Darque Dispatchez

My Fistfight with the Revenant Developer at Darque-Con

by E. James Tourmaline

Yes, I'm sure you've heard the story by now. But let me tell it the way it happened.

First things first: I never had anything against the Developer of Revenant: the Putrescence, and I've never had any problems with Revenant, either. In fact, it was the first Black Dog game I ever played, and while Spectre: the Annihilation is my true love, in some ways you could say that Revenant was my first love. And you always remember your first love, even if she did you wrong, or filed for a restraining order, or tried to have you arrested for date rape, or whatever.

But, no, Revenant never did me wrong. And neither had its Developer, Jason O'Kelly. Some of its butt-monkey writers ­ past and present ­ may have had some unkind things to say on alt.games.blackdog, ELD or other sites where I had the massive displeasure of trying to raise concerns with them and being called rude names in return. But aside from nasty jibes that seemed more aimed at the matter as a whole, rather than me as an individual, I have never, ever had a bad experience with O'Kelly, himself.

Sadly, this last Darque-Con, that was to change.

Let me set the scene for you: if you've never been to Darque-Con, you are seriously missing out on one of the greatest conglomerations of gamers and gaming to be found anywhere. The place is just electric with the joy that is gaming, and whatever you find of interest, you will find it there ­ guaranteed. Plus, you'd never think a city like Milwaukee could ever be as charming as it is when a couple thousand gamers are walking its streets, eating in its restaurants, drinking in its bars and cohabitating past the point of health and safety regulations in its hotels.

(Not to mention lolling in their drunk tanks, but we'll get to that in due time.)

However, there is a less germane side to Darque-Con, and that's what happens when you pile a bunch of tired, overworked and underpaid game writers and developers into way too few cars, make them spend a whole day and night setting up, and then have them alternate between walking the floor to talk shop and sell stuff (and keep an eye peeled for shoplifters), and running demo game after demo game after demo game for seriously ungrateful people. Oh, and they have to be doing this for way more than eight hours at a pop?

People get testy and lose their shit very easily after having to deal with that kind of work schedule. And there seems to be a weird ratio that stipulates that the more people you have there, the less amused you are and the less people there actually are who do anything. The small operations, who only ever have two people in a dinky little stall, seem to be having a blast, while the folks over at Witches of the Shoreline ­ who took up about 1/3 of the floor space to sell cardboard crack to grade schoolers ­ are in no mood whatsoever to answer ANYTHING, even though they have people there whose only purpose, so far as I could see, was to stand there and pretend to be enjoying the latest release of You-Know-What.

(The word is "shill," ladies and gentlemen.)

So there's the folks from Black Dog. They've got the first booth you run into, a lot of people who actually volunteered for this kind of cruel and inhuman punishment, and none of them are in a good mood. I was led to understand that they didn't get out of their rendezvous point until much later than they should have, and then hit Chicago at rush hour, so they didn't make it to Milwaukee until WAY late, and had to spend the whole night and into the morning getting set up. And for that they have my sympathies.

That does not, however, excuse what happened, especially considering the Developer in question actually ditched the whole show around eight so he could go "check out the hotel." He then proceeded to go on a special K bender that could have shamed Christian Slater, and narrowly avoided getting nailed by the police ­ again. I hear he came staggering onto the convention floor at around 5 am, red-eyed as fuck, and asked where the white women were at; I'm sure Mel Brooks would have found that incredibly funny

Enter me and the other Spectral Undertakingz staff that came along for the ride. We got there bright and early, smiling ear to ear, and generally looking forward to the day. We were going to try and get an impromptu Spectre LARP going if we could find the hallspace, and maybe get some fans together to run a game back in the room that night. All kinds of fun stuff to keep this game going, in spite of no support whatsoever from a company that's more content to put out frankly-crappy books for its "big three" games, or sell us on some weird anime fantasy world where every single signature character is either a drag queen, a queer, a necrophiliac or a pedophile, and license out their property to make computer games that seem to be Quake with revenants instead of campers

But I digress. I had all these plans, and I didn't get to do any of them. And that's because the Revenant Developer decided he wanted to give me a hassle instead of be a gentleman.

What happened? Well, of course, the first place we went to was Black Dog. We walked around the floor they had, amused ourselves looking for typos in their new books and had a good laugh watching their new video game being demonstrated for slack-jawed fans. And, yes, I'll admit we did start singing "Smack my Bitch Up" a little loudly when the dude who was running the demo changed the character over to a buxom wench and had her make out with a girl and then shoot her full of holes with her uzi, but that's hardly annoying behavior, surely. (And we DID stop when the dude told us to ­ so there.)

But then we ran into the Revenant Developer. O'Kelly was standing by the latest batch of Superpowered books, talking to a bunch of fans who were all obviously trying to coat their noses with his fecal matter. But I had some REAL questions for him, and he didn't want to answer them.

So when were they going to reissue Spectre? "Uh well," he started to say, and then he saw my name tag and he went from ten to minus-sixty in a single second.

Well? I asked, and he wrinkled his nose, shook his head and said "We had to cancel the game because it wasn't making any money-"

Oh, cancel it? See, I was under the impression it was on quote-endquote hiatus? That's what they told us, anyway.

"Well, it was canceled. Sorry."

But there were a lot of fans.

"Well, not enough."

How much is enough?

"Enough is enough, and you guys were I'm sorry, but you were statistically insignificant."

Wonderful way to talk about dedicated fans.

"Look, man, we have to balance out bank accounts at the end of the day. You do understand that, right?"

Well, yeah, but let's face it, none of these new books for Revenant are selling worth a damn, much less worth a damn. Why not use that money to bring back a classic game and offset any losses by-?

"FUCK! OFF!" he screamed. He got right in my face, balled up his fists and started to foam at the mouth. I am not joking.

But, of course, I smiled and asked if that was a come on. Then he hit me.

Now, normally I would have defended myself, but he got a good one in, and I fell to the floor. Suddenly, everyone was all over me. I think I heard Marty Shepherder yell "Boot party!" and suddenly every single Black Dog employee, volunteer and fan available were all over me and my posse, kicking the crap out of us like we were kittens in a certain women in prison movie.

And do you know what the guards did? All those security personnel who are supposed to be there to stop this kind of behavior? They laughed. And then they slowly waded into the pile, got me and my friends out and said we were to blame? Can you believe that?

Of course, we got it all straightened out, eventually, and were allowed to return to the con once I got out of the hospital - on the last day - but we were told to stay away from Black Dog "just in case." And I don't think anything happened to Black Dog at all, really. (Their Hitler Youth fan club said some of their staffers were sent away, but only for the day, as they needed everyone possible.)

Now, I could have pressed charges, but in the interest of being a good sport and recognizing that everyone was really stressed out, I declined. That and, while I think they've made a number of really bad creative mistakes of late - most notably canceling the best game ever made - I do respect Black Dog, and I want them to grow to a point where all their games are as good as Spectre, all their Developers are as good as the late Jessica Shornheart and the still living (we hope?) Rich Glumsky, wherever he is, now, and people like Jason O'Kelly, Connor Claptrapp and most of the asshats they have writing for them are all kicked out and allowed to go peddle their "talents" to cardboard crack pushers like Witches of the Shoreline. And if I sue them and take them for all they own, like my legal advisors have said I should, they'll go bankrupt and then go nowhere, respectively.

So no, they won't be seeing me in court. But I will urge everyone who cares about truth and a damn good game to keep the pressure on. We could all get Spectre back within a year if we tightened the screws. So what are we waiting for?

Yours Truly:

E. James Tourmaline

 The Ugly Truth

Yes, E. is a Spectre Cultist, and the Revenant Developer in question is, like most folks at Black Dog, possessed by Banes. But even though their respective masters are supposedly "on the same team" (ha ha. Yeah. right.) there's no love lost between the voice from the wilderness and the men on the inside. So when they see each other, and nature is allowed to take its rightful course, there'll be a fight unless others intervene - especially considering what a psycho badass Jason O'Kelly is.

Whether this version of what happened is the truth, or just wishful thinking on E.'s part, is yours to figure out on your own. However, anyone who reads it is strangely led to feel as though E. at least has a point, even if the readers can't quite agree with him.

Odd, that...


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