A couple years back, I wrote a “browser-based multiplayer role-playing game” called Nexus War. Don’t go looking for it on Wikipedia; the article was deleted (again) a couple weeks ago for being “non notable”.

(Fuck you for that, by the way. I play lots of “free to play” games from time to time to see what they do, and so many of them integrate gameplay elements that I fucking invented so fuck off with your entire “not notable” shit. The game was mentioned in fucking Playboy but whatever I guess people who don’t know dick about the subject at hand know more than me.)

Anyways.

Nexus War was fun for me to build. It started as a small hobbyist thing that my friends could play and that was cool. That was my only reason for doing it for a long, long time. Later, it got popular and it started requiring Real Cash Money to manage.

I never designed the game with the intent to make money and it showed. Any monetization principles were clearly bolted on after-the-fact.

After a time, the output for the game overran the input for the game and I had to kill it.

Those of you who have been in the situation where you had to murder your own children may understand the emotions I dealt with in this.

Given that I am a communist bastard at heart, playing the game was free. Everyone could play. You got to have three characters for free and that ended up to anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes a day that you could play. For free.

I really only ever wanted to break even.

If you wanted to play more than a half hour, you could buy “character slots” at a one-time cost of about five bucks per slot. That gave you an additional dude that you could have running around. But buying slots didn’t create any advantage for you: you still couldn’t work your characters in tandem, nor could you “slip time” to other guys. So a one-time drop of five bones gave you another 10 minutes a day for the life of the game.

Later, I added the ability to buy small tokens. These things were not game-affecting; they were the equivalent of “cool clothes”. 25 cents and you could have a rare type of clothing. That sort of thing. It was a credits system, where one US cent equalled 1 credit.

I also ran ads in sidebars and such not. Mostly text ads, but some were images.

At it’s peak, Nexus War had 40,000 unique players at a time (80,000 over its life). Games like this have a rotational user-base. The lifecycle of a player is about 3 to 4 months, after which they move on. I guess it was costing me about 700 dollars a month to run on multiple servers, before the entire “cloud computing” thing happened. I was coding this in my spare time.

There was exactly one month that I made a profit and two months that I broke even. The ad revenue was key, actually. The introduction of ads pushed me into the green for the initial 30 days I had them turned on.

You cannot imagine my emotions at this. I could do this! I could continue running the game and not compromise any of my principles. Holy smokes, I was in the green.

Then someone made a post on the game forums about how to best disable the ads using various adblocker techniques.

I briefly thought about killing the post. I could do it. No one would really complain. But I would be censoring someone and I couldn’t abide that. They weren’t being racist or homophobic or any other kind of hateful. I had to let it go. So I did.

And the advertising revenue halved itself in the next month. And yet again in the month after, with no appreciable loss in players.

At that point I was deep in the red. It continued to get worse, until my ad revenue checks were along the lines of “ten dollars”. The playerbase hadn’t really decreased, either.

I ran the game at a heavy loss for another eight months before I had to close it. I just couldn’t do it anymore.

So.

Every time I visit a site and it throws an advertisement at me? I know what that means. And I don’t block it. I reckon there’s somebody on the other side of that http request who is hoping that my visit will earn him 1/100th of a penny.

Remember that when you decide that you love something and want to kill its ability to make money.

First, access to the “outer” planes was cut off. Slowly but surely, other planes were locked away, until only the Purgatorio (a giant void filled with small “islands” of land) and Valhalla (the “earth” zone) remained. Then, elements of the void started eating up Valhalla. . .

Eventually, the main island in Valhalla was “moved” to the Purgatorio and Valhalla itself was shut off. At that point, the “memories” began appearing: shards and snippets of poetry, broadcast as global messages. These have served as my “bookend” for the game, and serve to connect one of its central themes back to itself.

Here is a log of the “memory shards”, including my final speech to the players. They were broadcast in sets, over multiple days.

Set One:

There is a sudden flash of light from all around that blinds you momentarily. As your eyes return to normal, you momentarily see several unknown rune shapes.

Visions and memories, not your own, flood your mind.

There are the eyes of a woman, auburn-haired. Laughing. Her name is Molly.

Here are the cracked and peeling houses of the neighborhood where the you-who-is-not-you grew up.

Two small boys are chasing a dog through a field. One of them has a bb gun, and will shoot it in the side. The wound will get infected, and the dog will die.

The blonde woman buys ice cream for her son. His name is Clay. He has a liver disease. The sun is setting.

The sun rises behind the tower, spreading golden light across a field of yellow grass dotted with sleeping horses. The king is dead; you have failed.

You will hear the racous cries of the fishermen selling their wares one day; the whack-whack snicker-snack of knives gutting tuna and salmon.

The wails of the slaves, so viscous, a pathetic, liquid sound. Mayhaps you’ll eat one soon.

You should speak to her. That girl. You know the one I mean. Tell her soon; the world is ending.

The symbols fade and the world rightens.

Set Two:

The true name of the Maker lies hidden between the muted rhythm of a heart beat and the liquid eeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhh-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah of the lungs. Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum.

The dentist grimaces as she sands bits of dried epoxy from a patient’s tooth. The teeth are stained – too much tobacco and coffee – and the filling doesn’t match.

A handful of dirt splatters on the coffin. The mortuary gave out cards; one side has a picture of a saint, and the other side has the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. You fold it without thinking and put it in your pocket.

His name is Richard. You can smell his lust; it’s a oily tang in the city air. He intends to sleep with the blonde stripper. He will fail. You order another drink and wait, the gun heavy in your pocket.

The prisoners sing spirituals as they work along the road. The pounding of rocks punctuates each verse. The noon sun gleams dully off the black steel of the guard’s shotgun.

A young brunette woman leans out of an apartment building to watch a wedding processional in the street below. This moment is captured on a greasy stream of film. It will be one of the few photographs of her. She will die a few years later, the victim of a genocidal pogrom.

Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum.

Your grandfather is teaching you how to twirl a gun. His enormous hands effortless spin an antique Colt while yours struggle with a cheap, tin pop-gun. You are four years old. He will soon die, and this will be your only memory of him.

Gently the child bobs in the water, bouyed by an air-filled vest. She smiles and gurgles as she learns to swim.

Every time a baby is born in the ward, the nurse presses a little button, and strains of Brahms are heard through the floor.

The tangy smell of cordite fills the air as the deranged assassin finds his mark. The musician dies, bleeding into the gutter. His widow cries over his body.

He is furiously stabbing at the tree where he had carved their initials together inside of a heart. Tears blind him, and he cuts his hand.

The cat is in pain. It does not know how to communicate this to its mother. Instead it sets down, glassy-eyed, barely moving.

Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum.

Several thousand miles away, an unsung poet dies.

Set Three:

Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum.

She touches his hand, accidentally, electrically. “I’m sorry,” she says, but doesn’t mean it, not really, he is so handsome. Her name is Hannah; his Francis. One day, in the future, she will bear him a son who will become a president.

You sit at the edge of the lake. Your fishing rod is a simple thing: just a stick with a nylon line tied the end and a bright orange bobber above the hook. Father has a *real* fishing rod, with a reel and everything. There is a metal bucket filled with small trout; he caught them. You will never be happier than this moment, being a son in the moment of your father, who loves you more than you can know. Eventually, you will drift apart, and then together.

He said, “We shouldn’t tell anyone about this,” as he touched her. She sighs.

I have to let you go. You are no longer mine.

Her name is Tatinana. She likes playing with her doll. Her father is important somehow but she doesn’t quite understand. Someday, in the future, she will help to hold down a soldier while a surgeon violently removes a bullet from his chest.

Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum.

She doesn’t understand. The boy pushed her in the sand; she just wanted to go down the slide. Mother wipes away tears with a cheap tissue. There will be ice cream.

OHGOD OHGOD OHGOD DON’T FUCKING DIE ON ME YOU BITCH. ohfuck you’re overdosing. don’tyoufuckingdieplease. Here, take some speed; maybe that will make you well until the ambulance comes.

Things have never been so swell.

The knives! The knives! Once, twice, five, twelve, twenty, they stab and stab. The pain, the pain – my cloak, my hands, the floor, they are painted crimson, this cannot be my blood. That cannot be my son…

I watch the fireflies swarm in the heat. They twist and dance among the eddies of the late summer night; I think of the girl I am crushing on and wish she could experience this with me.

Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum.

He is a gentle boy. He loves creatures; he loves the world. Nervously, he tells his parents that he thinks he is gay. “You’re no son of mine,” father says. “I didn’t raise no faggot.” There are bruises the next day.

I read your fucking book. Did you hear me? I READ YOUR FUCKING BOOK.

The blood washes down, mixing with the dirt, collecting in the cracks of the soles of my shoes. “I’ll have to scrub that out”, I think.

She lifts the bowl of soup to her mouth. She thinks of a man she used to love. He boarded a ship one day and she never saw him again.

Thrum thrum thrum.

Thrum thrum thrum.

Set Four:

Thrum, thrum, thrum.

That girl, the one with dishwater hair, the one over there…

“Faggot! Faggot!” They scream this at me as they beat me but I’m not gay! I’m not! Stop! The gravel sticks into my skin, my skull lifted and pounded into it. Jesus, jesus, jesus, STOP.

Here sings the sun. It shines yellow upon the trees. They are golden in its light. I step across a broken branch and take her hand. Her touch is electric, like a jellyfish.

There is a burbling sound as he tries to breathe. Bubbles of blood collect around his mouth; ohgod it hurtssobad. The wrecked motorcycle lies five meters ahead; the car drives off.

“I want a divorce,” she says. “I never really thought we had a future together.” There is a flash of patience, then a flash of rage. There is a crunching sound as you punch the wall, bloodying your knuckles. “THEN WHY DID YOU FUCKING AGREE TO MARRY ME IN THE FIRST PLACE?” you scream. The wall will bear the mark for two years before it is cleaned.

Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum.

The monitors sing. deet. deet. deet. deet. deeeeeeeeeeeet. My friend dies from cancer, unknown, alone, in a hospital in New York. His parents are informed of his illness when they are called upon to claim his corpse.

“I do this for her,” he thinks. “She’ll love me when it’s done.” Finger pulses on the trigger: once, twice, thrice, four times. Secret Service tackles him, but the hornets find their marks.

As he lays to rest, her cat settles on his chest and purrs. He is accepted. Once he sleeps, she will slink away, her purpose complete.

“I’ve seen you around,” she says. “You’re noticable. ‘Hey, whose that rockin’ dude, there?'” Stunned, no words, the event passes without notice.

This is your world. This is your life.

Live in it now or be a spectator forever.

Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum.

Set Five:

Thrum thrum thrum. Thrum thrum thrum.

It is July 2nd, 1961. The voices say, “take the pills! Take the pills!” Do it, papa. Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. Best of all he loved the fall / The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods / Leaves floating on the trout stream / And above the hills / The high blue windless skies / Now he will be a part of them forever

Christ, she is so beautiful, and I’ll never. . . I’ll never be able to talk to her again.

“I want you to listen to this,” she says. “I think you’ll like it.” It’s a trip-hop drum-and-bass cd. He listens attentively because she is hot and he likes her. He tries not to think that the lyrics mean anything.

A small voice in the back of my skull says “no, stop” but I keep hitting him. He’s down, done, drawn – I keep punching. Wet meat, broken bone, my knuckles. Someone grabs my shoulders, pulls me off him; he coughs blood. Someone says, “Cops are comin'”. I wake up the next day with damaged hands and no memory of who he was.

“You know, I thought you were going to ask me if we could get another cat,” she says. He had asked her to marry him. She said ‘yes’.

Thrum, thrum, thrum.

“I didn’t know it was like this,” he said. “I had no idea, I was so scared.” He kisses the other boy. “I’m so scared; I don’t know what to do, everyone will hate me.”

Click, click, click. The bullets go click, click, click as they are slotted into the magazine. Click, click, click. The Ambassador Hotel. He’ll be there.

She coughs for the last time. A small amount of blood seeps into the tube. Her family sighs, collectively.

“You know. . . You know that I love you, right?”

Thrum, thrum, thrum.

Set Five:

Thrum, thrum, thrum.

Thrum, thrum, thrum.

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to weep and a time to laugh;A time to mourn and a time to dance.
A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to lose and a time to seek; A time to rend and a time to sew;
A time to keep silent and a time to speak; A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.

Thrum, thrum, thrum.

Thrum, thrum, thrum.

My favorite quote is by an American author, John Steinbeck. “A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?”

Do your best to do good things because the time when you must ask those questions comes all too soon.

I have enjoyed our time together.

Thank you.

About ten years ago, I adopted a cat. His name was Simon. He was a good cat.

As I write this, several hundred of you are trying to log in and play this stupid little game that I made on a lark, as a hobby, because I had fallen in love with some friendships that I made once upon a time.

Many of you do not know the history of nexuswar or why it was made in the first place. It may help to explain that now.

Many, many moons ago, I made friends with some people in a game called “Urban Dead”. You may have heard of it. It’s a great game. I loved playing it. I made a lot of friends there, in its metagame. I was one of the founders of the Ridleybank Resistance Front, if you can believe that, and was the founder of the Militant Order of Barhah (the MOB) in that game.

We (my friends and I) loved Urban Dead a great deal, but there came a time in late 2006 when we thought the game was going to die. And we did not want our community – this group of people we had come to care for – to go with it. So I set out to create a game that would replace it should it ever fall, somewhere we could go, and own.

And after two weeks of coding, I had what was known as the very first “alpha” build of Nexus War. It was so much like Urban Dead that I am almost ashamed (but not really, because Kevan is a hell of a guy). The first players came up as alpha testers, and they played the fuck out of the game. They found bugs, they found gameplay issues, they pissed me off.

Did you know that, in early versions of the game, you could actually loot corpses? If you killed someone and they had a Hellblade, you could take it. And then, if you dropped it, it was gone forever.

In the beginning, there was only Northcamp. Later, the rest of Valhalla opened, and during the Beta phase, the first level of the outer planes.

In Alpha, Kibbs was the most brutal player, ever. Everyone feared him. I remember hours of time I spent working to balance the hiding rules just to counter-act his guile and will.

I remember when wcil slaughtered everyone in the hospital with a Death Cloud, prompting me to significantly downgrade its power. I remember the “Zerg Prison”. I remember Stroth creating the first faction, “Oblivion Squadron”. I remember my boss (at the time) figuring out teleport bugs. Petro dropping his fists. Mr. Shooty’s Manifesto.

I loved writing every line of this game. I loved writing every snippet of lore. I loved writing every stupid little routine and in-joke. I loved creating cities and history.

And I loved creating a community for people.

I didn’t start out with the plan to “make money”. That was never a motive; I wanted to make a clubhouse for my friends. And somehow it grew larger: larger than a treehouse, larger than a schoolhouse, and larger than me.

Anyone who understands business or game design will see immediately that there was never a plan for “making money”. That I was an idiot for not doing so.

Maybe that was a mistake? I don’t know. I don’t think so. It could be argued that if I had a business plan in mind from the get go we wouldn’t be here today. There might be money to keep the lights on.

But I’m okay with that, because there’s something wonderful that happened along the way, and because I didn’t require money:

You.

Yes, you.

The community.

Sure, sure. You guys bitch and moan. At each other, at me, at the game, at the rules, at factions, at the forums, at zergers. But despite all that – despite all that drama – you made friends. You formed coalitions. Groups. Factions. Friendships. Around the entire world.

And so I succeeded in my original goal, and for that, I thank you, the players.

I cannot describe to you how much it pains me to write this. For real, and serious. This has been a big part of my life for three and a half years. I’m trying not to be weepy but that’s unavoidable; I, personally, am an emotional creature, so there we go.

About a ten years ago, I adopted a cat. His name was Simon.

He was a teeny-tiny tuxedo-colored cat when I found him. He had health problems, but I didn’t care. I nursed him up; he became super friendly. We called him “The Marshmallow Cat” because he was so soft around people. He developed strong friendships with everyone, especially my friend Kristen.

About nine months ago, he started losing weight. Three months ago, he was skin and bones, and the veterinarian was not optomistic.

Two months ago, I put him to sleep. He had stopped eating entirely; the end diagnosis was a stomach cancer. He died very peacefully. I was there at the end, and so was his friend, Kristen. We loved him; he loved us.

He was a good cat. He lived a good life, surrounded by people who loved him.

I remember saying to her, to Kristen, “This is the price we pay. The pain at the end, it is what we pay for the lifetime of love.”

This is the end, my friends. The pain, the price? That’s mine. I knew this going into it.

I don’t know if you love this but I love what has happened. And I hope – with every cell in my body – that I have enabled you to make friends with others. I hope that you have made friendships – strong ones. I hope that, in the months and years to come that you will continue to talk to these people. I hope that you will remember this fondly.

This entire thing would not have been possible without the efforts of some extraordinary individuals from around the entire world. I would like to thank them personally, and will compile a list of them so that you can thank them as well.

But really, the thanks go to you, the players. For everything.