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October 11, 2002 - Working as a computer game developer does have
its perks. Obviously there's the wine, the women and the emergency fellatio-coding
scenes as realistically demonstrated in Swordfish, but recently we've been feeling
grateful for something much more important. Writing computer games is probably the
only way that ugly, socially dysfunctional human beings such as ourselves can work
on something that develops a real fan base, with the possible exception of being
in Oasis. It really is quite incredible, and humbling, knowing that the project
we are working on is eagerly anticipated by so many different people.
Recently we've had a bit of a PR push and, as is usually the case with these things,
we've had a surge of email and letters from people, which we always take the time
to read. Due to the volume of letters we get, we don't often have the chance to
reply, which is a real shame since the vast majority of them are very encouraging,
and many of them have great suggestions for the game. Our gratitude goes out to
everyone who has ever sent us a letter of encouragement.
Anyway, every now and then, we get a letter that makes us a teeny tiny bit concerned.
One of the things we've talked about in the past is that we wanted Ego to give the
player a greater degree of freedom than in other role-playing games. You should
be able to choose how you look, you should be able to choose how you play the game,
who you help, who you kill, who you flirt with, etc. The response we've had to these
ideas has generally been extremely positive. However, for some reason many people
seemed to relate this directly to sex; if we had a penny for every letter asking
us if you can 'have relations' with women/men/dogs/sheep/chickens/sandgeese(ahem)/cheese,
then we'd have, well, nearly 47 pence.
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The idea of 'freedom' seemed to resonate particularly with one chap, who sent us
a mail along the lines of the following (grammar and names have been changed to
protect the guilty):
Dear Big Blue Box,
Many thanks for Project Ego, I think you are going to create a fantastic game. I
was thinking about the freedom you have in the game, and how you should probably
be able to kill animals and skin them for their pelts. Wouldn't it also be cool
if you could sneak into a village, kill a child and skin it, and then wear its skin?
Wearing a cape made out of the hide of a child would show everyone in the world
how badass I am.
Yours truly,
Little Johnny, Age 12
We weren't at all disturbed by that letter, no, not at all. Perhaps more concerning,
though, was an almost incomprehensible, hand-written religious diatribe we received
in the post. It goes on a bit, but makes some very useful points including the threatening
'You offspring of the snakes, how are you, being evil, able to say good things',
the confusing 'If your neighbour has 4 oil wells, don't confess for 8 oil wells'
and the obvious 'The thick dirt in the dark attic was already there, when the flashlight
shone on dirt. The Bible is our flashlight'. Enlightening stuff -- we'd always wondered
what to do with all those spare oil wells.
Of course, most people reading this will probably think we're making this up. Quite
frankly, however, we're quite proud to have fans like these. If we can make our
game half as original and unique as some of the people waiting for it, we will have
a hit on our hands...
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