last night was the ion storm (austin) christmas gathering. round one was laser tag, which i bailed out on because, depending on who you listen to i am a) an anti-social bastard or b) i am to ‘fun’ as the Grinch is to Who-singing. whatever. actually i skipped the first part because i get up at 6am and get to work by 7…so by the time i get off in the eveningi am totally wiped out and need some battery recharge time.

anyway, about the dinner party, which i did attend:

all the people i work with were there and of course it was cool to see them in a more relaxed environment, where we did not have to fight it out over various techno-creative issues. warren was congenial, flitting about and doing a good job of making everyone feel like part of the company. romero, tom hall & (ion art director) jerry drove down from dallas to have dinner with us. people seemed relaxed and in the right spirit. (something i was not into prior to arrival–for some reason i was in a black mood and had it in my head that i was going to interrupt the party halfway through, standing up loudly and proposing a toast “to all the social retards and creative vampires in this industry…” fortunately, drinking a few glasses of merlot & chatting for a while took the edge off my misanthropic feelings. ho, ho, ho.

i did get to discuss rainbow 6’s excellent game-play dynamics and half-life’s overall extremely high quality with romero. he just finished half-life (without realizing there was an alternate fire mode on the weapons, which must have made it a tad more difficult). thief, rainbow 6 (co-op multiplayer) and half-life are some of the coolest 1st person pov games i’ve played in years.

special thanks to leesa grills for setting the christmas party up and making sure it was cool and smooth.

there’s a bunch more that has happened recently that i want to rant about, but i’ll save it and keep this one somewhat focused.