Of all the Views in all the Moviestorms, he had to make changes to mine.

It was a Tuesday, just like any other Tuesday in rain-soaked Cambridge. I'd just returned from the 2008 Machinima Film Festival in New York. Crazy city. I was jetlagged, but anxious to get back to work. Before I left for New York, I'd completely rewritten and expanded the internal help pages for Moviestorm's Set Workshop View. It was a big job, but I'd got it finished and submitted to QA for testing just before I left. I was feeling proud of my work. I was ready to make a start on the Director's View section.

Dave Lloyd, co-founder of the company and Chief Bit Shoveller, looked up as I walked into the room. He seemed nervous; sheepish. Perhaps even guilty. I stared him down. I knew he'd crack eventually.

"Ingram," he gulped, "good to see ya! I, er ... I didn't know you were back in town. I'd love to stay and chat, but I got things to do, you know? Gotta run!"

I wasn't buying. This schmuck knew something, and I was going to find out what. I grabbed him by the lapels of his smart checkered suit.

"Spill it, Lloyd," I growled, "whadya know?"

A single bead of perspiration rolled down his craggy cheek, glinting in the moonlight, and then dropped to impact on the top of his trusty MacBook like a gunshot.

"I made some changes." he whispered, "I'm sorry! I didn't know it would go this far!"

I might have guessed. Lloyd was always pulling crazy stunts like this. They didn't call him "The Workaholic" for nothing. I pulled out my copy of The Ruby Way from inside my trenchcoat and pressed it to his throat. Violence is the only thing these engineers understand.

"Show me," I muttered between clenched teeth, "or I'll cut you a new programming language."

I felt sick. All my hard work had been for nothing. My documentation was now as useless as a J2EE engineer on an OpenGL project. This job gets to you sometimes. It eats away at your soul like a World Of Warcraft addiction. Still, as I walked down the smoke-filled alleyway towards my office, I had to admit: Lloyd's changes were good. Crazy, but good. Maybe I could document them after all ...

Moviestorm in New York

In a couple of weeks, Short Fuze is despatching an elite squad of ninja machinima evangelists to take Gotham by 'storm. Armed only with laptops, beer and charisma, they'll sneak into Times Square during the Halloween celebrations. Their mission is to infiltrate the Machinima Film Festival, brainwash the attendees into abandoning Second Life, and hold Overman hostage until he agrees to rename the Overcast The Moviestorm Show.

Well, when we say "elite", we mean Matt & Johnnie. Look for the guy in the hat or his tubby bitch and they'll buy you a beer (or other tasty beverage if you're not a beer-drinking type). Chances are if you're reading this, you're already a convert to the True Faith, so they won't preach at you and threaten you with disembowelment if you don't download Moviestorm immediately. Instead, they'll listen to your endless suggestions for improvements and new content packs, and relay them back through the interweb to the Moviestorm Command Centre (Europe), where, um, something may happen as a result.

Matt will also be sharing a stage with John Martin of Reallusion championing the cause of non-game machinima tools in a panel on Interfacing Virtual Actors. They will be joined by Ken Perlin of the NYU Media Lab and Michael Nitsche of Georgia Tech.

Come along if you can. It'll be a blast!