About a month ago, I got an e-mail from Troy “Aether” Hewitt, community rep for Flying Lab Software, makers of Pirates of the Burning Sea. He’d seen my coverage of the Wolfpack Wake, which featured former ‘Packer and ‘Labber Thomas Sitch wearing a PotBS T-shirt, and asked if I wanted one.

I said sure, but I wanted a different style than the one Thomas had. This came in the mail today. Click for bigger.

I applaud Troy for doing what all community managers should do — give me free stuff for being awesome, even if the association with me or promotional value of being mentioned on this site is questionable.

Yeah, I saw the season premiere, two frigging years in the making. And apparently Noodle Soup is run by Castro or something, and McCulloch is still calling himself Jackson Publick.

That’s a really good show. Needs to be promoted better, so the FCC can notice just how raunchy and filthy it is. That’s the only way to get any attention these days. Make your government work for you.

I’ve been asked to plug this link, as the IGDA-Austin chapter (don’t know if it’s going to be called AGD much anymore,) wants to compile resumes of people who have been laid off from their jobs in the games industry, so other studios can snatch them back up.

Of course this doesn’t help me much, as I never had such a job to get fired/laid off from in the first place. But, well, I was asked nicely. It’s worth noting, however, that the request went up just before (and I’m posting one day after) one of the studios in Austin laid off a substantial chunk of its staff — though from what I hear, most of them weren’t what you would call “dev” jobs. But they’re still the sort of thing allegedly in demand in Austin.

I’ve probably said more than anyone would really want me to. So if this is offensive to you, you’re probably going to want to click the above link and get far away from here.

Well, OK, I’m not that heartless. Have a music video. Here’s hoping tomorrow goes better. Please don’t take a picture.

Edit: CuppaJo posted some details. 300 people at the NCSoft Austin office, now 230, because of a “slowdown in launch pattern.” F13 has more unofficial perspective: “80% of GM’s, 90% of tech support, 75% of QA.” To that I’ll add 35% of the community relations department, and “no execs and none of the old Origin clique.”

Edit 2: Gamespot says f13 is WRONG ALL WRONG. Yeah, and Austin is starting to talk, too. I think that’s the last I’ll be thinking about this. Why’d I even post in the first place? Oh yeah, I was asked.

Adam Poots, whom I’d written about almost a month ago, apparently spent the past month taking stock of his situation. He’s since taken down an interview with himself and the message boards on his site — only the video of himself and people on-the-street talking about how the game industry has gone sour and dreamers like him are sorely needed, remain.

Adam apparently replied to my post on Thursday, and I hadn’t noticed until today. (It’s been a busy weekend, and I still need to wish my dad Happy Father’s Day.) And he seems to have come to his senses about Atari, if not reassessed his own attitude about the game industry and his intended role in it.

Don’t feel bad, Adam. You could have ended up working for Atari, but then you’d be party to the monkey business they’re trying to pull regarding the support for Neverwinter Nights and the marketing and feature set of its yet-to-be-released sequel. Or the continued downslide of its financial status, which makes up the rest of the available news on Atari.

One dreamer only can do so much. You could always be a blogger, and crush other people’s dreams.

If I hadn’t been browsing a bunch of other comic-book-related Web sites, I might not have noticed Peter David’s report that Tim Hildebrandt, one half of the Brothers Hildebrandt, died over the weekend at the age of 67. He had diabetes.

Whether you’re a fantasy-art fan or not, Ultima Online fans should recall the “Tapestry of Sosaria,” which probably wasn’t the only name given to the painting the Brothers did for Ultima Online when it shipped. The original (I think) used to hang in the offices of Origin Studios back in the day — I know that because I saw it there. It was featured on the 7th Anniversary box art, but there are probably better prints floating around.

There might have even been news about this on other gaming news sites, not that I read them. At least not this week.

In the effort to do more than just clear bogus spam postings out of my comments field (and not really wanting to make people register just for that) here’s most of what’s been rattling around in my head for the past week.

Continue reading Hey Norman, was it thrown with a broken arm?…