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When you’re talking about a theme such as ‘The One That Got Away’ then it’s easy to get stuck thinking on the small scale, such as cancelled games and personal losses. But what about the bigger picture – what about the larger ideas which have escaped us all?

Mike Cook is the researcher responsible for creating ANGELINA, the game-making AI. In this episode he talks about games research as an overlooked aspect of the business and explains why it’s a problem developers don’t interact with researchers more often. In doing so he reveals the future that’s got away from the industry and asks if gamers have been cheated out of their ambitions…

Unlimited Hyperbole is a short podcast about videogames and the stories we tell about them. The show is divided into seasons of five episodes, each with a precise topic. This time we’re talking about ‘The One That Got Away’ – but to find out more, read after the jump.

So.

Another five episodes and this season finally draws to a close. I like to think this is our best season yet, partly because of the great guests we had and partly because I’ve taught myself enough about production not to cringe when I listen back to these episodes.

Mike in particular has been one of the best guests. I’ve interviewed him at length before for other projects and he never fails to throw up new ideas when we talk. He mentioned a bunch of other research projects which unfortunately didn’t make the cut for this episode, for example. I’ll throw those and the ones he did mention in together, below…

• Julian Togelius - ‘A Procedural Content Generator Generator‘
• Mark Riedl and Boyang Li – ‘Goal-Driven Conceptual Blending‘
• Nathan Sturtevant – ‘Memory-Efficient Abstractions for Pathfinding‘
• Michael Mateas – Publication Archive
• Valve Software – Publication Archive

Meanwhile, if you want to download Mike’s research or games then head to ANGELINA’s official site. Mike runs a weekly round-up of games research that’s very much worth checking out too, called The Saturday Papers.

As I said at the end of this episode, Unlimited Hyperbole will be going on hiatus for a short period now. We do this at the end of every season, as it usually takes me some time to gather new interviews and decide what I want to do, but this time I’ve left the duration deliberately vague.

There are two essential problems blocking the show at the moment. The first is logistical (I have a full time job that limits my time) and the second is financial (I’d need to invest a lot more cash to keep the show going). Hopefully neither will stop me forever, but while I do have ideas for a new season, I want to stop short of promising when/if that’ll appear.

What I will say is that, if you want to stay up to date then the best way would be subscribe (iTunes / Email / Other). That way, you’ll know when we return.

In the meantime though, it just remains to thank everyone who’s listened to and supported the show over the last four seasons. It’s hard to believe that this show is now a full year old, but I’m pretty proud that it is.

I’ll be frank and brief; Unlimited Hyperbole costs money to run. Normally I’m happy to swallow that cost, but with one more episode left to publish the show has run out of hosting capacity and the choice  is either to triple our budget for the sake of one episode or find an alternative arrangement.

Luckily, Paul Presley of Continue Magazine offered to rehost two old episodes to help free up capacity. As a result the first two episodes of the show are now removed from iTunes, but can be downloaded directly using the links below.

Episode One – My Favourite Game with Dan Pinchbeck

Episode Two – My Favourite Game with Craig Lager

It’s a little inconvenient, but since these are old and unpolished episodes it should be tolerable. Craig’s episode in particular is in desperate need of remastering, as it was the first episode I properly produced for this podcast, but hopefully the new episode should make up for it.

These days, publishers and journalists love to talk about how big a business games are. Just a single big title can bring in millions of pounds and keep thousands of employed, for example, while even indie developers can succeed admirably. The less talked-about side effect of all this though is that when games do fail, they fail hard.

Our guest this episode knows this all too well. In addition to working on the usual spate of cancelled games, Nicoll Hunt also worked on one of the biggest gaming flops ever, APB. Now, Nicoll discusses what that collapse looked like from the inside and why Realtime Worlds went out of business. He also touches on some of the cancelled games he worked on at Codemasters.

Unlimited Hyperbole is a short podcast about videogames and the stories we tell about them. The show is divided into seasons of five episodes, each with a precise topic. This time we’re talking about ‘The One That Got Away’ – but to find out more, read after the jump.

So.

I’ve been getting a lot of comments lately about the depressing tone of the podcast or, as some call it, the ‘mournful quality’ of the show. One person even said I sound like Marvin the Paranoid Android. I don’t always intend to do that though; it’s just the way my voice sounds. Sorry.

For once, I don’t actually have a huge amount to add as a comment for this episode though – I think it pretty much stands for itself. Instead, here are some links that are related to the show, if only tangentially.

• I Fight Bears – Nicoll’s site
• You Won’t Respawn Tomorrow – A great article about the closure of APB
• A Life Well Wasted: Episode 2 – Contains some great thoughts about the closure of MMOs
• Punchbag Artists – A great and unrelated piece I read yesterday

That’s all, I guess.

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There’s a temptation when you ask someone about a cancelled game to delve into the details of the idea itself. What was the game like and is there any way I can play it? This episode isn’t about that.

Instead, Introversion’s Mark Morris talks openly about Introversion’s only cancelled game – the futuristic heist simulator called Subversion. Rather than delving into the potential mechanics of the game and the hit that might have been, Mark walks us through the story of Subversion’s inception, collapse and eventual rebirth on a personal level.

Unlimited Hyperbole is a short podcast about videogames and the stories we tell about them. The show is divided into seasons of five episodes, each with a precise topic. This time we’re talking about ‘The One That Got Away’ – but to find out more, read after the jump.

So.

I have to confess, I was enormously excited for Subversion when it was first released and what Mark says at the end of the show is a perfect explanation why – I was sold on the dream of the game. The idea of a heist game at the level of detail Mark discusses is tantalising in the extreme. All through the interview I was just thinking how desperately I want to play it.

I can’t though, obviously. In a section that was cut from the final episode Mark said he actually wouldn’t rule out the idea of releasing Subversion as either a free prototype or code drop, but he didn’t seem optimistic. It would take work, he said. It’s not a priority, he said.

On the topic of what Mark said, it’s worth touching on the topic of perspective. Assembling this episode I was regularly reminded that a lot of it involved Mark talking about Chris and presenting actions in a way which might seem one-sided. Several times I considered  chasing Chris for comment or exploring the story in more depth because of that.

Ultimately, I decided not to. I’ve mentioned before that Unlimited Hyperbole is founded on a set of rules (‘Episodes can be no longer than 15 minutes’, ‘No repeat guests’…) and one of those is a limit of one guest per episode. I also reminded myself that this is a podcast about stories in a broad and often personal sense. Even if Chris did disagree then Mark’s story is still valid as a perspective, if not a universal truth.

Again, this is a podcast about stories, not facts. Facts are just what’s left when all the stories agree.

Journalistic philosophy aside though, I’d like to encourage everyone reading this to please support the show by the usual methods – sharing it with friends, posting in forums and giving us positive iTunes reviews.

• Go to Twitter.
• Go to Facebook.
• Go to Penny Arcade.
• Go to Neogaf.
• Go to wherever you go to talk about games and tell them about us.

Seriously, we don’t ask often and it means a lot. We’re currently halfway through Season Four and, while we value every listener, it’s very possible real-life pressures may make this the last season.

There’s two episodes left. The only thing that can change that is you.

]]> http://joemartinwords.com/2013/04/10/unlimited-hyperbole-18/feed/ 5 Lonely Gamer http://joemartinwords.com/2013/04/03/unlimited-hyperbole-17/ http://joemartinwords.com/2013/04/03/unlimited-hyperbole-17/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:16:22 +0000 Joe Martin http://joemartinwords.com/?p=1644 ]]>

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They say there’s more than one way to skin a cat and, likewise, I say there’s more than one way things can get away from people too. They can slip away slowly and quietly, for example, or they can be taken in a sudden tragedy – and this episode covers a bit of both.

This week journalist David Brown talks about the closure of PC Zone Magazine. Once home to the likes of Charlie Brooker, Jon Blyth and Will Porter, PC Zone was a bastion of irreverence that was edged out by the realities of print publishing. As the last writer left on the team, David talks about the final days and how they shaped his opinion of journalism as a whole.

Unlimited Hyperbole is a short podcast about videogames and the stories we tell about them. The show is divided into seasons of five episodes, each with a precise topic. This time we’re talking about ‘The One That Got Away’ – but to find out more, read after the jump.

So.

I sympathised with David a lot in this episode. I’ve been in the shoes he describes and that moment when a blank-faced suit with an air of false sympathy tells you you’re out of a job? It feels like a hand reaching inside your chest and turning your stomach inside out – and the only person to blame is yourself.

This isn’t a tale of black-and-white badguys though, so anyone reasonable person has to recognise that the closure of a magazine is a business decision made for intelligent business reasons. ‘Blank-faced suits’ is a nicely vilifying concept, but it’s totally unfair. These things happen and people move on.

Much as I sympathise with David’s story though, I still disagree with some of what he said. The issue of pay, for example, is a particularly troublesome one for me because I always felt I was getting a fair wage for the work I did – and strictly never accepted less. That’s not to say I was rich or anything but I don’t thing it’s fair to complain about cash when there’s bread on the table – especially when you put it there with a joypad.

Ultimately, I guess it’s different strokes for different folks. Personally, when it comes to the matter of improving the standard of journalism I think what’s really needed are more (and more varied) role models, rather than bigger paycheques. We have a handful of exemplary voices, but they’re few and ultimately lacking in both machines to rage against and ways to rage.

It’s taken me an awfully long time to learn and re-learn this, but review scores and free t-shirts aren’t the only thing worth complaining about and manifestos aren’t the only way to change things. We don’t all need to jump on the same bandwagon at once.

And there I go proselytizing again. I’ll quit while I’m ahead.

Now I’m no longer writing for other sites, I’d planned to stop writing worklogs on here and instead write proper posts instead. As it is though, my final piece of games journalism just went live on Gamasutra. Seems a shame not to talk about it…

Published under the wordy title of ‘ANGELINA: The Computer Program That Designs Games‘, the article is the result of a hefty three-hour interview I did with Mike Cook, an academic at Imperial College London. Mike and I discuss the philosophy of creativity, look at his titular research and discuss (perhaps controversially) whether artists are really as creative as they might think:

“Good ideas aren’t intentionally produced; you just recognize that one of the random thoughts you were having was good… But nobody thinks of themselves that way. They think themselves incredibly creative. Artists will say that their muse descended on them.”

It really is a shame there’s not more stuff written about games in academia; there’s much more out there than bits about whether games cause real-world violence! Take this paper Mike pointed me to, for example – about a procedural generator that generates procedural generators procedurally.

While I’m talking about my old work, I’ll say quickly that my last issue of Custom PC Magazine should still be on sale for another day or two. After that the excellent Rick Lane will be taking over from me and I’ll be focusing on the future of Unlimited Hyperbole.

I also found out today that I was long-listed for the first annual Games Journalism Prize (for this article) and, while I didn’t make the short-list, Rick did. Congrats to him!

One constant in the games industry is that any one success necessitates a sequel. It was true for Zork in the 1980s and it’s true for Dishonored now too; the law of the franchise.

Professor Brian Moriarty has bucked this law throughout his entire career however, leaving titles such as Loom, Wishbringer and Trinity as standalone hits rather than sprawling series. He’s also worked on a staggering number of unreleased or cancelled games, including unseen Indiana Jones and Star Wars games. In this episode, Brian discusses why he left those titles and the industry behind.

Unlimited Hyperbole is a short podcast about videogames and the stories we tell about them. The show is divided into seasons of five episodes, each with a precise topic. This time we’re talking about ‘The One That Got Away’ – but to find out more, read after the jump.

So.

This is the season I’ve been wanting to make almost since Unlimited Hyperbole started, if I’m honest. One of my big frustrations with games journalism has always been that there isn’t more of an effort to properly explore the past – we get the occasional retrospective, but usually we’re more focused on what’s coming soon than learning about what went before. Those who don’t understand the past are doomed to repeat it, etc.

On that topic, here’s a self-aggrandising plug for my old pieces on Eurogamer, by the way. Ahem.

Much as I could easily slip into games journalism manifesto mode, that’s not really the purpose of this blog or these liner notes. Instead, I’ll just give you some links in case you want to do further reading about cancelled or unreleased games, then remind you to tell your friends about this show. There are four more episodes to come over the next four weeks and at the end of it the show’s future will have to be decided!

• Images from Brian Moriarty’s The Dig
• Rogue Leaders: The Story of Lucasarts
• Cancelled LucasArts Games
• The Cutting Room Floor
• Unseen 64
• The UT Videogame Archive
• The Big List of Postmortems
• What Went Wrong? – A Gamasutra Special

It’s good to be back. Tell your friends.

I’ve been meaning to replay Thief: The Dark Project for literally years, but on the few occasions when I had time to play it, I never felt I could. One of the side affects of games journalism was that I was reluctant to spend time replaying old games – it always seemed better to spend time playing new things, keeping up to date.

So, when I quit games journalism to take my new job, the first thing I did was reinstall Thief as a way to reclaim my hobby. Now, after spending five weeks of weekends finishing the game, I’ve come to a weird conclusion.

That conclusion is that, while I still very much enjoyed playing it again, Thief is a slightly broken game. There are a lot of great things about it, but there are things that are broken about it too – and on a very basic level.

Before getting to that though, it’s worth establishing what makes Thief so good. As I see it, Thief is a game built on two simple concepts. These define every element of the design and fully express the appeal of playing the game. They are:

1) You are always vulnerable
2) The world is predictable; built of physical-feeling systems

Experientially, it’s the first one that always seems to resonate with people. I’ve heard a lot of people say that Thief is a game about vulnerability; about having to hide. It’s true that hiding is key, but to me Thief is a game about contrasts – it’s about being vulnerable in the light and being invulnerable in the dark.

Contrast is a theme that runs through Thief like a seam. Light and shadow; faith and knowledge; science and magic; art and FMVs – the game is built up out of deliberately contrasting elements that make it stand out.

But, anyway. Those predictable systems are the real key, because Thief does a lot to establish them as being predictable just so it can distort them later on. Literally every level takes a system that was previously predictable, then breaks it, forcing you again and again through a three stage ludic cycle – vulnerability, experimentation, mastery.

It does this over and over again, subtly and surely, coupling it with narrative distortions when it can so the game never feels unfair. There’s a distortion on a new system in literally every level.

Level One – Lord Bafford’s Manor
This is the first level, so it establishes the patterns. If anything, the distortion here is that you aren’t Duke Nukem, despite this being a first-person game. Really though, you learn combat, stealth and exploration. By the end of this level, you’ve mastered all three.

Level Two – Break from Cragscleft Prison
Zombies are introduced, with no real guidance on how to defeat them. Combat with them is very different than normal and stealth can be different too, as you can’t incapacitate a zombie quietly. The first time one rises from the dead, it’s bloody terrifying.

Level Three – Down in the Bonehoard
Traps are introduced, so now you have to be careful even when you’re sure you’re alone. There are lots of different types – darts, boulders, etc. The Bonehoard also focuses more on vertical spaces.

Level Four – Assassins
Narratively, this is the first level where you start on the defensive. Stalking the assassins is an interesting twist, but the big distortion is that you start with lockpicks, which fundamentally change the way you explore and can proceed through a level.

Level Five – The Sword
Prior to this level Thief focuses on realistic locations – and mainly mansions. This level takes that, but removes the realism. Constantine’s Mansion is full of bizarre architecture, optical illusions and impossible spaces. It’s a standard mission, but a non-standard space.

Level Six – The Haunted Cathedral
Prior to the cathedral you could mix aggression and stealth easily by hiding bodies. Now, Craymen appear who are too heavy to lift – along with Apparitions who have no bodies. You also expect to be stealing a priceless jewel, but then find you’re actually stealing a sentient artifact. Meanwhile, the Keepers are revealed.

Level Seven – The Lost City
From one ruined city to another, very different one. Fire Elementals appear here, with no warning whatsoever. These shadow-eroding foes are hard to sneak past because they are have no conventional line of sight. Gas arrows also become available, dramatically changing the way you engage enemies at range and building lights come on automatically, making stealth harder.

Level Eight – Undercover
The distortion here is in your favour; a disguise that lets you approach many enemies directly and turns this into more of a puzzle level than a stealth mission. You’re also establishing what the Hammer Temple is like, which becomes important later.

Level Nine – Return to the Cathedral
Haunts appear as a new enemy; fast, scary and, again, something you aren’t warned about beforehand. Friendly Apparitions also appear, proving that not all undead are evil. This level also juxtaposes faith (The Hammers) with scepticism (Garrett) more than any other.

Level Ten – Escape!
Nearly every level before this let you choose your gear before you started, but here you start essentially naked. You get gas mines and also meet Frogbeasts for the first time, who run at you and explode – both of which change the balance of combat significantly. Meanwhile, the Trickster is revealed.

Level Eleven – Strange Bedfellows
You have to rescue the High Priest and carry his body to safety – making this Thief’s only escort mission and making it much harder to hide and get around. Web spiders and Bugbeasts are also introduced, both of which uniquely restrict your movements rather than hurting you outright – essentially stopping you from runinng away.

Level Twelve – The Maw of Chaos
Firstly, there’s no shop before the mission again. The ice fields make a last-minute appearance too, adding environmental risks. The big distortion though is the linearity of the level design: there’s only one way forward in the Maw and no room to explore.

There’s also the Thief: Gold missions too, which have distortions of their own, but those levels are much weaker in my opinion. What really matters though is that each level has something in it that makes it feel different to the others – something new that gets you through. Something that you had previously assumed you had mastered is suddenly changed – making you feel vulnerable again and giving you something new to learn about. This is a good thing.

So, what is it that breaks Thief? It’s the fact that there are too many mechanical distortions introduced too quickly. By the time you’ve reached the fourth level you’ve already faced off against the undead, learned how to avoid traps and learned the basics of stealth and exploration. The game tries to escalate from there, but it doesn’t always have somewhere worthwhile to go to. Unliftable Craymen, for example, are an interesting twist but don’t actually change the way you play – and the Apparition in the same level is positioned more for scares than anything else.

What complicates this is that Thief constantly over-caters for distortions too – giving huge numbers of supplies to you as you play. This is especially true later in the game, where you get such a surplus of gear that you can just tackle everything violently. Playing through Strange Bedfellows, for example, I had so many gas mines and gas arrows that I was essentially unstoppable.

There’s nothing wrong with the assassin approach, of course – killing everything is as viable a path as any – but when violence arises from ability and not necessity then it causes friction with the vulnerability that otherwise lays at the heart of Thief. In Bedfellows I killed everything in the level purely because I could. That’s very different from being able to take out a single guard in an awkward spot.

The other problems is that the distortions don’t always fit well with the narrative either. Take The Maw, for example. The story here is that you’re going against an all-powerful foe; that you’ve got the support of others and that you’ve had time to prepare for the task. The distortion though is that you don’t get a shop before you start and the floor is a bit slippery in some places. The former doesn’t make sense, the latter is an irrelevance

To me, that along with the poor level design makes The Maw the worst level in the game. It would have made more sense to have the distortion be that Garrett is supported by Hammer/Keeper forces, or for The Trickster to have some weird power that needs to be overcome. Instead, The Trickster is essentially the weakest enemy in the game and the Hammers are nowhere to be seen despite supplying you in the briefing.

Don’t get me wrong, Thief is an excellent game. I said as much in Brendon Chung’s episode of Unlimited Hyperbole – but even played over the course of five weeks there’s an element of mechanical fatigue that comes into it.

For me, the best levels are the ones where multiple distortions appear at once while still being in alignment with the narrative. The Lost City, for example, is staged as an expedition into the unknown – and that’s exactly what you get. There’s an arc of vulnerability, experimentation and mastery and it makes sense at every step. The level briefing makes a promise which the level delivers on.

There are a lot of lessons that modern games can take from Thief on this front. Establishing predictable rules and then distorting them for the player is something games can arguably do better than any other medium and which can have really strong impacts on the player. The AC130 sequence in Modern Warfare, the gravity gun sequence at the end of Half-Life 2 and the  second character in Hotline Miami are all great examples of this. It’s also something other Thief games did well too – Kieron Gillen offered a great example in another episode of Unlimited Hyperbole, actually.

Most interesting to me though is the way Dishonored, the spiritual successor to Thief, inverts the idea of these distortions so that they are driven by the player, rather than the environment. In Thief you have to keep adjusting because of the new threats in your way; in Dishonored the threats are usually pretty predictable. Instead, it’s your gradually unlocked abilities that put you in a shorter arc of pure experimentation and mastery. Occasionally you get a new external distortion, such as Daud’s assassins, but really what drives you forward in Dishonored is a sense of power, not vulnerability.

That’s why it’s not a problem that Dishonored oversupplies you just as much as Thief does; in Thief your supplies are only useful for overcoming problems, but in Dishonored your supplies are useful just because they can be used.

That Dishonored and Thief end up so similar while also being so different is very interesting to me, especially when you look at how Dishonored uses consistency where Thief uses contrasts. That’s a discussion for another blogpost, however. I’ve written enough as it is and, as I said at the start, it’s not like I get paid for this anymore!

TL;DR – 7/10.

I went to a tea tasting a few weeks ago. It was a three hour course led by a master tea blender and covered everything from farming to brewing. I bought the tickets as a Christmas present for my girlfriend, who enjoyed it despite claiming just before Christmas that she didn’t like tea at all. That was lucky.

Anyway, after the initial lessons we were able to design our own tea. No ingredients were off the table  and we were encouraged to be adventurous. Most people seemed to interpret that as adding chilli to existing blends, while Nicola decided to instead develop a zero-calorie alternative to Starbucks’ chai.

I decided to do something a little different.

I wanted a tea I could ice and use in cocktails. That meant I’d want it to be brightly coloured and strong-flavoured, so I settled on using Hibiscus as the base. We’d tried that earlier and I really liked how sour it was.

At the tutor’s recommendation I added Lemongrass to temper the hibiscus, then threw in some Silver Needle white tea because it sounded cool. I just had to name it after that, which was easy given the bright red colour and medicinal flavour I anticipated the tea would have. I imagined serving it in long, test-tube-like glasses, but a good set has been hard to find.

Sadly, the tea is actually more pale and weak than I anticipated, so if I get some more mixed up I’ll likely up the Hibiscus percentages and cut out the Lemongrass altogether (a slice of fresh lemon would work better). It still tastes good, however – especially served with ice and gin. It’s a G & Tea!

I doubt they’d drink it at The Hound Pits though, no matter how alcoholic it is.

For best results, serve with Apricot Tartlets. 

January was not a busy month; I accepted a new job early on, meaning most of my time was then spent running out remaining assignments prior to the new start. I also collected outstanding interviews for Unlimited Hyperbole‘s next season. Squeezing production in on weekends will cause delays, but Harriet and I are keen to keep the show alive – particularly since this season features several heroes of mine who are too cool to ignore.

Even though I’m not taking on anymore commissions or journalistic work at the moment, it’s likely some of my work will continue to trickle out for the next month or two. I have unpublished pieces still waiting with Custom PC and Gamasutra, for example. I’ll try to cover those as they come out, but in the mean time here’s what I did in January…

The biggest article was another ‘Deleted Scenes’ feature for Eurogamer, this time looking at the original Doom and comparing the design document to the finished product, which turned out very differently to the initial plan. The document has actually been online for years, but not many people seem to know about it and by following up with Tom Hall I was able to get a bit more insight too. Other members of the original Id team couldn’t be persuaded to comment, however.

A few people have asked where I’m getting these design documents. The answer is that while there are a few available online (GTA, Metal Gear Solid 2, Doom), I’ve had the most luck approaching developers directly. Warren Spector put me on to the University of Texas’ archive, for example, which was where I got the Deus Ex documents. There’s much more left unsurfaced in there though, such as Wing Commander design documents and Spector’s original marketing pitch for the unmade version of Thief 4.

Unfortunately, while there are some other pitch and concept documents available online (Planescape, Grim Fandango, BioShock), most studios don’t store documents properly or publicly. That’s a shame and I  try to encourage the developers that can’t share things publicly to consider donating to the UT Archive as a result.

Anyway. This month I also went off to Iceland for a few days with Paradox Interactive, to see all their games. I don’t often get international trips like that – I’ve had less than ten in seven years – and I find them stressful when I do go, but this was wonderful. Iceland is a spectacular country with one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen and Paradox, as always, let journalists have unlimited access to developers. If only all publishers were so open and frank.

There’s a bunch of stuff coming up from that trip in the coming weeks. Bit-tech.net is getting two previews from the event, while Custom PC Magazine is getting three. The game of the show was probably March of the Eagles, not because I enjoyed it myself but because it was fun to watch others play a big multiplayer match and see the emergent stories that came out of it.

Speaking of Bit-tech and Custom PC, I also did all my usual coverage for them too. That included reviews of the fantastic Kentucky Route Zero and Waking Mars, but also my farewell column for the magazine which will feature in Issue 116. Be warned, it’s a bit creepy.

A lot of people have been asking what my new job is and why I’m leaving, but I’ve decided to avoid discussing that on here. It’s just not interesting or relevant to anyone but my friends and it’s doubtful I’ll ever publish my grumpy goodbye post. Suffice it to say for now that I’ll be working in the marketing department for a telecoms company and you can find the rest out by either checking my LinkedIn profile when I update it or inviting me out for a drink.

That seems like a bitter point to end this blogpost on, but it’s not meant to be. Allow me to compensate by sharing this awesome music video.