ABC-TV's hit show, "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" asked 9-year-old James
Westbrook what his favorite activities included, playing and designing
videogames were at the top of his list.
Enter Insomniac Games. Once the independent console videogames
developer learned of James' interests, the studio went one step further to
help make his dreams come true: They created a digital version of James and
inserted him into their upcoming PlayStation 3 videogame,
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction.
Players will be able to navigate the Polaris Galaxy as James in his spaceships when the game launches this holiday season
exclusively on PlayStation 3 .
Viewers who tune in to ABC on Sunday, April 22 at 8 p.m. EDT/7 p.m. CDT
will witness how Insomniac Games produced a digital replica of James and
turned him into a playable videogame character. The 160-person studio
rallied to produce what normally amounts to one month's worth of work in
approximately one week's time.
The Westbrook family has been hard hit by two separate incidents. In
April 2004, then-SFC Gene Westbrook was hit by a mortar at an American camp
mess hall in Baghdad, Iraq. The attack left Westbrook paralyzed. Then, last
July, another accident shook the family. While en route to visit friends in
Oklahoma, the family van lost control, touched an oncoming vehicle, and
flipped into a ditch. The accident left James paralyzed and caused internal
injuries to one of two Westbrook daughters, who later lost a kidney. The
day after the accident, Gene Westbrook suffered a stroke, leaving him with
further damage to his right arm and some memory loss. Peggy Westbrook
recovered quickly from the accident to take on the daunting task of trying
to rehabilitate both her husband and son while raising the rest of the
family. That task was made ever more difficult because the family had to
maneuver two wheelchairs around their ranch home, which was not designed to
be wheelchair accessible.