(re: re: re: re: re: re: PQ and real police training)
I wish I could recall which police departments used (or looked at) the PQ games. Of the Police Quest series (including SWAT) I believe that SWAT 3 ended up having the largest following with police agencies and SWAT teams. One of the aspects that they found most intriguing was the firearms that we used in the game and the tactics. I think what also attracted them to the game was the genuine level of authenticity that we applied throughout the game. Tam and I spent a lot of time with LAPD SWAT and we learned pretty much everything there is to know about their work (as it would apply to a game). Even my dev. team spent time with LAPD SWAT. I recall on numerous occasions that we took them done to LA for tactics training, urban climbing, etc… We became friends with a number of the senior staff members at LAPD and I still correspond with them frequently.
Chief Gates was involved with SWAT 3, but as Ken mentioned his biggest contribution was to mostly open doors for us. Ken Thatcher (LAPD SWAT aka “the bullfrog’) was the chief consultant and he is the one that really showed me the ropes when it came to LAPD SWAT. BTW- Ken is on the cover of the SWAT 3 boxes (guy in the center).
Lots of stories to tell about the SWAT days as I could go on and on…. I had a great dev. team at Sierra and it’s sad to think it’s all gone now. I’m really happy with the accomplishments that my team and I made for Sierra, and I thank Ken Williams for letting us do our thing. I’m over here at Xbox making some cool stuff and having fun, many of my Sierra dev. team members went on to make SOCOM 2 at Zipper interactive.
-R