Video Game Journalist Pranked

Shacknews Campaign, Dallas, TX--A long-time video game journalist was convicted last week of being an easy, gullible target, a weakness that left the helpless man humbled and humiliated by his peers.

In what is likely the opening shot of a terrible war, Christopher Faylor, an editor at Shacknews.com, found himself on the receiving end of an elaborate prank perpetrated by fellow colleague Nick Breckon and Shacknews community member Abigail Sponge.

The hoax involved an arrangement for a fictional interview with famed gaming icon Peter Molyneux, initiated during the recent Game Developers Conference. As the phone call became increasingly perverse, the unknowing victim hastily scrambled to appease his faux future interviewee.

The result was captured on a rudimentary recorder, set to accompanying video, and posted directly to the Shacknews website for universal appreciation. Also attached was an afterword by the co-conspirator Sponge.

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And now, a message from the desk of Abigail Sponge:

My dear friends, I have kindly been permitted to write a short afterword on the video you are about to see. You know me to be a kind and virtuous woman from our many poignant Team Fortress 2 moments, and will no doubt be shocked and appalled by the contents of this video. I believed this to be an artistic venture, one which would demand emotion and feeling rather than competence and timing. I also believed my colleague and dear, dear friend Christopher Faylor to similarly be performing and expressing the wonderful wealth of passion that permeates his entire being.

Our production would challenge your conceptions and change everything. You would awake the next morning to view our wonderful world in a whole new joyous light. Or so I had been led to believe. Only at the fumbling, clumsy climax when Faylor came in his own face out of sheer confusion did I realise that intent and consent had been eroded in terrible ways. To my infinite disgust, worse was yet to come.

Friends, imagine my horror upon discovering my most womanly of tracts screencapped and posted on Shacknews for all to leer at. Every goosebump of my raw emotions lay frozen and exposed. Who do I believe is responsible for this atrocity? Nicholas Breckon's diabolical role is obvious, however please do not misunderstand me: Nicholas Breckon is a simple man.

No, the true puppeteers of this fiendish plot can only be Stephen Gibson and his associate Marty Goldstein. Their media empire demands blockbusters in full-colour, high-definition display, laden with special effects and bearing a soundtrack other than an anguished man shrieking numbers and beating on household plumbing with a spoon. Art, beauty, truth and decency have no meaning to Stephen and Marty. How could they permit me to challenge your conceptions when they rely so strongly on the reign of philistines? They could not.

And so we arrive at what you have just viewed. I scream furious apologies in your scared little face.