Old Man Murray

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Old Man Murray (aka OMM) was a popular computer game commentary and reviews site, well-known for its highly irreverent and satiric tone. It was written and edited by Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw. Old Man Murray was perhaps the most critical of game criticism sites, and was harsh on games that were overhyped or received strong reviews elsewhere, most notably Trespasser and the King's Quest series. Common targets of OMM news updates included John Romero^[1] and American McGee^[2].

A major theme in Old Man Murray criticism was the accusation that many new games failed to add any original ideas to the medium. Gabe Newell cited the opinion of Old Man Murray as a factor when designing Half-Life. Old Man Murray often took aim at the conventions embedded within game genres, such as the "bizarre dream logic" required to solve puzzles in various adventure games (most notably Sierra Entertainment titles), or the ubiquity of crates and cowardly scientists as a design element in first-person shooter titles. For example, Old Man Murray's writers devised the tongue-in-cheek "Start-To-Crate Rating System", an "objective" way of determining the quality of a game by simply determining the time an average player must play until seeing a crate. In Half-Life 2: Raising The Bar, Gabe Newell mentions, when developing Half-Life 2, there was such a worry about the crate cliche that eventually the Valve Software team gave up and made a crate one of the first things the player sees and manipulates, figuring this "was the Old Man Murray equivalent of throwing yourself to the mercy of the court."

In February 1999, the site received a form letter from the United States Postal Service personally signed by US Postmaster General Marvin Runyon. This letter was interpreted as proof that Old Man Murray had been named the official gaming site of the United States Postal Service and, by extension, the United States Government^{[citation needed]}.

The Old Man Murray forums were a hotbed of game discussion, as well as other topics. When updates began to slow on the main website the forums remained active. When Faliszek removed the forums, many of the regular posters migrated to a new site called Caltrops. ^[3]^[4]^[5]

Old Man Murray was still running as of 2008, but for archival purposes only; the site is no longer updated. The founders of Old Man Murray continue to run Portal of Evil and its affiliate website system. Faliszek and Wolpaw are currently employed with Valve Software. In March of 2006, Wolpaw won a Game Developers Choice Award for Best Writing for his contributions to the game Psychonauts.

[edit] Appearances in other media

On the Quake 3: Arena map Q3DM19, the OMM logo is on the back of the antenna lift.
The Old Man Murray website appears on all the monitors within the game Postal².
Old Man Murray is thanked in the first level of Serious Sam.