Nukes in Moscow

In case you missed the picture, it's nothing for the Russians to be alarmed about, really...

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A score ago (that's about 20 years the way they taught me) - I was beginning what is arguably the misuse of some of the best years of my life. I didn't really come out the other side of high school a "normal" person. My suicidal ideations had kicked in in the 7th grade, and I had graduated in 1995. Most of my friends had joined the military. I nearly did as well. I had tested well and was going to go into the Navy in what we referred to as the "Nuke" program - which meant toiling around underwater with a bunch of other fellas on a nuclear powered submarines. 

An overriding fear of my childhood asthma coming back to wreck me during the gas-mask portion of basic training ended up with me not enlisting by confessing the afore mentioned ideations, and playing them up enough to get the recruiters to back off (no easy task). The commitment of 4 years was too much for me as well. With my consistency the resistance to commitment is a level of honesty with myself and others. Never really know what my future-self is going to want or do. 

As it went, the commitment of a student loan I might not be able to pay back convinced me to take a year off after high school. Started out in a dishpit, moved to waiting tables, ended up stocking Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. to keep my bills paid. I eventually went to college for computer science and did real common-sense things, like use my Pell grant to building a gaming computer, and use unbankruptable student loan money to make bankruptable credit card payments.

Throughout all that, I was also flying SpaceShips. It was the first Massively Multiplayer Online game - at least that had a persistent universe, that I had discovered. 

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There's an image of that persistent universe. That was taken in December of 2011. That seems to be the last time I really flew my spaceship, until recently. Recently though - the persistence of the universe - even after all these years. Well, persistence is sort of a stretch, but only sort of.

Spanning such a broad swath of time, the story that brings us to today is quite an epic one. A group of friends in Colorado create a galaxy - and, like the witnesses that keep steem alive, for years they kept the server running. Not only was it the first persistent universe massive multiplayer game I'd encountered, it was also my first open beta. Since it was a garage band development studio, it gave me my addiction to Open Betas I've never shaken. The notion that the developers might actually hear you. Sort of the way a representative government is supposed to work, but a small enough community that if you can communicate well enough - you can be heard.

Like other garage bands, they signed with a label. 3DO in this case, makers of hit-games such as... Army Men? I can't recall precisely if 3DO went south before the game launched, or shortly thereafter. From this perspective it seems as though 3DO was going south and wanted to jump in on MMOs and didn't quite make it. They brought in game community team, went by *Themis* to manage us, the players. Citizens of this little galaxy. Almost worked my way in with them, and might have ended up in the gaming industry. Bastards tested me though - the community was in an uproar about this, or that, and they gave me enough information to calm it down. Keeping that information on lockdown was the test. I was still cared too much about the community, and fucked that up. 

After the launch/crash of 3DO - as I recall things - most of the developers got in on the Lego contract the company landed. I'm hoping this turns into a post series, so hopefully I can highlight some of that travesty. The important take away is that the company got the contract to do the Lego MMO - and somehow didn't come out with Minecraft. 

Over in the TRI galaxy, a former pilot got promoted to keeping the thing alive. Horrible in that there was only one guy working on it, while the rest were banging away on [JumpGate Evolution](

). This made the hooks sink in me further, though, as the one guy trying to keep the galaxy alive actually *did* listen to the pilots. He came from us, was one of us.

As you've probably never played JumpGate Evolution, you may guess that the corporate world drama struck again. Before it was released, the 'production company' it was being developed under (gazillion?) folded. Two for two. Eventually that meant the one guy they had left working on it couldn't work on it any more. It was, effectively, dead.

Yet, here it is [today](http://jumpgate-tri.org/):

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... it's in Moscow. I'll tell you more tomorrow. Right now, since it's the birthday of a character these Quantar bastards assassinated... I'm going to launch in my Barracuda Bomber, and throw some nukes at their failed targeting computer custom producer. 

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