We considered announcing System Shock, Syndicate Wars, every single Star Wars game ever, and even the Final Fantasy games today, but decided that would be cruel, even if it was an obvious joke.

I also tried to convince the team here to announce our new publisher who we've actually signed today, just because no one would believe us. But we decided that was too much of case of messing with everyone's head.

The discussion we had was more or less, "Yeah, any prank we pull will have 500 people commenting about the shutdown. So let's not do one this year." Short of defenestration, we've done about everything we can think of to express our regrets at the reaction to the site's shutdown while we upgraded it.

Would you believe I learned that word from Calvin and Hobbes?

(The comic, that is. Not the philosophers.)