I love the Internet. Let me just set that straight. I’ve heard these “the Darklord hates the Interweb” rumors, and I’m saying it here for the record: it’s a dirty, damn lie. And I’ve paid good money to have it squelched, so let’s just let it end here. Cool?

I specifically love web comics.

I grewed up reading the funny pages every damn day. I remember this one time, I brought a bunch of Peanuts collections to keep me entertained during some religious meeting my father was was attending at a friend’s house, and ended up embarassing him horribly because I was giggling away in the bedroom to Snoopy while the adults were trying to commune with the big “G” or something.

I really haven’t changed much since then. I still loves me a good comic strip. Yes I do.

And, for those of you who don’t know, the goddamn Internet has changed the entire face of this delightful medium. Yes it has. For you see, it had long been understood that there were only twenty-seven or so comic strips in existence (only enough to fill a page and a half in your local newspaper), and it was further understood that these strips had to be bland, banal, and pretty fucking stupid, generally, or else the editors of said papers would cut them.

I like to think of this as the “Dark Ages” of comic-ery. Comicary. Comic… itude?

Then, lo, one day I was browsin’ me some interweb, and I stumbled upon the best online comic strip story of all time. Sluggy Freelance is not so much a comic as it is an epic exertion of hilarity and drama, exerted out of its creator apparently by sheer force of will. It’s outstanding.

If you haven’t read it, start at the fucking beginning. Don’t think you can just drop right in or something. Because you can’t.

For me, see, this was a bit of an eye opener. “What’s this??” said me befuddled noggin, “A comic strip, written for adults, that is funny, serious, witty, disturbing, and clever?? Whaaaaaaaa?”

Such a thing did not exist, as far as I knew, outside of Calvin and Hobbes (defunct) and Bloom County (also defunct). But, as it turns out, there are many, many more of these available for your viewing pleasure.

Flintlocke is not one of those.

No, friends. No.

Flintlocke is one of those things that can only exist inside the web. It is a horrid, awful abomination, a merging of ideas so foul that it should only be tasted in two’s and three’s.

…

I’m almost all the way through the archives. Oh. My. God.

Episode 1: Guide to Maiming Meat that Walks is… pretty much required reading. If you are a geek. Which I know you are.

And, anyone who has dumped more of their life than they should have into WoW pretty much needs to read Episode 2: Ogre Killing in 56 Easy Steps.

Beyond that, you have no one but yourself to blame.

*whew*

I just checked in my last major tuning change to my game. I’ve been totally absorbed by the process of increasing and decreasing hit points, damage, upgrade values, enemy attack rates, and the like, for the past three weeks.

It’s been a blast.

My Exec Producer laughed at me at one point. He told me that his wife had been worried about how many hours I had been putting in (in particular over the weekends) and he told her, “Are you kidding? This part of the project he would do for free.”

Which indicates two things: 1) my EP knows me far too well. That’s dangerous. And, 2) he’s right, I would gladly do this for free.

Hello, any aspiring game development teams! Once your game is totally built and nearly done, I will gladly tune your game for free!

….

All the designers out there go, “Yeah, over my dead body, byotch.”

It’s the best part, you see. It’s the part game designers live for. Game is all built, it runs, all the features are in place, the knobs are all exposed, and you’ve got to sit there and turn them until it sings. Or, at least, fails to screech.

It’s absolutely the kind work that I most enjoy.

The cost, of course, is that to get there, sitting in the chair in front of the command console with all the knobs and dials and meters smiling up at you, you have to endure at least a year (often two, sometimes three, argh) of fits and starts while your team constructs all those knobs and dials, and wires, and whatever it is that the knobs and wires actually hook up to and control.

Don’t get me wrong. That part can be fun, too. It’s just not the miasmic joy cloud that is the tuning phase.

Now, of course, that my big ol’ phase one is (largely) complete, it’s time to get out the fine-grit sandpaper, and… uh… polish those… dials? Or something. You know what I mean. Polish!

This is the part that I think is the hardest for many designers: when you get the knobs to a state where it generally works, is stable, and is doing roughly what you want it to do… you have to stop turning the dials.

This is impossible for many people. Designers I have known, worked with, loved, circumnavigated the globe with, and jettisoned into space, all of them at one time or another have had to be physically pried off of the command console.

And that, dear friends, is why God made Producers.

Why?

Because it’s possible, apparently. Genius.

Believe it or not, the little arrows are to pick other games. The site actually starts here.

I’m afraid I have to show you something. I’m unable to prevent myself. And, I’m aware that, in total, I will not be bringing you joy. No, in fact, what I offer you is a vacancy.

However, I would point out that the road I point to you now is paved with joy. Pleasure is what has shaped the bricks that you will walk upon, so in that, at least, I am satisfied.

…

That’s actually a lie. I just have to show you this shit.

I should get this out of the way right off the bat: there is no last chapter to the story I’m linking here for you. And, let’s be clear: the lack of that final chapter is the origin of the suffering I mentioned above.

Yet, if you are wired as I am (and, if you’re reading this, I gotta assume there’s a reasonable amount of correlation there), after seeing

Mario Brothers – Part I

you will be unable to prevent yourself from treading, in full knowledge, into the empty abyss that awaits you.

Here’s the path: Mario Brothers – Part II, Mario Brothers – Part III, and… uh, Mario Brothers – Part IV…

I’ll put this here, just to fuck with you: Mario Brothers – Part V.

And, if you are one of those lucky bastards who don’t mind a tale with no end, who can cavalierly accept the joys of the moment, without needing a closed, meaningful resolution, then fuck you, and the horse you rode in on. I’m not jealous of you, and I wouldn’t admit it if I was.

…

Have you watched at least the first one? Go watch it. Yes, all the way through.

…

k.

So, here’s something I want you to think about. The startling thing to me about this kind of presentation is that the amount of emotion I’m capable of generating over this stuff is roughly equivalent to the emotion I churn at a pretty good movie.

But that’s people. This is a flash animation of a 2D side-scroller.

The same principle applies, I think, in anime. Anime as a style has distilled the communications necessary to generate emotion in the viewer down to their barest essence. Sudden shot of dramatic event (say, building collapsing), with our hero in frame, seeing what we are seeing… flash cut to their face, with pure amazement and/or fear, shaking camera… and that’s all it takes. Amazing thing… character we empathize with in presence of amazing thing… emotion of said character… yaaaay! Entertainment!

There’s more to say about this… specifically about how American media differs in their approach, but it’s complicated, and I haven’t really gelled the thought yet. Maybe later.

Having been through a massive layoff or two (at EA), I have a rather vivid idea of what yesterday was like at Electronic Arts.

Let’s not dwell on that. It was no fun, and a whole bunch of people got caught in the proverbial threshing machine of business priorities. If you are still at EA, and still want to be, congratulations. If you are not there, and wish you were, my condolences to you and your family.

I do not share many people’s urge to shake their fist and rail against the cruelty of these financial institutions; I am not startled when a large, soulless organization makes a large, soulless decision, shifting the world around to better suit its aims. I observe these behemoths in the same way I would a Tyrannosaur: with some fear, some respect, and very little surprise when their predatory instincts flare up.

…

It is clear what it would feel like to have been given the boot. A variation on anger, or a variation on acceptance, or a variation on relief, are in my mind the most likely candidates.

What fascinates me are the moments just after events like this. In particular, when one is among the survivors.

For example. Immediately after a large layoff, the folks who have not been pulled into an office and given a sad (but stern) communication from the Human Resources group end up kindof… walking around. You can’t really work on a day like that, and no one expects you to. But you do go looking. Can’t help it: you want to know who made it and who didn’t.

And then, you see a friend of yours, maybe that one artist guy who worked with you on your level a few months back. And he’s out looking, too. You look at each other.

That moment there? The air fairly shimmers with the unspoken communication. “So. You lived too.” And, you both share this strange sequence of emotion:

1. Relief (or regret) that he made it.
2. Brief shared sympathy for those that didn’t.
3. Quick (and unadmitted) pride that you didn’t get cut, shared (also unadmitted) with your coworker who also didn’t get cut.

And you both move on, looking for other signs of what people the future might contain, and what people it won’t.

…

And now, today. Today, of course, the surviving members of the Event gather together in the auditorium for a studio meeting. At this meeting, the Heads of State will stand up in front of the uncertain crowd. And, the remarkable thing about this moment is that as everyone is streaming in, witnessing the podium and the preperations for the PowerPoint presentation that will explain what just happened and why, and what will happen now, there is this almost tangible undercurrent, talking to everyone in the room.

“We lied to you,” the undercurrent says. “We have been lying to you for some time. We have been lying to you about the security of your positions, what the future holds, who you will be working with, what you will be doing, what our plans are for the studio… just about everything, in fact.

“However, that is our job, in times such as these. You know that, and we know that. If we had told you the truth about this before it happened, it would have gotten ugly. Because it had to happen. Or, at the very least, that is the conclusion we have reached.

“And now, even though it is remarkably uncomfortable to start over like this, we want to tell you a new story about the future. And, we want you to believe that this one is the actual truth.

“But… let’s be honest. You know, and we know, that this new story is also a lie. And, we are all painfully aware that that doesn’t really matter. Because we never tell you the actual truth. We don’t have to, but… also, we really can’t. Not if we want to keep our jobs.

“Please don’t think about this too much, for your sake and for ours, but the main difference between today and any other day is that today it is much harder to convince yourself that the world is not filled with monsters.”