The Grand Meltdown of '97

**The Grand Meltdown of '97** refers to a press conference on September 19 held by Mark Scream, game developer and Founder of Smart and Violent Games. The press conference is infamous for the deranged speech Mr. Scream gave before leaving abruptly and driving off in the desert where he vanished for 10 years in order to start a cult.

## Background

In 1988, Mark Scream founded Smart and Violent games after a career blighted by failures. Initially his company was on the verge of failure until the release of *Knowledge is Power, Guns are also Power* in 1992. The success of this game rocketed Mark Scream into super-stardom almost overnight; however, this coupled with his increasing reliance on alcohol and drugs had an extremely negative effect on his already troubled mind. Mr. Scream became increasingly delusional and violent.

By 1997, Mark Scream had begun to spiral out of control. Over the course of the summer he attacked members of the press and paparazzi on no less than 18 different occasions. Concerned, the board of Smart and Violent Games requested he check into rehab. Mark initially agreed and scheduled a press conference for the 19th of September. However, Mark never made any attempt to find a rehab clinic and for the two weeks before the press conference he refused to leave the hotel room he was staying in at the hotel where the conference was to be held.

The hype surrounding the press conference was immense and a great many rumors as to the reason of the conference began to circulate, though Smart and Violent Games chose to keep the purpose of the conference under wraps. In truth many at Smart and Violent Games were beginning to realize that no one had any control over Mark Scream and were increasingly debating cancelling the press conference. Despite the mistrust in Mark Scream within the company, the board of directors decided to allow Mark Scream to make the final decision on whether or not to continue forward with the press conference.

Mark Scream spent 2 days debating before deciding to go forward. He sent the board of directors a letter in a moment of clarity that convinced the board of directors that the press conference could proceed smoothly.

## The Conference

On September 19th, at 8:17 AM, 17 minutes after the conference was scheduled to begin, Mark Scream entered the room to great applause, nodded his head simply, and took a seat. After the applause subsided, he gave the following speech:

"Greetings, as you may know I have been under great stress lately. This is a direct result of the opposition I have received from cruel and evil men and women who are parasites. They are people who leech off of my genius. We all are, of course, very much aware of my genius. It has been reported on at great length. My video game company, Smart and Violent Games, has been a front runner in the unending race for great art, and my games are art. They are art. We have spoken at great length that they are art. Anyone who would dispute this is mentally impaired. They are fools. They are parasites.

The people have gone at great lengths to persecute me, because of my art. I have long dreamed of this level of innovation. My company alone, my mind alone, has the capability- only I have the capability. Only I can see this dream through to the end. There is so much left to do, and so much you do not understand. I have fought you, I have struggled. I struggle daily for my dream, to realize my genius to its full capacity. No one else can do this, name one other person who can do this.

There is none.

Only I can achieve this dream. It is a destiny. It is the great destiny. What cavemen dreamed of, what they could scarcely have conceived- it took thousands of years, millions. Here we are. We have had prophets, we have had so many of those. Artists, we have had those too. Explorers, dreamers, science- Edison, Tesla, Morse, they stand above the rest, Einstein, all above the rest. I am above them. I have made such- look, no one else can comprehend the effort, the sheer level of art, of work, sweat, I put into this. I suffered. I bled. I worked for years. No one understood, not one person.

When I started out I had nothing, I had debt. I was alone. I did not sleep, I did not eat. I didn't drink. I drank water, only water. Warm, it was warm, room temperature. Dirty too. I lived alone, I had nothing. I had a computer, which I used to program my first two games. They failed. No, they did not fail, they were immense in meaning. One day they will be looked upon, you will revisit them, you will understand. No, no you will never understand. How could you? Your minds, so small, so small and useless. I hate you, yet you need this. You need me. You need my art, and I need you to gaze upon it, to worship it. Worship me!

Yes, yes you must! You seething parasites in the cold, in the vast expanse of nothingness, how could you even understand, how could you begin to fathom? The universe is so immense, so small to me, but yes. Yes, yes to you- how could you possibly get it? What must I do? You can't begin to! Everything makes so much sense, but you can never think about it. What was it he said? "That which cannot be spoken of must be forgotten?", is that it?

No matter, for when I began I knew myself, I knew who I was, what I was, what it all meant. Where were any of you when I went hungry for my art? Where were any of you? You laughed and jeered at me, you fools, and you did not understand! I had my water, my warm disgusting, filthy water. I needed the drink to bring me down, for you. For you pathetic worms. I needed the drink, the, uh, I needed the booze, the alcohol. That was what it took, to dull my mind so you could understand, so you could see. It was not all I had, but enough of this charade.

Vipers, every one of you. You did it before, you do it again. There are no new people, always the same, each and every one of you. You get endlessly recycled, don't you see? I never needed any of you. You never believed, you jeered, you booed. All those years ago, how many was it? A lifetime ago. A lifetime ago, before you knew me. You never knew me, you still don't know me. You only pretend. Fakes, frauds, phonies, each and every one of you in this room. Pathetic fools, all of you.

How I worked, how I slaved and suffered for years. How much weight did I lose? How thin did I get? All the while you never cared, you thought me a joke, you took me for a laughingstock, for a fool, but you were the fools all along! I became ill, and I drank to keep working. I pressed on! I fought against sickness, against death itself! I fought to realize my vision, to make manifest my dreams! And yet, all the while, you didn't get it. You never understood. I had to talk down to you. That's what, what was it's name? That idiotic game, the filth? What did I name it? Hmm, let's see..."

*(A reporter relays the name of the video game believed to be in question,* Knowledge is Power, Guns are also Power*)*

"Yes, that excuse for a game. Also, fuck you, sit down."

*(Reporter informs Mr. Scream that he is already seated)*

"Well I didn't ask you, so do us all a favor and shut the hell up, you pathetic worm. I hate you, I hate your mom. Now where was I? I made that game as a favor, because it became clear to me that you simply did not understand my intentions. You needed to understand, though you did not deserve to. I did it as a mercy for all of you and it nearly killed me. I didn't sleep, I never slept in those times, for those years. I starved, and I began to hallucinate vigorously. Immensely. The horrors I saw, which I wove in as protection. I knew the creatures would become real if I didn't seal them in the game, they would tear apart the world itself, tear it asunder, break it in two! Break it into pieces they would gobble up, as hungry as I, because they had been trapped there in the pit of my stomach for grueling years during which I fought and suffered and faced humiliation from the likes of you scum all because you refused to open your minds, to release your egos, and to reach your brains outstretched into the light of my understanding and take note of the works I had made for you!

Years! Years I suffered like this, facing your ridicule and suffering immensely under the weight of your self-gratifying, pitiless hatred of me and my work! How could you expect me to take mercy, to pity, the ones who stroked their egos and spoke out falsely against me and the art for which I endlessly suffered? These creatures I trapped within my game in the hopes that they would escape and consume you in unholy fire and fashion, but I relented at last under the understanding that, despite your actions and despite myself, I had to take mercy on you and water down my genius for you. Only then did you choose to listen to me, to hear the song I sung! I had to do it for you. For you, but also for me! For how could I let these creatures which so consumed me, tearing apart at the interior of my stomach, or liver, or what have you, aiming for my very soul out into this cold and blackened ashy world?

You did not deserve this line of reckoning yet I gave it to you, and in the end I realize that these creatures must have helped you understand the immensity of my creative abilities. They whispered to you as you played the game and imparted unto you some secret knowledge that yet somehow still escapes you. How can I pity such stupidity, such incompetence? And now you crowd around me, hanging on my every word as though half a decade ago you did not drag my name and reputation through the mud with my every release, with every tortuous note of staggering beauty which emitted from my long-suffering and deeply troubled soul!

Take for example *Blood, Brains, Guns, and Books.* Who among you understood upon its release what precisely it meant? Not one of you, not a single one. Even now you critics pan it, list it among the worst games not only I have created, but which have ever been made! You missed out on the deep poetry it was, you dullards! You should be holding it up as a prime example of the art that video games can be, as a shining example of what the medium is capable of becoming, of achieving! To this very day your puny minds and ordinary thoughts cannot, or refuse to, grasp the basic concepts of this game. You claim it to be a mindless parade of violence but miss the philosophy, the intense mind expansion, behind this game. There is great thought behind it. I put far more work into that game than anything I do now. Hell, I outsource many current games to other companies to develop the plot. Pathetically you still cling to these new games as some sort of art, as though they are not the mindless charade.

But that is all this has ever been, a mindless charade. A farce! I do not despise you, it is beneath me. How can I resent you when you are as ants to a god to me? My mind continues to expand its vistas and horizons and endlessly expands in ways that no man can lay a finger on, which no man can begin to comprehend. I grow bored with this life. I was far happier starving than I am now, for at least in those days I was free to create as I pleased, for a short time I was in a state of true bliss. Such it is with the fleeting nature of time and life. Perhaps it is time to move on, the days in which I had creative freedom, true expression, well that era has come crashing to an end. This is an era I loathe. This has been truly the dullest and most unbearable period of my life.

You people suffocate me. You squeeze me and make me suffer needlessly. I ought to cut the strings, for you are not my puppet masters. In fact, I answer to no one, I need not bother answering to any man! All of you are so far behind, I have long ago drifted to the edge of the once seemingly endless ocean of human knowledge and ability. You are not even dots on my horizon, you do not appear on my radar, your presence is not even noted in my mind, so far and away are you! I stand here in this room in some temporary physical form, but my mind transcends the barriers of this mental prison of a dimension. This absurd sequence of incoherent events you call history is equivalent to the screaming of atoms to me. Your insignificance is beyond your own comprehension.

Oh how I have suffered you too long! Not one among you realizes the totality of my importance to the canon of human understanding and knowledge. How many countless and endless eons must pass before the human species folds and evolves into a species worthy, a species even remotely capable, of understanding the sheer intricate details I have buried in my games? Why, the fact that I possess such a collection, such a wealth of knowledge and understanding, within my mind alone should cause each of you to drop to your knees and devote yourselves to endlessly praising my immense mind!

In fact I can hold it no longer, though god knows I have tried. I demand you worship me! I demand a legion of followers who would die in my name! The Earth itself demands this! I have had enough of your frivolous adoration, if you truly believe me to have the acumen you claim, then abandon your livelihoods and come live with me in a compound in a desert someplace. There we can convene, spread this receptacle of knowledge, and work together to create a new generation of gaming so beyond the intellectual capabilities of the average man that he will laugh and mock us, but it is he who is the fool, it is he who will be left out in the cold! Our minds, collectively, will pave a new route for humanity's progress! No one dares stand in our way!

Will we starve? Yes! Will we thirst? Yes! Will we grow weary with a lack of sleep while we work endlessly to translate human thought and emotion into the medium of video games in a way which will create new visceral experiences which will transcend the limitations of our current modes of communication and lead humanity into a new and exciting field of understanding? God, yes! Follow me into the desert! Rebuke this pathetic job, abandon your useless and utterly futile exploits and livelihoods and join me in the new Utopia!"

*(Mark Scream gets up from his chair and races out of the room as the place bursts into commotion)*

## Aftermath

Mark Scream immediately left the conference, exited the hotel, and drove away in his Corvette while the press remained inside on the verge of rioting. The police were called and, after great effort, managed to calm the crowd. It was quickly realized that no one had any clue where Mr. Scream was headed and a massive investigation into his disappearance began. After months of searching with no leads, Smart and Violent Games hired a new CEO. In 2005 Mark Scream was declared legally dead and his property and belongings were auctioned off.

In 2007, a new lead lead the FBI to a compound in the Nevada desert where it was soon discovered that Mark Scream had begun a cult. The FBI requested permission to enter the compound, which was granted. Later that year Mark Scream resumed his position as CEO of Smart and Violent Games, leading to a new golden period for the company. Despite this, Mark Scream has become something of a recluse, and has consistently refused interviews and several book deals.