Comic-Con 2010. Woah.

I last hit Comic-Con in 2003, and every time this week that I said “I was last here seven years ago” I felt like it was a huge gulf. Not much has actually changed about Comic-Con in that time, to be honest; it’s still huge, and the same sort of stuff is still being shown. On the other hand, an awful lot has changed about me in seven years. I started to wonder what 2003 me would think of 2010 me. Y’know, if they could have a conversation. Considering the amount of sci-fi entertainment media on display at Comic-Con, and the amount of geeks willing crazy stuff into existence during the show, it doesn’t seem impossible.

What’s up, 2010?

Nothin’. Sitting in the airport, drinkin’ a… actually I’m not drinking. Just finished the Con. Heading home to San Francisco. I live there now. Well, near there anyway.

Wow! Really? That’s great. How was the Con? Cool, right?

Well yeah, it was cool – I spent it working, though.

Working?? What as? Doing what??

Manning part of the Marvel booth. Showing off a Marvel game I’m working on. I can’t tell you too much, it’ll cause a massive paradox. Suffice to say it’s pretty darn cool.

Okay, alright. But working at the Marvel booth? That must be amazing!

It is, especially considering that they make movies and stuff now. About half the booth, maybe more, was focused on their movies, and building hype for them -

Marvel makes movies???

Alright, let’s not talk too much about the spoilers. What else did you love about the 2003 con.

I got to spend a bunch of time talking to some artists. They didn’t seem to mind me talking to them. I got a few sketches done, too.

Yep, started off a rather ambitious sketchbook as I recall. Turns out sketches aren’t free… but still, that Brent Anderson one is a doozy, right?

Sure is. I loved hanging out with these guys though. I could watch them draw all day, frankly.

Some things never change. Did you enjoy the panels?

Some of ‘em, but some of ‘em, I was just watching them to get to the ‘real’ panels that I wanted to see later on, so…

Well, you won’t have to do that next time. Frankly you won’t have time to do it… you’ll still get to a couple of cool ones, though. Just not the big, crazy, media presentations. Frankly that’ll all be on the web a few minutes later anyway. Or Twitter.

Twitter?

You’ll see. It’ll change your life. Well, sort of.

Okay…

What about the night life? Good times?

Pretty good times. I only knew the guy I came with, so -

Well, that’ll change. You’ll get to hang out with work folk, which is fun, but also with artists and other creative types. It’ll be pretty cool. Although somehow you won’t get to see many of the ‘big’ parties. You could work on that, starting now. Er, then.

Oh alright. I kind of felt like I was tired at the end of every day, though -

Exactly, right? Too tired to party. Well, admittedly, that’s the years adding on…

… sounds like an excuse to me.

It is, kind of. Hey, you’ve got it easy – you can sit down any time you want, go back to the hotel – I’m on my feet all day and my hotel is a mile away!

Cry me a river, buddy. Working the Marvel booth. Living the geek dream.

Alright, okay. I shouldn’t complain.

Nope, you shouldn’t. Also, you shouldn’t blog about it. If you even keep a blog going in 2010.

Point noted. Points, in fact.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What do you think? More soon.

Well, a year to the day since I made some outlandish predictions for Twenty-Zero-Nine, here I am back to make a fool of myself for 2010. I’m a year older, a year wiser (ish) and probably going to be a mite more cautious, especially after what I’ve seen this year.

Let’s dive in though, see what the scrying pool has to tell us.

One caveat: being currently employed as I am, and wanting to stay that way, I won’t be ‘predicting’ anything to do with Trion World Network (my employers until October this year) or Gazillion Entertainment (my current employers). So no predictions for (deep breath) Heroes of Telara or any other Trion game in production, or Jumpgate: Evolution, LEGO Universe or anything else Gazillion has in the works which we haven’t told anyone about yet…! Sorry ’bout that, but I reckon you understand.

Known MMOGs

World of WarCraft‘s latest expansion, Cataclysm, will launch in September, or very close to that (last week of August/first week of October). Backed by a huge global marketing campaign (TV adverts, etc etc) Activision-Blizzard will attempt to convert the last few humans living in a cave on the moon into active players by pushing – hard – the fact that the game is now easier to get into than ever. It’ll be a massive, towering hit at launch, breaking the current (US, NPD-data) records for fastest selling PC game. A month after launch, everyone who’s played for more than a year will find something to complain about.

Star Wars: The Old Republic will launch in Q4 as well, probably about two months after Cataclysm (say, November). EA’s marketing machine will be in full effect from E3 onwards, pulling out all the stops to get as many people into the Beta as possible, which everyone will call the ‘most polished since WoW’. Bloggers will spend endless amounts of words talking about whether SWTOR will topple WoW; of course it won’t, but it’ll launch huge, falling just shy of Cataclysm’s newly-established record for fastest-selling PC game. Naturally, we won’t hear a thing about subscriber numbers until EA’s first financial report in 2011… so I can neatly dodge predicting them. (Although I will say, they’ll be less than WoW’s…!)

November update, post-hire at BioWare: For those who might have missed the original date this post was published (January 3rd, 2010), here’s the disclaimer: This post was written long before BioWare even knew I existed, and vice-versa. It was a prediction based solely on my own guesswork, and it is preserved here solely for posterity. It does not reflect any official views on Star Wars: The Old Republic, as at the time I had zero insight apart from my own guesses. As such, it should not be seen as any kind of official view… on anything.

Star Trek Online will launch on time in February, and will get plenty of early traction from Trekkers who’ve spent many a long year waiting for a chance to indulge their inner captain. Think 250K box sales in the US alone… but a month after launch, despite Cryptic/Atari keeping very quiet about the actual numbers, the retained subscribers will be less than 100K. We’ll all be guessing about this though. Reviews will be in the fair-to-good range, depending on the level of Trek-love the reviewer has.

APB will launch on time, with a big marketing push from EA. It’ll start strongly but will quickly be derided by ‘hardcore’ MMOGers as just being ‘CounterStrike with better customisation’. Realtime Worlds will promise a lot of exciting stuff post-ship, and will probably get a chance to do it, as their initial numbers (customers? subscribers?) will be decent. Talk of a 360 port will be mostly drowned out by whoops of joy from those of us already playing Crackdown 2 / MAG.

DC Universe Online won’t launch this year, but it’ll spend another summer doing the comic book convention circuit. I have to hope it’ll be in some form of Beta by the end of the year. Surely. Said Beta will be PC-only though, leading many to predict it’s never going to ship on PS3.

City of Heroes will launch Going Rogue, which will be generally well accepted, and give a small shot in the arm to the game’s subscriber base – undermining Champions Online a little in the process.

Guild Wars 2 will be demonstrated to press, behind closed doors, at E3. The previews are strong, mostly based on graphics and a few demonstrable features, but press are unsure if they’ll let it be called a ‘proper’ MMOG. The game will be playable at PAX in Q4, and the first public ‘preview event’ dates will be announced for 2011.

Aion will continue to suffer from bots and gold farming galore, although NCwest will try their best to make their finger-in-the-dam approach to controlling them look tough. The actual reason the bots and gold farming exists – the massive in-game grind – won’t go anywhere. NCsoft will continue to make enough money from Aion in Korea to keep it afloat elsewhere.

Unknown MMOGs

Blizzard will continue to not announce their next MMOG project. They’ll be too busy launching StarCraft 2, Cataclysm and pretending that Diablo III is ‘coming soon’.

I think it’s put-up or shut-up time for 38 Studios, Red 5 and Carbine Studios. All three of them should really be taking the wrappers off something this year. Having said that, if somehow all three have gotten funding for what we (read: marketing people and journos) like to call a ‘triple A’ MMOG, then it’s quite possible they’re on a 3-5 year development schedule. If that’s the case… then assume they’ll stay quiet for a while longer. (Still, it’s got to be getting pretty close to announcement time. Takes time to build a big community to get back that big funding.)

What else; oh yeah, SOE will announce a new game based on the Free Realms ‘engine’ but with a known IP. (Thus helping them earn back some of the big development costs on Free Realms.)

Me, personally?

All I’m going to say about me to finish, is that I hope 2010 is a slightly more quiet year than 2009.

See you in 362 days to find out if I’m right!

Back in January I threw out a few predictions for the year. I’m sure if I could open a hole in time, stick my head through and say to my almost-a-year-younger self “By the time you look back at this post, you’ll be living in the US, in a job you don’t even know exists yet – oh and most of your predictions will be wrong…” Well I’d probably be half-surprised.

Let’s score me then – feel free to refresh your memory with the original post, although the important stuff is here anyway.

Known MMOG predictions

Champions Online will get released this year… but will still slip, probably to Q4. It’ll attract a solid 250K subscribers at launch. Oh: it won’t release on Xbox 360 at launch, either.

Well, it released, I’ll say that much – and in Q4, to boot – but boy is my face red about that subscriber figure. At launch? Maybe, perhaps that many boxes were sold, globally, at retail. But subscribers? Absolutely no way. I do have a smidgen of insider knowledge about this… but trust me. Champions Online has nowhere near 250K subscribers and never did. I guess I was thinking somehow they’d convert everyone then-subscribing to City of Heroes… and a few more, besides.

I was spot-on about the lack of Xbox 360 version, but honestly, that was sort of a gimme. Still, three-outta-four ain’t bad. Great start!

Final score: 3/4

DC Universe Online won’t get released, but will go into some sort of Closed Beta… probably about the same time Champions launches… and will announce a ’solid’ release date in 2010.

Oh dearie me… well, you would think that putting your superhero MMOG into some sort of Closed Beta at the same time as the new kid on the block launches would be a good idea, right? But whether SOE realised their game wasn’t ready for prime-time (which is what Beta is these days, make no mistake) or they had some psychic premonition that Champions wasn’t going to be much of a threat, I guess we’ll never know.

And a solid release date? No. I have ideas about DCUO in 2010… but we’ll leave that to the predictions post.

Final score: 1/3

City of Heroes will get a major product announcement. 5th anniversary aproaching? Rival super-MMOs releasing? Hel-lo, sequel.

Ohhh, I should have hedged my bets… and acted on my insider knowledge… ahem. Yes, I knew about the expansion. I guess I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Or did I? Dun-dun-duuuuuhh… Strictly speaking I failed here. No sequel (yet) but we have an expansion to look forward to. I’m gonna say I scored zilch here, because otherwise feels like a cheat!

Final score: 0/1

Guild Wars 2 will finally get some marketing love; think videos, some press demos, at least. But no release date.

Damn close. The release of several Guild Wars 2 videos has everyone in a lather already. But… suspiciously… no press demos. Hmmm. (I actually had zero insider knowledge on this, although I had seen Guild Wars 2 footage a lot earlier than you did….) I’ll say that’s a…

Final score: 1/2

Jumpgate: Evolution will debut and attract a nice, solid 85K subscribers. We won’t be able to confirm or deny this though, as Codemasters are releasing it.

Ahem. Well, at the beginning of the year I had no idea I’d end up working for Jumpgate Evolution… without working for Codemasters. In fact that would have blown my tiny mind. Anyway, fair to say Jumpgate didn’t launch in 2009, although all signs did point to it for the first half of the year.

Further comment would compromise me professionally, so you’ll have to settle with my final score of.. dangit…

Final score: 0/2

Unknown MMOG predictions

Cryptic’s third, unannounced MMOG will be announced as a quasi-pulp game, set in the 1930s, featuring Indiana Jones style global hijinks and monster battling. Hey, I can dream.

Dreaming indeed. Struck out here.

Red 5’s unannounced MMOG will be announced as a… fantasy game! (Boy, I’m pushing the boat out.)

Red who?

38 Studios‘ ‘Copernicus’ will also be announced… as a dark fantasy game! (Yeah. I’m playing the short odds.)

Copernywhat?

NCsoft will finally take the wrapper off the Carbine Studios project.

Apparently NCsoft like to keep the wrapper on things now.

Blizzard won’t announce anything new. At all. Why bother?

I should have said ‘Blizzard won’t announce their new MMO’ because I could have told you the next expansion was coming… but I didn’t. So I guess I score a big, fat…

Final score: 0/5

Games industry predictions

The Wii will end up so far ahead of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in sales terms, industry watchers will stop even mentioning it in sales figures. (They’re practically doing this already.)

Yep, I think that’s fair to say. It’s pretty much like the Wii doesn’t exist to the average gaming site. Or at least not the ones I go to. They’ve successfully crossed the divide to ‘average consumer product’ – and more power to ‘em. I heard more about people using Wii Fit this year than using it to, you know, play games.

Microsoft will drop heavy, unsubtle hints about the next Xbox. But won’t announce it, officially, until 2010.

Errr… maybe they did drop some and they weren’t that heavy?

PlayStation Home will get a major revamp by Q4… but will still be a complete flop.

I don’t know if launching an MMOG counts as a ‘major revamp’… but I don’t see any press releases touting Home as a massive success.

Activision will announce a Guitar Hero product that’ll have a ‘massively multiplayer’ component. Think: your band versus everyone else’s band in the world. There will be additional fees involved.

Nope, but instead they’ll flog the franchise to death with many products with ‘Hero’ in the name.

No-one in the business of MMOGs will pay much attention to articles like this over at Massively. (Sorry, Massively.)

I’d say I get a big fat ‘check’ for that, especially considering the two ‘big’ MMOG releases of 2009 – Champions Online and Aion – both got ripped in various quarters for many of the issues described in that article. Go read it, it’s still very applicable… sadly.

Final score: 2/7

Personal, uh, ‘predictions’

I’ll end up moving to the US of A.

Check!

I’ll make a public announcement about why I’m moving to the US.

Check!

I’ll make a public appearance (Oooohh!!) at a US-based gaming show or two.

Well if you made it to E3 – check!

I’ll keep blogging here, perhaps not as often as in 2008 though.

Ahem – check??

I’ll keep playing World of Warcraft. I know! I’m sorry!

Well, I did until April, and then I got bored.

Final, final score for 2009

It seems a little cheeky to give myself a score for personal predictions, so leaving that section aside it looks like I scored a massive…  7/24!! So basically almost 1-in-3… not terrible odds at a bookies. Although basically, you should have put all your cash on me guessing easy stuff about Champions.

Fairly big things that I totally didn’t predict this year – Star Wars: The Old Republic becoming the only damn game that anyone talks about; my employer, Gazillion Entertainment, revealing themselves; Facebook games becoming so bloody massive.

I figure I’ve got three days or so to figure out 2010. Place your bets.

Yes, that Gazillion Entertainment; the company I called ‘the new 800lb gorilla‘ when they de-cloaked back in March, and who are working on a variety of MMOGs, including two based on Marvel Comics.

Not so surprised now, are ya?

Yes, I’ll admit that when Gazillion’s acquisition of the Marvel licence was announced, my interest was very definitely piqued, if that wasn’t obvious. What really got me intrigued was that they had acquired NetDevil, a development team who I’ve been a fan of since we worked together on Auto Assault. I made some enquiries, heard some pleasing noises, and six months later… here we are.

You might think that I’ve spent the last six months scheming to extract myself from Trion, but that’s absolutely not true. In fact, I’ve had a blast over there, and I’m genuinely sad that I’m leaving. The development teams behind Heroes of Telara and the Syfy-MMO(Action)RPG are packed full of great people who I’m going to miss and in the case of the Syfy crew, now don’t get to work with – boo! Both games are looking great, and unfortunately I now won’t be able to help them across the finish line. Don’t think I’m forgetting the MMORTS in production with Petroglyph Games, either; a trip to Las Vegas earlier this year convinced me that they are going to unleash something that’ll shake up the genre. I still believe everything I said about Trion back when I announced I was working there, however… when opportunity knocks, you don’t just sit back in your easy chair.

Gazillion has got a stellar line-up of games coming, including some I know are going to surprise a lot of people, and my new role allows me to work on all of them, as well as tasking me to direct community strategies for the entire company. Once offered, I couldn’t turn that down, even if it meant leaving behind new friends and some great looking games at Trion.

Weirdly – at least for me – this means that I’m back to full-on secrecy mode. I thought Trion had a lot of secrets, but even after signing on with Gazillion, I still don’t know about everything they’re developing! Roll on Monday….

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and I’m sure it’ll be a crazy couple of months ahead, but I’m very excited about it; perhaps even ‘stoked’ or ‘psyched’ if we’re being American. Here was me thinking I was done with big, tumultuous changes in my life. I guess all I can do is strap in and enjoy the ride!

Life progresses apace in the Land of the Free, and the ‘dark days’ of early 2009 seem a long, long way behind me now. Not necessarily for the better. While I certainly prefer the daily stability of going to a job and being steadily employed, I miss a lot of people back in the UK, and the support network I had around me then which I’ll admit, I took for granted. That’s probably because it didn’t feel like a support network at the time, but the best ones don’t. More like an invisible hand holding you steady.

Now, life is a daily high-wire act, and although I feel confident in my abilities as… umm… a high-wire act, that doesn’t mean it’s any less scary to perform. To complete the metaphor, you have to pay attention to what you’re doing, otherwise it’s a long, long way to fall.

To all of you back in Blighty, then, I miss you more than I probably expected, although I won’t be running back any time soon. I’m not one to give up that easily, and although it’s tough, we’re going to soldier on. What I will say is that even if I haven’t been in touch recently, that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought of you, and doesn’t mean that I don’t want to stay in touch. I’ve just been busy.

With what? Well, mostly the banalities of moving your life halfway across the world, setting up a new place to live and assimilating yourself into society. It’s pretty much all done now, from the Social Security Number to the California Driver’s Licence (License, sorry). I’ve even availed myself of the American Healthcare system and found it to be very helpful, but then again it should be considering what I’m paying for it.

The day job has been good to me, with a few trips (Germany, Las Vegas, Austin) to keep me busy, and other stuff besides. We’re still at a relatively early stage with things, so I can’t spill too many beans here, but one day we will.

With that, I seem to run out of things to says, so I’ll leave you for now. Just know I’m probably thinking about ya. Talk soon.

We’ve recorded two episodes recently (#28 and #29) which are both online now, and actually just did show #30 this evening, which will be online later this week.

In case you’ve never heard it, it’s 30-minutes or so (when we run to time) about movies, which we both know far too much about. That is, when we don’t forget names of movies, actors, actresses, directors, plots… ahem. We try to be funny. Perhaps that was an example of humour?

Anyway, take a listen if you like. I’m also still guesting on John’s Limited Edition podcast, which has a new format now, so feel free to check that out too. Oh and feel free to let me know your thoughts on either.

Movies: Remakes and reboots aren’t just a trend any more, they’re business as usual. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Red Dawn, Halloween and more have all been or are being remade. Recent reboots included The Incredible Hulk and Punisher: War Zone with rumoured ones including The X-Files and of course, every Marvel property.

And if you’re not rebooting or remaking, you’re digging up a licence to something we are supposed to have liked as kids, like Transformers or G.I. Joe. Little wonder when a vaguely original idea like District 9 comes along, people go crazy for it.

Comics: Same trends, different medium, although it tends to be restricted to characters rather than comics. In the last few years just about every major DC character has been rebooted at least once (Batman, Batgirl, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Blue Beetle), either turning into a new incarnation of the same character or just undergoing an origin revision. Marvel isn’t immune to it either, whether it’s characters (Spider-Man, Captain America) or entire lines (Ultimate becoming Ultimate, er, Comics).

In comics’ defence, given the volume of content that’s output in comparison to movies, they have a more urgent requirement to shake things up on a regular basis; and I remember nodding sagely with (I think) Dan Didio’s assertion that the DC Universe needed to be rebooted every twenty years or so (Crisis on Infinite Earths was in 1986 after all). So perhaps this is just me being an old fart…

Games: However even now in games, we’re getting the same effect. The idea of ‘new IP’ seems to be total anathema to most of the major publishers, with the safe, tried and true method being to remake or reboot somehow. And why is this on my mind? Well it’s because of an MMO announcement, of course.

Those of us (ahem) ‘in the know’ have been aware of WoW’s Cataclysm expansion for a while now, but the full extent of the nostalgia trip it’s going to be wasn’t really clear until recent announcements. While I absolutely see the sense in going back to old content to ensure that players feel the world they’ve inhabited for so long, I can also see that the sticky, sweet, clingy sense of nostalgia that hangs around this stuff had to be a strong motivator in choosing what to do next. I actually read a blog post yesterday where the author was extremely excited for the nostalgia effect, not particularly for the new gameplay.

In other words, apparently as consumers, we’re now just looking to recapture that old feeling, instead of looking for new ones.

I’m as guilty of this as the rest of you. I yearn for those first, life-defining experiences to come again, at least some days. But other days, I really do find myself wondering if there’s a single original thought out there in this world. If anyone is trying to do something new.

If they are, unfortunately, they have their work cut out for them. It’s a rocky road ahead when you’re trying to genuinely do something different and exciting. For me though, it’s the most important path to take. Because everything that’s been remade or rebooted was original once… and it’s those guys, the ones who blazed a trail, who get to say they did it first, who I respect most. Everyone else is just trading on old memories.

Yesterday being awake early apparently spurred me to play Boy Philosopher, for some reason. As you can tell, a life-changing event like emigration can turn the most reasonable of men (yes, me) into some sort of navel-gazing fluffhunter. However, today, let me give you the right answer for the rorschach test; you know, the one you spout at parties.

We’re both fine, and settling in, just about.

Ahem…

Well yes I could go into a lot more detail than that, but there’s a limit to what I’ll say on an open page. I will say that we’ve almost done everything we knew we were going to need to do before we left, and now we’re down to discovering things that are all-new. By that I mean we’ve moved into our apartment, we’ve bought a new TV (woo!), we’ve set up a bank account (and one with a credit union), we’ve gotten registered with all the right people, and I’ve even been paid a few times (as it’s happening ‘semi-monthly’, ie twice a month). We have a couch, a cat, a dining table, a couple of chairs, and a whole new series of incoming bills.

In other words, it feels like normality, albeit an always* sunny, surrounded by America normality.

And I have to say it’s pretty darn nice, at least in a superficial way. Life is treating us well. We have a bountiful choice of fresh produce and product whenever we go to one of the many local supermarkets. We can see all the movies we want when they open here. We have many choices in restaurants, which of course usually serve massive portions for reasonable prices. Oh and everything is open late. In fact shopping after work is a norm, not something you do on a Thursday.

What’s the one thing we’re missing? Oh yeah. You lot.

At first, our minds were both so occupied with what we have to do now every day that not being amongst people we know and love didn’t really phase us. Every day we were both busy with settling into a new home, dealing with new challenges and trying not to get killed merging on the 101 expressway. Now, that we’ve been here a while, it’s starting to nag.

It’s not so much that there aren’t nice people here, or that I feel we can’t make new friends – I think we have already, to be honest, and that feels great. It’s just that every now and then, someone pops into your mind and you think “Oh, I haven’t seen them in ages, we should…” and then reality intrudes, and you remember that no, they’re not just a mile or two away and all you need to do is pick up the phone. They’re thousands of miles away, and even if you did pick up the phone, the likelihood is you’d wake them up. This is how being homesick starts.

That only really follows if you assume home is where the heart is, which I guess is true right now. I lost my heart in Brighton as opposed to 30 minutes up the road (Sorry Tony Bennett). This doesn’t mean that we’re ready to move back, literally or figuratively; we made our choice and we move forward. Doesn’t mean I don’t think of you though, and past moments, and great memories.

Did I mention we have a guest room?

* Except for this morning! Where it appears to be raining for the first time since I got here. I knew that those big grey fluffy things in the sky meant something.

There’s a lot to say, and simultaneously, not very much at all.

In case you’re wondering, I can say with some certainty that moving countries (even to a country where they generally speak English) is a bit of a bitch. Mostly just because of the ties that bind. The emotional ones, the physical ones, and not-so-physical, but still very real bureaucratic and political ties that prevent us from wandering this Earth like free people, man, free to do what we wanna do, even if that’s just sitting around playing our guitars and singing – kum-ba-ya, my Lord… ahem.

That, if I so choose, would be the ‘lot to say’. I could tell you of the swift break I experienced with friends and family, the lack of real feeling because I didn’t know how to feel, which gradually day by day is turning into a void in my heart which… I guess I’ll just have to tread carefully around. But I won’t.

I could bore you with tales of almost monk-like acts of charity as we gave away all our stuff – and then reversed that karma by buying almost everything again, here. I could try to convince you that the process of spending money can actually get quite boring, even depressing – that I actually heard the words “I don’t think I could spend my life shopping” from my wife, that I found myself resenting the fact I had to spend another evening researching electronics or cars or both. But I won’t.

And I guess I could summarise the tricky, but not insurmountable obstacles that we faced in getting here, but honestly, they were just tricky… not insurmountable. If you ever have to face the same, feel free to ask me about it, but I won’t enrich the world by recounting here.

Which brings me to saying not very much at all.

I’ve been going back to basics, like prehistoric man. My primary concerns have been with the most basic of things: shelter, food, safety, money, transport. Now all of those things are accomplished, I ask myself, what’s next? Discover fire? Invent the wheel? Even those have been done, so really when it comes down to it – what is there for me to say that hasn’t been said a million times before?

Everyone’s story is unique of course, a beautiful delicate snowflake etc, but I’ll tell you; there’s nothing like detaching yourself from family, friends and familiar surroundings to make you sit back, look at your own life, and go: woah. Is this it?

Too philosophical? Well I haven’t had breakfast yet.