This article marks the second Anniversary of the Fort. At the same time this will also almost certainly be the final article I publish here. After today the Fort has to be considered being in “Hiatus” (to avoid phrases like “passed on”, “is no more”, “ceased to be”, “expired”, “bereft of life” or “Ex-Site”). A year ago I have already mused in mild frustration about my plans and expectations, as well as about the failures on my part to bring those plans to fruition. In the back of my head I’ve always (...)

Let me tell you a tale: Once upon a time ... Two men are sitting in a park. Let’s call them Dave and John [1]. Dave wants to read a book. John switches on his mobile phone, starts playing music and turns the music volume way up. Dave asks John to reduce the volume. Johns responds that he likes it that way. Dave points out that the music in its volume is distressing him. John demonstrates a lack of empathy and states that there’s no law prohibiting him to play music and if he would feel like (...)

Let me give you my opinion on people in general: One third is stupid as a brick, another third is (in a varying degree) mean and only the remaining third is somewhat bearable. Besides other character traits you will also find a certain level of ignorance interspersed between all three parts (not surprisingly showing the clearest in the mean portion). You can see that all in all the odds are pretty much stacked against me liking a person. I also find that the older I get the more I despise (...)

Radio TF2 was IMHO a promising concept. A glimpse into an alternate reality in which technology has developed differently than in ours. Over there computers were introduced much earlier into everybody’s life and consequently computer games entered the public scene decades ago. Games have become part of mainstream entertainment (We might get there in 10 to 15 years). And have also influenced or even penetrated other media, like music and literature. In a world like that successful gamers or (...)

Granted: Except the wealthy people none of us has money to squander. While with varying income and varying costs of living the amount of money available to us vary as well, we all have to make ends meet with the money we’ve got. Consequently we all love a bargain, we will try to get a product for a low price, we try to make the most of the money we have to spare. Nothing wrong with that. And while that has probably been the same since the dawn of time I think this approach (or even (...)

Currently I’m not playing any TF2. I can’t say if this is just an extensive break or if I’m about to leave the game behind. After my stint with Fallout 3 and New Vegas I have turned towards other projects which consume my time (as a matter of fact right now I’m not playing anything, though I have a few perfectly fine games sitting in my Steam folder, but I expect that Portal 2 will change that at the latest). Unlike with TFC I’m not fed up with the game. In TFC it was the increasing amount of (...)

Still alive. Barely, though. Stressed out from work and on top of that got sick right for the Christmas holidays. Nothing too serious, but enough to put me out of order for a few days. I know I haven’t commented on the latest TF2 update, but I didn’t even have much opportunity to check out the new Medieval Mode. Truth to be told the little info I have absorbed didn’t exactly instill any urge to fire up TF2 to try it out. Melee-oriented gameplay doesn’t hold that much appeal to me. Still, (...)

Ah, the disappointment. These days lazy Teatime only updates The Fort every new moon and now the newest installment is not even covering the game the site is dedicated to? Boo, I say. Truth to be told I don’t have any pressing issues prompting me to write about. The game is what it is. The people playing it are what they are [1]. Same old same old, so to say. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. There are people in the community who are wishing the game would have been “same old” (...)

I guess you’ve all have read the news a couple of weeks ago: Valve paid the creators of the Polycount items the agreed percentage of the proceeds from the in-game store of the first two weeks. This turned out far more lucrative than anybody would have guessed. The five creators received between $ 39,000 and $ 47,000 as their 25% share of the sales of their Polycount items (single items or bundles) in the first two weeks. Those are impressive numbers. The numbers are getting even more (...)

Did you enjoy the Halloween Update? I think everybody was expecting the two winners of the Art Pass Contest to be released for Halloween (all the more since Mann’s Manor very well lent itself to a season release), but of course Valve couldn’t resist and topped it off with some additional stuff and turned a simple update once more into an event. At one hand I can’t help but love Valve for all this. Store and all that (which I intend to comment on soon) might be a controversial affair, but (...)