Dispatch Game Episode 1 Ambience: First Start Screen for Sleep or Villainy

This week’s episode is based on the ⁠video game Dispatch⁠ (⁠ADHOC⁠) our first game homage at uncommon ambience.

Before each episode (level) of the game Dispatch there is a mildly animated ambient perspective. For instance, episode two of Dispatch shows a lobby, a mostly static scene, and you have buttons for “Play,” “Settings,” “Extras,” and “Exit Game” at the bottom.

The ambient experience for each episode is what I live for — a liminal space to inhabit (that loops seamlessly every few minutes). Recently, I used the late-night office start screen for sleep (episode 3). Probably not ideal for my Steam Deck working all night as a noise maker.

So here is the value proposition: I can make the ambient experience longer and in podcast form (with my own sounds; this is homage, not theft).

If you are not familiar, Dispatch is an absolutely charming (lewd) gamified choose-your-adventure cartoon with occasional button-mashing. Set in a despotic Los Angele-ish world of superheroes and supervillains. The heroing comes with a price tag for the powerless. If you need rescuing or have a donut shop to protect, ⁠you better have a subscription with SDN⁠ (Superhero Dispatch Network).

And that’s how we get to “Dispatch.” In the game, you are a beaten hero forced to serve as a team leader in an emergency call center. Instead of calling 911 for fire or public safety, civillians call superheroes with capes or an angsty invisible lady who can seriously throw hands.

To have a subscription to a superhero service in a world of war crimes and masked men kidnapping people off our streets — well, that would be amazing. I would love to task the Blonde Bomber with chucking a few doofuses into orbit.

But ⁠Alan Moore might caution⁠ my bringing fantasy with me into the real world — pretending I have Professor X mind melting rays for that ******* who ran the red, might deliver a brief (meaningless) sensation of victory. It’s less than self-indulgence.

Moore spoke about the dangers of grown folks watching Batman films — a just crusader swooping in with morals and a Batarang, delivering accountability to the powerful. The danger is we accept these fantasies, of independent-actors fixing systemic problems and not interrogate our responsibilities in an unfair world.

But ****, I wouldn’t look askance if the future handed us comic book technology, especially if it comes with ⁠Scud the Disposable Assassin vending machines⁠. I would go for the “Scud Lite” version, the robot that only beats the ⁠“**** out of somebody.”⁠ Ahhh, escapism.

BTW, I don’t know how Alan Moore would take Dispatch. Dispatch was released as a game and comic book, at the same time.

Superheroes existing in a more realistic universe was Moore's lane (⁠Watchmen⁠, ⁠V for Vendetta⁠), but he wasn’t fond of comics being made into films, especially his. He wanted to show off what comics could do that films can’t.

I would love to know Moore’s thoughts on Zack Snyder’s ⁠chorus of the Aquaman⁠.

This is where I’m ending it.

I had a bunch more paragraphs that built from a “If safe were profitable we would already be safe” — and join me on the tambourine line!

That somehow led to my praising the LL Cool J ⁠Mr. Smith album⁠ which has been unfairly eclipsed by ⁠one of its singles⁠, to landing on the track ⁠“Life As…”⁠ being on both Mr. Smith and the Street Fighter soundtrack, and finally to a Street Fighter advertisement from ⁠The Source Magazine (April ’95)⁠ featuring a comic that concedes the movie is ****, but the album is dope (plus ⁠MC Hammer / Deion Sanders⁠).

AND… Tell Tale Walking Dead… I was ruthlessly mocked by coworkers in 2013 for saving Doug over Carley the TV Reporter and that I somehow had a grudge against news people. Gawd Doug sucked, but he looked to be closer to immediate peril — Carley had a gun! How was I supposed to know Carley was out of ammo.

Shoehorned it, baby!

[[episode graphic made in photoshop]]