Calling All Game Developers

It seems to me that the more the world goes to pot – WWIII threatening in Ukraine, another holocaust threatening in Iraq, Cloud storage going up in smoke – the more the masses are going to want to escape from the unending media misery by diving into digital worlds of their own making. And being an opportunist kind of chap I figure I could make a fast buck or two and thus escape the impending Western Armageddon for real by cashing in on this virtual life-hacking industry by coming up with my own digital games.

Having little or no hard programming skills I see myself more as the conceptual engine behind the venture and will be looking for a few code monkeys to actually copy and paste all the binary gubbins into a working software platform. Or whatever it is these Visual Basic nerds do when they’re not checking their emails on their Androids.

I’ve already come up with some amazing games concepts which I am convinced will effortlessly fly off the shelves at Steam or Game. Or even Argos.

Moancraft – people are randomly spawned into a world where they have to dig for the resources to survive by moaning and complaining themselves into ever deepening holes and pits of despair. The more they moan about their lives the deeper they drop until they either reach the Epiphany Layer or plough on through the bedrock of misery and drop completely out of the world to the sounds of cheers from the other inhabitants.

Grand Theft Otto – this is a World War II simulation game. Sort of. You play Otto, a blond despot who goes on a violent retail spree across Europe and much of the world (kind of shopping with menaces) and accrues as many of the world’s treasures and artefacts as possible. This is a sandbox game where you can drive the vehicle of your choice (a tank is a good option) and do pretty much whatever the hell you like, destroy what you like and kill whom you like. Imagine a pre-United Nations world unfettered by any kind of global moral compass. Or if you can’t imagine that read the newspapers and imagine it’s the real post-United Nations world. There is very little difference. On the bright side your tank is very shiny. With the blood of countless innocents. And you can give your avatar a very severe moustache. Older version of the game may also be available: Grand Theft Ottoman.

Skyeram – set on a sprawling but illogically tiny Scottish island you play a male sheep who battles dragons, runs around through vast underground burial cairns fighting the undead and who frequently dies by jumping off massive cliffs whose height you have totally miscalculated. You can either join the Blue Coat faction and fight for independence or join the Old Empire and fight to keep the masses under the unthinking yolk of traditional oppression. Or you could just kill everybody and mess up every quest contained within the game as you say no to life both real and virtual and submit yourself to solipsistic armchair autocracy.

Other games currently in mental development are:

Assassin’s Crud – an assassin with OCD cleans all his weapons daily and collects all the resultant smeg, blood and gristle and stores it in a jar that he keeps on permanent show on top of his highly desirable Venetian sideboard.

BO Shock – a man who hasn’t bathed for 17 years shuts down a chemical weapons plant by wandering through the front doors by accident and rubbing himself off against an air conditioning vent.

Unreal Tourniquet – you have to invent the most unlikely and useless bandages possible. The player with the most resultant deaths (frags) wins. Ingredients will include Blue-tack, a fax machine, a nude photo of Jennifer Lawrence and a Muller Crunch Corner.

Super Mario Bros (Real Life Edition) – 2 normal plumbers come round to your house, overcharge you for fixing your blocked pipes and then freak out when you show them your pet terrapin.

Now don’t worry guys, there’s plenty more where they came from – I’ve hit a rich seam – there’s more than enough to go round. If anyone is interested in coding these up just PM me on Facebook. Or Pinterest. Or Twitter. Or some other social networking platform that I am currently not allowing to connect me to the outside world.

Language!

One of the unfortunate side effects of this time of year is finding yourself queuing at Argos; standing like a stranded penguin at Collection Point A, B or C, waiting for one of the backroom boys to hoof your internet-ready-teasmaid-DVD/Blu-Ray player out of the warehouse and onto those cheap looking shelves at the back of the counter that look like they were found in a skip outside IKEA.

It's amazing what you can overhear as you wait for your product to arrive for the clientele of Argos is a bizarre mix of every social strata known to mankind. I bet even Prince Wills pops in every now and then to take advantage of their AA battery multipacks.

So I am waiting. Trying to look like I don't shop here very often at all. And I hear a youthful voice piercing the "rhubarb-rhubarb" of the shop's natural ambience.

"Va-gi-nah!"

I raise an eyebrow and half turn.

"Va-gi-NAH!"

There is a boy who looks like the fruit of Fagin's loins sitting on one of the chairs. He can be no more than 10 or 11 but plainly has the vocabulary of a teenage barrow-boy. Hearing an impatient sigh to my right I deduce that his mother (25 going on 47) is stood next to me at Collection Point B.

"Va-GI-NAH!"

The call comes again and I briefly wonder whether the boy is merely pointing out an Empress's new clothes (but can see no evidence of public nudity) or is insulting a mortal enemy after swearing off four letter words.

His mother, turns and utters his name like it is itself an expletive.

"Kevin!"

Kevin clearly hears the warning in his mother's voice and changes tack.

"Pee-nus!"

Oh joy, I think. Sex education at the junior school level is plainly working. Let's talk about sex (baby). Let's talk about all the good thing and the bad things, etc, etc. It is after all what Collection Point A was made for.

The word penis is intoned a few more times, steadily rising in volume, like Master Pottymouth is the high priest of the great god, Nob before his mother finally kicks in with an unspecified threat.

"Kevin, if you don't shut up..."

Kevin shuts up. Though not before positing the argument that, "What? They're just words."

And for all I found his shameless genitalia obsession a little disturbing and worryingly unwholesome I have to concede that he has a point. They are just words. But I wonder what he was trying to communicate with them? What meaning lay behind them in his mind?

A cry for help?

A call for information on this topic, please mater, for it fascinates me deeply?

Or just a sad cry for attention to someone who can't even focus on her son long enough to formulate a decent cause and effect response to his inappropriate behaviour?

Who knows. My goods had arrived by that point and, it being Argos, I figured it was all bollocks anyway.

I Could Be The Great Leamington Spa Knicker Nicker

No, I could. With ease. And not just knickers but pretty much anything – kettles, DVDs, legumes, Brita water filer jug systems – provided it all fits neatly into a normal sized carrier bag of course. And it is an item I can pick up from Tesco.

‘Cos Tesco just don’t care. They’ve given me carte blanche to walk out of their store with absolutely anything I fancy.

Which is great if I could only find something that I actually like from their all encompassing range of household products – nicking a loaf of bread seems a bit lame and pointless (though I was tempted by the Ben & Jerry’s).

Of course, the Tesco management team might feel differently about all this but certainly the monobrowed, blue tabarded young ruffian I spoke to on the DVD aisle last week seemed totally oblivious to the fact that I had just set off all of their door alarms several times as I nipped in and out of the building just to check that, yes, it was me that was setting off the alarms even though I hadn’t actually at that point made a single purchase from Tesco.

I had bought something tasty from Argos though. A nice gadget thing which I can’t talk about here because it’s for my wife’s birthday in a fortnight. Seems the demagnetizer / security device remover thingy had failed to work as I picked up my product from collection point B. Not that I set off any alarms when I exited Argos though.

However, it was definitely my wife’s gift that had set off the Tesco alarms because I swang the bloody thing a couple of times in front of the door alarms just to be doubly sure. Anybody seen me performing that act would have wondered where the hell Goliath was hiding.

Swing – beep beep beep! Swing – beep beep beep!

Definitely me.

And the British public being mindful of Law & Order and swollenly turgid with moral rectitude and righteous fibre did, to a man, not rush towards me en masse and pin me to the floor with a shining example of citizen’s arrestmanship.

Nobody batted a single eyelid. Though one woman did flick some stray hair back up into her monumentally anachronistic beehive.

Oh well, I’m in Ronnie Biggs heaven, I thought and got on with purchasing my goods from Tesco. I paid for them and then ensured I got given a receipt because I knew what was coming next when I tried to exit the store.

Beep beep beep!

Yes, me again. This time with a Tesco bag in my hand as well as the one from Argos. Look people! Proof my grubby hands have been pawing the goods and chattels of the Tesco Corporation! Arrest me! Let me feel that heartless hand on my shoulder (a push – and it’s over). Full body cavity search! Good cop bad cop interview with Officer Krupt! I’m going down for a long stretch (6 months is a long time).

But no. Not a dickie-bird. Nobody gave a rat’s arse.

I did the decent thing being (a) tied to a moral compass of my own making and (b) stupid and approached the aforementioned member of staff.

“I think I’m setting off your alarms,” I said.

He gave me that kind of look that says, yes, I thought you looked like a weirdo. He just shrugged and said something about a fault and that I ought to just keep walking and the alarms would stop in a few seconds.

What I wouldn’t give to hear my bank manager say that to me. I could give up the ruddy pantomime with the balaclava and the sawn-off and never have to threaten anybody ever again. (I know, I know, but where would I get my kicks then?)

So I left the store.

Beep beep beep.

Only after I was heading down the street did I kick myself for the missed opportunity. I was in the DVD aisle when I spoke to Mr Poirot. I could have stuffed a load into my bag when his back was turned (or even when it wasn’t) and made off with a goodly haul.

I even briefly considered pulling the same scam in the other stores on the high street. Beep beep beep! Sorry – it’s this thing I’ve bought from Argos; it’s setting off your alarms... mind if I have a look around your nice store...?

But I just couldn’t be bothered.

What’s the point?

The knickers in Leamington are crap.

So. Freeview. It’s A Bit Shit

It’s been about 4 weeks since we ditched the cable TV package and bought a mid range, mid price set top box from Argos. More than enough time for the new system to bed-in and outlive the initial honeymoon period.

Sure we can record one channel while watching another. Sure we can even record two different channels at the same time while watching one of them. Or we can even record stuff while watching stuff we’ve already recorded. And the rather capacious harddrive means we can store entire series and entire film oeuvres and still have room for the odd sitcom or two shoehorned on top.

Long live the great god Technology.

Except the reception is patchy and intermittent. This despite blowing the best part of £200 on a brand spanking new TV aerial and “booster box” – apparently the latter was necessary because our house is in a “slight dip” which is further aggravated by the presence of a 3 storey apartment block a couple of roads away whose sole purpose in life (aside from acting like a Chav hatchery) is to block out the TV signal that legitimately should be ours.

But here’s the thing: the reception seems to go at more or less the same time every night. 8.0pm approaches and the picture pixelates and the sound pops and jumps like that annoying comedian from the 70’s who’s main shtick was to pretend to have a dodgy hearing aid and would thus speak like this: “-llo can y- h- me? I’m h-ing tr-ble w- my h-ing ai-“

Yeah, right, ‘cos the ol’ voicebox is controlled by a device you plug into your ears, isn’t it, you st-pid b-st-d?

We’ve tried turning it off and on. We’ve tried changing channels. We’ve tried blowing onto the box in case, you know, it’s overheated playing back The Sarah Jane Adventures to the kids (well, Rani is a bit of a babe).

But all to no avail.

Reception is scrambled.

So something must be occurring around the same time every night and interfering with our TV reception. My money is on the students next door. I daresay 8pm sees them opening their coffin lids to finally start their day and all logging-on en masse to Windows Messenger and Facebook to see if anybody actually gives a shit about their status (“drank 8 bottles of tiger beer last night am well wasted”).

I can’t think what else it can be.

Either way if my Freeview box can’t cope with a little bit of interference then the great god Technology is dead and buried in my book. I mean, we never had reception problems like this when I was a kid. We only had 3 channels and they all worked fine. The only time the TV would go on the fritz was when a seagull would sit on the TV aerial or there’d be a thunderstorm somewhere in the Birmingham area.

Freeview? What a misnomer. It’s anything but free and half the time you can’t view anything.

Still, at least I can record static and white noise from 2 different TV channels whilst watching a digital snowstorm on a third.

Every cloud, eh?