Articles

Screenshots

The meeting is at a local
church. They’re kind enough to let us use their basement. A
few of us trickle in one at a time, eyes down on the ground. A couple
settle into the slightly dented folding chairs set up in a circle,
while others try to act casual around the table with a pot of almost
lethally strong coffee and the fresh muffins that Mrs. Kirschbaum
brings every week. Some of the people appear to be shaking a little.
The rest of us pretend not to notice. It’s harder and harder
for any of us to get our fix lately.

This week it’s my
turn to start.

“Hi, my name is Don,
and I’m a Ghost Whisperer addict. It’s been three weeks
since my last episode.”

Someone in the back of
the room begins to sob quietly. I see Mrs. Kirschbaum pat a younger
woman’s knee consolingly as she chokes back the tears.

“Hi, Don” says
the chorus of voices back to me.

“I know it’s
been hard for all of us since the show was so unfairly canceled,”
I tell the group. “I’ve pulled out my Ghost Whisperer
DVDs and gone through all the special features. I watched the first
season a couple times, now, but I can’t bring myself to watch
the final season again. If I do…it’ll be over.”
Mrs. Kirschbaum nods. She understands.

I take a deep breath and
continue on. “I’ve tried to quit cold turkey. I really
have. But…I can’t. And since they’re not making
any new episodes….I’ve decided to make my own.”

There’s a stunned
silence in the room. Half the group looks up at me, confused. Mrs.
Kirschbaum shakes her head. She thinks I’ve lost it.

“I’ve gotten
together a team of people to make three new episodes. I’ve hired
Emmy award winning writer Lance Gentile, and consulted with Kim Moses,
executive producer of the show. I’ve got three amazing scripts
that fit perfectly into the Ghost Whisperer epic…”

“Scripts don’t
mean anything,” Mrs. Kirschbaum chides me, “You can’t
possibly get together the cast, the sets….”

“But I can! Well,
maybe not literally. But I can make it…as a video game.”

An angry murmur shoots
through the room. The girl who sobbed earlier stands up and shouts
something at me, shaking a second season DVD set at me furiously.

“No, no wait! Look!
I brought pictures! I’ve hired artists to capture the best likenesses
of each of the regular characters. They’ll all be in the game,
in loving detail! Jim, Delia, Eli…and yes, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s
greatest character to date, Melinda.”

I hold up the pictures
of each of the characters as if they can shield me from the wrath
of all these good people who are already on edge from Ghost Whisperer
withdrawal. Mrs. Kirschbaum snatches one of the printouts from my
hand and beats me over the head with it, but her anger subsides when
she actually gets a good look at it.

“I’m liking what
I’m seeing,” she finally admits, studying each of them and looking
for flaws. “But you can’t possibly capture the town of
Grandview in all its complexity. It’s just not possible.”

“But I can try! Not
only will the game visit some of the beloved locations from the show,
like Melinda’s store ‘Same As It Never Was’ and the Grandview
Town Square, but we’ll be including all sorts of locations around
Grandview that we’ve only glimpsed in the show, like the Train
Station or Eli’s Office. We’ll have original locations,
too, like the Grandview Art Museum and the Fairgrounds.”

“Will there be ghosts?”
asks a skeptic. “Real quality ghosts, like they had in the show,
none of this flying around in sheets silliness.”

“Absolutely,”
I nod emphatically. “My central focus has been to honor the
show. That doesn’t just mean the style of story, but the art
direction of the show. I went to Comic Con last year to meet a number
of the fans and figure out what they loved about the show. When I
saw one of the largest convention halls in San Diego filled with fans
of the show…I knew I had to get this right.”

“I was honored that
I actually was able to visit the set of Ghost Whisperer just a few
weeks before they were canceled, and got to meet with Kim Moses herself,
one of the great minds behind the show. She took me on a tour of the
sets, introduced me to the wardrobe department, and sat me down to
explain to me some of the more subtle aspects of the show’s
storytelling that the game had to be sure to honor. And be fun as
all get out on top of that.”

I realize at this point
that everyone’s staring at me.

“You met one of the
executive producers of the show? Personally?” asked Mrs. Kirschbaum.

“Yes,” I replied.
“Yes, I did.”

The sobbing girl from earlier
raises her hand. I call on her.

“What did she smell
like?”

Ghost Whisperer is coming
2011 for PC/MAC. Visit the Ghost Whisperer game blog at http://ghostwhisperergame.com
for the latest info!