When show producers learned of 9-year-old James' love for video games and his aspirations to become a game developer, they began questioning development studios as to the various opportunities they could provide. "From what we were told by the show's design producer," Insomniac marketing director Ryan Schneider told The Hollywood Reporter, "Insomniac responded the quickest and offered the best opportunity: to integrate James Westbrook as a playable character into an actual PlayStation 3 game."

All of the work on James' character--design, texturing, animation, programming--was performed by volunteers in their free time. While this process can take up to a month, the volunteers had the virtual rendition of James playable within a week.

Not having met James until they revealed his saucer-flying avatar to him, the Insomniac staff faced a significant challenge. "We only had a couple photos to use. Normally, we'd work from detailed scans, but they just weren't available--which made sense since the whole endeavor was a huge secret," explained Insomniac founder and CEO Ted Price. "Despite this, our guys did a fantastic job creating, texturing, animating and programming a model that is unmistakably James. And now that we've had a chance to meet James in person, we'll add even more polish to the model for release in the final game."

"For all of us at Insomniac, this opportunity to help such an amazing family with our game-making experience was a real honor," Price continued. "We've never inserted a member of the public into our videogames, and we think it's incredibly appropriate that James will be the first gamer to enjoy that unique experience."