Three Funny Links. (And Our Sale Is Ending Soon.)

So I need to write a blog post to remind people that Spiderweb Software's Glorious October Carnage 10% Off Sale ends in just a few days. But I don't have one of my standard 1000 word infodumps ready. You see I've been busy lately trying to finish our next game and playing Catherine on my XBox. (Working title ... "I Have Serious Issues With Women: The Game.")

So I'm going to post links to three thinks I really liked. Because that's what blogs are best at.

1. An Old Short Story

There used to be a magazine called Dragon. It was ostensibly about tabletop role-playing games, but who are we kidding? It was about Dungeons and Dragons. This was back in the good old days when you could play D&D and relax and unwind and keep up with what was going on without a computer, four whiteboards, and a specially trained idiot savant. (If you ever wanted me to write a review of Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons, there it was.)

Every month, Dragon magazine also had a short story, for some reason. One of these stories has stuck with me because it was so amazingly prescient. It was about MUDs, but in the story they were weird free for alls and if you did the right thing you could earn game cash that converted to real money. It predicted the existence of Eve Online twenty years before the fact, and other SF writers are just now catching up with the crazy possibilities.

Someone just sent me a link to the story, so here it is:

Catacomb, by Henry Melton

Henry, if you ever end up here and see this, your work had a big, big influence on one particular misfit boy.

2. A New Video

So far, I've managed to avoid writing any blog articles on the subject of The Game Industry Might Maybe Have Woman Issues, Just a Little Bit. To anyone looking in from outside, this statement is about as controversial as saying that water is wet, but it still gets gamers really angry.

Anyway. IGN made some sort of online reality show thingy called The Next Game Boss. It's about indie game developers. That someone made a reality show (even a web one with a micro-budget) about people who want to do what I do is pretty fascinating. Not flattering, but fascinating. Because, um ... watch this cruelly edited selection of highlights from the first episode ...

Hey, Ladies! They're Still Single!

(It gets awesome one minute in.)

There are things I could say about this, but there's really nothing that can be added to perfection.

3. I Like Music

Everyone who knows me in real life is sick of hearing about Garfunkel & Oates. But you don't know me! So I can just drop a link or two.

They really broke big over the last year or so and are now making actual money (plus an HBO development deal). If you poke around on YouTube, you will find that these two have been working their asses off for years trying this and that before they broke big. They are a great example of a universal truth: It takes ten years to make an overnight success.

OK, that seems like enough content to justify a blog post. So. We're having a sale. It's over in a few days. Order one of our series on CD and you can totally get your Hanukkah shopping done early.