What's Been Happening 2025 & Other Minutiae

Obligatory two-yearly update.

After crashing out from Subnautica Below Zero (I have a whole blog post just about that, but I'm saving it until I found out of Unknown Worlds is really going to make a Subnautica movie without crediting me for the original story) I took a couple years off, then I took a little consulting gig with a UK indie.

That consulting gig turned into a three year narrative design lead position on the most incredibly exciting FPSRPG set in a Hot Fuzz vibes Welsh farmpunk world tearing itself apart over god and AI (I know, original). 

I loved it, I did so much writing of a flavour and variety I never got to exercise before. I loved my characters. There was a posh boy who can be redeemed or tortured comically, and a hot welsh magic priest who makes you throw up everytime you try top talk to her, and a village defence laser with a targeting system that runs on chickens, and a whole religion based on 1990s computer instruction manuals, and a tough as nails police chief who ever-so-slightly warms to you over time, and so on. I wrote hundreds of thousands of words.

And from the day I took the job I knew it was a 50:50 gamble.

Friends, my gamble did not pay off.

Now I am back to taking my couple of years off.

Aside, naturally, and if it ever occurs, from Talos Principle 3, of which, if it did exist, my small part might begin like this (MID-LEVEL SPOILERS FOR A HYPOTHETICAL ART PRODUCT WHICH DOESN'T YET EXIST AFTER THE BREAK):

So, you and some other creatures with whom you share genetic, geographic and social history (what you may think of as your 'species'—quite wrong of course, but we'll get to that) have finally developed wormhole technology and reached the radical realisation: you're not alone in the universe. In fact, you're late to the party.

And right now you lot are wondering, "Gosh, it's been hard enough keeping things civil between the factions of our OWN tribe... How the DEVIL are we going to get on with all these ALIENS?! What if there's an alien the size of the sun that eats inhabited planets for lunch? What if we're being farmed? What kind of GUNS does everyone have? And most importantly: how do we COLONISE all this?"

Before you try anything stupid, remember this: every spacefaring civilisation was once in your position. That means everyone, including you lot, either learns to live in harmony or utterly self-annihilates.

And that's GOOD news. Whatever happens next, you'll have nothing to worry about.

That said, our long-standing members have developed this EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT PROGRAM to nudge you just a little closer to harmony than annihilation.

After collating and reviewing each section of this program you may, should you choose, undergo a final test: a shibboleth which determines whether or not your moral outlook prohibits harmonious universal cohabitation.

In case of failure this program will attempt to instil within you a sanguine relationship towards your civilisation's inevitable mass unaliving.