I'm standing around in the middle of the Moscone Center, cell phone vibrating in my pocket. I check the message and see it's Bob.

I don't like Bob. Bob's a dick.

That was my take-away reaction when I first tried out Jim Munroe's GDC-commissioned text-adventure game. Bob is a dick. You see, Bob was one of the many people I ran into during my play-through, and he pissed me off more than any other NPC. He wasn't into synthesizers and he wasn't into Creative Commons licensed art, two things I discovered I was very interested in.

Bob didn't join my development team, because I didn't ask Bob to join my development team. Because Bob's a dick.

I did, however, find about 4 or 5 other people (none of whom were dicks) who were very much interested in making an indie game with me. Some of them even took me to the lavish after-hours parties where I mixed and mingled with other like-minded promoters and developers. I'd wake up the next day, stroll over to one of my new friends, and before I could say "Hey," they'd crack a smile and whisper an in-joke.

I don't develop games (see above graphic), I merely play them. While I imagine it'd be hard to capture every possible nuance of attending GDC as a developer/promoter, I gotta say that my first ever experience with a text-adventure (no lie) was pretty gnarly. Thanks again to Jim Munroe for letting me test it and then renaming the "Bob" character to "Ryan". Play the game online over at GameSetWatch right here.