That's right, this week's Flop Bin is special. It's about a person, not a game. That person is David Freeman, a scriptwriting contractor for a bevy of games that were never released as well as a bunch of poorly selling games. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Van Helsing, Pitfall: The Lost Expedition: all flops in their own right. I'm not saying that David's writing made them tank, but it obviously didn't help.

Then there's David's self-described work on Enter the Matrix:

David did a major polish on the script. However, after he was done, the Wachowskis became increasingly involved in the story...consequently, the Wachowski's took the script in a different direction and little of David's work remained.

Impressive, isn't it? There's more.

David has trademarked the word "Emotioneering" to describe his process of writing and to let all right-thinking people know that he's a fruit.

Q: ARE THERE TECHNIQUES FOR PUTTING EMOTION INTO GAMES? A: YES — OVER FIFTEEN HUNDRED

1,500! That's a lot of techniques. Each falls into one of 32 categories. They're not simple techniques either. He can only fit 300 into his book "Creating Emotion in Games", that's how big his techniques are. I could try to explain the "Role Induction Technique" or "Player Toward NPC Chemistry Techniques", but I might accidentally violate his trademark. Plus my bullshit gland is way too puny.

End result: I'll let game design grandmaster Chris Crawford wrap up with an anecdote about his encounter with David Freeman at a conference in Australia, which culminates in Chris walking out of David's lecture.

P.S. You might have seen on David's client list that he did writing for an as-yet unreleased 3D Realms game. My source tells me that, yep, it was Prey. Furthermore, all his work has been thrown out for not meeting the standards of a company whose major literary achievement to date is stealing lines from the movie Army of Darkness.