I just read the latest Shoot Club and laughed so hard I started coughing, causing the nervous secretaries in the main office to come see what was wrong =).

Yet more proof that Marx was dead wrong -- "religion is the opiate of the masses" -- clearly he never laid a halberd upside Diablo's head or countered a six pool rush with a firebat wave of doom. There's no better way to de-stress, anesthetize your brain or just avoid life than a good game, especially one by Blizzard =).

Dan (Sharpe)

Trevor is a smart man.

Escapism is the surest form of short-term therapy. At least it beats moping.

"Yet more proof that Marx was dead wrong -- "religion is the opiate of the masses" -- clearly he never laid a halberd upside Diablo's head or countered a six pool rush with a firebat wave of doom. "

Can we combine this in some way? Trevor as prophet from the Church of Video Games?

Thanks Tom, I laughed my ass off (even as a little chill ran up my neck).

A good game's gotten me through times of no women better than a good woman's gotten me through times of bad games. Or something like that. ;)

Excellent Shoot Club.

Heh, when I got the "you're a great guy and all but I met someone else" message I realized the truth of this column. Before I'd get hammered and mope around and just drag it on forever. Sad, but true. This time, I did a little of that but I also took the plunge and bought EverQuest. That was a year ago and I'm still playing, it really is a form of therapy. I still think about her sometimes but hey, I can always go kick some Orc butt. Good luck Tom.

I love shoot club though its near immpossible for me to distinguish whats probably real or taken out of his life and whats made up. Oh one thing though didnt Trevor seem a bit different in this one? He is usually more of a consistent character but he seemed like a hole different guy maby I'm just imagining it I'm going to go read a couple from the archives now.

All of us who are geeked out about games recognize a bit of ourselves in Trevor. It's good writing.

I agree with Mark, though I think what I recognize of myself in Trevor--aside from the bald spot--is the desperate, scrambling, shifting-strategies-friendship mode he has gone into because his friend needs it. I daresay this brings a taste of universality to the column.

I think this is a superlative Shoot Club.

Amanpour

Mr. Chick:

As a frequent reader of Shoot Club, I have to say that this one was one of the best yet. Sad, poignant, and relevant.

And if Trevor is only half real, you should punch the half that is square in the head, and buy the half that isn't a pitcher of beer (or bag of Cheetos)...

You can decide which is which

Hey, I was really serious with my ex gf in college... hadnt played much games for two years (my non gaming years)... she broke up with me, and then... all i had was money to buy a new pc... it was the best thing at the time. Women. Games. I dont think id be playing games now if she didnt break up with me, i was heavily into "art" shit. somehow games was the best thing, to get away of all things relating to the realtionship. i remember getting Advanced Tactical Fighter after the break up (huh?) weird....i think i've regressed in maturity since college.. no wait, i think im just reclusive more now. uhmmm

btw, is this true? did Chick break up or sumtin?
oh well, other fish in the sea and all.. plus you always have The Sims Hot Date harhar.

etc

I'm coming out of lurk status (6 months now) just long enough to say that that was maybe the best Shoot Club I've ever read. I've laughed harder at others, but this one, I had to come out of the woodwork and tell you. I thought it was brilliant. Thanks.

DeanCo--

>All of us who are geeked out about games recognize a bit of ourselves in Trevor. It's good writing.

GREAT writing. Well done, Tom!

I haven't yet read a Shoot Club that I didn't enjoy. This one does rate very highly on my list, though. I love the ones where the focus is on the games (okay, really, the focus is never on the games, but some of them are more game-related than others), but editions like this and Chasing Amy really get me. My wife has also enjoyed them both.

But, ditto Stefan's comment -- GREAT writing.

"But, ditto Stefan's comment -- GREAT writing."

This is right up there with Chasing Amy for my favorite Shoot Club. I've been making lots of people read it, including non-gamers, and everyone has liked it. Tom has some sort of zeitgeist-tapping going on here for the age of computer gaming.

Tom is one of my favorite writers in the field - and Shoot Club is just one example of it. I just showed my wife his glowing review of X-Com on IGN, and it echoed her feelings about the game. As a relatively new gamer, she likes having her feelings validated - that it's OK to like what she likes. Mr. Chick's writing taps into something most of the time.

What's really disappointing is that there is not that much good writing on computer games or gamers. Shoot Club is usually humor, which, while certainly difficult to write well, works only if the audience "gets it" or has a chance of getting it in the future. SC is at its best when it implies something meaningful about gamers and gaming in a social environment.

Where film writing and sports writing can, at its best, reach beyond moviegoers and sports fans, there is not much game writing that tries. SC, I think, does when it is at its best.

When I have time and space, I will try to devote my overeducated and underutilized mind to some critical thinking about computer gaming.

Nothing like SC, though. I was never much good at dialogue.

All in all a very good SC. I always look forward to them.

As for the truth behind the story...it has been a while since Tom wrote a SC and he has been laying low. Never know...shit happens, and it usually isn't good when it does.

Tom is a gamer. I'm a gamer. Hell, we all are gamers. So we know what it is like. Those lazy Saturdays, Sundays, or both, where you sit in partial darkness hunched over your keyboard with a single minded obsession. A time and place where we ignore the world and take offense when "our time" is broken by pointless phone calls or the endless gibbering of a friend or love one peering over our shoulder and inquiring as to "What we are doing?"

"Go away all of you," we think and scowel at the phone when it's annoying shrill breaks the mood. "Just leave me in peace."

This world has no room for "others" or those who do not understand, and therefore these people drift in and out of our lives like and endless river, while we sit on the bank. We watch. We wait. We game.

There are times I regret not seeing the sun more, or spending time with "others", but then, they can't KO a CHAR at 1000 meters with a PzIII, can they? I can, and that makes all the difference.

Keep your chin up, Tom. Shit happens for a reason and in the end, in my experience, it is always for the best.

Life's too short to get all pissy over it. ;)

Jeff

I smell a Peng threader. Do you still inhabit that which they call the Cess Pool, or has WW2OL taken over? Sorry if you were just an innocent CM poster, but somehow I think you may have come from THAT THREAD.

Another great Shoot Club.

Isn't life itself just another game? If anything, I think gamers have a better grip on their lives. I approach my work, my relationships, and my home life the same way I do my games. Above all, have fun. By any means necessary.

Jeff Green did a kick-ass greenspeak on a topic very close to this one. One of my favorites.

"Where film writing and sports writing can, at its best, reach beyond moviegoers and sports fans, there is not much game writing that tries. SC, I think, does when it is at its best."

Well, both sports and film are much more mature industries for one thing. For another, they deal with human issues, problems, and endeavors. Games are games. It's very difficult to elevate game writing to something broader because there isn't anything broader there.

However, Tom's found a way to write about games AND people at the same time, and it's the people stuff in Shoot Club that we find so interesting and attractive. I don't really know of a way of doing that with most game writing. In fact, it's inappropriate for most game writing. When I have a 700 word limit for a review, I'd better focus just on the game because I don't have space for much else.

I'd love to see someone who works at a big game company satirize working at a big game company. I could see that being a funny series. Maybe someone could write about what it's like to be a clerk at EB. In the hands of a good writer, that could be entertaining too.

If Tom's up to it, I think he should take a stab writing a screenplay based off of Shoot Club characters. I'm serious!
Shoot Club is totally in the vein of Kevin Smith's movies..send him the screenplay even.

Rob,

Does it make you feel better if I say, "Die A Lot Now"?

Now rot,
Jeff

P.S. Mark has a point... Hmmm...Just imagine what NBC could do with a game developer T.V. series. Now that is scary. Token Geek, Token "smart" babe, Token hunk with no people skills. I can see it now. *shiver*

A Shoot Club movie? For Hollywood to do it, Trevor would have to frag someone repeatedly in an Internet game, and then this fragee would then stalk Trevor in real-life. During the course of the movie Shoot Club players would be killed one-by-one. One would be found strangled with a mouse cord. Another would have his PC rigged so that it blew up when he killed someone in Quake. Another guy would get off work late and walk out to a deserted parking lot and find a crate near his car. He'd open it up and hear a voice say, "You've found the rocket launcher!" and then he'd be shot. At the end Trevor would engage the psychopath in a game of real-life shooters in the sewers under LA or something, though along the way he'd finally score with some sexy police woman assigned to protect him. She'd see through his geekiness and bag him. That's the Hollywood version of Shoot Club. Maybe it stars Rob Schneider as Trevor.

See, we must fight to make sure this doesn't happen. :)

Ooh, I was just wondering who would play Trevor. Rob Schneider sounds pretty good, thought he doesn't have a bald spot.

To me, Shoot Club would make a great series...

You guys do know that Shoot Club is loosely based on Fight Club right?

--Dave

Maybe I should have added this link to that for the uninformed.

--Dave

Yeah, we know. (Well, most of us do, I think.) That's where the premise comes from.

But it's evolved past that. It's now it's own creation. It no longer resembles Fight Club. (At least, not to me.) So I stand by everything that I said. It still feels like it would make a great weekly sitcom.

The first rule of shoot club is we don't talk about fight club.

But Trevor isn't real...

--Dave

He absolutely IS real. Just because he's not someone who can walk up and shake your hand doesn't mean that he's not real.

There's a little bit of Trevor in all of us. The more of us you get together in one room, the more real Trevor becomes, because each of us contributes to his "realness." At something like E3, heck, there are hundreds of Trevors...

Besides, come and spend an evening with my buddy Jeremiah and then try and tell me that Trevor isn't real. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that Jeremiah was flying to Tom's house for Shoot Club, and going by a different name...

Besides, Dave -- you're not suggesting that you can't make a movie based on someone who's not real, are you?

Tom Chick is a genius. It must be that he grew up in Arkansas:), or he is a genius in spite of that fact. Great Shoot Club. I hope that it gets picked up somewhere so he can get paid for it.

Mark: I'd love to see someone who works at a big game company satirize working at a big game company. I could see that being a funny series. Maybe someone could write about what it's like to be a clerk at EB. In the hands of a good writer, that could be entertaining too.

Though it is comedy and not satire, Scott Kurtz is pretty funny with his PvP strip at:

www.pvponline.com

Though most of you have probably seen this strip, its setting is a PC game magazine. It's tough to do much in only 4 to 6 frames, but he does a good job.

I also remember PC Accelerator used to do a little article about speaking to clerks at game stores or calling support lines that was funny from time to time.

-DavidCPA

The great thing about sci-fi writing (and the shoot club series is kind of like sci-fi) is that it allows the writer to make references, point out things about the human experience that we normally wouldn't think of. Because sci-fi and computer games are kind of removed from real life, writers can use them as a template for specific life situations. I really don't know where I'm going with this, but I just think that tom is touching on some essential human experiences and relating them in a new way to us. and tom, the next time I come over to your house, I'm going to give you a big kiss.

Chick could make a shoot club movie (or write a script?) like Swingers with swank game developers and/or game writers. You know, like a lo-fi version of Singles but you know for the luvable new millenium. Definitely gaming is more "mainstream", i mean it could even come out like Chasing Amy or something (lesbian game developer meets hetero game writer?!?)... That was comic books, i could see it with games. Though, their has to be a story of course. BTW, reading Shoot Club reminds me alot of that indie P. Bagge comic Hate... but like a slacker version of a gaming niche or sumtin. It is a subculture... it is out there... sell it like hotcakes! yah yah make it like Office Space (underrated movie imo). sorry to ramble...

etc

Swordfish presented one of the problems with making a movie about a computer topic. It's quite comical watching the scene where the hacker hacks into the banking system. You can just imagine all the meetings where the producers were going, "How the hell do we make a scene about a guy sitting in front of a computer and typing interesting?"

They couldn't. They set the guy up in front of some fancy, nonsensical computer with five monitors all arrayed in a ring above the desk and then showed some dippy computer graphics that indicated how much progress he was making. Inbetween we were also treated to the actor making various faces. Puzzled, excited, satisfied, angry, tired, etc. Riveting stuff.

Of course my favorite scene was near the beginning when Travolta first recruited him. He's talking to the guy and asks him if he can break into a system in two minutes. The guy says no, maybe two hours. Travolta says you have two minutes or I'll kill you, and then thugs hold the hacker in his chair while he tries to hack into the system using a laptop.

Oh yeah, at this point a beautiful babe gives the hacker a blow job just to add to the pressure while he's trying to hack. That kind of thing just happens all the time to me when I'm playing games. Instead of the babe, though, it's usually a dog humping my leg. I just can't win.

In that situation I'd just enjoy myself and then die after two minutes. What a way to go, forget hacking.

-Andrew

Er...
I was talking about Swordfish, not Mark's dog. That was clear right?


Right?

-Andrew

Whatever, Andrew...

You just keep tellin' yourself whatever you have to live with yourself... ;-)

I didnt see Swordfish, but i still think that Wargames movie with Matthew Broderick had the best "feel" of the computer crowd. And Office Space resembles alot of the contract jobs I have done... corporate Dilbertesque Kafkaesque bureacratic nightmaresque cubiclish...I'll stop now...

etc

Another good riff on office culture can be found in the first 20 minutes of the terrible film "Joe vs. the Volcano."

Boss on the phone:

"I know he can get the job... but can he do the job? I'm not arguing that with you. I'm not arguing that with you! Look. I'm know he can get the job, but can he DO the job? I'm not arguing that with you..."

Dan Hedaya is hilarious.

-Andrew

"It's very difficult to elevate game writing to something broader because there isn't anything broader there."

I"m not sure that this is necessarily the case, Mark. You are right that gaming is not even close to film or sports as an industry dollars wise, but it sure beats modern art, industry size wise. As for its mass appeal, gaming certainly has greater mass appeal than architecture, yet there is a lot of good architecture writing.

And I am not sure that you need a "mature" industry to have good critical and approachable writing. Yes, film and sports seem to have had a long wait for mature writing, but their rise was synchronous with the rise of the better daily papers and weekly magazines. TV didn't wait 25 years for good analysis.

As for there not being anything broader in games, is there anything broader in Barry Bonds' pursuit of the home run record? But I guarantee we'll see at least ten superlative pieces of sports writing if he catches McGwire. For the uninitiated, it may be meaningless, but a good writer can draw the philistine in anyway.

You are right, though, that the people are part of what makes SC so appealing. As Scott Kurtz wrote, games aren't funny - gamers are. But all the best entertainment writing (sports, music, theatre) is really about the people and the "art" (not that games are necessarily art, but you know what I mean).

"But I guarantee we'll see at least ten superlative pieces of sports writing if he catches McGwire. For the uninitiated, it may be meaningless, but a good writer can draw the philistine in anyway."

Yes! Great point!
However, this is expected among sports writers.
Also, Bonds catching up to McQwire has --meaning-- to more people (philistine and erudite), and in a more significant (statistical) way than anything analogous in gaming.

But the main factor is that Game Editors (with a few LOVELY, WONDERFUL, and APPRECIATED exceptions) don't want and, in fact, regularly cut (edit) out anything they feel would be over the heads of the masses.

In gaming it's felt that the audience can't or won't reach. That may be true, but I've always disagreed with it.

Anyway, notice that Shoot Club is on a self-hosted free site...

-Andrew

Many, many thanks to all of you for the comments RE: Shoot Club. I'm so used to working with very little feedback, so it's been immensely helpful to read your comments. I don't really have that clear an idea of what I'm doing when I do it, so you've all been great in terms of helping me sort out what works, why it works, what I should do next, etc.

If I could, I'd buy each of you a beer. Actually, I can and I think I will. It's just that I'll have to drink your beers for you...

-Tom

"Diablo II. The expansion just came out. Dude, you could be the druid and I'll be the assassin. I'm talking time flying, baby. There's no better way to piss away a week or so. Before you know it, you'll have forgotten about Lisa and you'll have a thirtieth level character. I'm telling you, man, computer games are God's apology to man for the whole woman thing. It's like He said, 'I know what I did didn't really work out like it should have, but here, have this to take your mind off it'. You know how Charlie says when he's not getting along with his wife, they have this agreement that he's allowed to just lock himself in the basement and play games for a while to blow off steam? It's like that."

ROGER FUCKING THAT

WHACK DIABLO IN ONE DAY OR BUST, BABY

--scharmers
--950 miles away from a screwed-up relationship