."

1879. And I showed, and he's like, "Shit!"

1880. Pretty much got hired on the spot.

1881. Maybe we should put that one on the, on the store site.

1882. We'll see, what I have to do is I have to sign this

1883. and the disc and the cover because I'm 60, diabetic, and asthmatic.

1884. I could die any time now, and it's worth three times

1885. as much on eBay if I sign all the parts.

1886. I got an email one day from, uh, a guy named Michael.

1887. So he sent me clips of the original actors and I did sort of an imitation of them.

1888. And he said, "No, that's, that's not what we want.

1889. We're looking for a really snarky voice."

1890. And I went, "Well, pff! That's my natural voice.

1891. I'm snarky as hell. You should just use my normal voice."

1892. Looks like Champ's found something of interest.

1893. Yeah. Okay.

1894. And about a day later, I get, uh, an email from Mike

1895. saying, "Oh, yeah, you're snarky. You got the part."

1896. Dammit, Champ, I thought you were guarding the car.

1897. - Figures. - I remember looking it up

1898. 'cause I was like, "Okay, like, sounds cool."

1899. But, like, you know, I just wanted to make sure, like,

1900. if you're gonna put your name in something and be represented in it,

1901. like, is this something that, you know, aligns

1902. with, like, my brand and is, you know, not, like—

1903. I want to make sure it wasn't, like, problematic or something.

1904. So I look it up… and it was— the first article was, like,

1905. - someone just railing against it…

1906. …like, "This is the most offensive thing I've ever seen."

1907. "Oh, God! Like, maybe this is not something I want to do."

1908. But then I looked into it and I was like, "Wait, this is hilarious."

1909. And also so on brand. I was like,

1910. "Okay, this kind of seems like it's up my alley."

1911. You know, I like to down-talk what we do.

1912. I don't like to pretend, like, we have something bigger than we do,

1913. but it is culturally significant.

1914. Um, there are a lot of people that know what it is, and I've said it before,

1915. it's, it is super weird to me

1916. when people know the thing that I do and, and it's odd.

1917. It's odd being, um, I'll call it… a footnote,

1918. a footnote of gaming history.

1919. I think I miss that Postal III now.

1920. I think I miss that Postal 2…

1921. Man, I have at least over 300 hours on Postal 2.

1922. I've been playing for so long

1923. and it's, like, just a game that, if I'm feeling down

1924. and, you know, I want to pop some heads in real life.

1925. I'll just go onto Postal 2 and I pop some heads in the game.

1926. I'm in Boston at PAX East.

1927. Great people all around us, thousands of gamers, super fans.

1928. One of the crazy things about this show

1929. is we got this thing going around the world called the coronavirus,

1930. and we're showcasing Postal 4.

1931. It feels exactly like Postal.

1932. It, it just, it's, it's just as outrageous.

1933. You can still piss on people. You can set people on fire,

1934. and just cause absolute mayhem for no reason at all.

1935. It's awesome. Especially because I like Postal 2 so much.

1936. This one reminds me so much of it.

1937. I think it's gonna be a blast when you guys finish.

1938. What happens when Postal 4 releases?

1939. And really, by extension,

1940. what does success look like for Running With Scissors?

1941. Is it Postal 4 making a lot of money?

1942. Is it Postal 4 finally getting the reviews

1943. that Mike and Desi have felt like they've deserved all these years?

1944. Having, having that victory over everyone that gave them

1945. ones and zeros by finally making a, a good game?

1946. Is it, is it just getting Postal 4 out after releasing Postal III?

1947. That is essentially so bad it's vaporware now.

1948. Like, that game is so bad it doesn't exist.

1949. I, I don't think that Running With Scissors is,

1950. uh, is going to survive on controversy.

1951. I think they're going to survive on making great games,

1952. which is a bit in contrast to the early days

1953. where Running With Scissors pretty much got known everywhere

1954. because of controversy.

1955. So I think when people not our age, when, when they play these games, uh,

1956. they are playing them because they're great games.

1957. Running With Scissors' reputation was that of a,

1958. of an independent developer trying to, uh, get their game noticed.

1959. And, uh, one of the ways to get your game noticed is to be extreme.

1960. And, uh, while some of the larger publishers probably thought

1961. that Running With Scissors was a pain in the ass,

1962. uh, independent developers and publishers thought

1963. that they were doing, uh, they were kicking ass and taking names,

1964. and, you know, fighting for every inch that they could get.

1965. I liked how it was, like, naughty to play.

1966. And it was, it was this,

1967. this thing that everybody was back lashing against.

1968. And it was so ridiculous and silly.

1969. And the humor was fun and, and juvenile.

1970. But it, like— I— it, it felt like a release in many ways

1971. because you— it's fun to be able to be juvenile

1972. and, and it's fun to be, you know, non-PC

1973. and really see the way that they, they play into that comedy.

1974. I would say that it is absolutely fair

1975. that Running With Scissors was made a poster child

1976. for video game violence because they actively courted it.

1977. They got exactly what they wanted.

1978. They wanted to, uh, be regressive,

1979. outlandish and controversial, and they achieved that.

1980. It's a little different, I mean, uh, we're just

1981. again, just renting a, a room in somebody else's business.

1982. This time we're inside of an Allstate agency.

1983. But I arranged it the same.

1984. So there's, like, no culture shock for anybody,

1985. even though I'm the only one that really works here.

1986. Glad they enjoy the game, you know?

1987. And it, it seems kind of weird that so many people actually, you know,

1988. are into this game like they are.

1989. But, um, I would just say, you know, thanks for, uh, playing along.

1990. I don't think I could ever give enough credit to our fans.

1991. I see our fans as part of our family.

1992. And it's why we do what we do.

1993. The fan community for Postal 4 is amazing.

1994. It's, it's different than any other fan community I've seen.

1995. These fans are extremely passionate. They're also very honest with us.

1996. They tell us what they like, what they don't like.

1997. We, we make this game for us, but we make it for them as well.

1998. Playing Postal ha— has helped me through, uh, some difficult times in my life.

1999. Postal has changed my life for the better.

2000. I used to be really quiet and introverted and stuff like that.

2001. And this, this game has actually helped me pull out of that.

2002. You know, if you, you know, that, that game you play

2003. when you're feeling, like, um, like, stressed,

2004. you just want to kind of relax, that, that's the game series for me.

2005. Good job on not following the trends.

2006. Good job on making a unique game, one that stands out.

2007. One that isn't afraid to do things its own way,

2008. to be controversial, to be crazy and be funny.

2009. Running With Scissors, Vince, Mike, thank you for inspiring me so damn much.

2010. Thank you very much, Vince.

2011. Tha— thank you very much, Mike. You have been terrific.

2012. I mean, you made my childhood a whole lot more,

2013. uh, exciting you could say.

2014. The whole Postal series for me has been very inspirational.

2015. I think what they have put together over all these years

2016. has definitely been something that the world would have

2017. definitely been missing out if they didn't have it.

2018. It's definitely a game made by misfits for misfits,

2019. and I consider myself a misfit.

2020. It's, it's never gonna win awards.

2021. And that's okay because it doesn't need to.

2022. It's just one of those games where you pop it on

2023. and you just, you just have some fun

2024. being a irredeemable piece of shit in a virtual world,

2025. and then you can go to sleep soundly, you know?

2026. Postal is one of my favorite games from my childhood.

2027. And my brain exploded

2028. the first time playing it.

2029. In terms of how Postal

2030. has impacted my life,

2031. it's gotten me through tough points in my life where I needed it most,

2032. where I needed to vent out my frustrations,

2033. where I needed a good laugh, where I just wanted to have fun

2034. and just, you know, forget about my problems,

2035. even just for, like, an evening or a day.

2036. I think it's one of the most important games

2037. that I didn't want, but I didn't know I needed.

2038. And now, we've become an important part in people's lives.

2039. The fans are Running With Scissors family.

2040. I really can't even put that in words or describe what it means

2041. or how it feels, other than "really fucking cool."

2042. I think if there's one redemption arc here for Running With Scissors

2043. and the story of what they've been through,

2044. it's that they've been through it.

2045. Postal 4 is coming out.

2046. That's a win. That's just a victory.

2047. I got to see those guys when they barely had the lights on,

2048. and they were individually responding to people for years,

2049. making good on a game they didn't make in Postal III

2050. and just responding to everyone for so long.

2051. I, I think that that's genuinely charming

2052. and equally the only reason they're still here.

2053. They built a community

2054. by just being normal people to absolutely everyone.

2055. They're accessible, they're real,

2056. and they genuinely give a shit about people.

2057. You just don't find that in the rest of this industry.

2058. I came into the industry a huge gamer.

2059. I wasn't necessarily planning

2060. for this to be my career for the rest of my life.

2061. You know, I was a cell phone salesman. That's what I did.

2062. I met Vince in passing in high school because I went to school with his kid.

2063. And then when I, when he asked me to come work for him,

2064. I was like, "Yeah! This should be a cool couple of years

2065. traveling around, promoting this video game."

2066. And now, it's my life.

2067. Clearly, Mike's personality is what shined through.

2068. And Vince's personality. These guys are both,

2069. they're like walking, breathing South Park characters.

2070. That ultimately culminates in what the Postal Dude is.

2071. They're both such sardonic people.

2072. And to have that translate into a game, to have your personality

2073. really come through in your art, period, no matter what it is,

2074. but specifically, in Postal, is a beautiful thing.

2075. It's really easy to look at, at Postal and the guys behind it

2076. and all of the times that they have just fallen on their face

2077. over the years and, and point and laugh at that.

2078. Or to point and judge it, or to, to look at what they were even

2079. trying to do in the first place and be like,

2080. "This sucks. This feels bad. This has bad intentionality.

2081. These are maybe bad people by extension."

2082. I, I think that the story of Running With Scissors

2083. is that these are a couple of guys just trying their best,

2084. and their hope and dream was to do something

2085. that makes people happy

2086. and they just keep coming back to it

2087. no matter how many times they lose and lose big.

2088. I don't know anyone else that has that tenacity.

2089. They just keep coming back to the table.

2090. They keep trying to make the same IP over and over again.

2091. They are literally the definition of insanity,

2092. and there is something so joyful and singular about that.

2093. No other game studio in the world has gone bankrupt…

2094. as many times as Running With Scissors,

2095. and then they just keep coming back and saying, "Let's make more Postal."

2096. And I wish that there was more people

2097. this broken…

2098. …or, or happy with what they're doing

2099. or kind enough to be supported by all of these folks.

2100. It's weird to say that it would be a better world

2101. if there were more people like Vince and Mike.

2102. But it's, it's true, and games would be better for it.

2103. It is cool to see it happen.

2104. I'm glad we're still around to make this dumb shit

2105. that people can laugh at, so…

2106. Final thoughts…

2107. …like last rites.

2108. To me, it's very simple.

2109. Have fun.

2110. Enjoy your life.

2111. Love your family and friends.

2112. Play Postal.

2113. Have a blast.

2114. And regret nothing.