“I just lost the game.

As a side effect, so did you.”

It’s entirely unfortunate that whenever I, you, or anybody else reads this article they lose “The Game” (and now, of course, anyone who reads this blog.) Still, if it works to spread this little viral bit of magic even further, then it makes me happy.

A short while ago I was contacted entirely randomly by someone who was trying to prove The Game exists to Wikipedia, and I’m gratified to find out the legendarily insane Wikipedia overlords now admit it does. People are even selling t-shirts, but as you can see from this article, I was not thinking of The Game back when it was cool to not think of it. That’s “not think of it”, not “not have heard of it”; there’s a crucial difference.

Anyway, this article shows the sad, confused state of London’s trade shows in 2004, with 3 different floor shows an 2 different developers conferences. ECTS was by this point little more than a hollow shell, with the Koreans the only shining light. The Korean stand at any trade show has always been one of the highlights, usually a lavishly laid out affair, but yet somehow they would never bother to make sure they were using proper English on their pamphlets, allowing hilarity to ensue. As far as anyone can tell the Korean games industry gets piles of cash from their government to take their wares across the world, but whether they’ve ever had anything to show for it is another matter.

This trip was however personally gratifying, because I got to chat to Warren Spector for a while. I found him astoundingly pleasant and interesting.

I hadn’t played Deus Ex: Invisible War by that point. A good thing, really.