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24

The Game Games Bowl

January 25, 2012 by Tim

When I started putting together this year’s Winter-een-mas story arc, I began to envision this huge tournament that would take place to determine who deserved to wear the Winter-een-mas crown. Not just sitting around playing video games, but an ultimate competition in the vein of Battle Royale/The Running Man/The Hunger Games that would push the gamers to their limits.

The more I thought about it, the more excited I got about writing it. However I started to realize that if I tried to do it in comic-strip form, we’d still be in the middle of it come March. The Scott/Ted storyline last year took a long time, and while I’m happy with the way it turned out, and I think that had to be told visually, I didn’t want to do that again so soon.

So instead I started working with the idea of telling the story in a more traditional format: prose. Writing a short story would both allow me to tell you the story I wanted to, without it needing to take up months and months of comic updates.

I can already hear some of you saying “What? You expect me to read?! What is this, school?!” To which I would respond, ‘Look at it this way: If you don’t want to read it, at least it isn’t also dominating the next couple of months of the comic.’

This story counts as the Winter-een-mas update. It’s available in its entirety, right now for you to read or not read. After Winter-een-mas is over, we’ll return to regular, good ol’ comic strips.

Now, the reason that this will count for the next three updates (something I hadn’t intended) is because when I first set out to write this project, I expected it to be a short story. Five or six pages, I figured. What I ended up with is a veritable novella. Nearly fifty pages. Nine chapters. Twenty-five thousand words. The story I wanted to tell was much bigger than I intitially expected, so much so that of the last ninety-six hours, fifty of those have been spent on my laptop writing, trying to get this finished for today.

I started this weeks ago, and if I’m being honest, I still wish I had another week to spend work on it. I admit that I was caught completely by surprise regarding how much I wanted to fit into this tale. I haven’t written a short story for a while, and I misjudged how long it would take me. As such I have little doubt that you guys will find a spelling or grammatical error (or  twenty) as you read through the story. Please do email me any such errors or suggestions that you find.

So if you end up reading this story, I do hope you find it entertaining. I had a lot of fun writing it, it’s extremely satisfying to be able to tell a total story like this and not have it take months and months.

Currently the story is in PDF format. I need to find some other options for making it available to people, as my website isn’t exactly designed to easily host something like this in an easily-readable format. I’m definitely open to suggestions for different file formats I can offer you guys so that you can read this on the computer, or print it out and take it with you, whatever. Let me know.

Click to read The Game Games Bowl

 Now also available in .epub and .mobi formats for reading on phones/tablets and the kindle!

.EPUB

.MOBI


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Joe
Joe
7 years ago

So this goes straight to the Aftermath, and I can’t find a way to view the Game Games bowl arc. The comics are just not there. I hope this gets fixed.

Stanley
Stanley
6 years ago

Dude that was awesome!

Blair
Blair
6 years ago

Just re-read this, it’s awesome! I’d love to see this made into a movie short.. I’d fund that!

Robert Hoots
Robert Hoots
6 years ago

EPUB and MOBI links are returning a 403 error. If these are still available somewhere, I’d love to throw a copy of this on my Kindle!

Robert Hoots
Robert Hoots
6 years ago
Reply to  Robert Hoots

Actually, I’m getting the same thing with the PDF version. I can’t read it at all 🙁

Ottopilot
Ottopilot
6 years ago

Ditto, still broken.

Christoffer
Christoffer
6 years ago

You don’t have permission to access /images/gamegamesbowl/GameGamesBowl.pdf on this server.

I would very much like to read this!

opticsnake
opticsnake
6 years ago

Yep, still broken…

DewOnTheGrass
DewOnTheGrass
6 years ago
Blu
Blu
6 years ago

This was so epic.

Hamstermer
Hamstermer
6 years ago

I was the darkest of nights, it was the stormiest of nights
Okay really though
Amaaziingg

MidnightDStroyer
MidnightDStroyer
5 years ago

Heh! Not even the toilet could offer any relief from the pressure!
Lucas. Is. EVIL.
😀

Griever
Griever
5 years ago

So epic, why isn’t this on ESPN!? Instead there’s people kicking a ball across a field and people playing with sticks swinging with their *icks. A real man’s sport is a gamer’s Game Games Bowl!

Ang3lus033
Ang3lus033
5 years ago

Magnificent !
Really well written, you should consider writing more and more !
Maybe you did in the past 6 years ? I’m not there yet ! (no spoil please)

Kriket
Kriket
5 years ago

Nice work Tim! I didn’t read it the first time through. I should have!

Matthias Shadowblood
Matthias Shadowblood
4 years ago

That short story, for the whole competition, that was just amazing, as amazing as everything else here that I’ve read so far, also considering I’m typing this in 2019, that means I’ve got plenty of entries to go before I’m all caught up, so yay for that. Looking forward to continuing now that I finished the shortstory. On to the next strip!

Daemonslayer
Daemonslayer
4 years ago

I love the short story read, and it was great…. still wish it had comic form because seeing it would be awesome too

Tosteriev
Tosteriev
3 years ago
Reply to  Daemonslayer

Yup. All the stations, the air strike. I believe it would be pain to show in a comic style.
That’s where the other ways come.
Some consider them to be… “unnatural”.

Shadowthrone
Shadowthrone
3 years ago

Loved the story. So glad that I printed it off when it was first posted. Still have it tucked away somewhere. Great for some light reading when I want some chuckles.

Trekris Michaels
Trekris Michaels
1 year ago

Tim really did make squid games before Netflix… except without all the murder.

Omegasonic2000
Omegasonic2000
4 months ago

I just finished reading it. Worth every moment, and the finale left me with a huge grin on my face. A novel worthy of Winter-een-mas.