• I’d like to write more about fun stuff on this website. Lately it’s become too much about politics and my projects; not that these aren’t valid subjects, or the things I spend most of my time thinking about, but there’s more to the world. (If there wasn’t, what would be the point of politics?)
• So I’d like to write more about books I’m reading or have read, or about music, or about interesting things I found on the internet, or about funny/odd/fascinating/horrible things I have seen or encountered in my strange life so far.
• Speaking of music, I’ve recently rediscovered my love of Nick Cave. The Firstborn Is Dead was always one of my favourite albums, but now I’m listening to some of his newer work (from the last 13 years, that is) and enjoying it a great deal.
• OK, now I’ll say something about what I’m working on.
• I’ve only done two episodes/updates of The Urthona Revolution so far, but I’m really enjoying it. It’s good to flex slightly different artistic muscles, and I’m having fun putting oodles of hints and intertextual references into the images. It’s like poetry, really. Very compressed.
• As you may know, one of my primary goals is to make movies – not just small indie flicks, but big movies with big budgets. (Verena just wants to write them. I also want to direct.) We share this goal with our friend Dana Pastor (Dr. Halvorsen in Phenomenon 32), who is primarily interested in editing and cinematography. Since there is little hope of getting into what passes for the film industry in Germany, and since we’re not particularly oriented towards this part of the world anyway, our eyes are turned more towards England and (particularly) Hollywood. Hey, you’ve got to have ambitions.
• How to get there, then? How to get the attention and support to do some bigger film projects? Well, we have to start somewhere, so part of our approach is to just go and make a movie – one that can be achieved on a tiny budget, but is still visually impressive and has a good story.
• Our current plan is to film this movie in August-September of this year. Details are still not entirely clear, but today I had a very good moment when I took my camera off the shelf, where it had been gathering dust for a few years now, and played around with it a bit. I’d been terrified it would be broken, or just not up to modern technical standards anymore, but it turns out that I didn’t waste all my money back when I bought it: this thing rocks.
• Another aspect of this get-to-Hollywood plan is writing; more specifically, writing a screenplay. As you may have noticed, I’m not very big on saying a lot about my projects before they’re done, but I’ll give you a hint: it’s a comedy/drama with plenty of action and horror, and it’s about demons. (No, it’s not Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it does reference it in a very nice way.)
• We’re also always looking for interesting film competitions or similar events. Let us know if you hear of anything!
• I’ve had some very nice ideas for my next game, including some absolutely outrageous jokes.
• Sometimes I’m incredibly frustrated by these really simple game ideas that I come up with, that a better programmer/artist could do in less than a day, but which are completely out of reach for me. Grrr. Someday.
• We’ve been sending Verena’s novel Mind the Gap out to agents. Gods, I want this thing to be published. Not only because we desperately need the money, but also because it is incredibly excellent. Seriously, if you like my work, this book will make your head explode. Pray that it finds an agent who can see what a masterpiece it is.
• Phenomenon 32 feedback has been rather sparse in terms of reviews, but I’ve gotten some lovely emails from people who found the game to be thought-provoking and enjoyable. This is good.
• Our cat continues to be unspeakably cute. She really is incredible.
• Oh, and since I’m talking about my projects again, here’s something political: Auschwitz Survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’
• I probably shouldn’t end on something controversial, should I?
• OK, here’s a random bit of trivia: when, in a pen & paper role-playing game, your characters witness a political assassination, and then spend an hour coming up with a long explanation as to why the killer was a yellow M&M… you know you’re playing with the right people.
• Come to think of it, I should really write about role-playing one of these days.
• Bored? Depressed? Listen to Tim Minchin and cheer up.

The release of Phenomenon 32 has been… not exactly a wonderful event so far. There was one absolutely delightful post by Gregory Weir that literally had me dancing with joy that someone was having the intended experience… and the rest has been all aggression and negativity. Apparently I should be ashamed for making a game so big, for making people read the manual, for not putting subtitles in my intro, and generally for not making exactly the type of casual game people wanted. (I have nothing at all against casual games. But this isn’t one.)

Now, my games usually get mixed responses. I understand that, and that’s never bothered me. But I’ve never had a game where people felt the need to contact me personally to tell me I should be ashamed for “luring people in with the story” while “not making it fun” and similar stuff.

I worked on Phenomenon 32 for fourteen months. Fourteen. That’s hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work. It’s also hundreds upon hundreds of hours I could have spent on something that would get me somewhere and that would make money. But instead I chose to work on a free game, because I love the medium, and because I loved the idea of this game. Now we’re running out of time and money, and if things don’t turn around soon my dreams of creativity will be greatly endangered. And it’s just not worth it.

I have been making games for nearly 10 years now. That’s a hell of a long time, and I’m considering whether I should take a very long break. Yes, there’s that story of a troll and his adventures, and so many other ideas, but I’m basically destroying our life and our future. And let’s face it, it’s not like people will donate. In all the many years this website has had a donation button, I think three people have donated. I don’t really remember, because the last time was somewhere around The Museum of Broken Memories.

I’m not posting this because I want attention, or compliments, or pity, or people to convince me otherwise. This is not about ego. But consider: in the time it took me to make Phenomenon 32, I could have written 14 screenplays. I could have made multiple movies. I could have finished my book. All those are things that can get us money to live off and a chance to tell more stories. And that’s what I want to do, in the end: tell stories.

Anyway. It’s not the end of the world. I’m still thinking about what my next step is. I’m still happy with Phenomenon 32 as a game. And I still love the artform, deeply and passionately. Games do matter. That my own forays into the medium have caused me such frustration and disappointment does not invalidate games, it just tells me that maybe I should, for now, be putting my efforts elsewhere.

And again, let me say thanks to everyone for their feedback. Testing games is incredibly hard when you don’t have the resources. Even though I tested Phenomenon 32 on several computers, these issues still slipped through, and I wouldn’t have been able to fix them without your help.

In completely different news, the short story I’ve been submitting has been rejected yet again, and I’m once more on the hunt for a good venue for it. It’s tricky and frustrating, because it’s really a good story, and I’d love to get it out there, but its mixture of elements seems to be just wrong for most magazines/journals.

Edit: Another bug was just reported, which potentially makes the game unfinishable. Thankfully, I’ve already figured out what was going on, an a patch is on the way.

Edit: Thanks for the feedback. Should be able to work out something or other.

• The game probably doesn’t run on Windows 7. Still experimenting with this.
• The file hosts sometimes don’t work properly. I had to remove the FileFront download because the files were corrupted, and Filedropper seems to work inconsistently (a lot of people had no problems, but some did). I am currently hosting the game on my own website as well, which is rather bad, and am working on more alternatives. Unfortunately, uploading a 240MB game is slow work.
• Not a lot of feedback yet, but the game is big and it only came out yesterday.

In other news, you can really tell what a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Clearly there’s still work to do, but it’s nothing compared to the task of bringing the game to its current state, and I feel much better than I have in a while. In fact, in the last ten hours alone I wrote a new short story and submitted another one to a literary magazine. How awesome is that?

Oh, and don’t forget that you could be in my next game!

It’s hard for me to describe what I’m feeling right now; pride, tiredness and terror are all part of it. I’m happy that the game works for me, that I enjoyed playing it; terrified that it will have technical problems or unforseen issues. I guess it’s normal to feel that way when releasing anything – a book, a game, a child.

I’m sure there’s still plenty of frustration and bug-hunting and screaming at the ceiling in store for me, but it feels good to have reached this goal. Others can now explore the strange Earth I spent the last fourteen months on. That is a good feeling.

And once I’ve gotten some sleep, there is so much more to work on – stuff I’ve been looking forward to for some time now. There’s a movie, and a new game, and screenplays, and short stories, and all sorts of other stuff.

I’ll talk about all that later. For now, it is time for you to begin your journey to the ruins of Earth, where nothing is what it used to be…

It frustrates me more than I can tell you that I have had to postpone the release again, but it was for the best. I feel much better now, having tested it all yet again. Maybe Monday isn’t the best day to release a game, but who cares? What matters is that it’s done, and that it will be released.

But first I will get some sleep. I’ve been going over the code for the last 15 hours with almost not a single stop. I’m exhausted. I have nothing else to do tomorrow, so first thing in the morning I will start uploading the game.

And then I can finally tell you about all the other cool stuff I’ve been working on…

I believe it will be released today.

One thing I can say with some certainty, though, is this: I like it. Playing it again today has reminded me of why I worked so hard on this game in the first place. It won’t be to everyone’s liking, and some will call it clunky or confusing or I don’t know what, but I like it. This is the kind of game that I, as a player, enjoy playing.

It’s good for me to remember that.

So let us say that the official release date for Phenomenon 32 is somewhere in the next 24 or so hours.

Anyway. I’m considering taking a short break from working on Phenomenon 32 to write that article about Avatar. Maybe I will do that. I could use a break, and I really want to get these arguments out of my system.

But for now, the sun is out – a rare enough event in this depressing country – and I will go cycling with my wife.