I, Hope, is a game about hope.
It finally happened, holy shit it finally happened. In the six or so years I have been writing this blog there had yet to be a person I spoke to in RL who has asked me why. A ton of "what's," a smattering of "how's," but no "why," until a couple hours ago.
I promised myself I would explain why I write the blog the moment someone asked why I write the blog, so here is how the story goes.
I started writing the blog to keep my group of tester friends entertained while going through the shitstorm that was Sony Online Entertainment in 2011. I was a quality assurance engineer working on game deployment to Station.com, SOE's digital delivery platform.
We were a small team tucked away in the bowels of building one, most of us plucked from web, trc, or EverQuest test crews. The hackers DDoS,ed to make everyone think they were just players pissed about Star Wars Galaxies nerfs to cover up what they were actually going for, credit card and social security info.
They did us dirty, but there is no way around it, we fucked up. We all did, the hackers were like a running back breaking tackle after tackle. The days after were meeting after meeting and lawyer after lawyer and executive after executive.
Co-workers from other departments showed only love, knew it happened to the best and the rest, part of life on the high seas. But we saw the disappointment in their eyes that their partners, their kids, and their friends private info were in some randos' hands.
Morale was nonexistent, our team dropping like flies. A few months later there were about five of us, showing up to work out of habit. I decided to break the gallows silence by going into these long diatribes about games I was playing, speaking at the top of my lungs in order to clear the cubicle walls so they could hear.
The rest of the office told me to shut the fuck up, so I did. Everyone on the team loved Penny Arcade, as do I, so I decided to completely bite @Tychobrahe and write weird things about video games to send to my team via instant message. I needed a place to host and Blogger.com is lit, so I used it.
Problems were I'm not a good writer, I had no time to actually review the games all technical or whatever, only test them, and I was battling crippling depression, so the motivation just wasn't there. I decided to write a one-sentence explanation of what I thought the game was about, then go on some weird tangent. Oh also I can't draw, so I just linked a playlist of stuff I watched or was sent on youtube that week.
I sent it, they enjoyed it, and asked me to continue writing it so we all could keep in touch, as I kept getting fired or quitting from places, the community of game industry folk that found this little hole in the wall bar kept growing, they started talking among themselves, and a network was born. What comes next hasn't been written yet.
So yeah, that's it. That's why. Not a very interesting story, if you ask me.
To wrap up the whole SOE thing, it got worse than it got good then it got worse then I quit. Was what it was, is what it is, will be what it will be. Oh, and I felt bad about ripping off @Tychobrahe so I turned Default Tester into a tip jar for Child's Play. The blog is basically a street busker if you like the show please put a couple dollars in the briefcase. Thank you.
Years after SOE, Penny Arcade and I crossed paths thanks to our day jobs. They are notoriously critical but gave my product at the time high praise. Legends. I told them this story, they replied, "Yeah man, shit happens. Glad you made it through." Too true. Thanks, guys. Also rest in peace, Heathcliff Hatcher. Thank you for teaching me how to play, you are missed. Also congrats on "I, Hope" Kenny. Amazing game. Also Jobs.
The Protoculture Mixtape: V.1
