why games fail, an insiders story

[RickyGerbail]

this is a pretty fun, disturbing and surprising thread about a company that made a bunch of rpg's and the jagged alliance series. it's pretty much enough to read the posts by Cleveland Mark Blakemore:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/why-did-sir-tech-go-bankrupt.53695/

[RickyGerbail]

Philip Moore, just confirm these five points quickly for me. It's 20 years later, Phipps is burning in hell where he belongs and the statute of limitations keeps you from being prosecuted even if implicated. People have thought for two decades I invented this stuff, I want you to tell them the truth.

Confirm or deny:

1. Wiz 8 : Stones of Arnhem featured fully animated and colored cell frames of a giant throbbing penis monster and a living rectum with legs which were based on concept art by Max Phipps.

2. At team meetings held at Max Phipps apartment, whenever you wanted to use the bathroom you had to crawl through waist deep piles of vibrators, dildos, sex toys, bondage gear and ass pounder devices.

3. Max Phipps beta testing team for Wiz 8: Stones of Arnhem was assembled from underage homeless teen runaways that Max was housing in his apartment he recruited at the railway station, that he intended to double task as testers during the day and blowjob slaves at night as part of their room and board.

4. All PC portraits in the game were derived from male model headshots in gay wankoff magazines that had been laying around when Max urged the artist to draw up some portraits quickly. As a result, all the portraits of men looked like gay porn stars and the women looked like 40 year old hags.

5. All story lines in the game Stones of Arnhem revolved around transsexual furries who were either murdered themselves or looking to murder someone else. All story lines ended with dramatic shrill monologues by the surviving queens in the game that went on for pages and pages of tedious dialogue with no semantic content of any kind. In one plotline, a magical diamond was hidden inside an NPC's anus and had to be smelled out with an enchanted butt bandit on a stick that was held in front of the party like a totem. It was called "bitchie the hedgehog" or something to that effect.

Confirm or deny.

You are all about to find out if Cleve Blakemore is a nut or simply partially insane as a result of his existentialist nightmare experiences in life. You couldn't make this stuff up.

[chocky909]

Is there something wrong with your PC? It seems to be posting random shit.

[Lee Van Cleef]

Can I have a go?  This review is my favourite games review of all time:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/game-reviews/completely-libelous-review.php

[RickyGerbail]

Can I have a go?  This review is my favourite games review of all time:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/game-reviews/completely-libelous-review.php

that's funny, but the other thing is not a made up review of a game, that guy actually did work on Stones of Arnhem in Australia with the lead designer, Max Phipps. Phipps was a  gay, bit-part actor with no previous experience as game designer or with software development.

He played the role of toadie in Mad Max 2 for example, and also starred in co-lead designer Phil Moores short film about a gay couple, called the Bobsey Boys.

[Steve Lampkins]

Why games are shipped with crippling bugs: http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/9810

Some monstrous stories on there.

[Dead kate moss]

Ricky, are you saying that gay people have no business designing games? That they should burn in Hell? Seems harsh.

[mook]

Ricky, are you saying that gay people have no business designing games? That they should burn in Hell? Seems harsh.

of course not, even ricky ain't that much of a fool... gay folk can make successful and well developed games, won't stop them burning in hell though.

[RickyGerbail]

you're all doomed.

[Still Not George]

Whut

[Phil_A]

this is a pretty fun, disturbing and surprising thread about a company that made a bunch of rpg's and the jagged alliance series. it's pretty much enough to read the posts by Cleveland Mark Blakemore:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/why-did-sir-tech-go-bankrupt.53695/

I don't think you have to wade through all thirty odd pages of that to realise Blakemore is a delusional fantasist with some supremely weird issues regarding "LOL NO gays". I believe he may've worked on the abandoned game he said he did, but all of his other claims appear to be the product of a seriously fucked up mind.

[Still Not George]

I preferred my response.

[RickyGerbail]

I don't think you have to wade through all thirty odd pages of that to realise Blakemore is a delusional fantasist with some supremely weird issues regarding "LOL NO gays". I believe he may've worked on the abandoned game he said he did, but all of his other claims appear to be the product of a seriously fucked up mind.

actually the more lucid and non-trollish accounts of the alleged events come late in the thread. i'm not condoning the kind of homophobia that is on display , i do however think it makes it extra entertaining that a man like Blakemore would find himself in a situation where he's designing a game with two men who represents everything he fears and detests about humanity and that he's forced to go  to  Phipps apartment to work where there's a bathroom allegedly full off sex toys.

I just wanted to add, for those semi-autistic people who are on this thread who have trouble recognizing hyperbole, that there wasn't really a waist-deep pile of sex toys in the bathroom in Max Phipps apartment. Here I'll tell the literal truth about Max Phipps bathroom instead of the colorful version ...

When you entered the already cramped bathroom, there was always a vibrator behind the sink faucets. Why a man needed to keep a vibrator in the open in his bathroom, I'll never understand.

The bathroom was already cramped. Max Phipps had picked this as a place to store a padded sex couch (elevates a man's ass who lies on it stomach first) with metal railings in here around the same size as your typical Sears weight bench. So in order to be able to sit on the toilet, you had to push this bench backs towards the wall so that it now blocked the door to exit.

But wait, I have not got to the best part yet. Max always had a series of strapped bondage gear and strap-on paraphernalia that was drying over the shower curtain rod. It is like he had to have some massive cleanup each night after some wild gay bacchanalia he conducted in his apartment. I will give the man one thing - he was concerned with hygiene because the place smelled very strongly of the bleach that all this stuff was soaked in before it dried out.

So once you were seated on the toilet, it was impossible to simply turn your head to the left even an inch because there was usually a 9 inch rubber dildo hanging at nose level on the strap-on right in front of your face on the curtain rod.

You might try to think to yourself ... This is an absurd situation, I'll just try to make the best of it, perhaps read something, keep my head to the right and pretend I don't see any of this stuff. There was the strange occasional bump to your left shoulder that was like something in a horror movie, you just knew it was the rubber dildo poking into your back on that side but you sat there quietly ignoring it. You would reach for the stack of literature that was piled to one side beneath the sink ... let's see if we can find something here ...

NAVY COCKS COME ASHORE ... skip ...
MANLOADS : SUMMER COMING UP ... skip ...
BOYS AND TOYS AND JOYS ... skip ...

.... (rifling through around thirty gay magazines) ....

... Okay ... here's a flyer from Target.

You'd turn the pages, looking at consumer items on sale ... then notice when it got to the menswear section there were a series of bizarre stains on the pages ... recoil in horror and throw it back onto the pile.

You'd think "A MAN HAS GOT TO SET LIMITS FOR THE PURPOSE OF HIS OWN HUMAN DIGNITY WHEN IT COMES TO A JOB AND THIS SITUATION EXCEEDS THOSE LIMITS. EXCEEDS WHAT IS REASONABLE TO BE EXPECTED OF ANY WELL ADJUSTED PERSON."

Feeling revulsion, you'd realize you now had to try to wash your hands whilst remaining seated, you'd twist sideways, turn on the water and reach for the hand soap bottle, also covered in strange stains ... finally you would just rinse your hands under the tap ... impulsively reach for a hand towel hanging on the rack ... think better of it, just shake your hands dry and hold them in front of you.

Max Phipps would scream from the meeting room ... "Did you fall in, Yank?!? We're waiting out here! I don't have all day."

Right, you'd think ... attempt to stand and complete the exercise without touching anything. Shuffle sideways and attempt to rinse your hands again, using your elbows to turn the taps ... shake your hands dry ... "Be right out, Max, just a minute!"

You would pull the ass-pounder bench back against the toilet so you could open the door, trying to use the inside of your wrists to turn the knob, then exit back to the meeting where Phipps would talk for hours and hours without ever making a point or even conveying any real information. He would usually grow so shrill and enraged his face would flush bright red and the veins on his forehead would bulge as he indicted the movie and television industry for never recognizing the true extent of his talent and reminding us all again how lucky that peasants like we were even exposed to his social strata for any reason, claiming to know a wide variety of famous people he hobnobbed about with who led superior glamorous lives that we should never know. All the while Philip Moore would sit silently at his side nodding his head, tears of joy and love in his eyes hanging on Max's every word. He might occasionally insert a confirmation to Max ... "You got it that time, Max!" or "Max, once again you have nailed it!" or "Max, we are lucky to even have you!" (Imagine Philip Hoffman in The Big Lebowski as the rich man's butler toady except a hundred pounds lighter and with the build of Pee-Wee Herman.)

This was part of the requirements for the job. This wasn't just one day. This was the "team meeting" twice a week and after it was over I was never really certain what had been discussed, coming away with no useful semantic information about anything.

Those of you who think I have lied about any of this should know what I have done is exaggerate for effect in many places, like claiming that his apartment was waist-deep in dildos. That is simply not the truth, it is however so funny it conveys the truth.
Cleveland Mark Blakemore said: ↑
Now here's the literal truth about Max's "beta testing ring" ...

One night I had constructed a crude prototype editor using Paradox 4.0 to edit dialogue trees, which would give Philip and Max the capacity to edit dialogues and specify logic tests and actions connected with the text itself. They had repeatedly asked for it and after I began to get the shell of the game going I agreed this was a priority so we could continue working independently. Paradox was the closet thing to a RAD tool for text applications I owned so I wrote it in Paradox and then learned how to export the resulting data files to my code in the resource editor.

I was scheduled to demo it at the next team meeting and I got it working pretty well for testing.

One of the things I had noticed when at Max Phipps apartment is this mysterious phenomenon of teenage boys appearing and disappearing at random. Like you would be sitting at his kitchen table reading over some story scenario materials he had just produced and all of a sudden like in a stage play, a person would appear.

All of a sudden, this kid who looked around 14 would emerge silently from what I had previously thought was a broom closet, cross the room behind me and vanish into another cupola door near Max's bedroom. I'd hesitate a second, not knowing if this kid was actually supposed to be here or why. I had thought when I first arrived it was nothing but Max and I in the apartment. He had these strange "presences" in the apartment, teenage boys all around all the time.

A couple minutes later, another kid would emerge from his games room, definitely underage, a little taller. He left through the front door like he was running an errand.

I was kind of baffled and couldn't help but wonder who these kids were that were always coming and going. when Max came out of his study, I'd say to him, "Max, a kid just walked through. Does he have your permission to be here?" Max would glare at me and make himself a cup of coffee without saying anything .... I'd think, Some weird dudes I am working with on this "Stones of Arnhem" project. Must be some kind of australian cultural gap thing. Maybe unknown teenage kids walk through people's apartments all over Australia and I am just not familiar with it.

Over the course of time, overhearing little fragments of conversation here and there, I began to gather that these kids were "teenage runaways that Max was 'counseling.'"

When I first heard this, I thought ... wow. Maybe I have totally misunderstood this guy. He is suffering from some debilitating illness and still finds time to 'counsel' local kids and help them out in life. (Typical Neanderthal social doofus, never understands the implications socially of what he is seeing.)

Shortly before the meeting to demo the dialogue tree, I happened to bring it up in conversation with Philip, a little bit humbled maybe. Perhaps I just did not understand what a great guy this Max Phipps really was. He might be an ever greater person than he himself was constantly claiming to be.

Philip snapped back at me over the phone. "Know your place, Cleve."

I said "Whazzat? I was just wondering about those kids at his place. Are those Max's friends?"

Philip said "Know your place, Cleve. This does not concern you. You are simply a programmer brought on to realize Max's brilliant creative vision. Don't involve yourself in these things because they are none of your business."

When we had our team meeting that night at Max's place, I noticed Max was keeping the kids stoked with alcohol, beer or wine from his refrigerator. In fact, as Max was seated at his study desk the teen was standing behind us drinking a beer that Max had given him. This kid was waiting to get back onto Max's computer to play computer games, which Max always kept stocked up in his apartment to give another reason for these teens to "visit."

This teenage kid gave me the heads up as he was sipping his beer. "Hey, 'sup dude. I am going to be beta testing the game when it is ready, Max already promised me and the other fellows. Max said it's going to be ready for test very soon."

I tried to smile but I was feeling sick and dizzy in my stomach. "That's great. Great. That's convenient. So you live nearby?"

Max stopped testing and turned around to glare at me as if to keep me from asking too many more questions of his young "charge." "Cleve, this is going to need some work. It's a good start but it will need changes before it is usable."

I nodded. "Why don't you keep it here to test and just write down your feedback and notes, Max. No problem, I will do whatever you need to it to allow you and Philip to work with it to create the dialogues."

I looked back at the kid. He was still smiling at me drinking his beer and it suddenly hit me he was a bit attracted to me or something. Or something.

Then I looked at Max. I looked at Phil. And it hit me. This sh*t just got taken to a whole 'nuther level. These two are hosting underage teens from the nearby train station, plying them with alcohol and computer games.

Philip Moore must have seen the relays click over in my head because suddenly he said to me, "Cleve, know your place. You are not over here to be asking questions. You just need to do as you are told."

I nodded a little bit. You'd think these guys had me on $5000.00 a week and expected I would overlook money laundering as part of my job if I knew what was good for me. I was thinking, These faggots think they can talk this crap to me on $125.00 a week and I am going to keep silent on their pedophile teen network. I can't believe there are people this screwed up in the world. Then I was thinking, I can't believe I took this "job" (joke) instead of that permanent position I was offered.

When I mentioned this to the project director about a week later and saw the look of recognition in his face and he said to me "Just mind your own business. That has nothing to do with you," I knew that whatever happened in the future, I was never going to have much respect for the average Australian male. Ever. Seeing how they reacted to this situation, knowing something pretty criminal was going on and just telling me to "know my place," I could see exactly why the British had deported their ancestors. I had just met them and I wanted to deport these assholes. Farther south this time, maybe to Antarctica.

So continuing on to the E3 demo, I always had this sick feeling in my stomach. I just didn't feel right about these people at all. They weren't just incompetent, rather they were really BAD people. Really BAD. Not just lousy at software game development. Apart from their lack of ability, they were also really ROTTEN, HORRIBLE, PERVERTED bastards. Really BAD people.

This is the literal truth, no exaggeration at all.
Cleveland Mark Blakemore said: ↑
A few weeks before the E3, when I had the demo ready, I called the project director (name withheld) and told him I was resigning effective immediately. I said I was exhausted, that I had gained 84 pounds since I started work for him, about 84 pounds heavier than when I left America and had developed a severe sleeping disorder where I could never be sure if it was day or night. I told him I would package up the demo for installation once they got to E3 and that I was severing ties with the project. I told him "I've had enough. Grown-ups don't get involved in fiascos like this. I need to get a real day job instead of this crap. My health is so bad from working for you I am the merest shell of the person when I stepped off the plane in this country. This project has taken ten years off my life. I have been doing the work of twenty people for $125 a week for over a year."

So the project director (name withheld) begged me to meet with him for a coffee so he could talk to me. Please, just a coffee. Please, he asked me.

He pleaded with me, blah blah blah please don't quit, I need you to meet with the Siroteks after E3 to discuss what to do about the project. If you quit they are going to can us all and I will lose my investment. I told him, you should of thought of that over the past year when you were paying me $125.00 a week and telling me I should "know my place." He was nearly crying, wah wah wah, my money, my wife will kill me all the money I spent, yada yada yada. He truly folded like a cheap suit under pressure, this guy. I had been handling boiler room personal pressure for 12 months hearing every waking second that this game was overdue, there was no money left and I was expected to do whatever was necessary or I would be in breach of my contract and all my game "royalties"  would be forfeit. (ask D.W. Bradley about game royalties from Sir-Tech.)

I told him, if I go to E3 with you and meet with the Siroteks then you are going to find out exactly what I think of you and your countrymen. I've only been in the country a year and my opinion of the Australian people was formed very quickly from first impressions derived mostly from you and your team. I told him, with a few exceptions like Shamgar and some other people I have met here, I don't really think anything of you. I think the British should be fined by the United Nations for dumping toxic waste in this country. You know what I am saying, right? You don't want me to speak to the Siroteks because it is not going to go well for you and your team at all. I'm going to say things about this project and about these other team members that is going to make you feel faint. Sh*t will get real pretty quick. I told him, before I moved to this country ... I thought Americans were some screwed up people. I guess everything is relative.

I said, knowing this in advance, do you still want me to accompany you back to America and to talk to the Siroteks? Because I promise you I will be savage at that meeting.

He said, look, whatever, you tell them what you need to tell them, the alternative is they are going to can the project immediately if I don't show up with you at E3. He told me, of course Philip is a clown. What do you expect me to do? He is the only one Max talked to about the scenario and the only creative direction we have at the moment. If I fired Phil, that would leave us with nothing. Are you going to do everything yourself? You just told me you are at the brink of nervous collapse. Obviously we have to keep Phil until we can find somebody else to replace him. You can say whatever you want at the meeting if you promise me you will be constructive and tell the Siroteks what we need to do to salvage this disaster. He said, you don't think I feel sick when I look at that Penisaurus or the other queer sh*t in this game? Of course I do. I am trying to balance these two idiots and keep this whole thing intact so I don't lose all my money invested in it. We can't fire them until we find replacements.

He said, I will tell you a secret. Max Phipps has had to commit himself to a sanatorium for a rest. He is not a well person, mentally or physically. Basically, he is falling apart from a lot of different things at once. I think you know what I am talking about. He's not well and his immune system is just shot. This is why he has been virtually impossible to even talk to at team meetings. Imagine you're me and you discover your creative lead is dying from a terminal illness in the middle of your game project. Try to understand I have invested a lot here and I have to work with what I've got. I have this dying man on my hands who is also mentally unstable and then I have his best friend who is one step behind him. It's a nightmare for me as well. I don't think I appreciated what I have put you through until this moment but I promise I won't be taking you for granted in the future. Until we get to the States I can offer you $500 a week and I hope that will help out a little more. After we speak to the Siroteks I will try to get you a little more. You should try to understand that these two idiots have spent nearly everything that was budgeted before you even started on this project.

So I agreed to come back, I told him I was going to have to take at least one week off to try to recover. I was waking up in the morning dizzy and I thought I had gained so much weight so rapidly I was now having heart pains for the first time in my life. I asked him, can you imagine a former all-army athlete who arrived in your country with a resting pulse of 37 at 215 pounds and after working for you for a year, now has a resting pulse of 94 and weighs almost 300 pounds? Do you know how bizarre all this is for me? It is as if I have woken up in another human's body. The idea of me having to now worry if I am going to drop dead because of a f*cking computer roleplaying game I worked on? It's crazy. Even after we get back, I am going to have to rest and try to lose some of this weight I have packed on. It's crazy. Do you think two years ago when I ran a 5 minute mile that I imagined in two years I would weigh 300 pounds and have trouble climbing a flight of stairs? It's insane. All I did was step off a plane into your country. Think about that sh*t. That's what Australia means to me. A triple bypass and congestive heart failure. This sh*t is insane. From working on a computer game.

He said, I understand.

Then I said, no matter what happens, when we come back, Philip Moore is terminated, right? No negotiation on this subject. Philip Moore is terminated as soon as we return. I'm not open to discussion on this subject. He said, agreed. Phil is history when we get back from E3.
Cleveland Mark Blakemore said: ↑
About one week after we had this discussion on E3, this fellow who was the project director (name withheld) called me and asked me how I was getting on, reminding me that we would be flying out very shortly to the States and I needed to have everything ready for the demo and make sure it was properly tested.

Then he asked me, "Listen, I know this sounds crazy, but you didn't talk to any police, did you?"

I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "Look, Philip was saying somebody from social services was up at Max's apartment inquiring about some runaway kid. You didn't have anything to do with it, did you? Philip said he told these people Max was away and would not be back for some time. Philip said somehow he had a feeling you had been talking to people behind their backs."

Now I was worried if I said too much I would blurt out that it was me. So I said, keeping it very short, "Hmm, Phil thinks I have been contacting social services?"

He said, "Yeah. I mean, Max is gone now so nothing is going to come of it." He was still on edge with me, worried I might resign again if he pressed me too hard on this or any other subject.

I said, "What were Max and Philip doing up there that they got a call from social services," I asked. "Were they doing something wrong?"

There was a long pause. Way too long for a simple question with a yes or no answer.

This guy blew a sigh of exasperation. "No, of course not. That wasn't you, was it? Okay, look, forget about it, it is not important. I know you have stuff to work on so I'll let you get back to it." He paused for a moment then hung up.

Of course it was me.
Cleveland Mark Blakemore said: ↑
When I was on the airplane on the way to E3, I could not help but imagine what the Siroteks would do when I dropped the bomb and told them what was really going on overseas.

I thought, these guys are hardened pros. Blam right out of the gate they will fire both of us, me and the project director. Then they will probably sue Phipps and Philip to get their money back. I thought, these guys have been around a long time. They probably could do weapons-grade game development in their sleep. I imagined their headquarters as some kind of tech fortress like you might see in Thunderbirds, complete with flashing lights and digital displays. These guys will have minds like high intensity laser beams. I will probably be sweating like a pig under their inquisition, they will be firing all these questions that will quickly reveal that me and (name withheld) are just f*cking posers playing at all this. They're probably going to be telling me, what in the hell was somebody thinking hiring some puny Commodore 64 game author who has mostly worked on his own over the years as a Senior Programmer on a project of this magnitude? They're going to be yelling at me, how could you not stand up to these two and protect our investment? First day on the job if you were worth a damn you would have told the project director these guys were totally incompetent.

Furthermore, what in the hell have you been doing for 7 months? You built an exact working replica of the most complicated computer roleplaying game in human history by yourself on a 386 computer using a copy of Turbo C++ starting from scratch, including all required editors for the data in the game? What a time waster. Any of our coders here at Sir-Tech could have done as much in a single lunch break. Clearly you're a complete fake and a loafer or so unproductive this is practically charity work for us to even employ a bum like you.

I imagined myself starting to weep silently at how pathetic I was as they informed me, we have no need of a charlatan like yourself in our company. We are real game making types and you my friend are nothing more than a try-hard wannabe with a couple dozen clutches of C64 games published in magazines and rinky-dink software publishers which are nothing more than shovelware. Our godlike coders here could run circles around a mental midget like yourself.

I imagined them showing us to the door, our shoulders slumped, crying like little bitches. Security guards would show up and physically drag us out to the curb and toss us into the dumpsters like so much refuse, followed by buckets full of potato peels and fish heads. The guards would wave for a rubbish truck to then hoist our containers away and drive us to the nearest garbage tip after stripping us of all our clothing, our return fare to Australia and even our continental breakfast vouchers.

Yeah, I thought as I was dozing on the plane, it's going to be ugly. It's going to be so traumatic for me I will probably never get over it. At least they will know the truth about what these guys are doing over here. That's all that matters at this stage.
Cleveland Mark Blakemore said: ↑
Just before the plane landed I went to the bathroom and vomited from general fatique and exhaustion. I felt like I was running a mild fever. Right up to the last hour I had been trying to locate a bug in the demo that had to do with a memory buffer in the graphics cache for the screen not being deallocated with the graphics subsystem. Later on I found out where it was after E3 and it was something really simple I had not known about in the graphics subsystem I was calling in Sham's code. It did not release these buffers when you called it to do so.

I was kind of weak and pale when I got off, I felt slightly dizzy. I remember being winded just walking down the concourse and thinking This is what comes from being glued to the chair in my study drinking diet coke for seven months. I had a sense of being trapped in some kind of fat suit. It's an interesting observation to note that I had never drunk diet soda before until I started to work on the Sir-Tech project and had become addicted to the stuff. I think it is fair to say that nothing is worse in your diet than diet soda.

So the Siroteks and other staff picked us up in their van. I noticed around ten seconds after getting on board there was something going on between Norman Sirotek and his wife that was similar to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It was creeping me out within one minute. Very ugly rapport there, strange grimaces, not good. Not good at all. There was something that my Neanderthal spidey-sense was picking up as we were driving along in the van and it was like a black pall hanging over these humans. Something was bad here. Of course, in those days I didn't know it was my Neanderthal spidey-sense. It was just my good old spidey-sense.

When Norman's wife put her hand on my knee I thought Oh man this whole thing was a huge mistake. I should have never come here. I should have known there is no way it could be that messed up in Australia if it wasn't equally messed up on this end in America. A huge mistake.

I was thinking when we stopped for something to eat, that this would be a good time to pretend to be overcome by food poisoning. I could claim that only my physician in Australia could treat me and use my return fare to get on the plane immediately and go back. I hesitated and the moment was lost.
Cleveland Mark Blakemore said: ↑
I'm not going to go into E3 in any detail, I don't feel like writing a novel on it.

The biggest thing to happen in E3 was somebody swiped the source code for Jagged Alliance off the front desk where Ian Currie had left it. This was a bad thing.

I met Gary Gygax and to my eternal regret, was so depressed at that moment that I did not take advantage of the opportunity just to chat with him. He attempted to make conversation with me and I had a chance to speak to one of the legends. He tried quite hard to strike up a discussion with me about the demo of the game and I was so flat I could only look at my feet and wait for him to break this long uncomfortable silence by walking away. I knew in any other situation I would've talked his ear off and listened to him eagerly. Imagine meeting one of the founders of the entire genre. Just another missed opportunity for me. When he died I thought of how many chances I have had in life to network with people who might've discovered I was a talented person in my own right of sorts and just passed them up. A better person, more social and affable, could have likely come away from E3 with a pocket full of business cards and job offers. I'm not that guy, unfortunately. I am like a guy standing on one side of a chasm that can only be bridged with social skills I just don't seem to possess. People with a microscopic percentage of my ability as a programmer do far, far better on much, much less because of their willingness to open up and talk with the humans. If you are unwilling to talk you are not going to be successful with women, with a career or with much of anything in life no matter how much talent you have. It's depressing (!) but there you have it. Now you know why I am always so depressed. Crazy Catch-22, right? Only about 50 years. Guess why people with severe "Aspergers" (Neanderthal gene expression) have all killed themselves usually by the time they turn thirty? Right.

... and yes, my anecdote about a journalist asking me if we were trying to tap into the gay market with the game was not invented. It was embellished but not invented.

Lots of people said they thought it looked spectacular, but this particular writer was exclaiming quite avidly about it. "I mean, there is definitely a demographic like that for roleplaying games. I think there might be a warm reception for a game with some openly gay themes in it. You don't have to call it gay, you can let people decide for themselves. Other than that, the game looks pretty amazing. I know it is just an alpha but it looks complete from the front end. You have all the interfaces there from the previous Wizardry 7 and the UI looks much better in fact, really good. The 3D engine is not too shabby, either. Colorful and smooth movement as opposed to the step-based movement of Crusaders. I think you guys really have something going here from what I have seen of it." I was trying to nod while this guy was talking and was likely more responsive than I was with Gary Gygax.

I actually liked Ian Currie. He and his wife were not bad sorts at all. Brenda was okay, too. The entire show of E3 I was nervous around the Sirotechs because you could just feel this bad pall around the both of them. It was not good. A kind of alarm was going off in my head whenever they were near. It was not what I was expecting but that's the truth.

One thing I realized during the E3 show being around Currie and his team was that they weren't supermen. They didn't shoot lasers out of their eyes and lift monster trucks above their heads while laughing nonchalantly. I listened to them speaking and began to realize that I was likely as good a developer as anybody else at Sir-Tech or perhaps a little better. Certain things they said sort of gave away they were not completely experienced software developers and when I began to go over my priors in New York and in the military I understood I was certainly as good as any of these guys at game development.

The real difference, which I saw immediately, was that these guys had serious support, funding, equipment, budgeting, offices and team structures compared to what was in Australia. Where I had just come from, I was one guy working on a 386 25mhz with Turbo C++ 3.0 on a 9 inch monitor.

I started to look at Jagged Alliance (which certainly looked terrific) and compare it with our demo and realized that what they had done at Sir-Tech with a full team of developers, the protected mode Watcom DOS-32 extender, Multiedit text editor and Pentium computers ... I had accomplished at home in a decrepit flat with a leaky roof, a toy compiler and 2 megs of RAM working by myself in DOS Real Mode, in about half the time ... with no real support or serious funding other than the awesome Michael Shamgar to back me up. I had something to benchmark myself with and it slowly began to dawn on me what I had done in seven months. I had written an almost exact duplicate of one of the most complex roleplaying systems and game engines in the world from scratch with no outside help of any kind. I had also duplicated the end product of most of the roleplaying system mathematics in a parallel system without copying the original code or using it in any way. Then I had wrapped a modern 3D engine around this and had a full alpha working in time for the E3.

In retrospect, it is difficult to imagine this feat ever being repeated by any mortal made of flesh and blood in the seven months that I had to work on it. It is like Bob Beamon's world record long jump at Mexico City. It is the sort of thing unlikely to ever happen again on this planet within these time frames. I had done the impossible and didn't really know it until I went to the E3 show. As Albert indicated, everything is relative. I am sure there is a planet where the Sirotechs would see me as an inferior creature posing as a games developer but this wasn't that planet. On this planet, I was as good or better than most of the other people around me when it came to games development. This is one important thing I took away from E3.

The research shows that people like me will underestimate their own IQs and vastly overestimate everyone else's well into their thirties, at which time this outlook will toggle sharply. I mean, really sharply. By their forties, people like me will not see most of the people around them as being sentient or even capable of abstract reasoning at all. Whether or not this is realistic, this is what the psychological research clearly shows.
Cleveland Mark Blakemore said: ↑
So by the time the meeting after E3 came with the Siroteks, I had already made up my mind that I didn't want any more of this. I had done too much for them on too little pay and way too much sh*t had rolled down on my head for $125.00 a week. I went into the meeting to tell them how I felt about everything hoping they would just can it.

By the time we sat down, I had figured out the following things without any outside help from anybody:

1. They had cheated D.W. Bradley's team blind using milestones to bilk them out of all their royalties. This had brought about a severe fracture and destroyed any hope of them putting together a similar team to do the next Wizardry. This was the reason they had turned to this dodgy "team" in Australia. (Not really a team at all)

2. They had extensive legal problems with Andrew Greenberg and all of the original source code for Wizardry, which they had never properly obtained the rights to or purchased from Greenberg. They had written successive sequels while all these legal problems raged in the background, thinking ownership was 9/10s of the law and the longer they stalled in court the more likely they would just be conceded the owners of the franchise by default.

3. Their role as "managers" in the past of software projects mostly consisted of calling people on the phone and asking them when did they think it would be ready. I gathered they had no real hands-on experience managing software development and they were so sparse they decided (all non-technical people do) that it was really a very easy affair, you could just hire some interns for peanuts or anybody handy and shazam, a game would appear in some way sooner or later. I had worked with people in New York with far superior experience and credentials to these guys and was good at recognizing real technical people when I saw them. Norm and Rob were not these kinds of guys.

4. There were extensive divisions in Sir-Tech corporate at almost every level. The place was a battlefield when I arrived with nearly everyone scheming against everyone else. Largely what was missing amidst all this scheming and calculating was anybody with any real talent for writing computer games. Those types of people had peeled off and left long beforehand. Maybe Ian Currie's team was still capable of some productive output but I got the sense that they too were a little spoiled by too much profit taking and not enough brains to keep it. These are just my freeform impressions.

5. Both Norm and Rob were not aware you can easily go bankrupt in software development if the company is run by idiots. They were both confident in a way that did not really resonate with what they had on tap, outside of their name and previous glories. I guessed when I was there that Sir-Tech was really on it's final legs at that point despite having "lots of money" in reserves. I have been doing this long enough to know that incompetent people can burn a million dollars a month easily without being able to explain where it all went. I would not have purchased stock in Sir-Tech if I had been offered it.

So at the meeting I told them most of what I have told all of you on this thread, about everything that had happened up to this point.

I told them the premise of the game had merit, I thought my source needed work but would get the job done, they would have to get themselves a real team and put some more funding into the project in order to complete it. I told them about Max and Grantley and Philip as being worse than no team mates at all, they had so frequently failed to deliver anything.

When they got to the part where they asked me if I thought the game would be completed in Australia by the team that was there, I told them no. If we had no more resources than we were currently operating with, the game would never be finished.

I told them I had gathered that Australians suffered some kind of genetic anemia, a lack of iron in the blood that made them listless and unable to solve problems in their lives. I told them that they were fond of pretending to work but by and large most Australians were some of the least productive people in the world when it came to software development and programming. I told them socialism clearly makes a race of men weak and soft in the head given enough time. I told them that working alone it would take me such a long time to complete the game by myself it would not be worth it to proceed in that context.

They asked me specifics about who I would hire to rebuild the team. I told them, definitely a UI coder to help me with the interfaces. At least two asset wranglers including game data. Of course, a new senior creative lead who would fix up the story and setting and decide with us on a definitive game mechanic and an approach he was committed to. I mentioned LANDS OF LORE as a stunning effort that put it's faith into step-based movement and a certain type of 3D engine and went with it and it worked out superbly. I explained they could not vacillate from one month to the next wanting a step engine one day and the next a DOOM style experience. I could see talking to them they really didn't understand the difference and deep down didn't care. It was just the money they were trying to get at.

The biggest thing that clinched it for me during the meeting was when they started to throw out that "sh*t sells" philosophy, where they basically said that anything with the Wizardry name on it was going to sell and it didn't have to be a good game to make a lot of money. They said they wanted to get it out there and trade on the success of Crusaders and by the time people figured out it was crap it would be too late, they would clean up. I didn't like the sound of that at all and concluded these guys were just straphangers in the computer game industry.

I noticed at the meeting they were still sitting on the fence, which was to be expected. I had seen that before too. There are certain moments in software development where the best manager is going to start sacking people. Even if they had sacked me on the spot, that would have shown some initiative. Instead they were still trying to mull it over without recognizing they had paid a quarter million dollars out before I came on the team and had nothing to show for it. Any time something like that happens, you start firing people. Otherwise you're just a socialist sadsack outfit - which is what we were.

By the end of the meeting I was certain that Norm and Rob were baffled because they were baffled. You know what I am talking about? The way Steve Ballmer always has that baffled quality? You can just see the gears turning in Steven Ballmer's head worrying if everybody around him has figured out that he knows absolutely nothing about what he is doing. These two guys were in fear of being found out. If they thought their old buddy Cleve was just going to fetch them their umpteen million bucks on $125.00 a week and once again salvage their rep for them, they obviously didn't have any options left and didn't know how to produce a sequel to Wizardry.

This project director (name withheld) was furious for me telling them we couldn't do it with what we had, despite it being of course the truth. The guy told me along with Philip that I should "know my place" when it came to pedophilia so he should not have been shocked when I sh*t all over him at the meeting. Seriously, who says that to another guy he is paying $125.00 a week? That.just.doesn't.make.any.sense. Then you're going to take the guy with you to the United States and have him explain what has gone wrong in the development? Makes. No. Sense. I would not have taken me. I would be smart enough to think, wow this guy has an IQ that is so much higher than my own I barely even merit a mention and I am telling him not to pay any attention to the kiddy porn ring on $125.00 a week? It was such a shock when he dropped a dime on me in front of the Sirotek brothers. I never saw that coming.

The night before I came back to Australia I ran up an exorbitant room service bill at the hotel and charged every single thing on the menu to Sir-Tech. I think I ate everything in the minibar and threw a lobster in the trash as soon as it was delivered and then a bottle of their best wine. Assholes. I was hoping I could bankrupt them before I even got back. I already knew the project was finished, it would just take longer for those two idiots to work it out amongst themselves.

"Know your place." Three little words, [name withheld]. Sealed your fate, a**hole. I don't know how you Aussie twinks talk to each other but there are some things you just don't say to a Texan.
Cleveland Mark Blakemore said: ↑
Anyway, the epilogue is not really important. Just think of the three stooges having a massive digital slap fight and the project concluding in a noisy, angry mess, with all staff let go finishing with me. I had been staying out of it for weeks and when the news came that Siroteks were actually going to be collecting the computer equipment (resale value of about $100.00 by then) I was so disgusted I could not even bear to think about the project any more.

It would have meant a lot to me if Norm or Robert had called me and said "We're really sorry things turned out like this. We appreciate all the hard work you did and we think under different circumstances you would have completed the game. I'm sure you understand for our own purposes we have to cut our losses and end the project here. The project had already gone bankrupt before you were even hired." Of course I would have understood. It would have meant everything in the world to me if either of them had called me and told me that. Just something close to a thank you and a recognition that this project did not fail because of me. It would have meant everything.

No such luck. I wasn't expecting it, anyway.

It would have taken a man with fundamentally good character to have done it. Both these guys were shabby people.

... but of course, this isn't the end of the story.

Privately, I had begun to ruminate. As a result of idly thinking about how I'd do things differently if I produced a worthy sequel to the Wizardry series with my own capital, I began to realize that a bright guy could do it at a fraction of the price it would cost morons like the Siroteks through their comical trial and error. The Siroteks Communist style centralized approach virtually guaranteed a budget was required of a million dollars or more to get a game out using their process. I was certain a smarter person could do the same job a lot cheaper than they ever could.

I had been thinking of a sequel to one of my old Commodore 64 3-D Games, a followup to Crypt of Fear, Vault of Terror, Tomb of Horror. The working title in my brain for this game had been Clock of Fate for a long, long time. I had formed this loose premise of a world where an antique clock is actually tied into the reality of the world and as it winds down with nobody to maintain it, the whole world is winding down with it. I decided to spruce up the title more to try to make it as baroque as BANE OF THE COSMIC FORGE. I did a bit of synonym searching in the thesaurus and I came up with something, something of the Metronome Mysterium. I think I was looking for words for the first part of the title when I found "Tome" attached to some suitable candidate.

Wait, I was thinking, isn't there another more obscure word (not in the thesaurus) associated with an ancient book of magic or knowledge? French origins, maybe. Something to do with alchemistry. What was that ... oh, right ...

GRIMOIRE. That was the word.

So what if instead of having to write my own graphics engine and UI I just bought some third party product? That would slice off my first two months of work for the Siroteks. What if I got the Watcom Compiler (which the Siroteks should have provided me from the beginning if they had a clue) and started in flat protected mode C++ instead of C? That would shave enormous amounts of time off just getting rolling without a million headaches from the 523K real mode limit.

I could slap the text editors together in Visual Basic for DOS for all the game data. I could slap a universal resource packer together in one day. I had looked at a lot of the code I wrote for the Siroteks and it was so primitive to me at this point it is like I was looking at the scrawlings of a child. Just like a Rubik's Cube, I thought, twist this, turn that, here we are. I could make a better turn-based Wizardry style RPG than the Siroteks could under my own steam. Unbeknownst to either Philip Moore or Max Phipps, I was a richly creative storyteller who had crafted ten thousand worlds for hundreds of games in my life. They had never figured it out but I had more imagination than the both of them put together ten times over. I never told either one of them because they probably thought queers have a monopoly on creativity but my mind was so much more active and vibrant that both of them were just dim bulbs in comparison. Like Dr. Manhattan, I would reassemble myself from the aether out of nothing at all.

So I got started on it.

Obviously, there was a little more work there than I originally estimated.

[Still Not George]

Why yes, that's clearly the work of a sane and cohesive individual who isn't in any way a crazed bedroom programmer who's been going slowly batshit for 20 years.