Official Retraction:

There are no alien archaeologists. They want me to tell you that if there were, they would kick Pirate butt. No contest. And they don't have any interest in funding a game project, so stop asking.

Quick thinking Eric Anderson snapped this photo of the conference-that-didn't-happen in progress.

...

Sorry, we're gettin punchy here as Uru Offline Gold Master looms larger. The nice thing is that we'll slip right into crunch time for Uru Live without any of that awkward, end-of-project whaddoIdowithmyselfnow angst.

The Crunch is dead. Long live the Crunch!

I was struck again at lunch today how big 'small' drinks are.

If humans all suddenly died in some manner that also removed any biological evidence to the contrary, alien archaeologists would uncover our restaurants and think they'd discovered a Land of Giants. Or maybe, if they did reassemble some of our skeletons, they'd reason that the great empty space between the false ribs and the pelvis housed a huge, multi-chamber stomach.

Alien Archaeologists vs. Pirates!

I eat too much.

"It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around."

- Stephen King, On Writing

I don't know if that's as poignant without the 94 pages of life-story that lead up to it, but here in the midst of 80-hour weeks working on Uru, it sure hit home.

I don't really like horror. I read Stephen King first because his characters make me care and second because his style is so accessible. If he can make me read a genre I'm not wired to enjoy on the power of those two things alone, well, there's something there.

If I could craft characters like King, build worlds like Tolkien, paint ideas like C.S. Lewis, and finish stories like M. Night Shyamalan...I'd still miss my wife and daughter while I was working.

I posted this on the Uru beta forums back in July as a reply in a thread that the author titled "My patience has run out..." I've edited my original post for, um, punch...and for blogworthiness:

Beta testing an online adventure game has got to be one of the most masochistic experiences anyone could call down upon themselves. Testers are having to deal with a sevenfold frustration:

1) genuine bugs
2) incomplete areas/puzzles/features
3) non-tuned puzzle difficulty
4) normal adventure-game puzzle frustration
5) hardware issues
6) internet lag/instability
7) unfinished story elements

Seven is the Biblical number of 'completeness,' so it's fair to conclude that beta testing Uru is, at the moment, Completely Frustrating. Frustration is its essence, its soul, its very own ontological argument in fact for if this weren't the case, there'd be no Uru beta test.

Take solace in this if you will: There is justice. Imagine the fracas each rant, er, piece of feedback causes as multiple invested parties at Cyan and Ubisoft each with their own theories to espouse, blames to shift, and bullets to dodge try to sort out how much of the feedback is because of #'s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 and who should do what about which...It's an eye for an eye as it were. That's why we all wear the protective goggles.

Bad Game Ideas:

- Vikings vs. Pirates!
- Civil Unrest Online
- Cowboys vs. Indians!
- Sim Holocaust

I think the right salesman could actually get someone to underwrite some of those. I think it's the kind of thing I would set out to do as a joke...as a kind of performance art that's supposed to make a point to the industry and the public. But I'd end up getting the money and having to make the thing. That's the kind of luck I have. On the surface it seems like a really good thing, but it mostly just mocks me in the end.

I think you could actually do a whole * vs. Pirates! series...

- Girl Scouts vs. Pirates!
- Nazis vs. Pirates!
- International Soccer Teams vs. Pirates!
- Gladiators vs. Pirates!
- Volleyball Girls vs. Pirates!
- Zombies vs. Pirates!

Arrrr.