Old Man Murray

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may not meet the general notability guideline. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic. If notability cannot be established, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. (August 2009)

This article's tone or style may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (January 2010)

Old Man Murray (aka OMM) was a computer game commentary and reviews site, well-known for its highly irreverent and satiric tone. It was written and edited by Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw. Old Man Murray was perhaps the most critical of game criticism sites, and was harsh on games that were overhyped or received strong reviews elsewhere, most notably Trespasser and the King's Quest series. Common targets of OMM news updates included John Romero^[1] and American McGee.^[2]

Contents 1 Themes 2 Appearances in other media 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Themes

A major theme in Old Man Murray criticism was the accusation that many new games failed to add any original ideas to the medium. Gabe Newell cited the opinion of Old Man Murray as a factor when designing the popular and iconoclastic Half-Life. Old Man Murray often took aim at the conventions embedded within game genres, such as the "bizarre dream logic" required to solve puzzles in various adventure games (most notably Sierra Entertainment titles), or the ubiquity of crates and cowardly scientists as a design element in first-person shooter titles. For example, Old Man Murray's writers devised the tongue-in-cheek review system, dubbed "Start to Crate",^[3] an "objective" way of determining the quality of a game by determining the time an average player must play until seeing a packing crate. In Half-Life 2: Raising The Bar, a making-of documentary, Gabe Newell mentions that there was such a worry about the crate cliché that eventually the team gave up and made a crate one of the first things the player sees and manipulates, figuring that this "was the Old Man Murray equivalent of throwing yourself to the mercy of the court".

The Old Man Murray forums were a hotbed of discussion on games and other topics. When updates began to slow on the main website the forums remained active. When Faliszek removed the forums, many of the regular posters migrated to a new site called Caltrops.^[4][5][6]

The Old Man Murray website is still up as of 2009^[update], but for archival purposes only; the site is no longer updated. The founders of Old Man Murray continue to run Portal of Evil and its affiliate website system. Faliszek and Wolpaw were hired as writers for video game developers Valve in 2005.^[7] In March 2006, Wolpaw won a Game Developers Choice Award for Best Writing for his contributions to the game Psychonauts.

[edit] Appearances in other media

• On the Quake 3: Arena map Q3DM19, the OMM logo is on the back of the antenna lift.
• The Old Man Murray website appears on all the monitors within the game Postal².
• Old Man Murray is thanked in the first level of Serious Sam by avatars of the game's programmers. Old Man Murray had been one of game's few media champions during its development cycle, thanks to its uncomplicated, Smash TV-esque gameplay.^[8][9]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Old Man Murray
• Portal of Evil
• Caltrops