In the weeks leading up to April 1, 2008 I worked with the GameTap team to launch a brand new, mysterious "game" to the service, with tongue-in-cheek PR and marketing promising that it utilized stunning new technology, was "the first truly multiplayer adventure game" and that "an unlimited number of players will be able to shape the world and story around them, in real time, with limitless possibilities."
When April 1 came, the game was revealed as an improvised text adventure, hosted live on the GameTap forums for 8 hours. Players interacted by posting replies, which I as the "Grandpa Master" would translate to an in-game command and post the results of. It was an April Fools gag, of course, but I put in a lot of serious effort and made a compelling, funny diversion that generated 713 replies, 50,000 page views and a significant (though forgotten) number of new account registrations in only 8 hours. This might not be everybody's idea of a "game," but I'm rather proud of it!
Links:
In 2006 I worked with a very talented team to create an unofficial re-translation of the classic Sega RPG Phantasy Star. Though the official translation was perfectly adequate in 1988, there was a lot of content and nuances cut. This re-translation not only starts over from the original source material, it also literally doubles the amount of characters displayed on-screen, uses both capital and lower-cased letters (as opposed to the all-caps of the official release), and utilizes a special sound chip only used in the Japanese version of the game for a dramatically improved score.
My involvement was the writing itself. I worked with a literal line-by-line translation and re-wrote it into a much richer experience for the English-reading player. I also referenced official source material, including the game's official manual and guide books, to add more depth and subtleties to the in-game script without ever diverting from the author's intent. Additionally, I improved the gameplay experience by displaying full sentences on screen at all times (instead of cutting a sentence in the middle) and reducing unnecessary button presses to make a streamlined, smoother experience.
I worked with developer The Behemoth on lines of dialogue for an unfortunately unused element of 2008's Xbox Live Arcade game, Castle Crashers. The game sold approximately one billion units, but I'm pretty sure it would have been two billion had the feature made it all the way through! Oh well, at least they were nice enough to give me a special thanks credit.