Garwulf's Corner: An Odyssey into Diablo and the World Beyond the Video Game

By Robert B. Marks

At the dawn of the 21st Century, the video game industry experienced a period of wild creativity, fighting for recognition as an art form while making the transformation into a media juggernaut. And as it did, Garwulf’s Corner was there, watching and commentating.

One of the earliest, if not the first, video game issues columns on the Internet, Garwulf’s Corner ran every two weeks from 2000 to 2002 on Diabloii.net. Written by Robert B. Marks, author of Diablo: Demonsbane and The EverQuest Companion, it explored everything up to and including Diablo, the birth of artificial intelligence, hackers, literature and movies, and the video game’s struggle for legitimacy.

Collected here for the first time in print – with new introductions and updates – are all 52 installments of Garwulf’s Corner, along with the three columns written years later for the unpublished Blurred Edge Magazine, the holiday issue that never was, and the author’s final word (so far) on Diablo III and Diablo in general. Insightful, controversial, witty, and thought-provoking, Garwulf’s Corner is a journey into the world of video games that is still relevant today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legacy Books Press
• Release date: Nov 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781927537350

Book preview

Garwulf's Corner

An Odyssey into Diablo

and

the World Beyond the Video Game

Robert B. Marks

Published by Legacy Books Press

RPO Princess, Box 21031

445 Princess Street

Kingston, Ontario, K7L 5P5

Canada

www.legacybookspress.com

The uploading, and/or distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

This edition first published in 2014 by Legacy Books Press

1

© 2000-2014 Robert B. Marks, all rights reserved.

Garwulf's Corner installments 1-52 originally published from October 31, 2000 - October 28, 2002 by Diabloii.net.

Diablo: Demonsbane © 2000 Blizzard Entertainment. Diablo to Diablo III © 1996-2014 Blizzard Entertainment. All references to Diablo, Diablo: Demonsbane and the Diablo world are made under Fair Use and Fair Dealings for the purposes of commentary, criticism, and/or parody.

ISBN 978-1-927537-35-0

This book is typeset in a Times New Roman 11-point font.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

Marks, Robert B., 1976-, author

Garwulf's corner : an odyssey into Diablo and the world beyond the

video game / Robert B. Marks.

Complete collection of a biweekly column, Garwulf's corner, on

Diabloii.net from 2000-2002.

Includes bibliographical references.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/columns/retired-columns/garwulfs-corner

ISBN 978-1-927537-10-7 (pbk.)

1. Video games. I. Title.

GV1469.37.M35 2014 794.8 C2014-902047-3 C2014-902048-1

This e-book praises the Helix Fossil and our flappy saviour Bird Jesus.

To Harlan Ellison, whose work got me started as a columnist,

To my beautiful wife Johanna, a continuing inspiration,

To Malcolm Cox and the Digital Gamer, where more ideas than I can count were bounced around and made to work in an intelligent way...if you're reading this, Malcolm, you and the 'Gamer are badly missed,

But most of all to my original readers, who proved that if you write intelligently about computer games, people really will pay attention.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Diabloii.net Columns

1. Harlan Ellison, Diablo, and Insomnia

2. The Royal Circlet and the Hacker

3. Revelations from The Exorcist

4. Films for the Diablo Fan

5. Millennial Thoughts

6. Walking with the Dead

7. Emails from the Edge

8. Staring at the Top Rung

9. I am NOT Harlan Ellison

10. Cutting Through the Dung-Pile

11. Changing the Guard

12. The Devil in the Details

13. Hackers at the Gates

14. More Emails from the Edge

15. Through a Glass, Demonically

16. Small Matters

17. Books for the Diablo Fan

18. Shades of Grey

19. Back to the Beginning

20. Touching Darkness

21. Emails From the Edge, the Thirde

22. Once Upon A Time?

23. Special Disaster Edition

24. Coming of Age

25. Ask Garwulf

26. Random Thoughts

27. Baal's Friend, and Other Stories

28. Emails from the Edge Goes Forth

29. Will You Be Eating That Ration?

30. Language, Language

31. A Matter of Habit

32. Real Sticks and Stones

33. One Film to Rule Them All

34. Is Diablo Dead?

35. Emails from the Edge V

36. A Question of Rights?

37. A Glance at the Other Side

38. Having the Edge

39. The Lawsuits of April

40. The Future of the Genre?

41. To Judge a Medium

42. Yet Another Emails from the Edge

43. The Fate of Siggard

44. The Paradox of the Internet

45. A Copy of a Copy

46. A Matter of Freedoms

47. Double Standard

48. The Issue of Morality

49. Emails from the Edge: The Final Slice

50. The Second Year Retrospective

51. Baby Steps

52. Looking into the Future

The Installment That Never Was - Postcards from Sanctuary

Blurred Edge and Beyond

The Blurred Edge Installments - Introduction

Blurred Edge #1. Points of Failure - Part I

Blurred Edge #2. Points of Failure - Part II

Blurred Edge #3. Water Pistols at Dawn

Dawn of the Age of Decline

About the Author

Notes

Introduction

I'VE PLAYED VIDEO games, particularly computer games, for as long as I can remember. Back when I started, Douglas Adams (God rest his soul) had just released the original text game Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and computer graphics were primitive things that one was lucky to see in four colors.

Even then, I think I knew that there was something bigger behind them, although it was probably not much more than an inkling. Let's face it; thirteen year-olds are usually far more intelligent than we give them credit for, but they aren't that smart, and I was no exception. The life experience to make sense of it all was lacking.

The games stayed with me. I remember a huddled group playing Scorched Earth after school (and my parents getting annoyed at me for coming home around 5:30 after blowing up a CG landscape). I remember the original Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons games, which I started playing just as I got into fantasy (long before I knew I my career would be based partly on it). I remember being amazed at Wolfenstein 3D, and in absolute awe of DOOM.

Most importantly, though, I remember a group of teachers, including my parents, banging into my thick skull how important it was to think about things, rather than just taking them for granted. Of all my skills, being able to dig deeper and read between the lines is the one that has served me best.

Looking back at it all, over ten years after Garwulf's Corner ended, I can point to two primary influences on the column. The first was the long history of gaming I've just written about, along with how I was taught to always look beneath the surface. The second was a rather famous writer named Harlan Ellison.

In particular, it was a column of his named An Edge in my Voice.

An Edge in my Voice ran for about two or three years in a California newspaper. When I came across it, it had just been reprinted in Edgeworks Volume 1. The column dealt with just about everything, but most importantly, it delved deep into the issues, rather than lingering on the surface. Ellison forced his readers to think, and I came away from each installment with a sense that the world might just be a bit more interesting than I had previously thought.

He also taught me one of the most valuable lessons a columnist can ever learn: it is not the columnist's job to be right about the content, although that is helpful. Instead, the columnist must be informed, and raise questions about the content.

I have never forgotten that lesson.

As I discovered Ellison's column, I also got my first professional fiction sale: a little e-book named Diablo: Demonsbane. Although I was severely limited in time and word count, I think I did a good job. Between the e-book and Ellison's column, I was in just the right frame of mind to create Garwulf's Corner. I pitched the idea of a bi-weekly column to Diabloii.net (which today is Diablo.incgamers.com), who had interviewed me about Demonsbane, and the deal was done. As Demonsbane launched on Halloween in the year 2000, so did the first installment of Garwulf's Corner.

At the time I penned the first installment (which ended up being published second), I had noticed that there didn't seem to be any other columns out there that actually dealt with the issues behind computer games. In fact, there really were only three kinds of article in the video game media as a whole back then - previews, reviews, and strategy guides. The computer game, for all intents and purposes, was treated like a toy. But, it was so much more. I wanted to examine what things in the gaming world actually meant. And thus the focus of the column was born.

When the first installments were posted, I really felt like a lone voice in the wilderness. I later found out that there was one other column out there doing something different, but it was an industry insider column rather than a computer games issues column. But, as I wrote, something wonderful happened. Not only did people write back and engage with what I was saying, but other websites began to take a deeper look into the medium as well. By the time the last installment went live, my voice was one of many, and the video game had finally become the subject of more than just reviews and strategy guides.

Today, editorials about video games are pretty common. I don't think I can really claim any credit for that - frankly, I doubt that most of the current video game pundits out there have even heard of Garwulf's Corner, much less read an installment. Instead, my generation - who had grown up playing console and then computer games, and saw them as far more than mere toys - had come into their own, picked up their pens, and started to write. I had been part of the vanguard of that movement, and it was wonderful.

Garwulf's Corner ran twice a month on Diabloii.net between October 2000 and October 2002, garnering a readership in the tens of thousands; I decided to end it after two years because it was based on Diablo, and there is only so much you can use a single game to explore. I wanted to keep it fresh, and bring it to a close before it began a tailspin of repetition. Or, in short, I had begun to run out of intelligent things to say.

Today, it represents a glimpse back at a video game industry in the process of finishing the transition into big business, and the issues that arose as it did. Some of those issues are long gone - others are still relevant today. It was a world of computer games back when small studios could still break into the market with big releases, back before the modern piracy epidemic that helped drive so many game publishers into the console market, and back before DRM became draconian. I think, when it comes down to it, it is important to remember where we came from, particularly when the video game world of today is so very different than it was at the dawn of the 21st Century.

So, I present to you, a la The Twilight Zone, the complete collection of Garwulf's Corner columns. In here, you will find installments dealing with morality, game issues, and occasionally examining the meaning of life itself. You'll also find the Blurred Edge columns, written four years later for a magazine that never got off the ground, along with the installment that never was, and what has so far been my final word on Diablo III and Diablo as a whole. I've also provided some brand new introductions to some of the columns, bringing them up to date, or at least providing the context, or a note on some obscure bit of trivia about the column or how it was written. After all, an author has to have his fun, right?

Enjoy!

Robert B. Marks, Kingston, Ontario

March 13, 2014

The Diabloii.net Columns

1. Harlan Ellison, Diablo, and Insomnia

October 31, 2000

One of the hardest things to do is deciding how to start a column. Do you slowly introduce yourself, or do you dive right into the issues, and let the readers catch up later? This one was actually written after The Royal Circlet and the Hacker, to ease people into my writing style and the tone of the column, and just introduce myself.

SOMEDAY I'LL LEARN: no more Harlan Ellison stories right before going to bed. It isn't that they are poor stories; indeed, I wish I could write like Ellison. Unfortunately, they're just too good. I read a story or essay by this wonder of modern SF, and my mind starts to go, spinning like some demonic Ferris wheel. Great for coming up with stories, but lousy if I actually have intentions of getting any sleep. And, as I toss and turn, telling my brain to shut up for crying out loud, my mind turns to Diablo.

Somehow, especially now that I've written Demonsbane, writing and Diablo have become linked in my mind. After waiting for almost three years to generate that magic acceptance letter from a publisher, how was I to know that my professional fiction career would start with some phone calls and an emailed short story? If somebody had told me three months ago that I would be writing Diablo professional fiction, I would have laughed them off of whatever street they traveled (although I would try not to laugh them into traffic).

Still, Diablo has been good to me, in more ways than one. It was through Diablo that I met one of my best friends, a fellow named Gordon Brown. Gord is a great friend, the sort of man you can count on to help you through that crushing real-life problem, or to stand by your side and actually share the gold as the party goes deeper into the dungeon, noticing for the first time that these goat men happen to be better armed than you are.

Ah, yes, those halcyon comic-book shop days of Diablo back in the summer of 1997. I remember them so well. From the start, I had linked the game and literature; my character was named Sigifrith, from the Stephen Grundy novel Rhinegold. Later, when I finally made my way onto Battle.net, Sigifrith became Garwulf, a character from the novel I'm currently working on.

(Note, for all those who have a love of meaningless trivia: Garwulf is a mythical character, properly known as Garwulf the Slayer. He's the sort of warrior that makes Conan the Barbarian appear to be a weakling, a character capable of defeating an entire army using only a bread knife and a loaf of whole wheat. Hell, if you're going to name a Diablo character after one of your own, you may as well be ambitious...)

Gord was Sarnakyle, a wizard with a knack for getting me out of those situations where I had heedlessly charged into a room filled with monsters, one of whom invariably had the Medieval equivalent of a machine gun. Sometimes, he even managed to do it without both of us dying as well. When we did die, though, we were assured of spending half an hour working out who owned what, as we picked up the arms and armor that had fallen in enough quantity to fill in a castle moat. We fought together, we died together. It was true comradery.

As we played, I learned, and stopped charging into rooms, attracting the attention of every single monster in the dungeon at once. We still occasionally ran into the Diablo equal of the bazooka and Gatling gun, but we stood a better chance of survival. By the time we took on the big, horn-studded demon of Hell himself, we were a well oiled team, and our arch-nemesis didn't stand a change.

(Okay; we actually still bore a remarkable resemblance to thugs with swords, but deep down inside, we were a well-oiled team. Really.)

Still, nothing is forever, and eventually Diablo went the way of the wind. We waited for a while, spending our time painting miniatures and penning up our need to inflict acts of incredible and brutal violence on monsters. Finally, the new game came out, and we flocked to the comic shop to begin anew.

Garwulf rose again, this time as a terrifying barbarian, capable of sending monsters scrambling away in fear at the very sound of his voice (although Garwulf secretly believes that it might actually be his bad breath). Sarnakyle was transmuted into Sarnaka, a fetching sorceress with a knack for knocking demons about the head with a big stick (and who Gord insists is Sarnakyle's daughter).

You know what? Diablo II was a better game than its predecessor. There was much more to do, and a better in-game story. We were able to save some time when one of us managed to attract the attention of every monster in the area (remember, we were now going through deserts and jungles, rather than caves and catacombs), as our rotting corpse would survive our demise. We would wander back to where the monsters had been screaming obscenities at our fallen forms, and having driven them off, Garwulf would stare at his body and remark, So that explains the agonizing back pain a moment ago.

And then, while Garwulf the Slayer from my yet-to-be-finished novel was living an active life slaughtering demons, came the contract offer from Pocket Books. Gord was kind enough to let me use Sarnakyle as a character in the novella, and our adventures in the jungles of the Diablo world continued unabated during what little free time I had as I worked day and night on my word processor.

Except now, the original Sigifrith-Sarnakyle team, due to a neat little inside joke in the book referring to the Norse Volsunga Saga, is enshrined for all eternity in that new, wondrous thing called "Diablo literature." And thus the link is complete. Diablo and writing, all bundled up into one neat little package, specifically designed to keep me up at nights after reading yet another Harlan Ellison story.

There is a Mel Brooks film with the line: It's good to be the king. The line is wrong; it's even better to be an author.

2. The Royal Circlet and the Hacker

November 14, 2000

SOMETIMES, IT'S ENOUGH to make me wonder why people are playing.

Perhaps I should explain. I was on Battle.net venturing through a Diablo I dungeon, when a player (who shall remain nameless) entered the game. He came down to the caves to join me, there was a moment of lag, and then he killed some monsters. He then tried to draw my attention to several magical items that just didn't appear on my screen, and when I said I couldn't see them, picked them up and town portaled away.

When I returned to that wonderfully rustic village of Tristram, I found myself facing a menagerie of unique and magical items literally carpeting the center of town. Enough to fill an inventory three times over. They're all legit, he said. I found them in the caves.

Rather skeptical, I picked a Royal Circlet off the ground and examined it. It had a fancy graphic, and for all I knew, it looked like a real Royal Circlet. For a moment, I considered that perhaps this strange warrior was telling the truth, and due to a bug in the game, he really had found these things in the middle of the caves.

As I rolled the crown around in my hands, wondering if there was some bizarre quirk in the game that would make this possible, I received one last message from the mystery warrior. I have a Bnet cheat code that lets me get the good items, he declared proudly, and left the game.

I dropped the Royal Circlet in the dust and sighed.

Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that he didn't stay to kill any more monsters. Wandering through the caves in Hell difficulty, I might not be about to find that ultimate armor or weapon, but I am coming close to pumping my character up another level. It's a goal that is fun and time-consuming, and at the end there is a fair bit of reward. And, if I should come across an item that is an absolute keeper, at least I have the satisfaction of having found it myself. For me, it is worthwhile to stick around and keep playing.

But for somebody like the mystery warrior, who has found a hacker's code that gives him all the things he would actually have to work at finding, there is no challenge. Where is the joy in discovering that the unique greatsword you've just found is actually one of the best items in the game, when you can simply type in a code and have it appear?

Is it any surprise that he was in the game for less than twenty minutes?

It is really rather sad. The hackers and cheaters keep appearing, so proud of what they can do with the software they've downloaded from the internet, and log on to Battle.net. They create that ultimate item, start their god mode and kill some monsters, and then retire. In the process, they miss the point entirely. The reason I am so proud of my level 34 warrior is that I built him from scratch; he didn't even venture onto Battle.net until he could adventure at Hell difficulty. These new players with their fancy cheat codes will never know the simple pleasure I get out of loading up Garwulf and taking him for romp in the dungeon, hoping to get that next level.

Unfortunately, it seems they don't even try to play the game properly. And, since they are cheating, they figure that everybody else is to. And thus, in what should be a straightforward kill-the-monsters game, the town square becomes littered with hacked magical items. Not only do they litter the ground, making it difficult to walk without accidentally picking them up, but any legitimate player who comes into the game is immediately given cause to leave.

In the end, I pity the poor warrior with his cheat code. I really do. It was obvious that there was no longer a challenge for him, and that he had