Old Man Murray
Encyclopedia
Old Man Murray was a UGO Networks computer game commentary and reviews site, known for its highly irreverent and satiric tone. It was written and edited by Chet Faliszek
and Erik Wolpaw
. Old Man Murray was critical of games that received strong reviews elsewhere, most notably the King's Quest
series. Common targets of OMM news updates included John Romero
and American McGee
. Old Man Murray was a significant early influence in both the world of game development and Internet
comedy, and is often considered to have "helped birth online games journalism".
cited the opinion of Old Man Murray as a factor when designing the popular and iconoclastic Half-Life. Old Man Murray often took aim at the conventions embedded within game genres.
Two of the site's attacks on stale game conventions have received particular attention from game developers and journalists. One was the April 2000 "Crate Review System" essay, which facetiously introduced the "Start to Crate" metric as an "objective" measure of the overall quality of a videogame. The Start to Crate was the number of seconds from the start of a game until the player first encountered a crate or barrel. By 2000 crates and barrels were a commonplace of video game map design
; according to the essay, the first crate "represents the point where the developers ran out of ideas" This essay has had a significant impact in future game design, in part for pointing out the "a good gauge to determine just how creative your game is", and driving designers to a point where games are "at the stage where warehouse based level design is not de rigueur". Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve Corporation
mentions that there was such a worry about the crate cliché that eventually the team gave up and made a crate one of the first things the player sees and manipulates, figuring that this "was the Old Man Murray equivalent of throwing yourself to the mercy of the court". LightBox Interactive
's Matthew Breit considered the "Start to Crate Time" system the "first actual critical look at a level design trend", making him self-conscious of the off-handed use of crates in his level designs to fill an otherwise empty room. Ernest Adams of Gamasutra
cites Old Man Murray as being the original source of the sixth condition of "twinkie denial" named in the article: "I can't claim crates without pallets as an original Twinkie Denial Condition because the Old Man Murray guys thought of it first...". A decade after the original "Start to Crate" article, it can still be found as a tongue-in-cheek metric for game quality.
Another essay, "The Death of Adventure Games", mocked the elaborate and contrived puzzles that adventure game
s of the time used to confound the player. Wolpaw uses an example from Gabriel Knight 3
: to rent a motorcycle, the game requires the player to make his character fashion a false moustache using maple syrup, sticky tape and cat hair, then wear it to disguise himself as another man, one who in fact has no moustache - a far-fetched solution. The essay and its examples have been highlighted in analyses of the failing adventure game genre in the early 2000s.
Other features of Old Man Murray included web browser games such as Alien vs. Child Predator and Virtua Seaman. and serious interviews with leading game developers, The Old Man Murray forums were a hotbed of discussion on games and other topics. When updates began to slow on the main website the forums remained active. When Faliszek removed the forums, many of the regular posters migrated to a new site called Caltrops.
The Old Man Murray website is still up , but for archival purposes only; the site is no longer updated. Faliszek continued to run Portal of Evil and its affiliate website system until February 6, 2011.
, the CEO of Valve Corporation
, likened the site to "the Velvet Underground of post-print journalism". Bryan Lee O’Malley, creator of the Scott Pilgrim
series, attributes his inspiration and success of the series on the Old Man Murray's comedic treatment of video games. Both Mike Wilson of Gathering of Developers
and Roman Ribaric of Croteam
believed that without the strong interest from Old Man Murray toward the Serious Sam
demo, ultimately leading to the founding of Croteam, the game "would likely have died in the hands of whatever internal team the property was handed to". Popular video game critic and satirist Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw cites Old Man Murray as a major influence for his style of highly nitpicky writing and humor and have consistently praised games that Faliszek and Wolpaw worked on.
Eric Church of Electronic Arts
also called these criticisms "satire at its most effective", as it spurred "serious thought and discussions about the assumptions of game design". Dean O'Donnell, a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
's Interactive Media and Game Design school, includes the "Death of Adventure Games" as required reading in the student courses, considered it both a strong example of game journalism and game design considerations. Kieron Gillen
, former deputy editor at PC Gamer
, praised Old Man Murray for taking advantage of the then-nascent Internet culture in their writing and presentation, and attested that "they had a genuine impact in how people thought about games". It has also been cited as being "among the most respected commentators and journalists."
In March 2006, Wolpaw won a Game Developers Choice Award for Best Writing for co-writing Psychonauts
, an award he shared with Double Fine studio head and Psychonauts co-writer Tim Schafer
. Schafer referenced Wolpaw's work with Old Man Murray on the official Double Fine blog, as a way of drumming up attention for the game.
Faliszek and Wolpaw were hired as writers for video game developer Valve
in 2005. Faliszek has spoken numerous times to his work as a designer for Left4Dead, while Wolpaw has done the same for both Portal and Portal 2
The connection between the quality of writing in these games and the authors' previous work on Old Man Murray has also been noted by various reviewers. In May 2009, Wolpaw introduced Everyday Shooter
creator Jonathan Mak to the concept of internal team conflicts in video game development.
Chet Faliszek
Chet Faliszek is an American videogame writer and one of the main writers for the Valve Corporation, along with Erik Wolpaw and Marc Laidlaw. He has worked together with his co-writers in order to create the storylines for the Half-Life and Portal series, along with having personally written the...
and Erik Wolpaw
Erik Wolpaw
Erik Wolpaw is an American videogame writer. Erik along with Chet Faliszek were the two writers behind the now-defunct Old Man Murray video game commentary web site. As of 2011, he works for Valve Software in Seattle...
. Old Man Murray was critical of games that received strong reviews elsewhere, most notably the King's Quest
King's Quest
King's Quest is an adventure game series created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installment, the series was primarily responsible for building the reputation...
series. Common targets of OMM news updates included John Romero
John Romero
Alfonso John Romero is a game designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry. He is best known as a co-founder of id Software and was a designer for many of their games, including Wolfenstein 3D, Dangerous Dave, Doom and Quake...
and American McGee
American McGee
-Career:McGee began his career at id Software, working on level design, music production, sound effects development, and programming in such games as Doom, Doom II, Quake, and Quake II. In 1998, he moved to Electronic Arts, where he worked as creative director on several projects, including...
. Old Man Murray was a significant early influence in both the world of game development and Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
comedy, and is often considered to have "helped birth online games journalism".
Themes
A major theme in Old Man Murray criticism was the accusation that many new games failed to add any original ideas to the medium. Gabe NewellGabe Newell
Gabe Logan Newell is the co-founder and managing director of video game development and online distribution company Valve Corporation.-Work:...
cited the opinion of Old Man Murray as a factor when designing the popular and iconoclastic Half-Life. Old Man Murray often took aim at the conventions embedded within game genres.
Two of the site's attacks on stale game conventions have received particular attention from game developers and journalists. One was the April 2000 "Crate Review System" essay, which facetiously introduced the "Start to Crate" metric as an "objective" measure of the overall quality of a videogame. The Start to Crate was the number of seconds from the start of a game until the player first encountered a crate or barrel. By 2000 crates and barrels were a commonplace of video game map design
Level design
Level design, environment design or game mapping is a discipline of game development involving creation of video game levels—locales, stages, or missions. This is commonly done using level editor, a game development software designed for building levels; however some games feature built-in...
; according to the essay, the first crate "represents the point where the developers ran out of ideas" This essay has had a significant impact in future game design, in part for pointing out the "a good gauge to determine just how creative your game is", and driving designers to a point where games are "at the stage where warehouse based level design is not de rigueur". Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
mentions that there was such a worry about the crate cliché that eventually the team gave up and made a crate one of the first things the player sees and manipulates, figuring that this "was the Old Man Murray equivalent of throwing yourself to the mercy of the court". LightBox Interactive
LightBox Interactive
LightBox Interactive is an American video game developer founded in January 2009 by former team members of Incognito Entertainment, developer of titles such as Warhawk, Twisted Metal: Black, and War of the Monsters....
's Matthew Breit considered the "Start to Crate Time" system the "first actual critical look at a level design trend", making him self-conscious of the off-handed use of crates in his level designs to fill an otherwise empty room. Ernest Adams of Gamasutra
Gamasutra
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
cites Old Man Murray as being the original source of the sixth condition of "twinkie denial" named in the article: "I can't claim crates without pallets as an original Twinkie Denial Condition because the Old Man Murray guys thought of it first...". A decade after the original "Start to Crate" article, it can still be found as a tongue-in-cheek metric for game quality.
Another essay, "The Death of Adventure Games", mocked the elaborate and contrived puzzles that adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
s of the time used to confound the player. Wolpaw uses an example from Gabriel Knight 3
Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned
Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned is the third and final game in the Gabriel Knight series of adventure games by Sierra Online. The game was designed by Jane Jensen, Gabriel Knight's creator. In a departure from the previous two entries, the score is composed by David...
: to rent a motorcycle, the game requires the player to make his character fashion a false moustache using maple syrup, sticky tape and cat hair, then wear it to disguise himself as another man, one who in fact has no moustache - a far-fetched solution. The essay and its examples have been highlighted in analyses of the failing adventure game genre in the early 2000s.
Other features of Old Man Murray included web browser games such as Alien vs. Child Predator and Virtua Seaman. and serious interviews with leading game developers, The Old Man Murray forums were a hotbed of discussion on games and other topics. When updates began to slow on the main website the forums remained active. When Faliszek removed the forums, many of the regular posters migrated to a new site called Caltrops.
The Old Man Murray website is still up , but for archival purposes only; the site is no longer updated. Faliszek continued to run Portal of Evil and its affiliate website system until February 6, 2011.
Legacy
Though the site has been defunct for several years, many leaders in the video game industry consider the site fundamental to both game design and video game journalism today. Gabe NewellGabe Newell
Gabe Logan Newell is the co-founder and managing director of video game development and online distribution company Valve Corporation.-Work:...
, the CEO of Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
, likened the site to "the Velvet Underground of post-print journalism". Bryan Lee O’Malley, creator of the Scott Pilgrim
Scott Pilgrim
Scott Pilgrim is a graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley. It consists of six digest size black-and-white volumes, released between August 2004 and July 2010, by Portland-based independent comic book publisher Oni Press. It was later republished by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins...
series, attributes his inspiration and success of the series on the Old Man Murray's comedic treatment of video games. Both Mike Wilson of Gathering of Developers
Gathering of Developers
Gathering of Developers was a Texas-based PC and video games publishing company, founded in January 1998 with the mission to bridge the gap between publishers and independent game developers, allowing independent developers creative control over their projects, ownership of their IP, and...
and Roman Ribaric of Croteam
Croteam
Croteam is a video game developer established in Zagreb, Croatia in 1993, initially as a "garage games" company. They only had six employees and four contractors for the development of Serious Sam in 2001.-Company history:...
believed that without the strong interest from Old Man Murray toward the Serious Sam
Serious Sam
Serious Sam is the first game in the Serious Sam series. It is a first-person shooter created by the Croatian development house Croteam...
demo, ultimately leading to the founding of Croteam, the game "would likely have died in the hands of whatever internal team the property was handed to". Popular video game critic and satirist Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw cites Old Man Murray as a major influence for his style of highly nitpicky writing and humor and have consistently praised games that Faliszek and Wolpaw worked on.
Eric Church of Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
also called these criticisms "satire at its most effective", as it spurred "serious thought and discussions about the assumptions of game design". Dean O'Donnell, a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Worcester Polytechnic Institute is a private university located in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the United States.Founded in 1865 in Worcester, WPI was one of the United States' first engineering and technology universities...
's Interactive Media and Game Design school, includes the "Death of Adventure Games" as required reading in the student courses, considered it both a strong example of game journalism and game design considerations. Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen is a British computer games and music journalist, as well as a comic book author. Gillen has worked for many years as a video game journalist and has, more recently, worked on various comics. He is perhaps best known for his creator-owned comic Phonogram, created with artist Jamie...
, former deputy editor at PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
, praised Old Man Murray for taking advantage of the then-nascent Internet culture in their writing and presentation, and attested that "they had a genuine impact in how people thought about games". It has also been cited as being "among the most respected commentators and journalists."
In March 2006, Wolpaw won a Game Developers Choice Award for Best Writing for co-writing Psychonauts
Psychonauts
Psychonauts is a platform video game created by Tim Schafer, developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Majesco. The game was released on April 19, 2005, for the Xbox, April 26 for Microsoft Windows and June 21 for PlayStation 2. It was released on Steam on Oct 11, 2006, as an "Xbox...
, an award he shared with Double Fine studio head and Psychonauts co-writer Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer
Timothy Schafer is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in January 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts...
. Schafer referenced Wolpaw's work with Old Man Murray on the official Double Fine blog, as a way of drumming up attention for the game.
Faliszek and Wolpaw were hired as writers for video game developer Valve
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
in 2005. Faliszek has spoken numerous times to his work as a designer for Left4Dead, while Wolpaw has done the same for both Portal and Portal 2
Portal 2
Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. The sequel to the 2007 video game Portal, it was announced on March 5, 2010, following a week-long alternate reality game based on new patches to the original game...
The connection between the quality of writing in these games and the authors' previous work on Old Man Murray has also been noted by various reviewers. In May 2009, Wolpaw introduced Everyday Shooter
Everyday Shooter
Everyday Shooter is an independent video game developed by Canadian programmer and artist Jonathan Mak. It was released on the U.S...
creator Jonathan Mak to the concept of internal team conflicts in video game development.
Appearances in other media
- On the Quake 3: Arena map Q3DM19, the OMM logo is on the back of the antenna lift.
- The Old Man Murray website appears on all the monitors within the game Postal 2Postal 2Postal 2 is a first-person shooter video game by Running with Scissors, and it is the sequel to the 1997 game Postal. Both are intentionally highly controversial due to high levels of violence and stereotyping. Unlike its predecessor, Postal 2 is played completely in first-person based on the...
. - Old Man Murray is thanked in the first level of Serious SamSerious SamSerious Sam is the first game in the Serious Sam series. It is a first-person shooter created by the Croatian development house Croteam...
by avatars of the game's programmers. Old Man Murray had been one of the game's few media champions during its development cycle, thanks to its uncomplicated, Smash TVSmash TVSmash TV is a 1990 arcade game created by Eugene Jarvis and Mark Turmell for Williams. Home versions were developed for various platforms and most were published by Acclaim Entertainment.-Description:...
-esque gameplay. - Delarion Yar, of the XYZZY Award-winning graphical text adventure Fallacy of Dawn is depicted throughout wearing an Old Man Murray shirt.
- In the game Oni, the first crate seen in the Warehouse bears a label saying "-OMM- TTC 1.1", a reference to the site's tongue-in-cheek Crate Review System.
- Old Man Murray is referenced on multiple occasions by various authors on the humour web site Something AwfulSomething AwfulSomething Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website housing a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so...
, with which it shares some aspects of its humour. Among the frequent references is the quote "If anything this has been the worst year for gaming journalism since Old Man Murray stopped updating roughly three weeks after they started the site."