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Ancient history is a relative exaggeration when you’re talking ten years ago, but then again as a webcomic goes it could arguably qualify. Does anyone besides yours truly remember this page, one panel of which has come back around again at last in this week’s comic? If not, then by default I have preserved the secrecy of what was going to happen better than any Marvel Studios set. But then again, if no one remembered, then does anyone care?
That’s the trick. Who are these people and why are we spending time on them? Well, I believe the answer is pretty obvious but I have the luxury of “inside baseball” as it were, where it’s literally part of my job to keep track of things and manage such writerly ingredients such as foreshadowing and exposition. I know there are at least a few of you out there who have read through the archives multiple times but it’s hardly comparable to the legions of superfans crawling over every inch of a piece of a mega-property like Star Wars or Star Trek where many times they have a better grasp on the minutiae than the creators themselves.
Putting aside the modern attitude of giant game publishing companies knowingly pushing out bug-riddled messes to the public, you can also hearken to Linus’s Law: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” The common complaint of “how did they miss this?” can sometimes be answered by incompetence or malfeasance, but I believe most often boils down to that even a QA team of dozens or a Beta test of thousands pales in comparison to the millions of players that a popular game will have upon release, a portion of whom will immediately set out poking their noses into every nook and cranny and finding every possible exploit and then reporting upon them more or less politely.
But people have limited memory space and this comic has been shambling along slowly, so can I expect them to remember? Moreover, can I expect them to care?
Well, all I can do is connect the dots I’ve always meant to. If you don’t remember I ain’t gonna get mad. And like I tell Dawn every time she points out that, say, some “new” youtube video I comment upon admiringly has been there for years and, in fact, she showed it to me back then: “every day is a surprise!”