I have two bits of PAX related news to share with you. First up everyone needs to know that early bird registration for the event will end this month. You have until March 31st to get your 3 day pass for the low low price of just $40.

Well we had our ping pong match with Sucker Punch last Friday and I must say things did not go well for us. The Sucker Punch “Rockets” lived up to their studio's name and left us with a big old purple shiner. Already there is talk here in the office that our glorious victory march through the game industry is now looking more like a trail of tears.

I'm glad that we were able to discuss the news of a Warhammer 40k MMO without resorting to apocalyptic threats. I was able to present the idea to him by saying that they were making a Starcraft MMO, but they weren't going to call it Starcraft, and it wasn't being made by Blizzard. He was intrigued, but wary.

Remember our ping pong challenge to the game industry? Well our very first official match is tonight. We’re facing off against Sly Cooper developer Sucker Punch this evening. We’ll be taking some pictures of course. We will share them here on the site of course but they will also be needed as evidence in the coming trial. When we are arrested for manslaughter we’ll need some way to prove that Sucker Punch actually called down this thunder. It was hardly our fault that they could not withstand the whirlwind.

I've tried to make the most of the Playstation 3 now that it's set up, and hearing that Tekken 5 would see release on the service yesterday made us dig deeper into their virtual storefront.  This has got to be one of the most careful, convoluted purchase experiences ever engineered. The comic presents it as a conversation, which I suppose each transaction is, at some level - but this is actually how it goes down.

Robert and Gabriel (who is also called Mike, Michael, Misha briefly, and - though rarely - Mihael) took me out to lunch for my birthday a couple weeks ago, to a place called Von's they had discovered and enjoyed. The past tense of "enjoy" is appropriate here, and not only because this all happened in the past. I'm not sure we'll be eating there again: it turns out that there is an inverse relationship between appetite and the presence of mice.

The strip is... Well, we have appearances to maintain. But flOw is a beautiful, intuitive experience that the mind returns to hours or days after playing.

Sorry for the late comic strip today. It was just a little more than I was able to get done in one day. I ended up having to finish it up this morning. I've had some requests for wallpapers of the relief at the top of the Olympus and I'll try and get something like that out.

Alas, high Olympus! Would that we had known thee better.

Yesterday I made a post about the teenagers that murdered the homeless guy and then blamed it on violent games. These kids have given the media their angle and just like all the other cases where games are mentioned no one will ever look any further. No one will ask what their family life was like, what their parents were like, what the kid was like before all this happened. Games did it and that’s the end of the story.

Illusionz was too far away to enjoy often, and even if we had made it out there our twenty bucks - administered biweekly - wasn't going to save the place. An imposing acre-wide indoor cavern, its unchanging arcade selection came to resemble a kind of mausoleum - still inside, with the heroes of another era laid 'round.

You might have seen this story on CNN about the teens that murdered a homeless guy and then equated it to the sort of thrill one might get from a “violent video game”. There will be plenty of articles focusing on these kids and their crime. I’d like to take a second and talk about the parents of these teenagers instead. It is the job of a parent to teach their children certain rules. Obviously the rules themselves and the emphasis each family places on them will vary, but there are certain universal constants that these parents obviously failed to pass on.

Robert just updated the hotels page on the PAX site - information which may be of use to you, especially if you like to sleep on beds.

(CW)TB
 

I, um... Hm.

Our third book is now available on the store, if you haven't purchased it elsewhere.  Entitled The Warsun Prophecies, it incorporates all the strips from 2002.  I'm usually scared to read something I've written once I've written it, which may help you to understand the state these posts sometimes arrive in - but I think the book turned out really well.

I've just now finished the final edits on the fourth book, which will be released...  in the future. 

Also, on the very same store, our Fire Sale continues to rage - with the heat of a thousand bargains!  Huge savings in every department, etc.

(CW)TB
 

Gabriel's ill-conceived Pong Pong challenge has brought out the wolves, and now the forest rings with their baying. Amaze Entertainment is holding tryouts internally to see who will leave our merry band in ruins. Upstarts from the DigiPen Institute of Technology will arrive soon to unseat the last generation as is the charge of all young men.  "Suckerpunch" will cease to be a euphemism when one of their usually mild animators suddenly strikes my diaphragm.