Community Event / Creation Tails of the Borderline

TailsoftheBorderline

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Here on Tails of the Borderline, over the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you exclusive fly on the wall access to British Entertainment company Borderline Happenings.

It’s nearly Christmas, and it’s an exciting time at Borderline. We’ll follow them through the build-up to the release of their flagship product. It’s a make or break time for them as they’ve gambled all their money, (and a fair old amount of other people’s), into this venture. The excitement is tangible here at Borderline HQ, in the quiet rural idyll of Upper Swippage, Cambridgeshire.

Borderline are, of course, world renowned for some timeless classics, as well as some more recent hits including Roller Paint Mogul, a DIY based VR experience, and Pillville, the world's number 1 pharmacy owner’s simulation.

Will this release go without a hitch, or will there be bumps in the road? Will this be a triumphant return to past glories, or a storm in a tea cup. Join us in Tails of the Borderline, coming soon here.
 

TailsoftheBorderline

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Today on Tails of the Borderline, we’re right in the thick of things here at Borderline HQ. Last weekend, a lavish party was held to celebrate the upcoming release. Borderline invited many of their investors, having collected a significant portion of the money required through a Bootstart campaign.

Early Sunday morning, Borderline were forced to issue an emergency Bootstart supplement, colloquially known as a “kick up the jacksie”, asking fans for additional funds to pay for the bar tab for Saturday evening’s festivities. With cash flow tight, and the release of their new title still three weeks away, it was a real shock to discover the quantity of refreshments that their fans were able to consume.

The Bootstart page thanks the Borderline fans profusely for their previous contributions, and states that due to far higher than expected consumption of certain premium value beverages last Saturday, they’ve been forced to go back to the community for a contribution towards the drinks bill.

Various reward tiers are listed on the site, including:

£5 for two cans of Red Bull.

£10 for ready blended raw eggs and Worcester Sauce in a special “Borderline” souvenir container.

£15 for a self-help audiobook on how to reduce your alcohol consumption.

£50 for a year’s supply of Parecetamol.

£90 for the ability to begin your Monday in a new start position – 4pm.

Much higher reward tiers are available, including a 3 week stay in rehab and a copy of Back to Black, with the absolute highest level being a liver transplant.

Reaction from the fan community has been mixed. Some fans were furious, pointing out that they had already made significant contributions, and now they were being asked for more.

Another well-known group of fans are always furious, so we will of course often ask them for quotes as it puts the ratings up.

Still others were philosophical about it (or possibly still hung-over).

“I guess I did have a few more than normal”, admitted Slidey, a notorious backer of the game who had previously caused scandal, uproar, and revolution, by suggesting that in the far future, it might not be necessary to use a paper and pencil to write down the shopping prices as you travel around.

We spoke with Borderline community manager Edgar Morse, who explained some of the background:

“We wanted to make sure that our fans and contributors had the best time of all last Saturday. That’s why we laid on a free bar. As it turned out, our wonderful fans have rather expensive tastes, and they managed to consume over eight times more drinks than we had budgeted – we don’t want to raid the development budget to pay for that, otherwise it could jeopardise our ability to put Bobbleheads in the game.”

We asked our regular games launch party drink overcharge correspondent, Cathy Terrier, to comment on this.

“It’s definitely a bold and risky move. It’s clear that getting Bobbleheads back is the #1 feature request right now. However, I think there may be more to this than meets the eye. The amount being requested here would buy a full crate of 30 year cask aged Single Malt Whisky for every single guest who attended last weekend. I think there may have been some subsequent events last Saturday that may have incurred significant additional charges…”.

The Bobbleheads were unavailable for comment.

If you’ve been profoundly affected by this story in any way, or if you have further information to add to this, please contact Tails of the Borderline with your story. We're inviting our regular roving reporters out their to post their copy.

Here at Tails of the Borderline, we are still looking into this and will bring you further developments, as and when they occur.
 

TailsoftheBorderline

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Hoping to dig a little deeper into the recent goings on around the Borderline Bootstart bar bill ballyhoo, we took a quick trip down to the venue where the party was held, the Imperial Memorabilia Centre in nearby Maiden-over-water, a market town which hosts this beautiful collection of cultural and technological artefacts, together with the English Branch of the IUCC (International Underwater Cricket Club)

The manager of the establishment was away, but we did manage to speak to a person who claimed to be the acting Centre Chaplain, Canon Swivelle Gimbal, a very pleasant if somewhat eccentric looking individual. He was wearing a black robe, and muttering something about revolving lava.

Canon Gimbal did provide us, off the record, with some further information about the previous Saturday’s activities.

“Look, we’ve had to incur a series of additional costs clearing up the results of Borderline’s event.

Firstly, we had to bring a cherry picker into the building, and move several static aircraft displays, in order to rescue 2 revellers from Mossie. We didn’t even spot them until 2 days later. We have no idea how they got up there, and frankly, neither do they.

Then there is the matter of the not inconsiderable cost of returning Concorde to its normal colour. There was never an Orange Concorde in service, and the registration was never Alpha Sierra Bravo Oscar.”

He went on:

“Then to cap it all, we gave Borderline strict instructions to leave the full size Cobra outside on display at the main entrance to the Centre where it can be seen by passing trade from the road. They have shrunk the bally thing and dragged it into the main hall. It’s going to cost us (by which I mean them) a fortune to build it back up to the full size.”

At this point we began to wonder whether the Canon had actually fully recovered from attending the event, “…just to supervise and make sure nothing is damaged”.

Intrigued, we attempted to track down the two persons who were alleged to have boarded one of the exhibits.

We eventually found them and asked them what had happened. They comprehensively updated us as follows:

“ “

This may be because they had been sat upside down in the cockpit of a Mosquito for two days – they did look a little dishevelled.

It became clear that it was going to be difficult to get to the bottom of this.

We did though, take a short interlude before leaving to look around the centre's marvellous exhibits.

We felt very patriotic as we had never realised that the Harrier Jump Jets used by British forces in the Falklands were decorated with a Union Jack paint job.

We were also impressed by the large technology companies’ commitment to supporting heritage matters – it was good to see the BAC Lightning sponsored by Google with its sheening new colour.

Looking back to the problems in Korea in the early 50s, we could understand why the RAF chose to paint a Wireframe image onto the Gloucester Meteor – perfect camouflage as you make a low level sortie over the Pyongyang traffic grid.

It’s beginning to looks like we may never solve this riddle, but nevertheless, we have to now ask, did Borderline’s fans inflict this on themselves?

To our intrepid reporters out there in/on the ether – please file any additional copy you have around these matters.

Here at Tails of the Borderline, we’ll continue our research and continue to cover the run up to the release. Will this fog clear, or will a new level of darkness descend? Tomorrow we’ll be back at Borderline HQ in Upper Swippage, to find out how the Bootstart is going, and catch up on other new developments this week.
 

TailsoftheBorderline

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Tails of the Borderline here, back at Borderline Happenings’ Upper Swippage Headquarter building.

We arrived bright and early this morning, eager to get an update on the progress of the Bootstart drinks campaign. We decided first to visit the customer service department, the real coalface of the company where sales and customer service enquiries are adeptly handled by the Borderline crew.

Phones were ringing, and frantic typing could be heard all around the room as the beating heart of Borderline’s sales and customer service operation swung into action once more for a new day. Piles of game boxes and various other paraphernalia were all around the room, waiting to be packed and assembled. Several Domino’s pizza boxes were also prominently visible, contorted into hideous looking structures.

Eager to find out what was happening on this fine morning, we approached the German speaking customer service rep, Berndt Kornn, hoping for an update on yesterday’s findings.

“If you could just wait one moment, we are just working through some small glitches that occurred this morning. Due to a little slip of the finger late last night, we accidently, and temporarily, put some of our release day purchasing options online early. These are going to be special offers for new additions to your ship and environment in the game. Unfortunately they were up long enough for Google to cache them, and now there’s a four hundred page thread about it on our customer support forum. Also, we need to pack up all these game boxes and send out disc copies to all our customers of this exclusively online game, so if you’ll excuse me for a short while…..”.

We were ushered out of the room quickly whilst the team struggled through the backlog, but not before we managed to snap a photo of the press release that they had accidently put live too early:

____________________________

Do you feel the Cargo hold of your ship is looking faded and dated? Want to personalise your ship? Decorate your cargo hold interior with one of five new wallpapers:

1) Hessian Green.
2) Isinona Truffle
3) Titus Linen
4) Black hole in space
5) Retro Hypnotic - Ian Bell’s Website background

Price £3.99

Do you feel underdressed in the game? Choose from this unique range of flag based, and game career based, underwear for your pilot. Choose from a range of styles and genders:

1) A wide range of national flags. (Exclusively limited edition – unable to purchase on 29th February).
2) Federation
3) Empire
4) Pirate
5) Bounty Hunter
6) Miner.
7) Trader.
8) (Budgie) Smuggler.
9) Assassin (guaranteed to cover both cheeks).
10) Commando (special discount £1 off).

Price £4.99

If you want to save money and receive a special bonus, you can get our package:
1) choose your cargo hold wallpaper,
2) Choose your Pilot underwear,
3) Get free and exclusive access to the “If you can’t see my radar antenna, I can’t see you” decal for the rear of your ship, which lights up and flashes whilst docking or undocking.

Price £9.99
______________________
This was an interesting development, but we felt sure this was just a little slip. Nothing for anybody to get upset about, right?

Boy were we wrong. We made the mistake of looking on the Borderline Happenings official interweb forums, where thousands of fans of the game were queuing up, eager to express their opinions on the latest developments.

Just one example, from Anne Gree of Over-the-top, Berkshire, stated “I have never been so furious in all my life. I cannot believe they are trying to take money from us again for this useless drivel and tat. I will never buy anything from this company ever ever ever again”. It later transpired that Anne does not own a computer.

It has to be said that there were many voices on both sides – several enthusiastic backers of the game posted that they would be purchasing the items as soon as they become available, and they were hoping that the rumoured option to buy a new colour for the inside edge rivets on the inner bulkhead of your landing gear bay would soon be ready to buy as well.

Out of the 4237 posts on this matter, only 4 pointed out that at no point in the game would you, or anyone else, be able to see pretty much any of these items, and these 4 posts were roundly ignored.

We really did feel sympathy for the Borderline Happenings employees at this point. It’s amazing how just one small typing mistake can spiral out of control, but looking on the bright side, it does mean that we can focus in on this and get some good controversial quotes from a minuscule minority, instead of mentioning all the amazing features and capabilities in the upcoming software.

It’s been so busy for the rest of the day here that we found it difficult to get any significant comment from anyone here at Borderline. Borderline’s marketing spokeswoman, Emma T. Yoppurs, did release a written statement, which mentioned that although you won’t be able to see your pilot’s undergarments or cargo hold at this point, they are indeed being fully rendered in the background “assuming you have the appropriate equipment.” She also pointed out that, in her view, that having invisible ship add ons showed an important commitment to having an equal playing field for players with visual impairments, and that making them completely worthless proves that they don’t discriminate against players with more money than sense.

Late in the evening, we did manage to briefly collar Marcus Treams, story-line editor, for a few seconds as he sprinted down the corridor.

We asked him what he thought of the fans questions as to whether this had anything to do with items buried deep in the copious release notes of the latest gamma builds, which were previously thought to be networking tweaks:

“- Prepare breech drop for release activation
- Detect and supposit breech Drop request and lower cleanly
- Added but supressed maintain drop breeches on instance transition”,

and in a hastily released subsequent build the next day –

“- Inhibit release breeches if #pantype# = null”.

His reply as he disappeared around the corner:

“Shortly”.

As you can see, it’s never a dull moment here at Borderline Happenings. We’ll continue to bring you stories from our exclusive access to their amazing work as they prepare for their flagship release day.

As usual, any roving reporters or contributors who are out there, please file your copy here……
 

TailsoftheBorderline

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It's Monday here, but at Tails for the Borderline we never miss a beat. We are here, ready and waiting at 9am at the start of this new week, here in the Upper Swippage Borderline HQ.

Rumours have been circulating during the weekend that, if true, could send a seismic tremor through the whole entertainment industry. It seems that Borderline Happenings may be on the brink of calling a press conference which will announce something never before done in gaming history. They will be making major changes to the product, with little more than two weeks to go until release.

Their Bootstart drinks bill campaign finally reached its funding target during the weekend, partly thanks to a generous cross pledge from Iculus Waft, a company whose fortunes have become increasingly linked to borderline, and whom we hope to come back to later.

Here at Tails for the Borderline we can't be sure if these rumours are true, but we have not found anyone to deny them yet, and there are plenty of people on the Borderline interweb site quoting them as fact, regardless of whether there is any official statement of any kind.

Anyway, it certainly looks like a bright Monday and a fantastic start to the week, and it seemed that Borderline have finally put the little hiccups of last week behind them. At least it looked that way, until about 9.23. That's when a group of suited individuals arrived in the Borderline reception area. It seems they are from the Data Protection Authority and they are here to launch an unannounced investigation into Borderline's well publicized "wipe" strategy.

They were reacting to several complaints. These come from a strangely well-organized group identifying themselves as SOS (Save Our Saves). The complaints allege that Borderline have been deleting important and critical data from user save games, in breach of the data protection act (1998), namely the number of credits and items possessed by the user, together with various other “personal” meta data.

We spoke to three of the most prominent SOS activists, Donna Pummey from Milton Keynes, Ina Ruddy from Inverness, and Sid Winder from Romford.

We asked Donna why she had made this complaint.

“We created SOS because we were outraged at Borderline’s decision to wipe our progress again at launch time. I work as an intensive care nurse in a nearby hospital, and I had called in sick for the next 3 weeks so that I could get a head start in the game. I feel I owe it to myself, and several others who have unknowingly made sacrifices for this, to right this wrong.”

Ina was similarly peeved:

“I have spent the last two years training in Star City, Russia, having been selected to become an ISS astronaut. When I found out that Gamma was starting, and there would be no wipe after Gamma, I gave up my place on the Soyuz launch last week so that I could play the game. I can’t believe we might have to go back to the beginning again.”

Sid did not want to be quoted directly, but a video which surfaced on Youtube seemed to show that his account had over 14 trillion credits after 15 hours of the first Gamma test build. Doubtless, he does not want all this honest hard work and toil to be wasted. Sid also denied rumours that he was the person who was supposed to deploy the grappling hooks on the Rosetta lander, but missed the cue due to the final Beta test being released 20 minutes before.

In order to provide some background as to the motivations behind SOS, we wanted to get some comparative experiences from others who had played a highly prominent role in a success story, but without making any useful contribution. Therefore we asked for comments from Bez and Ana Matronic. Their agents said that they were unable to comment.

Although we haven’t been able to speak to anyone from the top leadership team at Borderline yet, an anonymous source told us that Borderline forgot to include key disclaimers in their terms and conditions, which were needed in order for them to wipe out player progress. Apparently they thought that most people would automatically assume that in a testing process, you might expect to have your progress reset to the beginning every so often, and that you might expect to find some issues and problems, but perhaps this is in the same way that one might assume that coffee is hot, or that a toaster might product hot toast – both items which seem to need a prominent warning posted in hotels and restaurants.

With all the fuss, we have not yet been able to get any more gossip or information regarding the alleged upcoming press conference, and this was set to continue into the late afternoon, as events took a rather sinister and unexpected turn.

Just after close of business, we noticed a police car parked outside the Borderline office. Initially, we assumed that this was just a visit from local law enforcement to give their perspective on what policing might look like in the 34th century.

As we crossed the office floor to track this latest development down, we were confronted with a shocking and unexpected sight.

Key design team members, Sandra Gamgee-Flood and Milton Aradise, were being led away in handcuffs…..

DA DA DUUUUM


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TailsoftheBorderline

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John T. Peel is a superhero. John T Peel specialises in rescuing those who are victims of miscarriages of justice, police corruption, or unfortunate misunderstandings of a legal nature. John T Peel has pledged, in increasingly over the top rhetoric, to work tirelessly in support of these unlucky folk.

John T Peel is on a mission. John T. Peel does not like subtlety. This rescue requires a major intervention. He needs to blast out the walls of the police station with a massive explosive charge, enter the station, and rescue the two falsely accused game developers. All without attracting attention.

BANG

Uhhhhhh!

Not that dream again, thought Sandra as she awoke in a police cell - the beds here really leave something to be desired in the area of comfort. Sandra Gamgee-Flood was used to having slightly surreal dreams involving dubious heroism. At least that's what she told us when we caught up with her back at Borderline Happenings later that day. It seems that being released on police bail is slightly more likely than a dramatic rescue.

Earlier that day, Upper Swippage Village police station had released the following statement:

"On Monday 1st December, during a routine audit by the data protection authority, investigators came across information which led them to believe that a crime might have been committed. We have seized certain equipment and data from Borderline Happenings HQ building, and we are continuing with our investigations. Two persons are helping us with our inquiries."

Unfortunately, both Sandra and Milton have been advised by their lawyers (or possibly just through embarrassment) not to comment on the latest situation. No worries though. We can turn to the tabloid newspapers, who are now showing an interest in Borderline's recent spate of problems, and who can always be relied upon to report only verifiable facts.

It seems that Borderline recently applied for a patent for a technology referred to as "The Hyperhyp Wipe", and some of the details of this patent were redacted for purposes of "commercial confidentiality". Eagle eyed fans in the depths of the Borderline interweb community had spotted this, and had assumed that this patent was filed by the audio team for the game - perhaps some kind of ambient dance that you do whilst waiting for your ship to exit hyperspace.

However, a number of communications and emails were found by the investigators, and in particular there is one apparently damning email which contains the following passage

"Look mate, you know what we're facing right now
1. 40 Threads per day complaining about us wiping the game progress out.

2. 43 threads per day complaining about us not wiping the game progress out.

3. 13 threads per day from people who claim they are already bored before we've even released.

4. 18 threads per day from people claiming that the prolonged Hyperspace animation makes them feel spaced out and queasy, some even claiming that it put them to sleep.

We need to do something about this. I've come up with a potential solution. I've been working on this for a while in the evenings. I think we can use Hyperspace Hypnosis - I have been able to tweak the hyperspace animation to introduce a hypnotic state into anyone watching.

Once in this state, we are then in a position to make whatever suggestions we want. Think about it, we can wipe all knowledge of the game from the user's own mind. If they don't know how to play or that they've played before, they won't have any problem starting from the beginning again. What's more, they won't be bored, and they will think it's a surprise release. They won’t even notice if we push it out by another few months!”

It’s believed that Borderline were conducting secret internal tests of this technology within their development team, and there are allegations that this technology has even been tested on end users without permission. Here is some of the “evidence” being suggested to support this.

a) The entire development team for the offline version of Borderline’s game were apparently let go, after they apparently forgot where they had put all the code.

b) A few minutes perusal of the Borderline interweb forums proves beyond all doubt that many users have forgotten their manners, and even lost touch with reality completely. Some players complained that they had forgotten to put the cat out, or eat their dinner, whilst playing. Are there perhaps bugs in this technology?

c) Apparently Borderline’s visitor book for the last few months contains several lengthy visits by Thomas Rance, a well-known expert in subliminal suggestion techniques.

Is Borderline’s release now in jeopardy? What release? Hmmmm. Join us again in our next installment, unless we have lost all memory of this by tomorrow (which could be a good thing).
 
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