I received the sad news earlier today that a far-off friend of mine, Jeff, aka "Cpt.Carnage", passed away last night.
I don't really know how to process this, so I'm just going to start typing and see what happens.
Many moons ago, you may recall me talking about a little group called the Squadron of Shame that originated on the 1up.com forums. We were a group of people who eschewed the big hits of the day in favour of the overlooked and underappreciated; our collective name was inspired by the term "Pile of Shame", which we first heard discussed on the 1up Yours podcast.
For the unfamiliar, the Pile of Shame is the pile of "stuff" you have that you keep meaning to get around to, but never do. You can have a Pile of Shame of pretty much any form of media, and pretty much everyone has one these days; some refer to it as their "backlog". The concept behind the discussion on the podcast was that the participants would take a game that they felt had passed them by — in this case, Psychonauts by Double Fine — then play it through independently and come back later to discuss it.
That never actually happened on the 1up Yours podcast because everyone involved was much too busy to be able to devote any time to such a project. But a group of us on the "Radio" forums on 1up.com thought it was a great idea, so we ran with it instead, playing through Psychonauts together and discussing it on the forums. We quickly gained a reputation for lengthy, in-depth discussion, but the Radio boards were a good place for that sort of thing, since they were generally relatively quiet, and free of the general console fanboy wars that were going on in the more generic forums.
I'm honestly not entirely sure if Jeff was with us right from the beginning, because to be perfectly honest he's felt like a fixture for as long as I can remember. In that respect, I think it simply doesn't matter whether he was there from the start or not; fact is, he was a part of our little group. A precious friend. A valued contributor to our discussions. Part of something bigger than each of our own, individual selves.
After 1up.com went through its slow, agonising death, much of the Squad drifted apart for one reason or another. Many of us moved to Twitter (from the period before it was The Worst Place On The Internet — yes, believe it or not, there once was a time like that) and there were several attempts to build our own little communal spaces online through shared blogs and forums. We got together and did our own podcast. Some of us even managed to meet face-to-face — and yes, that includes me, despite the vast majority of the Squad being in the U.S. and Canada. On one occasion I was happy to meet Jeff, who was pretty much how I had imagined him. That's a good thing.
The 2010s were, generally speaking, a fairly dark period for me for all manner of reasons that are beyond the scope of what I want to talk about today, but the net result was that I lost touch with a lot of people for a good few years, including former Squadmates. But when I emerged from the other side of things and found that there was a small but dedicated little unit of the Squad still hanging out online, chatting and sharing war stories, it was enormously comforting — and a big part of that comfort came from the fact that I saw Jeff was still there. He had always been there, even if I hadn't.
Jeff was the sort of person I always enjoyed seeing in the chat — and, of course, on that one occasion we were actually in the same place. He always had a kind word, something to contribute or something to share that he thought we'd be interested in. He was someone that it was simply nice to have around; as I say, he had always felt like a fixture, in a good way.
It's shocking, upsetting and scary to think that he could be gone so suddenly. The world has lost a wonderful person while so many other complete shitbags continue to exist.
It's not fair. It's not fair on Jeff, it's not fair on the people he leaves behind. But I hope, wherever he is now, that he knows how much people cared for him, and how much people are going to miss him now that he's gone. And that whatever is next is a better, more peaceful existence than the world we live in right now.
Farewell, Jeff. Forever a Squaddie.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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