Shortly before DICE shipped parkour runner Mirror’s Edge, I talked to a couple of team members about the process of making a first-person game where you don’t shoot a gun — which was pretty unusual back then.

I’d been bugging EA about doing this story for months, both because I liked the game and because I’d heard they had footage of a proof of concept “white box” video made early in development to simulate how the game would work. I was constantly bugging studios for prototype assets, napkin sketches, or anything that showed the process of how they made what they made. So, knowing the white box clip existed, I kept hounding them to let us release it.

Eventually they did! With a big disclaimer up-front making sure people knew that wasn’t what the final game looked like. I suppose it’s possible they would have ended up releasing it on their own at some point, but this was the kind of exclusive asset I loved tracking down and getting on the site.