Back in 1998, when Unreal was released (fab game no?) there was a bunch of us who got together to make a mod for it after we'd all discovered the marvels of the UnrealEngine and all that. It's completely beyond my memory as to what the mod was, something to do with a multiplayer gametype relating to deathmatch, but anyway. We got a little site going on some free hosting... Which was probably Geocities IIRC, though again I can't really remember (I wasn't a project leader, or even a developer, I was one of the original guys who came up with the idea and got together a team).
Anyway a few months went by and we were getting the desired interest in the project. Not huge of course, just a nice flow. I think at one point we had about 40 users in the IRC channel we owned on DAL at the time but, anyway, people kept asking us when the thing was going to be released, and we had exactly the same attiude towards it then as you do now; "When it's finished damnit!"
Now keep in mind I just used to throw ideas in, i didn't ever really do anything else, but we were having a team discussion on the channel one night when no bugger was online, and everyone was getting really riled up because Gary, the main developer who was also working a CTF mod with some other guys I believe, was really getting *beep* off with having a ton of email each week asking him the same question. Also, several other devs hadn't been pulling their weight or, what not, for various reasons and, basically everyone (except me because I didn't give a flying snot either way since I'd been left on the bench week ago) was getting mighty irritated with each other.
So, just off the bat, purely as a humourous suggestion, I said "I know. They want a release, date, give 'em one." The response I got was along the lines of "How can we when we don't know ourselves" and I just said, "Give 'em one anyway!". I was laughing in reality, but when you're behind a computer ona chat room the others can't really tell... Maybe I should have put a smiley down? I dunno. All i do know is Gary and the Phil, another devloper, immidiatly got Dave, the website designer, to put a release date up. It was four months away or something. Worked a treat. emails stopped flooding in and ran to a trickle, and the usernet we'd hijacked from some deadend Indian IS network stopp getting the usual "When it's coming out" and "Can i try it?" moans.
Erm, yea so anyway, we gave em false hope, and it worked a treat...
... Erm, I'm not sure if you wana hear the end of the story though. You can probably guess actually.
Okay so I'm not seriously suggesting this, I just thought it'd be nice to have a bit of a larf, seeing as recently I haven't seen much else other than moaning. I hope you see the funny side of this post... i certainly do (it is true as well but that's why i thought it was worth posting).
