Prisoner PWII360

[dexfarkin]

The only way to tell the seasons was in what they fed me. It had to be the autumn. It was the sanma, salted and flecked with tiny shreds of daikon and sitting in a shallow puddle of lime juice. Eating it with bare hands made the tiny cuts on my fingers sting, even after plunging it into the rice and licking it off. They say that sanma or saury, as they call it in the water, is attracted to light.

The fishermen are ingenious in how they catch it. The boat extends a net almost vertically beneath the water, with powerful lights on either side. First they flick on the ones on the right; big 500W blue and white lamps blasting into the ocean dark. The fish congregate, and then they switch sides with the light, drawing the fish into the net, often the entire school at one time, pulled by their attraction to the lamps.

I guess it wasn't that different for me.

E3 is a cavern of lights; LEDs fight with neon signs, projector screens and colour coordinated company themed light shows. Every time you go there, the only thing to compete with the visual riot is the aural miasma of sound. Girls in anime costumes taking photos with tech gamers in black tshirts and jeans. The only ones wearing suits work for the convention centre, and the cafeteria sells out of Mountain Dew by 3pm without fail.

It was Hitman: Blood Money that did it. Eidos had brought me into IO about a third of the way into development. Modeling and scaling issues, ruining the textures as Agent 47 moved. It was a tight bit of coding, half new design, half juryrigged shortcuts, and a lot of luck but I brought the game back on schedule and bulked out their proprietary engine. At E3, I was one of the people worth talking to. That must have been what did me in.

Everyone has heard the half nervous jokes about the designers that just dropped off the end of the earth. Called Release Exhaustion, they just burn out and leave the industry like ghosts. It's not strictly true. She was Japanese, stunningly gorgeous, and a video game groupie it seemed. I went to her room, feeling more charming than I'd ever had before. Her beauty was a 500W lamp.

I don't know how long I was unconscious before I woke up here. They provide excellent food, plenty of entertainment, and for the six of us, the odd luxury of alcohol or drugs. Everything but freedom.

This company found a new business model for development. Our new game was due out this winter, but we'd never see it or any other launched at E3 in this lifetime.

Comments

[trishalynn.livejournal.com]

Inspired by the EA blog debacle, I presume?