When in the future, bound to the wheelchair by an injury sustained in the Chrome Wars, I look back at 2007, I will see Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.
It’s not that I consider my other endeavors insignificant. I’m very happy with K2, even if we didn’t ship a 1.0 as I’d hoped. And I’m already very proud of the little work I’ve been able to contribute to Habari so far. Furthermore, both Rikke and I were able to chalk off Paris and New York from the ‘must travel to before impending death’-list.
But Kane & Lynch definitively marks the end of me wanting to make computer games for a living, and me having made making computer games for a living. And dammit, I’ll wear that chip on my shoulder and parade it around town like nobody’s business. It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to!… Look what you made me do.
2007 will also go down as the year I spent an excessive amount of money on a whole range of (fantastic) new Star Wars books, it being after all the 30th anniversary and all. And yes, I’m still a sucker for that stuff; you wanna start a fight or something? You a trekkie? Huh? Huh?!
Furthermore, this will be the last year Binary Bonsai will be brandishing WordPress. I’m a-shippin’ out and a-joinin’ Habari. It was fun, smell you later.
The Future
2008 will be the year where I leave the quantity of content to Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr and the seemingly never ending onslaught of something-r, and instead turn my focus on quality for this here site.
Proper writing, or at least, more attentive writing. Which is to say, if you enjoy reading about Russ Meyer and thinking about whether or not Chris Foss planted the seed for the Star Destroyers, then gosh darnit, you’re in luck Lucy, cuz that just about sets the style.
And proper writing, unlike this whole piece and this segue in particular, is exactly what 2008 will be tagged, bagged and sold as.
I love film. I work with games, but honestly, I can’t deny that my love is with film. And sure enough, the ‘I could do that better blindfolded!’–bravado is abound, but the actual product? It has yet to be manifested.
I’ve pseudo-dabbled in creative writing, and even half seriously discussed with Rikke the option of moving to New York for a stint, leading a bohemian life as a writer, living off of the wonderful New York deli’s and churning out socially subversive, but mostly un-produced scripts (that last part is a lie; it would be pulp sci-fi; you know that).
So this is the year where I, creatively, bend down to check whether I have a pair or not. And if I do, great, who knows what it might lead to? If I don’t? Well, shit.
So that’s it for 2008; you can go home now.
PS: This entry by the way, is the last entry to brandish comments. The spammers are too clever, they’ve won. But they can’t cross the bridge, if there is no bridge, so… Boom.
Catch me on twitter if you need me.
What…..leave it up to the net to tell the world (and/or your friends) about your illustrious future plans?!
The net owns joo, and I’m sad I didn’t know any of these thoughts beforehand…..
…and here I am talking TO YOU, in bloody english on your bloody blog for the entitre world to read…..Jeez!
Well, it’s been one hell of a ride so far, so I’ll be keeping track of your future endeavors regardless (and I’m looking forward to see what you come up with).
I’m curious as to what Habari will be able to do with you brandishing the whip, too (I’m sticking to Yaki, but I’m always on the lookout for new CMS doodads…)
May the Force be with you. :)
Good to hear about the resurgence of the writing, it has been missing in recent times, and not just from you, but from most cool cats on the net.
You serious? You’re going to let the bastards win? Akismet not working for you Mike? Why not try the alternative (that’s free as well, would have to dig it up for you) but c’mon man, surely you’re going to miss comments. It’s part of what makes a blog a blog right?
NOWAI!!!! no moar comments just for teh spammah?!!! omg that sux!!
No really, that’s a bad way to start this year, this blog rocks and without comments it will be like… a conversation between one person =(
I’ll be missing the comments, too, but I look forward to all the great stuff 2008 will bring to you, and thereby to us.
How am I supposed to correct your spelling/improper word usage if you disable comments? :)
Kane & Lynch, oh yeah, that reminds me, I need to hire that/
Asta la vista comments, it’s a shame the spammers won. Hopefully a solution will find it’s way to you in good time.
You’re sure you’re not just following the recent trend of disabling blog comments? It’s all the rage :-P Everyone wants to be Gruber ;)
What a very interesting blog post. Come see the uncensored post here…. oh, wait a minute.
Don’t let the spammers win! Can’t you install some form of spam control? After all, this is a WP blog… there are some good ones.
Well if this is your last foray into the Comment Wars, I’ll have to give you a sendoff right now dammit!
All the best to what sounds like gutsy moves all around. I can’t wait to see things unfold.
I, too, will be sad to see the comments turned off. Hopefully the Habari community will develop a comment spam system that works for you.
Sad news about these comments, Michael.
I’m sure you’ll be doing well with Habari!
I never comment on the site but I read when I get a chance, can you not install one of the many freely available antispam plugins?
2008 is shaping up to be an interesting year. I am looking forward to a return to some serious writing on your part Mike. That is why I started reading your site, way back in WWII/Vietnam guy in the grass header days.
And I can’t wait to see you move to Habari. I found that I was much more motivated to fix bugs and develop new features once I was running it everyday. I am sure it will be the same for you.
Oh and Habari has some excellent spam prevention measures in place. I turned off Akismet almost 6 months ago and haven’t had one comment get through. I do respect your position though man.
It is saddening that you feel it is necessary to turn off comments, and I also think it is quite telling that almost all the comments on this entry are comments lamenting the decision. That said, I fully understand your choice. There are not very many people that comment on my blog, but I am also getting very frustrated with the amount of spam I get. I just don’t want blogs to turn into email: Broken.
Like several other people I also want to say that I am looking forward to more writing in this space. Since you do say that the focus will be on more well-written posts I cannot wait to read what you come up with.
Finally, there was one sentence in your entry that I thought particularly interesting, and I thought it a bit curious that noone asked already.
Given that I of course have to ask, does that mean you are ending your career at IO? And if so, what will you do in the future?
No. Poor phrasing on my part (or a freudian-slip of sorts). I have no immediate intention of ending my job at Io, I merely meant to imply that I had gone from being a wannabe to a doing-it.
I’ve corrected the sentence.
As for comments, I’ll probably open up here and there, Kottke-style. But having to do manual checking on nearly every comment that rolls in, is simply too tedious in the long run.
And yes, I too will miss the comment-area interaction.
But there’s always Twitter :)
I miss-read that line the same way at first, but on re-reading it made perfect sense – unlike my sentences.
Happy New year Mike and I hope 2008 all goes to plan.
Like most people I found the bonsai from WordPress and Kubrick, but I stayed for the content. So a I can only tip my cap to a motivated move towards quality copy.
The comment situation is a strange one, I understand your reasons but of all the blogs I read your’s is one of the few I will actually put a voice to. I will miss it.
Hello Michael, I hope you’ll still be interested in computer games, enough so that you will not be just another consumer. Btw: you never finished those quake 1 maps you were making back in ’97 (with the quake 2 texture “style”)!!! Guess I’m just stuck in the past as far as Quake goes.
Oh well, I’ve never heard of Habari but if it’s better than wordpress it will be interesing. I guess that should be evident from how this blog will turn out when you switch.
Death to spammers!
I lament the passing of your wordpress blog, especially since that you will no longer maintain K2, my favorite theme of all time. Will anyone else maintain it? Does this spell certain doom for K2?
For those of you who don’t know, you can find out more about Habari at:
http://www.habariproject.org
The website is mostly powered by a wiki, but the software does look promising, bring written from the ground up for “today’s” blogger with RSS (read: atom) and antispam in mind. Looks fine and good, but I will be sad if it means the death of K2.
Please don’t make me cry.
Or I will just answer your twitter’s via facebook ;)
Sad to hear that you’ll close the comments. The blog won’t be the same without them. Isn’t there any solution for the problem other than completely shutting down?
As someone else whose game got a really poor reception in 2007, I’d be interested to know which was most fun-destroying for you – the hard grind getting the project out of the door, or its external reception?
Wow.. your getting rid of so many things in this site that attracted me to it.. but don’t get me wrong, i’ll still pop by everyonce in a while. i guess i’ll have to get a twitter account! :) your a well respected man in my books.
Will miss the thing’s you loose, will accept the things you bring on.
Good luck for ’08
- Domenic
How about a registration system in order to post a comment?
If you have the HomePage/Website option go in to moderation if it’s changed it will eliminate people registering with a good site and changing it later to some XXX domain.
Basically someone registers, their account needs to be approved by you at which time you can check the Homepage URL and approve or decline. Once approved, if any changes are made to the profile it goes back in to moderation.
This way when someone does post a comment, you know you have previously verified their account and homepage and won’t need to check it every time a comment is made.
Something like this i feel will enable people to still comment, but at the same time cut down on your work verifying if it’s legitimate or not.
Either way i’ll still pop in and read.
If you are going to disable comments, this post is going to attract a long long list. I might as well get in the middle. But frankly I think stopping comments is like stooping to the spammers..
No comments you say? Bravo.
If creative writing is your thing, indeed if writing wonderful, inspiring content is the goal, then comments are pretty much redundant. A great article is like a gift given without expectation of any response in return.
If you write something worth commenting on, I’ll be the first in line to respond, via my own blog.
And the claims that “no comments” is the same as giving in is quite frankly, poppycock. By removing comments you starve the spammer of their bread-and-butter. You remove their ability to profit without sacrificing usability.
It also moves debate into the wider community. Got comment? Blog it. With the advent of Twitter, Tumblr and the bajillion other services it’s no longer a rarity to have an online journal – micro or otherwise.
When I disabled comments I received more quality feedback than I could have possibly hoped for. A number of silent readers stepped forward to offer words of encouragement or advice.
I don’t doubt you’ll be hearing from me soon. ;)
Hey man, whatever you end up doing I know it’ll rock the casbah. Sad to see comments go but I might be doing that as well once I start blogging again, whenever that might be.
Michael, you probably know it, but if no, try it:
http://recaptcha.net/