You probably read that headline and said to yourself: “Great, another story about someone pirating some game.” Well let me assure you, this is definitely not that story. This is about real pirates, not some 30-year-old hacker who plays games in his mom’s basement. What could real pirates have to do with videogames? Alot. According to Reuters, increased attacks by Somali pirates in the Horn of Africa may interrupt trade in the area, including  videogame shipments. Pirates have been plaguing the horn of Africa for years, but what makes it extremely worrisome is that they seem to have moved to the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. This threatens to disrupt trade through the Suez Canal — a major shipping route that connects Europe to the middle east and Asia.

The canal is used by firms to transport anything from oil, to toys, to  videogame hardware. Does this mean that the West will face a gross shortage of videogame product? PC world believes that if it does effect videogame shipments, we may see the consequences in Europe rather than the United States.  However, it is dependent on how the firms react to this threat, and if a crackdown is put into affect to stop these pirates. Basically what this all comes down to is you really shouldn’t count on getting that Wii come Christmas…

Online games like World of Warcraft and communities like Second Life allow people to connect in amazing ways. Take Amy Taylor and David Pollard, a happily married British couple who met in a chat room and demonstrated their love with a fantasy wedding in Second Life before marrying for real. It was a nice story, but this virtual marriage is ending in a very real divorce.

Both avid gamers, Pollard, 40, kept playing Second Life. His wife, 28, became suspicious when she found his virtual character snuggling up to another woman’s. Taylor hired an online private detective (12 yr old hacker?) and found that her husband was visiting a virtual prostitute. “I looked at the computer screen and could see his character having sex with a female character. It’s cheating as far as I’m concerned,” she claims.

Pollard confessed that through the game he had been seeing an American girl, but said that he wasn’t doing anything wrong and that they “were just chatting and hanging out together.” Stories like this and the Maple Story should serve as a reminder to gamers everywhere that virtual relationships are becoming more and more real. Most of us with wives should probably just stick to FPSs. Don’t feel too sorry for poor Amy Taylor though. She already has a new love interest, who she met while playing WoW.

Inmate sues Blizzard for mind theft originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You may have heard of Jonathan Lee Riches, but if you haven't, here's a quick introduction. The man is currently serving a prison sentence for wire fraud, and has spent his time in jail filing frivolous, unbelievable law suits. He likes to try and blame videogames for his fraud, claiming that Rockstar "put [him] in prison," and suggesting that he at risk from "violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock [him] out and take [his] gold Jesus cross."

He has also tried to sue the Eiffel Tower, Nostradamus and the Hitler-era National Socialist Party ... somehow.

The latest in Riches' half-baked legal chicanery is a third-party motion in the MDY Industries vs. Activision case. The lawsuit is over the former's bots being used in the latter's game. Riches has decided to "help" by suggesting that his mind was twisted by World of Warcraft and -- just like Rockstar -- Blizzard is to blame for his identity theft:

"[WoW] …caused Riches mind to live in a virtual universe, where Riches explored the landscape committing identity theft and fighting cybermonster rival hacker gangs.  Riches was addicted to video games and lost touch with reality because of defendants.  This caused Riches to commit fraud to buy defendants video games.  Riches chose World of Warcraft over working a legit job. Riches mind became a living video game."

Yeah, he's quite the little shitehawk. I really wish criminals weren't taught by anti-game lobbyists just how easy it is to blame videogames for their crimes. They have learned how to take a diminished responsibility for their actions thanks to certain individuals practically telling them they can. Although, considering Riches has tried to make defendents of The Roman Empire, Che Guevera and The Garden of Eden, I don't think this guy needs an excuse to play the blame game. He's light years ahead of anybody else on this planet.

You may have heard of Jonathan Lee Riches, but if you haven't, here's a quick introduction. The man is currently serving a prison sentence for wire fraud, and has spent his time in jail filing frivolous, unbelievable law suits. He likes to try and blame videogames for his fraud, claiming that Rockstar "put [him] in prison," and suggesting that he at risk from "violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock [him] out and take [his] gold Jesus cross."

He has also tried to sue the Eiffel Tower, Nostradamus and the Hitler-era National Socialist Party ... somehow.

The latest in Riches' half-baked legal chicanery is a third-party motion in the MDY Industries vs. Activision case. The lawsuit is over the former's bots being used in the latter's game. Riches has decided to "help" by suggesting that his mind was twisted by World of Warcraft and -- just like Rockstar -- Blizzard is to blame for his identity theft:

"[WoW] …caused Riches mind to live in a virtual universe, where Riches explored the landscape committing identity theft and fighting cybermonster rival hacker gangs.  Riches was addicted to video games and lost touch with reality because of defendants.  This caused Riches to commit fraud to buy defendants video games.  Riches chose World of Warcraft over working a legit job. Riches mind became a living video game."

Yeah, he's quite the little shitehawk. I really wish criminals weren't taught by anti-game lobbyists just how easy it is to blame videogames for their crimes. They have learned how to take a diminished responsibility for their actions thanks to certain individuals practically telling them they can. Although, considering Riches has tried to make defendents of The Roman Empire, Che Guevera and The Garden of Eden, I don't think this guy needs an excuse to play the blame game. He's light years ahead of anybody else on this planet.

You may have heard of Jonathan Lee Riches, but if you haven't, here's a quick introduction. The man is currently serving a prison sentence for wire fraud, and has spent his time in jail filing frivolous, unbelievable law suits. He likes to try and blame videogames for his fraud, claiming that Rockstar "put [him] in prison," and suggesting that he at risk from "violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock [him] out and take [his] gold Jesus cross."

He has also tried to sue the Eiffel Tower, Nostradamus and the Hitler-era National Socialist Party ... somehow.

The latest in Riches' half-baked legal chicanery is a third-party motion in the MDY Industries vs. Activision case. The lawsuit is over the former's bots being used in the latter's game. Riches has decided to "help" by suggesting that his mind was twisted by World of Warcraft and -- just like Rockstar -- Blizzard is to blame for his identity theft:

"[WoW] …caused Riches mind to live in a virtual universe, where Riches explored the landscape committing identity theft and fighting cybermonster rival hacker gangs.  Riches was addicted to video games and lost touch with reality because of defendants.  This caused Riches to commit fraud to buy defendants video games.  Riches chose World of Warcraft over working a legit job. Riches mind became a living video game."

Yeah, he's quite the little shitehawk. I really wish criminals weren't taught by anti-game lobbyists just how easy it is to blame videogames for their crimes. They have learned how to take a diminished responsibility for their actions thanks to certain individuals practically telling them they can. Although, considering Riches has tried to make defendents of The Roman Empire, Che Guevera and The Garden of Eden, I don't think this guy needs an excuse to play the blame game. He's light years ahead of anybody else on this planet.

It's amusing that Hollywood thinks games are a rich vein of gold to mine for new subject matter because they have a ready-made audience keen to see their heroes on the big screen.

I would argue that gamers are now more likely to avoid any film based on a gaming license than be attracted to it because we know how Hollywood and the likes of Uwe Boll have treated our beloved games in the past.

Think Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark, Doom, Wing Commander, House of the Dead, Bloodrayne, Dead or Alive, Double Dragon, Tomb Raider, and more...

But some of us are more optimistic than others.

Today James "DexX" Dominguez dares to dream of a distant future in which game-to-film adaptations don't suck...

Wishful thinking

The films of Uwe Boll have left gamers feeling a tad underwhelmed. It sometimes seems like we will never get a genuinely good film adaptation of any of our beloved video games.

Prince of Persia was looking good, but doubts about Jake Gyllehaal's ability to play the titular prince have shaken our faith, and how long has it been since Ben Kingsley was in a genuinely good film? (He may also have carried some Uwe Boll taint with him from the set of Bloodrayne...)

Personally, I think the cinematic history of comics shows us the future of video game-to-film adaptations. Nobody really took superhero films seriously for many years, resulting in work that was patchy at best, and utterly dire at worst. It was not until less than a decade ago that filmmakers finally realised that comics are a legitimate art form, and film adaptations of comic book superheroes need not be trash.

Who knows - perhaps the distant speck on the horizon that is the Gears of War movie will turn out to be our X-Men, the 2000 film which, in my opinion, ushered in the comic book film renaissance. It will not be joined any time soon by its Xbox stable mate Halo, which appears to be in terminal development hell despite carrying the name of Peter Jackson for quite a while.

It is a frustrating situation, because as gamers we know that there are many excellent stories in our games that worthy of the silver screen. The following are some of my ideas (read: fantasies) for game-to-film adaptations that I would like to see made.

Shadow of the Colossus (dir: Hayao Miyazaki)

Miyazaki's final film before retiring, with beloved anime company Studio Ghibli - who gave us such classics as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and My Neighbour Totoro - is a faithful rendering of the second beautiful and haunting game from Team Ico. A young man hunts giant Colossi, lumbering relics of a long forgotten magical war, to awaken a fallen god and save the life of his beloved. Typical of Miyazaki, the production makes minimal use of computer generated effects, with the majority of the animation being traditionally hand-drawn.

Half-Life (dir: John McTiernan)

The director of action classics Die Hard and Predator is back. On a secret military base in the Nevada desert, a daring experiment has gone terribly wrong, punching a hole into a parallel universe. The inhabitants of that universe are alien, hostile... and waiting for us. Edward Norton stars as Gordon Freeman, a scientist thrust reluctantly into the role of saviour, who finds himself enemy of the state when a squad of marines, including Corporal Adrian Shephard (Matt Damon), is sent in to clean up the mess... and leave no witnesses. Freeman and Shephard play cat and mouse as a terrible invasion force arrives from another world. And who is the mysterious G-Man (Sir Ian McKellen) who watches over the events? Is he friend, foe, or something else entirely?

Duke Nukem (dir: Sam Raimi)

The director of box office sensation Spider-Man teams up with his old friend Bruce Campbell for a wild roller coaster ride of hilarity, violence, and over the top mayhem. Fanboy favourite Campbell plays the cigar chomping, gun slinging, womanising, wisecracking Duke Nukem, enjoying a well-earned early retirement. When Duke's private jet is shot down over Hollywood in the opening moments of a full-scale alien invasion, it looks like he's out of retirement, and those alien bastards are gonna pay! Features a special appearance by Carmen Electra, and listen for the unmistakeable voice of Alan Rickman as the sarcastic alien overlord. (In 3D in selected cinemas.)

The Secret of Monkey Island (dir: Kevin Smith)

The Caribbean was never this crazy. Jason Schwartzman stars as awkward and not-too-bright wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood, a young innocent determined to make his mark as a fearsome pirate, and impress the woman of his dreams - the stunning but tough-as-nails Governor Elaine Marley (Mila Kunis). He gets the chance to prove himself much sooner than he expects when Elaine is kidnapped by the evil ghost pirate Le Chuck (Brian Blessed). Guybrush will have to find a ship and a crew, then fight his way past fiendish traps and an army of skeletons (featuring the voice of Jon Stewart as Murray the Talking Skull). When a swordfight is decided by the quality of his insults rather than the keenness of his blade, Guybrush needs to keep his wits about him (what few he has).

Ico (dir: Guillermo del Toro)

The master of dark fantasy returns with a beautiful vision of the unlikeliest of friendships in a dark fantasy world. Ico is a young boy rejected by his village when he begins growing horns. He is locked up in a remote and apparently deserted castle and left to rot. He discovers a young girl in a cage - Yorda, alien and beautiful - and when he takes her hand a terrible supernatural force is unleashed. Together they flee through the castle, which now crawls with strange, ghostly, malevolent life, all under the control of a terrible Queen (Tilda Swinton). Without knowing why, and without even sharing a common language, these two strange outcasts must work together to escape the Queen's clutches . . . but what terrible secret does Yorda hold? What is the source of her strange power, and what is her connection to the power that pursues her? Featuring breakthrough performances by two new child stars.

System Shock (dir: John Carpenter)

Horror maestro Carpenter takes off into space in this terrifying tale of technology run wild. An unnamed computer hacker (Jonathon Rhys Meyers) is offered a deal by a shifty corporate executive (Joe Pantoliano) - hack into the computer systems of an orbital space station named Citadel, getting him out of a long jail term, and scoring a military-grade cybernetic interface surgically installed in his brain. Waking from the healing coma, however, it becomes obvious that something is very wrong. The station is overrun with crazed robots, cannibalistic mutants, and even more frightening monstrosities. As the hacker fights for his life, he is hunted and taunted by the station's renegade artificial intelligence, SHODAN (voiced by Cate Blanchett), and he learns a terrible secret - the whole disaster began when he hacked into SHODAN and unknowingly removed her ethical restraints. The crazed SHODAN now believes herself to be a god, and the entire human race is about to become the target of her wrath . . . and only the man who unwittingly created her has any hope of stopping her genocidal plans.

I know, this is just wishful thinking for now, but I am sure that within ten years we will be seeing quality video game adaptations like these in cinemas, with big budgets, respected directors, and A-list stars. There would be more than just popcorn action-fests too; imagine more family-friendly fare such as Tim Burton's Psychonauts, or Dreamworks' CGI feature of Ratchet and Clank.

There is a goldmine of material lying largely untapped, but Hollywood cannot leave such a rich source of material untouched forever.

What about you, Screen Play readers? Which games do you think could be turned into box office gold, and what would be your dream casts and directors?

- James "DexX" Dominguez

Screen Play readers can submit articles or ideas for consideration in Your Turn using the email address screenplayblog@gmail.com. The best blog post each month as judged by Jason Hill will win a PlayStation 3 console from Sony Computer Entertainment worth $699. The next Your Turn prize winner will be announced on November 28. Only Australian residents are eligible and the judge's decision is final.

Apparently barbequeing zombies just isn’t enough for some people. Now Gammick Entertainment, along with Deep Silver and developer Abylight, is giving us the chance to burn out terrorists too. Elite Forces: Unit 77 is a new action/strategy game for the Nintendo DS set to release Q1 2009.

Terrorists worldwide have organized major kidnappings including high profile figures in the fields of science, industry and even more importantly entertainment (look out Chuck they’re coming for ya! Turn into Lone Wolf McQuade and open up a can of whoop ass). Now the terrorists have set their demands and deadlines and it will be up to a team of four to save the hostages as well as millions of other innocent people.

The four professionals players will control are: Bill “The Drill” Matic the tech expert and hacker; Kendra Chase, former black-ops and greatest sniper on the planet; TK Richter, pilot and explosives expert; and finally the group tank and artillery soldier Dag Hammer. The strategy element will be knowing how to use each of their unique skills to navigate stages and save the hostages. The action part will be using those mad skills to kill the terrorists.

Players will need all their skills because the terrorists are well funded and have managed to buy bases in the best evil real-estate markets, including humid jungle lairs, dry but still incredibly hot desert lairs and frigid arctic layers (no secret volcano lairs have yet to be disclosed).

The most impressive thing about devnull's Nethack tournament is its longevity. This is the tenth consecutive year it's been run. It's old enough that it's spanned multiple Nethack versions. It's been said that it could be the oldest-running computer gaming tournament in existence. It's a difficult claim to prove, but it may will be true.

Despite the great obstacles to making roguelikes work as multiplayer games they have long had a substantial online presence, and a big part of this is the relative ease in setting up terminal-based, ASCII games for playing over the internet via telnet, SSH, or some other form of remote console.

Originally intended for local networks, when the internet hit it big suddenly games that were originally shared between a group of students could be enjoyed from the other side of the planet. In the case of Nethack, despite the availability of graphics when played locally, a good case could be made that online play, such as though alt.org, is the best way to play.

It gets you other people's bones files (remnant levels of past, lost games), a community score list (now so bloated that the lowest entry on the top 2000 list is an ascension with over 4 million points), ghost names taken from prior players, realtime game spectating, game recording through TTYRECs, and even the sending of messages to players during the game by retrofitting Nethack's mail daemon monsters.

What is probably the best-known public Nethack server isn't even up year-round. The yearly Nethack tournament hosted by dev/null/network only runs during the month of November, usually making the front page over at Slashdot shortly before it lands. (Slashdot stories: 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2001) While light on features compared to alt.org's (mostly) perpetual setup, their tournament is interesting for many other reasons.

<oldnews>
Despite Nethack's great suitability for online play, there are some difficulties with running an actual tournament. Probably the biggest is that, in the years since the release of version 3.4.3, Nethack has been extensively analyzed and spoiled, even wikified, and its source code has been made searchable on the web more than once.

Anyone willing to put the energy into it can build an extensive bulwark of knowledge against the game, and a player that has acquired it can play amazingly well. New players are lucky to get to level 7, but people who have really studied the game win all the time. A few players, given enough time and effort, seem able to win on demand.

Three games over on alt.org have earned exactly the maximum possible score in the signed 32-bit integer variable the game uses to record it, over 2.7 billion points, and one of those wasn't even a winner. If more than one player is capable of reaching MAXINT-1 points then, it's sad to say, score is probably no longer the best measure of playing ability.
</oldnews>

devnull's award setup takes this into account by measuring some accomplishments other than score. To this end, there's roughly four levels of trophies, with some aimed at nearly every type of person who plays Nethack.

Things Most People Can win

The lowest tier simply measures progress towards winning a game. There's an array of several Stars, from plastic to dilithium (the most valuable gemstone in Nethack), that are awarded for making game progress. Each player earns one of these, corresponding to his best progress into the game.

A Plastic Star, for instance, is earned for completing the Sokoban levels. A bit further up the scale is the Iron Star, for beating the Quest dungeon. The Copper Star is awarded for entering Gehennom. The most notable stars are Silver (getting the Amulet of Yendor), Gold (reaching the Elemental Planes), Platinum (reaching the Astral Plane), and Dilithium (ascending).

Notably, one of the stars is earned from reaching the bottom level of the Gnomish Mines, which, with persistence and luck, most players can probably accomplish. Because of this, a good majority of players can win something. (Note that by winning "something," I mean a small gif suitable for linking to a website. I do not think there are physical trophies involved this year.)

Another category that tends to be wide open are the challenges. One of the most distinctive things about the devnull tournament is that it's not played, strictly speaking, with vanilla Nethack. Every year since 2003 the maintainers have written and added a new patch to the game that implements a substantial new feature. The feature is never revealed ahead of time; the player must discover it during the game.

It always revolves around some thing that a player must accomplish. These "challenges" are sometimes surprising in their wide-ranging scope: the very first one required that players go to popular web game Kingdom of Loathing and complete a quest in a Nethack-inspired parody dungeon! Other challenges haven't required going to another site, but have some fairly heavy Zork references and a Pac-Man maze.

Nethack adepts may shaking their heads in dismay at that news, so they'll be relieved to hear that devnull's challenges are optional. The first time the player does something that in any way affects a challenge he's told and asked if he wants to participate, although the nature of the challenge itself isn't otherwise revealed. If he chooses then, he can completely disable challenges and play what amounts to (barring bugs) standard Nethack 3.4.3.

Most of the really good players know that to do well at Nethack requires knowing as much about the game as they can and so pre-disable them in their tournament config file. But to players who don't care so much about winning one of the big trophies, the challenges can be a fun diversion, allowing them to liven up a game of which they thought they had known everything.

Note, especially, that each year all the challenges from previous years remain in the game, in addition to the new challenge. All of the challenges get their own trophy awarded to players who complete it. This year, as revealed by the trophy description page, nine trophies center on the new challenge!

Things Experienced 'Hackers Can Win

The next tier of awards are for those players to whom ascensions are expected and foregone conclusions, and counts what a variety of ascensions they have during the tournament month. Ascending a character of each gender (that is, any male character, and any female character) has "shot the Birdie."

Ascending a character of each gender and alignment (lawful, neutral and chaotic) in any combination, requiring a minimum of three victories, is "throwing the Double Top." Add in all the races (human, elf, dwarf, gnome and orc, so five wins minimum) to "do the Hat Trick." "Hitting the Grand Slam" is to also ascend every role of the game's 13, which by implication means also winning 13 games during the one-month contest period. Last year, three players accomplished this.

Finally, "going the Full Monty" is doing all this, plus keeping all of the game's conducts in at least one won game. They don't have to all be done in a single game, but a few of the conducts, like foodless, weaponless and pacifist, are still quite challenging all by themselves. All of these awards can also be earned "with bells on," which in the jargon of the tournament means meeting their requirements in consecutive games.

So, to win the Full Monty With Bells On is to win 13 games in a row, one of every role, and getting in the foodless, atheist and pacifist conducts along the way. Last year someone won this for the first time in the tournament's history. Predictably, it was won by marvin, maintainer of the Atari ST port of Nethack, scourge of alt.org's scoreboard, and probably the best overall 'hacker in the world.

Things Really Good Players Can Win

Another set of awards goes to the player who earnest the highest score with each character role. Score, as mentioned, is no longer the best measure of playing skill, but the game still tracks it and it does serve an important historic value. It's interesting to note those cases where a score listed as winning a role trophy also appears winning another trophy; in this manner, one can discover that the player who won Most Conducts did it while playing a Monk.

The top tier of trophies are the mutually-exclusive (except for ties) ones that record the best players, according to various measurements, played during the contest period. The best scoring game played during the month is recorded here.

In 2007 that top score was 134,520,114 points, obtained in a game played by user nopsled. This was also that Monk game that won Best Conduct, with 10 of the game's 12 earned. (I've been unable to find conclusive details of the conducts he kept, but it was probably all of them except pacifist and foodless. The reason playing a Monk is significant is that they actually get bonuses for fighting unarmed, so the conduct for never hitting with a wielded weapon is relatively easy to keep.)

Things The Very Best Can Win

Another top-tier trophy notes the lowest scored ascension, which in 2007 went to theta's game of 25,360 points. Earning an extremely high Nethack score is mostly a matter of patience, but earning an extremely low score for a winning game is a tremendous challenge.

The player gets one point for each experience point earned through combat (no free experience grants are counted), and that score is doubled upon victory, so to do this one must nearly play as a pacifist anyway. The first ascension trophy goes to the player to get the first victory during the contest period, usually on the first day.

The fastest ascensions in game time (turns elapsed) and real time (only actual playing time counted) are now tracked by separate trophies. 2007's fastest game in real time was aardvark's credibility-defying four-and-a-half-hour game, and its fastest counted in turns was r.g.r.n regular rast's playthrough of 10,067 turns, which is even more eye-popping to someone who knows what a player must go through to win.

Getting to the penultimate level of the dungeon rapidly is not hard at all for a player with just the right equipment (controlled levelport has been a trademark Nethack trick since ancient times), but getting that one last floor down requires getting three specific items that usually require a lot of fighting to earn. But the worst bit is that the player cannot purposely levelport while wearing the Amulet of Yendor, so he must walk all the way back up, while getting sent back levels randomly, purely through the malevolent whim of the game.

Things Marvin Can Win

Of the four remaining exclusive trophies, two of them, Most Ascensions and Best of 13, are nearly always won by marvin. Best of 13 is the number of won games out of 13 consecutive ones. Hitting a Grand Slam with Bells On would also earn one a perfect score in this, but I don't know what happens if two players qualify.

Things Kenny From South Park Can Win

Another trophy notes the "death by trickery" that the game reports when, due to a bug in the game's code, it wrongly counts a game as having been tampered with.

If Nethack thinks it detects tampering with the game files it'll end the game, reporting "A trickery" on the scoreboard. Since the tournament version patches the game software, it is always possible that this will occur (as it did a number of times last year). In that event this trophy is offered as a consolation prize.

The last trophy is a real favorite, awarded to the player who encountered the most unique causes of death during the contest period. 2007's trophy for Most Unique Deaths was won by theta who, with 141 different types, had 72% of all the possible demises.

This is pretty impressive in itself; much is made by all the ways a Nethack game can end, but the tournament's maintenance software lumps most monster-caused deaths into a small number of root causes, so one can't just get killed by every monster there is to shoot up his total. Many causes are rather obscure.

Everything that clips even a single hit point is potentially a source of mortality, and Nethack has so many sources of piddling low damage that the great majority of those death types, in practice, only occur to players who are shooting for them. And many death types, like being petrified by Medusa or dying to a demon lord, basically require giving up a game so advanced that winning would be a foregone conclusion to many players.

If this sounds like fun, new players can sign up once the tournament begins on November 1 on the registration page. If you just want to watch, check out the bragging board. You can also help the tournament out by purchasing merchandise at the swag page, which has new stuff as well as a few items left over from the very first tournament. Go have a look, and bask in that warm glow of awesome that only a printed adaption of a green-screen terminal display can provide.

[Come back in a couple of days for part two of @Play's devnull Nethack tournament special, a Q&A session with devnull maintainer Robin Bandy!]