STOP! THIEF!

I met some people I've known for 12 years for the first time on Friday. This is the wonder of the internet - that you can forge lasting friendships with people you've never seen face to face. Some complain that these aren't real relationships. I've endured this assertion from people who think they really know their next door neighbor because they've borrowed milk from them or talked over the fence. I confess to not really getting to know many of my neighbors. Given some of the places we've lived there's a high probability they were serial killers anyway.

I've found that internet friendships tend to go way deeper than that because at first, there's an anonymity to them, where you can simply be yourself and not worry about the consequences. But then, someone in that group of friends has a crisis and everyone else rallies around. Or it's simply the weight of the years bearing down in which you've discussed one another's marriages, divorces, children, losses, joys and pains, and that creates a bond much deeper than those you share with co-workers or neighbors.You are friends because of shared interests and shared experiences, rather than proximity.

I discovered the internet after being diagnosed with HCM. We had moved in with my in-laws in Searcy, a little town north of Little Rock, AR. I was very isolated every day, and feeling horribly cut off from our past life. A friend loaned me a bunch of game demos since I suddenly had plenty of time on my hands. I wasn't really big on games, as they all seemed to consist of running around shooting people, which seemed boring since it wasn't real and wasn't taking place inside a Wal-Mart or the DMV.

Then I discovered Thief. It rewarded me for NOT killing anyone. I got to sneak around, hide in the dark, become invisible. I won't digress into the many parallels between the game and my own psychological state at the time. Thief is the ultimate example of what happens when painting, sculpting, poetry, prose, architecture, music, and story all come together in harmony, and ironically, it's only in a video game that all of these art forms can be married with technology to produce an interactive experience with them. I was hooked.

Even better, I discovered a network of people who also like this game. A whole forum full of them at TTLG (Through the Looking Glass). Like-minded people who not only appreciated intelligent games, but all manner of intelligent art, music, TV, and movies. I spent countless hours discussing these things with other "TTLGers" and eventually, we also began to talk about Real Life stuff too. That's how internet friendships happen.

Then the company that made the Thief games (Looking Glass) went belly-up before finishing the series. After mourning the loss of this highly artistic group of creators, the TTLG community decided we would finish the series ourselves. Easier said than done, but we did it. It took us five years and thousands of hours of creating, drawing, mapping, recording, playtesting, fixing, arguing, writing, stress, and frustration. We came together as a group of un-tested artists, writers, designers, musicians, and organizers to make it happen. We called ourselves The Dark Engineering Guild. Our number was about 50 when we started, about 12 when we finished. We had no idea what the heck we were getting into.

The finished product was called T2X (Thief 2 Expansion): Shadows of the Metal Age. It was a labor of love for the Thief community, as well as an homage to Looking Glass Studios. The expansion has been played by hundreds of thousands, received wild critical acclaim from all the important Gaming magazines, including being called, "one of the most impressive achievements of any fan community for any game," by the biggest of those, PC Gamer. The month it was released, it was featured on the cover and demo disc of every Gaming magazine that matters, both in the states and overseas. I'm going on and on about it because I'm very proud of the work we did in the name of honoring Good Art. We didn't do it for money, or to get famous - in fact, the most that's come of it is a few of the guys landed jobs in the industry on the basis of their work on T2X. But we mainly did it to affirm that Good Art is valuable, and should be preserved, in the face of a culture that values reality television and games like Halo and Call of Duty. It also bears mentioning that a fan-made game such as this has never been completed without the team members meeting in real life, and to my knowledge, it hasn't been done since. Other accolades for T2X can be seen HERE if you're interested, and I'll stop blowing our horn.

After 12 years, I finally got to meet some of the other developers face-to-face. I'd actually met David Reigel before when we recorded the 12 hour long commentary for the game on its 5th anniversary (which was also featured on the cover and discs of the aforementioned magazines). But this was the first time more than two of us were all together in the same room.

It's no stretch to say that during the many dark days early in my diagnosis, it was the relationship with some of these people, and our common mission that gave me something to get up for on those mornings, in the house, by myself, fearing I could drop dead at any moment. Of course, since those days, we've all gone on to become friends on another level, with a great deal of respect for one another, and an abiding attention to what happens in each other's lives. These are relationships I would trade in a second for many of the "real" relationships people compare them to.

In the next post, I'll talk about my other Dallas experience - finally seeing Dream Theater after being a fan for 20 years. No, it's fine if you don't want to hold your breath until then.

TTLGers - Leatherman, Broken Arts, Mrs. Raen, Raen/Sledge,
DeC/The Deciever, fett

Members of the Dark Engineering Guild:
Duncan Cooke (coding/mission design), Dave Johnson (admin/writer/
audio/design), David Reigel (design lead/sound), Suzy Madden (art design)