Deep Thoughts by Brendan Q. Ferguson

TelltaleGames

Hello, I'm Brendan Q. Ferguson. You may remember me from such blogs as Chronicles of the Absurd, The Sad Plight of the Adventure Game Bum, and Because It's There. Then again, you may not, as studies have repeatedly shown that the typical reader of this website is between 12 and 18 months old, so most of you weren't even born when those blogs were written.

I was shocked and horrified when someone suggested that I hadn't posted a blog in some time. That is an utter lie. I post anywhere from 50 to 60 blogs A DAY. I think censors must be removing the blogs from the site, that's the only thing I can figure. Down with censorship! Up with me writing anything I feel like, no matter how utterly without merit or grammatically awkward it is!

Okay, that's not really true. As much as I'd like to blame censorship, and as much as I just did, the truth is that I haven't been writing any blogs.

I've been undercover.

You see, I'm one of those game makers that believes that to truly understand the essence of a game character, you need to live his life. Like that time Brad Pitt had to play a lunatic in Twelve Monkeys, so to prepare for the role he actually went insane. Well that's what I did. I went insane. No, just kidding, I went undercover as... FREELANCE POLICE!

Perhaps you've heard of Sam & Max: Freelance Police? Well I am one of the few, the proud, the ugly, who have been called upon to serve their nation by making a new Sam & Max adventure. So I've been doing a little freelance policing of my own to get in the proper frame of mind. Plus, I wanted to be able to handcuff people and be praised for it.

Of course, I swore never to tell anyone of my undercover adventures, unless a million dollar book deal was involved. But I can tell you that on those long, lonely stakeouts, I had plenty of time for thinking. Thinking about games. Thinking about the very essence of the game. And I thought, "Hey, those babies reading the Telltale website might be interested in some of these massively profound thoughts."� (Yes, I'm a little boastful when thinking to myself, because hey, who's listening?)

Here, then, are my Deep Thoughts on Games:

I'm sick and tired of people saying games are "just for kids"�. Maybe if they tried playing one, they'd see that even adults love to jump through hoops like trained dogs.

People say there's too much violence in games. Maybe so, but if I had a dollar for every person I'd killed in a game, I'd convert them to rupees, because all the best stuff costs rupees.

Playing games is fun, but not playing them is fun too. Just not as fun.

Games should be more than mere entertainment. They should be a chance to discover ourselves, or, if that's not possible, you should at least be able to order some take-out or something.

I would love to play a game where you got to be the king of the world and you could rule however you want and you could eat all the macaroni and cheese you want because macaroni and cheese is so good, I'm going to have some right now.

The word 'games' doesn't really even capture what we're making here at Telltale Games. Maybe we should call them 'justice', because that would really make people think.

Games are important for mental health. Psychologists often talk of the need to play. They also talk about falling in love with their mothers, so maybe we should just ignore them for the time being.

A game is like an enchilada. You eat it and then you think, maybe I should've just gotten some nachos.

Well, I'm gonna take a break from all this navel-gazing to go work on Sam & Max. But wait, if I don't handle the navel-gazing, then who will? No one! Do you realize what this means?

I may have to hire someone to stare at my navel.

Wow, I really never thought I'd say that.