12 Years

Celebrating 12 Years!

The date came and went without even a ripple. In fact, it didn't dawn on me until about a week later that The Armchair Empire has been in existence for 12 years.

The official date of registration of the URL -- www.armchairempire.com -- was August 5, 2000, two days before my first son's first birthday and on the same day Alec Guinness died.

That was when all the trouble started.

Interviews: Then and Now

In the first three to five years of The Armchair Empire's glorious existence, one of my favourite aspects was snagging interviews. And it was so, so simple. I'd send an email to someone -- Jeff Green, Bruce Campbell, Al Lowe, Tim Schafer -- via their official site or some readily available email address, we'd connect, I'd send some questions, they'd answer them, etc.


If you've been paying attention, Interviews have really trickled off on the site -- we haven't posted a new one since December 2010! -- and there are two reasons.

Al Lowe

Time or lack thereof, plays into it, but mostly it's lack of response from the other side. Most developers have a layer of "protection" from people like me, people that want to know things that maybe are only tangentially related video games or the current project. We line things up as best we can and fire a salvo of questions only to have them drop out of the sky for unexplained reasons or just completely vanish with absolutely no echo. A couple of follow-up emails or phone calls later and still no response... my time is more precious to me than that. I'm not willing to hound people.

There's also the fact many developers and publishers have cultivated their own outlets -- blogs, Facebook, Twitter, official sites -- that eliminate the need for any "middle man" source. They pose the questions and they answer the questions. Control is important in this case -- there's very little room for a game journalist to plan for a "Gotcha!" moment that fools some game developer into explaining what's really on his or her mind.

For those moments we have to wait until someone comes unhinged or says something on Twitter they shouldn't have or spouts off at a live panel discussion, where the layer of PR/Marketing messaging is thinnest, mostly, I think, because the PR/Marketing handlers are stopped from rushing the platform.

Anyway, I kind of lament the stagnation of our Interviews section. It's probably time to be more aggressive getting interviews, likely from the indie games crowd who have no layer of PR.

That Part with the Homage to Adventure Games

Writer's Note: While it requires some editing -- I pass from present to past tense seemingly at random -- the bones of this vignette align in my own brain. This acts as a continuance of sorts of my blog post "Hitting the Mat."
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I hear waves.

No explosions, bullets, or foreign voices reach me. The pressure is off my leg and I feel warm. I move my arms and open my good eye.

I'm lying on warm sand.

I struggle to my back and prop myself on my elbows. In front of me, waves roll into the beach but 20 meters beyond the waves an opaque whiteness like a wall or some kind of fog blocks further view. To my right and left the white sand beach extends another 20 meters or so and seemingly blocked by the same fog. I rub my eye. The recent explosions and shockwaves may have done more damage than I realize.

I look again with a fresh eye, trying to blink my way passed the wall of fog.

Directly behind me are three palm trees. Nestled amoung them is a large wooden packing crate with the lid not quite nailed on. Beyond those objects, more fog.

I blink some more then gather myself.  I stumble for a step, but I managed to get my body to the crate and palm trees.

There are two dozen bottles of water, sunscreen, wool emergency blanket, a first aid kit, a bag of netting that turned out to be a hammock, a couple dozen k-rations, and three formal suits.

I stripped down and salved my wounds with ointment, wrapping gauze and bandages where I was bleeding or oozing most. I dry swallowed two pain pills. My stiff fingers worked enough to stretch the hammock between a couple of the trees. The effort exhausted my already spent carcass so with the small amount I had left I eased myself into the sling.

For the next two weeks, I healed under a never-changing sky and perfect weather. I drank most of a bottle of water a day, and what appetite I had was met with stale k-rations. The pain in my side receded to a dull ache and most of the rest of me felt much better in my little beach bubble. But I was restless.