by Rock Jonson

Molly and I caught having a laugh about
how rubbish the XBox is.

It was Friday afternoon and I was in the pub where my game industry friends were all buying me drinks for being so much better than them at designing videogames, when a funny thought occurred to me. I stroked my chin and furrowed my brow in the way that only I can, and immediately there was a hush in the room. Molly looked at me over his half a shandy and whispered excitedly:

“Rock! Do I sense a witty yet thought-provoking anecdote forthcoming from your long and, dare I say it, legendary career?”

“I’m afraid not, Molly”, I replied mournfully, “But don’t fret, for today I offer not an amusing tale from the past, but a glimmer into what could one day be. Gather round my friends, for I have had an idea so wonderful that you must witness every syllable of its full majesty!”

After the crowd had stopped weeping, I went home content in the lives that I had touched, more so shaped, for the better. This kind of reminds me of the time that Rockstar named their company after me. That was nice.

It all started when my good friend Andrew Semple phoned me up to request my assistance doing some ‘mo-co’ for their new videogame Max Pain (obviously on account of my training in that bit of my life I mysteriously don’t tend to talk about), when the lead artist suggested that they use my likeness for the main character. I immediately suspected that this was a ploy to pick my gargantuan brain on a number of problems that I’m sure they were having in the studio. I was also concerned about the security issue on account of the bit of my life I mysteriously don’t tend to talk about. However, being brilliant, I accepted none-the-less and, of course, more importantly, offered my services as game-design-guru (anonymous) as usual.

Ironically, two weeks later, the head of QA phoned me up begging and pleading with me for permission to remove my likeness from the game, as the playtesters couldn’t bear to see me killed and maimed repeatedly (admittedly in pixelaticated form). So of course, I understood their payne. Instead they went with a picture of that Richard Hillman bloke off Eastenders, crapping his pants when he was struck by my greatness at the photo shoot.

A month later, Semple and I were thwacking our balls together in a friendly game of golf (of course, I was winning. By miles.). Semple had just sliced his ball into the sandpit for the twentieth time, and was getting rather frustrated, so I thought that this was the time to offer some friendly (and calming) advice that has been instrumental in his life to this day (as all my advice is).

“If you play the linear game, you’re never going to avoid the pits. Take your head out of the sand and drive the ball of design into the chasm of non-linearity. “

And that man went away from that golf game a different man, calmer, wiser, more non-linear, more like me. He framed that advice and placed it on the mantelpiece next to the picture of me and repeated it, mantra-style, every morning. It was no coincidence that two years later, Grand-Theft-Auto hit the world like a golf ball of molten Rock and I just had to smile in that knowing way that only I can.

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