After reading that developer Ritual Entertainment had been aquired by casual games house MumboJumbo, I assumed we'd never hear from the SiN crew ever again. I also theorized that SiN Episodes: Emergence was a certified sales failure (fortunately, that's not in print). Turns out I was about 74.2% wrong.

The Ritualistic community spoke with 3D Realms' moustachioed Richard "Levelord" Gray to get some clarification on the merger. On the questionable success of the first SiN episode:

The first episode did well, but not good enough to completely self-fund the second episode. It sold over 150,000 units, which is better than many shooters. It more than paid for itself, but not enough to entirely fund the next one.

And the future of SiN?

What we plan to do right now, both Ritual and MumboJumbo, is establish ourselves in the casual gaming market with strong new franchises and then return to SiN at a later date. We love SiN, make no mistake, and we definitely want to return to it.

Good news for fans. Let's just hope they're not put on some Puyo Pop clone and burn out before they focus on their next chapter. Michael McWhertor

Going Small - How the MumboJumbo Merger Will Affect Ritual

After congratulting the Sam & Max team on actually publishing their second episode, the editors start rappin' 'bout episodic gaming.

Jeff: Sin Episode 2...

Shawn: ...is likely not happening now. A lot of the people from the dev team have left.

Jeff: At Ritual?

Shawn: Yeah, they've gone elsewhere. They now work for other people. Some of the key people. One of the lead programmers. That's not a good sign.

Jeff: That seems like a real world thing that's going to be constantly a problem with any episodic game. How can you possibly ensure to fans or gamers that there are going to be future episodes? At any given point the team might dissolve.

Shawn: And the jury's out on why that's happening, I've personally been trying to contact the head there, Tom Mustaine, and haven't been able to get too much information. What it seems to imply, obviously, is that Sin Episode 1 didn't do well.

Michael McWhertor

GFW Radio

Wow, talk about reaching! Father Germogen Tucker of Florence, KY has written a thoughtful editorial on his thoughts about the endless debate over violence in video games. But, the Father has taken a new approach. He doesn't need to rely on statistics or pie charts or specific examples, oh no. Father Tucker has the sage words of 3rd century Priest, St. Hescios...

St. Hesycios the Priest (3rd Cen.?) stated: "...we and the demons combine in committing sins. The demons work through evil thoughts alone by forming in the intellect what fanciful pictures they wish..."

Thus what we conceive in the mind, if acted upon, becomes sin. If we see violence, and do not dismiss it immediately, it then becomes a compulsion that we attempt to act on.

I guess now violent video games are sin according to this ancient man of the cloth. I suppose I shall have to add it to my already growing list of daily sins. I sure hope Ronnie James Dio is right and that there really are video games in hell. Flynn De Marco

Priest Draws Connection Between Games & Sin [GamePolitics]

Destructoid's readers (and contributors) are a tawdry, villainous bunch. As are scoundrels over at The Age blogs, where Destructoid got the idea for compiling a list of gaming sins in the first place.

For my own part, I despise the tendency of gamers to regard the personal tastes of themselves or others as wrong. Liking or not liking something is not immoral, because it has no effect on others. It's not a sin that you didn't finish Halo. It's not a sin that you dig Parappa. And it's most certainly not a sin to hate Sierra adventure games (it's common bloody sense).

Be absolved.

The most sinful confessions from both Destructoid and the Age's threads were often the ones not regarded so sinfully by onlookers, such as the Age's 'Bluie's precocious chirp, "My favourite game is Unreal Tournament (and I'm a girl)and the newer versions just can't beat it." Note here the absence of awareness of the morally repugnant nature of braying about your vagina every time you get a chance to relate it to gaming.

Hit the jump for my favorite sin from the 'Toid, plus personal confessions from myself and Stickypig (who is tired of being called Sizzlepig).

Being a fanboy is also, most certainly, a sin. If I see one more totally console-free comment thread get turned into a ps3 vs. wii pissing match, I'm calling the Pope to come and take you all to hell. And I'm not talking about John-Paul, either.

But my all-time favorite was from Destructoid, and has nothing to do with pontiffs or pussies:

# Xbudz says: September 19th, 2006 at 9:42 am

You guys call those gaming sins? Try this:

I sold my birthday presents for a Sega Saturn during its suprise launch in 1995.
# Chris Taran

For Stickypig's part, during Sega's promotion for Truxton, he missed the deadline by which he had to purchase another Sega game and send in the receipt to get a free copy of the former. But through the intervention of some dark god, S-Pig was struck with the inspiration to manually transfigure the date on a diferent receipt, thus receiving his ill-gotten game in a timely manner.

For my own part, I discovered that the secondary controller would steer the duck in Duck Hunt. I did not tell my friend who was actually manning the light gun, and who suddenly seemed to become far less proficient at the game. Eliza Gauger

Confess Your Gaming Sins [Destructoid]
Gaming Confessions [The Age Blogs]

id's Kevin Cloud hated the idea of doing Doom 3. Obviously, history's vindicated him on that one. So perhaps history will also vindicate his confusing thoughts on piracy.

"Piracy is hard," Cloud said, in a response to an audience member's question about the issue. "It's really, from my opinion, destroying the PC market." He said concerns over piracy were the biggest factor in PC gaming's shrinking presence in many retail stores. However, he maintained that he felt the PC gaming market as a whole was not in any danger. "I don't think the PC market is shrinking at all," he said. "I think there're tons of people playing games on the PC. I think World of Warcraft is a good example."

Got that? Piracy's both destroying the PC market, yet the PC market isn't in any danger at all. Ostensibly a confusing statement, but he's obviously seeing the future of PC Gaming going more in the direction of Steam and MMORPGs. Of course, with the Pirates to Buyers Ratio for Steam title SiN Episode 1 being 5:1, it looks like the only thing any of us might be playing before long will have a monthly fee attached. Florian Eckhardt

id co-owner says piracy killing PC gaming [Ars Technica]

So how's Steam doing in stopping piracy? Surprisingly poorly, according to Mike Russell over at Ritual. According to him, technical support requests for pirated copies of Sin Emergence: Episode One are five times more prevalent than from legitimate copies.

Some of the excuses from pirates wanting to know why their crack isn't working are truly hysterical:

"What's Steam?" one asked. "I don't have one," replied another when asked for his Steam ID. "Oh, my copy didn't come with an installer," replied yet another user, "it's in a folder on a DVD. I just drag it to my machine and then run the game."

Mark Russell takes no guff from pirates, though! What does he do when he encounters a pirate?

Actually, I contact their ISP [laughs]. I know it sounds silly, but ISPs have been a lot more responsive towards pirates than law enforcement has been. Most law enforcement sees piracy as petty theft. It's under a hundred bucks, it's piddly crap. But ISPs, they're really responsive towards pirates, because most pirates are the people who are munching all the bandwidth. So if they have, essentially, a legitimate excuse to boot a pirate off, they'll take it.

If only an ISP furries were so easily jettisoned. Florian Eckhardt

Ritual's Mike Russell on Piracy [Shacknews]