You have ONE week. On the evening of tuesday the first I will cut off entries and start the voting period. Get your stories in by Monday to be on the safe side.

Starting now, I'll bump this up roughly once a day for a week to keep it visible.

A reminder for those still writing: there's only a couple days left until I'll start the voting period, thereby not accepting more entries.

Get your entry added before tuesday, preferably during the weekend so you don't get cut off just because you think there's still time left to write on monday afternoon.

There's five prizes to be given out and there's only four entries, one of which is far too long and doesn't actually mention games (but will be given a prize if other entries can't fill the winners' podium).

Giving up doesn't always mean you are weak.



As soon as it was dark, I left the house to go to work knowing there would be trouble when I arrived. Sitting in the front seats of the bus, I went over everything that had happened in my mind.



It had all started the previous day in the big company where I am in charge of the production. It is a manufacturing company which provides countries all over the world with its products. That week I was on the night shift in the factory. In the beginning, everything seemed normal and so what would happen never entered my head. As usual, I changed shifts with Jim, the responsible of the production in the evening, and started “working”.

My job can be summed up as a supervision of an assembly line. It usually consists of a variety of mundane tasks from ordering spare interchangeable parts to collaboration with factory workers. Following the logistics planning, already done by others, was pretty boring and tiring. I wasn’t very happy about it, but it was the only thing I got.

I had stayed in the same damn position for too long, but I couldn’t put the blame on any other than myself. You see, I used to have another one occupation that demanded precious time and concentration: WuW – the famous MMORPG. This “little” hobby had led to numerous clumsy mistakes.

Once, for instance, I was given one of the company’s cars to transfer some products to a factory. Unfortunately, I forgot the keys in the car when I had to stop to buy cigarettes and both car and products were stolen. How can this happen? How can anyone be so absent-minded? Well, it’s easy when you are on the cell phone, talking with your buddies about the next raid.

One other day, I left last from the office and because of poor security protocols, I had to lock every door and come early with the keys the next day to open for everyone. However, I woke up late after an all-nighter WuW session and all of my colleagues had to wait outside the office for me.

My careless attitude during my first work days had made me look like a black sheep in there. No matter how hard I had tried to improve my image, it didn’t seem to matter. My afterward great job performance was spoiled by those awkward moments.

Anyhow, it was the night shift and I was mostly alone in the factory. I didn’t have time to monitor the automated assembly line as guild-duty called. I couldn’t abandon my comrades. Catlysm, the third expansion pack for WuW, had just been released and we had lot of things to do. I walked away from the factory area, straight to the office building, fired up my PC and joined my guild.

Time passed very rapidly, my shift was about to end and I had to write the report concerning the production of the last eight hours. Hardly, had I turned on the factory’s mainframe to see how it was going, when I saw something unbelievable.

According to some diagrams and pie charts, the production of the factory had been halved since Jim had left and hence I was the only responsible. My heart sank and I was in despair. The next thing I knew was that I would lose my post because of the reduced amount of production and because I hadn’t told anyone in time about this. The situation seemed helpless and so I left work as quick as a flash without reporting anything and hoping that I would find a pretext at home to use the other day.



Suddenly, tire noises roused me from my thoughts and I realized I was near the company. I stepped out of the bus and a worker, who had approached me, told me that the manager wanted to see me in his office. Of course, I imagined the reason why he wanted me and I decided to tell him the whole truth. However, my heart was in my mouth when I heard him saying, “Congratulations, Stelis, you have just been promoted!”

With difficulty I managed to stammer, “Promoted? What about yesterday’s production?” and described him the events. After that, he giggled and explained to me that all these had been caused due to a computational error – the recent software upgrade to our mainframes had been buggy. I nearly died of embarrassment and he couldn’t stop laughing at me but fortunately I hadn’t lost my job – instead I was promoted.

The above experience served as a reminder, that I was unavoidably reaching a point of no return. Second chances are rare, so I decided to cancel my WuW account and not ruin my life any further.



Disclaimer: the mentioned game and its expansion pack are completely fictitious. Any resemblance to real products is purely coincidental.

You have one day (give or take a couple hours).

This is my entry:

I play games, love em'.
Gog is the best site of all
This is my entry.

Talk about a last-minute entry...

Scratched memories.

You know that time, usually around high school, when you start drifting away from your parents? There’s less and less things you have in common, less topics to talk about, less time spent together. If you don’t, I commend you. But many do.

The ‘kid’ usually doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, since the mystical freedom and independence is always on his mind. But after a few years, maybe in college, or somewhere else working for a living, that kid might start missing his folks, and regretting not cherishing those last couple of years living together.

So what do you do to strengthen that relationship? What could bring the young rebel closer to the protective parent? You guessed it – video games.

Browsing the game-shelves in the local computer store, I came across a dirt-cheap copy of “Scratches”. Didn’t know much about it, apart from the “FPP horror adventure” you could read on the back of the box, but recalled good responses from the adventure-game crowd. The folks had just recently gotten a bigger LCD TV, so I figured a game like this would be pretty cool for some “late night gaming”. Was it ever… but that’s another story.

That same day it so happened there was apparently nothing on TV, so I was free to start the “session” a little earlier. After a few minutes of point&clicking mother noticed the nice looking Victorian house on the screen while walking by, stood there for a moment, and then sat by with a passing “oh, another little adventure game of yours?”.

At that moment we’d traveled back a dozen years or so, to the time when we played my first ever adventure game, “Broken Sword 2”, together. Or at least she’d come by whenever I was stuck to help me out. And here we were again, in a different century, me poking around in virtual reality, and her throwing a “use that on this” or “go there and try that” every once in a while. Eventually dad would also join in the ‘family gathering’, even though he never got the gaming thing. For those two weeks or so, we shared the evenings of brainstorming, exploring the Blackwood Manor (which you wouldn’t think of as a family experience) and the occasional quip from the old man.

Even if that was the last of such experiences, it will remain a special one. And just as Broken Sword became an integral part of my childhood memories, Scratches will stay with me forever.

Seriously, I played Scratches with my parents… what’s next, Phantasmagoria?

Huh, I was expecting more entries.

So, time for voting! I will give 6 votes for me, and 1 vote for MoP for bringing back some memories. :-P

Yeah, me too, given the interest of the comic competition. Maybe writing was too much effort, which makes me rethink whether I should do the second sequel.

Aw. :-(

Ugh, yeah, my fault entirely. Wanted to go round and make a few references about this game and that one, but It would make it seem forced and unintuitive, and in the end I just fazed out of it. It can be a section of the forgotten realms, the one where elves and other such "mythological" beings gone up and vanished. But yeah, if it were a game, It would perfectly fit an RPG stile, with little combat so far (I guess tackling can be considered combat when you need to roll for initiative and reflexes).

As for the length, I actually made some revisions of the material, but without the middle section it looked like a failed attempt to conduct a connected act structure, and I considered disqualification superior to bastardisation in this case.

Wanted to make up for it with a better entry, and use the first one just for laughs, but time is definitely not on my side this month, what with the office work and preparations for the exams that I have right now.

Your story gave me an extra chuckle because Mela in Finnish means "oar"... and is sometimes used as a slang term for something obscene. :-D I liked it though. Uh, your story I mean...

Aren't you going to vote, BTW?

I will, I just have to re-read the whole topic, I want to give out points to the most deserving. I'm not in the mood right now, have tuns of stuff to do, and I'm basically jumping from one thing to another in a desperate attempt to finish everything before sundown. I mean sunrise.

Oh, really? Mela is basically a dick joke? Layers upon layers... ;-)

Ah, now you're making me feel all ratty for voting for myself! :-( I figured everyone was going to do it anyway...
Re: names... It could be worse. Maho, a common Japanese female name, means "infertile cow". Another one, Kana, means "chicken". I do believe some Finnish names mean something incredibly offensive in Japanese.

Sorry for the lack of vote from me so far. I do enjoy writing, but ironically I'm not a fan of reading at all. So... I'll have to force myself through these stories at some point soon hopefully.