Contest Runner Up

John Wick has an ego the size of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which I have never seen but have heard is really really large. He now works full-time at my company, Totally Games (creators of X-Wing Alliance and the soon to be released Star Trek: Bridge Commander – www.bridgcommander.com) and I have to say that I’m sick of him strutting around the hallways.

"I’m John Wick," he says. "I changed the face of the RPG market. I can create five storylines in one day. I won thirty Origins Awards. I have my own publishing company. I’m married to a beautiful, outgoing, talented woman; when was the last time you had a date." Lets face it, he’s a prick.

Not that I’m arguing he isn’t prolific. I read his stuff, but it’s all crap. I mean, can he create a game WITHOUT a number in the title? Seventh Sea. Legend of the Five Rings. It’s pretty damned redundant. And everyone knows he stole the concept of Legend of the Five Rings from the movie Warriors of Virtue. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, I’m one of them, it’s about a kid who can’t play football because of a disability and ends up in a world with five kangaroo people who represent the five virtues of the Tao.

Isn’t that the dumbest thing you ever heard? I mean, who wants to play a Taoist kangaroo? And why are there so many bad movies with kangaroo people, like Tank Girl? And why is Tao pronounced "Dao?" And why is John Wick (rhymes with a certain male body part) adding to this? Doesn’t he have any sense of pride? Doesn’t he see what he’s doing to the youth of America?

"Oh yeah," John is fond of mentioning, "Orkworld is being translated into four different languages and they’re giving me money to do it." So, not only is he screwing up the youth of America he’s trying to push our twisted values on the youth of other countries.

So, John comes in to work with a huge box of Orkworld games one day. I notice that someone wrote on the side of the box in magic marker "John, nobody wants these games, they suck. Peddle your racist garbage elsewhere." He sends an email out to the whole company that says he’s brought the games in to sell us at a discount. I feel bad for the guy since he seems to be having trouble getting rid of these things and I offer to buy one. Twenty dollars. He has the GALL to charge me TWENTY DOLLARS for the game. But I just smile and ask him to autograph it. I figure that, since he’s such a failure at work and in his own business that he would get a boost out of being asked for an autograph.

Boy, was that a mistake.

He wrote, and I swear to God and all that I find holy I am not making this up, the following in my book:

Matthew,

You are a God damned Jew and I hate you. You and your kind will burn in Hell for an eternity for killing my savior. I hate your shylock ways. Go lend your dirty money somewhere else. By the way, I’m married to a beautiful, talented, outgoing woman and when was the last time you had a date?

Your enemy for all time,

John Wick

So I get the book home and I start reading it. It’s not that I particularly wanted to read it, but I had placed it in the bathroom and felt like reading something while I was there. I put it in the bathroom because the pages were really big and I figured I could use them if I ran out of paper. Silly me for putting something that bad within reach to read.

John begins his book with the following acknowledgements:

• My beautiful and outgoing wife.
• Hitler, who didn’t go far enough.
• Gary Gygax, the greatest mind in gaming history.
• And the Origin Awards voting staff who are beautiful, smart, and the most spiritual people I have ever met in my miserable existence.

Notice not ONE SINGLE reference to J.R.R. Tolkein. Tolkein INVENTED orcs. John blatantly rips it off from him and doesn’t even bother to mention him. “Oh,” John Wick thinks, “I’ll just change the last letter of Orc to a K and nobody will realize that I stole all of Tolkein’s ideas.” It’s like all of those morons who spell magic with a K and think they can copyright it. Morons. Idiots. John Wick Groupies.

But I digress.

The first chapter of the game is a story about a human who hates orks. Within three pages of hating orks he is already an ork warrior and having an affair with one of them. Three pages! In three pages, he goes from saying that orks are mindless creatures who smell bad to having a small half-ork child with some ork chick. That’s just bad writing. It’s also a complete rip off of the half-ork race from Dungeons and Dragons, a far superior product from a REAL game company.

I had some more time in the bathroom (Indian food does it to me every time) so I read on. The next chapter is about these witches that kill children and eat them. There is a long list about how they kill the children and what they do with their parts to make spells. Let me tell you, it’s hard to read about ritually killing a small child and using his bladder as a hat while you are in the bathroom and filled with Chana Masala.

At that point, I put the game into the fire (I just happen to have one in the bathroom) and said a few purification prayers over it to excise the evil spirits.

That was the end of my experience with Orkworld and I pray to all the holy hosts to never have to have anything more to do with it. It’s just bad. Really really bad. Don’t buy it. It will singe your soul. It will ruin your life. It will make your children into homicidal maniacs. It will piss me off to no end.