Whoa, I failed at the most important place

Heyo,

So, to all the readers who are new and don't know what I do. I maintain the Counter-Strike Deleted Scenes FGD, Which has had a smallish update that was just pushed today. It has been a wild ride.

We left off from the last journal a few years ago. During that time I was in contact with a lot of cool dudes in the early 2000s game development scene. I had tracked down most of the staff from Ritual Entertainment, some of the Gearbox guys and a really cool dude that had left Valve, but still helped me out when making an approach. Made some new friends in the YouTube game and a rather outlier of a person that was fundamental in the rise of early mobile games.

Though all of the planning and searching, thinking and optimizing the path to the proper people. I got to talk to some guys from Gearbox, and a few enthusiastic members of Ritual Entertainment (Looking at you, Castle, Kevin and a bunch more). Then came the greatest, yet strangest contact that I had ever made. For anonymity purposes, I will call them JD. JD was something of an entrepreneur in the early 2000s, and made a large name for themselves with early mobile games. The popularity skyrocketed and made a lot of money, they then acquired Ritual Entertainment and moved the dev teams off of there internal projects and onto other mobile market focused projects.

I messaged my normal opener of who I was, what I do, what I intended to do and how JD could help. Their reply was…

“Can you tell me who told you to contact me?”

My response was “No one in particular, just a lot of my own investigation into who would become the default owner of the materials owned by Ritual.”

The next message I got would send shivers of joy down my spine.

“We recovered a lot of the files from the servers, I also have a lot of boxes with the old tapes and such that I have no idea what to do with.”

There it was. I was exhilarated by the thought of finally putting my hands on the treasure that I had been looking for, 3 years in the making and here I was. Looking at the X on the map and seeing it in front of me.

JD was a key person, a proverbial “Key to the City” of old assets and developer files. I had a back and forth conversation with JD for a few months and even went as far to confirm what was actually extracted from the older raid servers that had been long powered off. Finding not only SiN content, but also the original XBOX version of Counter-Strike. Which I thought was the greatest thing around, and meant that the Deleted Scenes were also bound to be there too.

At this time, I had also learnt that another company, Nightdive Studios, had been in contact with JD about the SiN franchise (Which resulted in a purchase). So, I knew that I was in the right place at the right time. But I would lose contact with JD after a while… The messages just stopped. I would occasionally check in, but no more came in after this.

“We are starting the process soon, I actually started to search through the code archives myself this past week.”

I followed up twice with a message, hoping for a stir… nothing came back.

I had lost contact with the one person that could have put an end to the chase I had started. I was absolutely devastated. Destroyed. Immobilized from the loss of the most amazing cave of treasure to ever have existed for this long. I still am partially dead on the inside from missing my chance. I truly have not gotten over my own disappointment in myself.

After that, I too just drifted away from mapping, modding and developing anything. I just… didn’t get it anymore. I still have trouble coming back to do things for the Deleted Scenes FGD, any of the drafted documents that I had made, or the mod ideas I wrote down so enthusiastically during my free time. I had failed and at the moment, I am still in the midst of understanding that failure. Was it my eagerness, or was it the simple fact that JD might not be an avid user of emails. Was it this or that, I am still unsure to this date. I might check in later to see if the case is the same, only time will tell.

I had failed my goal in the modding community, and real life is still kinda tough with losing my job this month, now the 5th time that has happened, which is a bummer. Not sure what life has in store for me, I still live in Japan, which is cool. I know I can’t do corporate anymore, I am quite lost in real life and in the modding life.

But I came back today, just for a little bit to add in what was done bit by bit throughout last year and this year. I am still in the Discord and still comment on the occasional thing here and there. It was nice to see all the talent again and the dudes making cool stuff in WIP chat. Although, when I look at that, I just think that my skills in everything I do in the past year have reduced. I don’t create as much anymore, and not to the detail that I used too.

Kinda tired nowadays.

Anyway, I hope y'all enjoyed the journal.

See ya.