Oh, bless. The missus was rooting through my junk mail doing her usual run of attempting to tidy things up and found a cease and desist notice. Blimey. It’s from a week or so back, so y’know I may already be doomed. Cheers to whoever sent it, mind – it gave me a right guffaw.

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CEASE AND DESIST NOTICE

OUR REGISTERED TRADEMARK “E”

YOUR ILLEGAL USE OF OUR MARK FOR A WEBSITE

ATTN: bagfullofwrong.co.uk, Legal Department / CEO

September 11, 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

It has been brought to our attention that you have been using the letter “E” on your website. Your use of the mark E is a direct infringement of our international registered and common law rights in the trademark E which we have owned for infinite years. As of this date we count no less than 40 infringements on the front page of your site alone.

We write to demand that you immediately cease and desist from using the mark E, either alone or in combination with any other letters. For your information, we own the registered trademark for E in the US and UK, with common law rights in France, Germany, and elsewhere in the EU. Our company, EDGY, is the oldest videogame company (established 2009) and is widely known not only for its games, but also for our licensed products and those of our partners, such as EDGY Magazine, EDGY game PCs, EDGY controllers, and so forth.

Given the very serious nature of this matter we must demand your response no later than five business days from today. Failure to respond stating clearly that you will cease use of our famous registered trademark, and making us a proposal to recompense us for the damage you have caused by any use to-date, will likely mean we will take immediate action in the Federal Courts in the US, High Courts in the UK, as well as the European courts, with action against you to the full extent of the law. Certainly, in the US and the UK at least, the minimum claim we would have, should you ignore our warning, is three times the total Internet Moneys you have received from the site to-date. This is thus a very serious situation, and one we trust you will indeed take seriously. Should you doubt our sincerity in threatening action should you fail to respond, then please note that we sued and won on this very issue in the US Federal Court late last year, and at high cost to us proved in the US courts that we are the undisputed owner of the mark E for any goods or services pertaining to games.

We anticipate your prompt reply,

EDGY Games

www.edgygames.com
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Awesome!

Yeah. Vampire aliens. Squids. It can only mean one thing, I’ve spent the past week getting back up to speed on that old writing games lark. And oh, the madness. The delusional madness.

It’s all gone a bit odd this time round. You may think “but you’ve made a sweary game with graphics by a 4 year old featuring Bruce Forsyth, a game with the giant head of Johnny Ball and warned people of the dangers of incoming debates on games as art via the medium of the arcade game” or you might think “you’ve made the same game 3 times in a row, man” and proclaim “it’s already odd, Oddbob”. It’s gone proper odd this time.

It started out with the portal screen I shown in a previous update but nnng, too similar to Squid Harder but a bit more hi-res, that’s boring. It’s one thing writing the same game but another thing making it look pretty much the same. Bigger, better, prettier, more Popcap. Yeah, that’s what we need this time. Casual gaming. Let’s make that leap, let’s do it, let’s fuck some shit up in a very gentle manner.

Yeah. Let’s see what way madness lies. Let’s have a plot this time round too. A plot? Fuck it, yeah, let’s do it. More games need plots. Proper plots. Plots about vampire aliens from an orange planet kidnapping game developers. Ok, not game developers plural, a single game developer. That’ll work won’t it? I know, let’s write and ask the game developer would he mind being in the game, oh, he said he’s up for it. Amazing. A special guest star. One of the guys that helped form me, one of the folks that way back when I first started gaming I thought “woah, one man, a Speccy, BASIC and his own company? I’d love to do that one day, maybe tomorrow” and then didn’t get round to it for over 10 years. Only without the Speccy, the BASIC or my own company. Or perhaps this is a result of too much of my own company. Damn insomnia.

A celebration of gamey things and what put me here. No better way to bow out the SYNSO story in style, I reckon. Or it could be the lack of sleep doing funny things to my brain. Possibly, but you never know. It might work. Everyone loves the Eighties. Everyone loves Popcap. Somebody, somewhere probably likes SYNSO, bless their cotton socks. I know, let’s throw them all together in one game. That’s it, that’s the plan. Only it won’t work out quite so simple, it’s me after all, it’ll go left a bit. Ok, not a bit, a lot. It already has. It started off so calm, so nice, it’s already on the road to Wonkyville with the foot stapled to the accelerator pedal. It’s a sexadelic dance party retro casual hardcore rainbow vomit. It’s like what The Path really wanted to be deep down but didn’t have the bollocks to follow through with because they omitted laser beams and little cute rabbits on Mekon-esque anti gravity discs and pretty colourful stars. I think. Maybe. Perhaps.

Fucked if I know, it’s time to crack on. It’s time to bring a rainbow cavalcade of pretty once more unto the world, it’s time to save the universe, it’s time to turn up the lights, it’s time to get some sleep before the pretty pictures try to eat my brain.

It’s time to get sequellising. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll sequellise. It’s a real word, yeah? What could possibly go wrong? I’ve got a towel just in case, I’m taking no chances.

Don’t take chances. Conform. Obey. This is not entertainment.

This is Vampyros Squidos.

The Manual is the greatest book on game design that is not about game design.