Headmaster @ 2016 Champions League Final

May 31, 2017

I went to Milan for the UEFA Champions League final in 2016, where Headmaster was used as a promotional vehicle for Playstation VR. It was an amazing opportunity I never expected.

The 2016 festival venue was by the Milan Cathedral, an absolutely gigantic structure with an open square surrounding it. I managed to edit together some iPhone footage of it for posterity.

At one point Dutch football legend Ruud Gullit found his way into the game and of course killed it. He even started taunting his son to give it a try. In a nice way I think?

This festival runs for a few days and is pretty much just a giant roiling football party. I spent my time with some other developers who have become good friends. Guy Richards, who was at the time our man on the inside of Playstation Europe, was a fantastic host. Andreas Johnsson of Tarsier Studios (Statik, Little Nightmares) and I improved diplomatic relations between the USA and Sweden by exchanging our currencies. It was funny, just a couple days ago we were talking on Skype about Gamedev Things™ and realized we both have been carrying these notes around since then and both of us, at that moment, had no other cash. He has a $2 bill and I have this 20 Kronor note.

I was also fortunate to get to know Ilari Kuittinen of Housemarque (Alienation, Resogun) who had just started to talk about his studio’s collaboration with Eugene Jarvis on what has now been announced as Nex Machina.

Match Day 2016

On match day, we arrived at Milan’s San Siro stadium early for some food and drink in the Playstation FC Hospitality area, which also had a station for people to play Headmaster. I caught this shakycam footage of a stroll around the place, ending with some folks gawking at an unsuspecting player making a go of it.

After pregaming in this area for a few hours, we made our way to our seats and this is where I started to get really excited. I’m a pretty avid fan and this is just a huge match in a huge stadium. I am quite sure was built with alien technology. It is enormous.

And below is a video which is an attempt to capture the vibe of walking into the stadium. On the left of the frame you’ll see Andreas and Ilari, along with Guy Richards (now of XBox) making fun of me for holding my phone on top of my head but I GOT THIS VIDEO! The audio in this clip brings back some great memories and hopefully it captures a fraction of what it’s like to be met with a wall of 80,000 chanting fans.