It's not everyday I open my email inbox and get a press release this heartwarming and uplifting. If you tune in to the next episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on April 22nd, ABC will air an episode of a family that has been devastated with constant bad news. Gene Westbrook was serving in Iraq when a mortar hit his camp and left him paralyzed.
Following that incident, The Westbrook family van crashed and flipped over, causing paralysis to 9 year-old James, and injuring the two daughters. The day after their accident, Gene Westbrook suffered a stroke which worsened the condition of his right arm and affected his memory. The Westbrook's have no wheelchair accessibility to the home, and that is where ABC's Extreme Makeover comes in.
But where does Insomniac stand in all of this? The developer will be featured on the April 22nd show of Extreme Makeover, as Insomniac Games is going to turn the 9 year-old boy into a videogame character by creating a virtual version of him for Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. The motivation behind this move comes from the boy's immense admiration for videogames, as the boy one day hopes to design videogames.
All 160 employees at Insomniac assembled together to take on a creation process that is typically a month long and handled by about a dozen programmers. Because of the combined effort, the virtual replica of James was complete within one week.
Mucho kudos to Insomniac.