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      <h5><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">//<a href="../../../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">loonygames</font></a>://<a href="../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">issue 
        2.5</font></a>://<a href="index.html"><font color="#7C420E">down the pipe</font></a>://<a href="index.php"><font color="#7C420E">1</font></a>, 
        2</font></b></h5>
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                      <p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="2">Down 
                        the Pipe:</font><font color="#904C10" size="4"><br>
                        <font size="3">Want to Play Games for a Living?</font></font></i></font></b><br>
                      
                      <div align="right"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">By 
                        Russell &quot;<a href="mailto:radpipe@loonygames.com">RadPipe</a>&quot; 
                        Lauzon </font></div>
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                  <td width="45%" align="right" valign="top"> 
                    <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E">Vol. 
                      2, Issue 5&nbsp; <br>
                      December 10, 1999&nbsp; </font></b></h5>
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              <h5 align="right">&nbsp; </h5>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial"><loonystart></font></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">You could 
                stand around the water cooler and discuss your favorite technique 
                in <b>Age of Empires</b>, and the boss would pass by and nod. 
                Heck, you&#146;re hard at work. Fire up <b>WarCraft III </b>on 
                your computer and check out the lovely cinematics. Yep, gotta 
                keep up on what the competitor is doing. Better play a campaign 
                or two just to be sure. Shout at the top of your lungs: &#147;That 
                fucker fragged me!&#148; and no one will care (well maybe they 
                might, but nearly as much as the stinkhole environment most of 
                us work in).</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">But we&#146;re 
                not like that, are we. We sit in our little cubicles, wearing 
                our pressed shirts and choking ties, and wondering why the heck 
                the company can&#146;t splurge and get us real machines to work 
                on. We fire up our web browsers and check out <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue&#146;s 
                News</a> when we think no one is looking. Check out the heated 
                debate on <a href="http://www.shugashack.com">sCary&#146;s msgboard</a> 
                if we have just a little bit more time before work needs to be 
                done. What&#146;s the <a href="http://www.stomped.com">State of 
                the Wood</a>? If we&#146;re really daring, or perhaps sit in a 
                corner, we might even try to catch some screenshots from <b>Diablo 
                II</b>. Hot damn I can&#146;t wait for that one. Maybe you&#146;re 
                even as nifty as me and have a telnet IRC client running and while 
                you chat with friends. At lunch time it might actually be okay 
                to &#147;run the &acute;net&#148; so we do the same but more openly. 
                Me, I write stuff for upcoming issues of loonygames.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I&#146;ve 
                often heard that you shouldn&#146;t make a living out of something 
                you really love; that too much of a good thing sours you to it. 
                Well, damnit, let me give it a try and I&#146;ll let you know. 
                In my opinion, if you sour to something you really love doing, 
                then you didn&#146;t really love it in the first place. Or perhaps 
                you didn&#146;t really understand in the first place the capacity 
                of what you wanted to do. But that&#146;s my opinion. Feel free 
                to debate me on it.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I&#146;m 
                not sure what kind of life a professional gamer leads. I mean, 
                to get good at a game, and I mean really, really good -- so good 
                in fact that you can beat everyone you come across, and you start 
                going out of your way to find people who might be able to beat 
                you -- what kind of life do you have? Do you play for 16 hours 
                a day? More? And do you focus your energy on just one game? Well, 
                I can&#146;t think of any one game that I&#146;d want to play 
                that much. That&#146;s just crazy. I like lots of different games, 
                but they have a definite lifespan with me. They come, I play, 
                they go. Now and then I&#146;ll pick up an old game that I haven&#146;t 
                played recently, but that&#146;s it. I tend to remember very quickly 
                why I got bored of it in the first place.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I&#146;ve 
                often wondered what it would be like to a game tester. Actually 
                I&#146;ve got somewhat of a QA background in software development, 
                I&#146;m pretty sure I know exactly what goes on in testing games. 
                I think you&#146;d get pretty damned tired of doing it unless 
                you really liked the game. And I&#146;m picky, I&#146;d only want 
                to test games I like. And who wouldn&#146;t? I feel sorry for 
                the poor souls that game tested Trespasser.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So what&#146;s 
                your dream job in the game industry? I&#146;d actually like to 
                hear from people on this. And tell me why you think it&#146;s 
                a dream job. In fact, if I get enough feedback, I&#146;ll go off 
                and approach the type of people that hold your &#147;dream position&#148; 
                in the industry and get the beef on what it&#146;s really like, 
                and compare it to what people thought it would be like. How cool 
                is that? You can mail me here: <a href="mailto:radpipe@loonygames.com">radpipe@loonygames.com</a>.</font></p>
              <p align="right"><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i>- 
                Russell &quot;RadPipe&quot; Lauzon currently holds the world record 
                for using the word &quot;exhumed&quot; 15 times in a single sentence.</i></font></p>
            </DIV></loonystart>
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Illustration 
  &copy; 1999 Dan Zalkus. Down the Pipe is &copy; 1999 Russell Lauzon. All other 
  content is &copy; 1999 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. 
  So don't do it. Please? Pretty please? Okay, fine...be that way. But don't ask 
  me for your allowance, young man.</font></i></p>
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