Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! The Movie

I am incredibly proud of the story my writing partner and I wrote for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! but unfortunately there was no way to experience it outside of playing through the entire 40+ hour game ... until now!

Watch the entire story from start to finish in this 27 minute video that includes every cutscene and in-game story moment!

Thanks for the support! Bigger and better things are yet to come!

-Ryan

Behind CSD2's Writing: Leo and Dennis Emails

I've noticed that fans of Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! who read the hundreds of in-game emails (written by Nick Kraak and myself) seem especially fond of one of the series of emails involving characters named Leo and Dennis — a pair of coworkers at some unnamed in-game company who make each others' lives miserable. With the release of Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! on the horizon, I thought it'd be fun to talk about how I wrote these fan-favorite emails.

How Leo and Dennis Landed in My Lap

When David Galindo first tasked me with writing humorous in-game emails for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!, I didn't get a lot of direction. Having voluntarily written a few emails for the original game that he liked, I was simply tasked with writing even more fictional emails that provided a humorous break from the chaotic gameplay. He didn't even give me a deadline or tell me how many he wanted. I was free to write as few or as many as I wanted, and only through his feedback did I start to understand exactly what ideas he was and wasn't interested in pursuing.

Except he did have one request:

"What I'd like for you to try are the emails about Leo and Dennis, two passive-aggressive people that pretty much hate each other. Those were among my favorites in [CSD1]."

Along with this request I was provided a document of the email code from CSD1 that contained every single email that appeared in that game, including six emails exchanged between characters named Leo H and Dennis M. David couldn't remember who had written the emails, so I only had these six to go on when developing my own plans for the characters in the sequel.

Writing the Leo and Dennis Email Series

To help better understand the characters and what made them David's favorites, I copied the emails into a spreadsheet and broke them down by email sender, email subject, a summary of the action indicated in the body of the email, and what was the motivation for the action. It looked exactly like this:

(click to enlarge)

Through this, the general scenario became clear to me. Leo was a well-meaning idiot who kept getting on Dennis' nerves, and Dennis responded to every dumb or irresponsible thing Leo did by pranking him. Leo would then try to get revenge for these pranks, but never through pranking (aside from one exception). For example, here's an email from Dennis:

Subject Line: That smell
Body: Has anybody else noticed that smell coming from Leo's part of the office? I can't tell where it's coming from, but it smells like rotten eggs.
-Dennis M.
P.S. Leo, please stop eating my egg salad sandwiches. I don't want to have to keep hiding them. Sometimes I forget where I put them."

I'm not sure how intentional this distinction was to the original author, because I don't know who they are and they only wrote three emails for each character (with some inconsistencies, as mentioned), but nonetheless I decided to run with it in my follow-ups.

In the end I wrote 24 emails between the two characters, drawing as much inspiration from the original six emails as I could for how to make them unique from each other. Unlike the first game, however, my series of Leo and Dennis emails responded to one another and eventually told a story of an escalating feud—a byproduct of my affection for fiction story writing—that ultimately ended in tragedy.

Here's the chart for how that played out:

(click to enlarge)

The most difficult part of writing this series was, it should come as no surprise, coming up with so many different problems for Leo to create and pranks for Dennis to respond with. Naturally, I turned to my own office experiences for inspiration. While I haven't been personally wronged in any of the ways mentioned in these emails, I knew the common office annoyances (printer low on paper, lights flickering, etc.) and could work backwards to figure out how those could be intentionally caused by someone and why. I'd also heard of people's lunches disappearing/getting stolen, so naturally I used that as inspiration as well. Little did I know while writing that this seemingly small incident would escalate the way it did in the later emails.

You see, I didn't actually plan any sort of story out when writing this series. It's just that it was only natural when writing for the wrongdoings and subsequent pranks to escalate in order to show any sort of progress. However, while Leo being framed for embezzlement or getting his vehicle's brake lines cut seems like the height of "pranking," it's ultimately the mixing up of lunches that crosses the line into tragedy.

Wait, tragedy?

It turns out that some players had not realized that Dennis' pranks killed Leo in the end. This isn't because I'm a bad writer (I swear!) but because the game was meant to be kid-friendly, so it was intentionally obscure. In case you're one of those players, here's what the ending meant:

Finally fed up with having his lunch eaten by Leo, Dennis puts kale in his own lunch one day. Technically there's nothing wrong with putting kale in your lunch, but Dennis knows that Leo is "fatally allergic" to it. This is revealed in Dennis' last email in the story line:

Subject Line: Beware of Allergies
Body: We may want to beware of each other’s food allergies, if any, in the future. It seems that Leo is fatally allergic to Kale, which was completely unbeknownst to me when I made my lunch this morning and put my name on it. Also, if you’d like to send some well-wishes to his family, please see me to sign a card I’ve picked out for them!

The next (and final) email the player receives from Leo is an automated message that explains that Leo has been harassed by Dennis for quite some time and that the message itself was programmed to only send if Leo didn't return to work for an extended period of time, implying that his allergy was in fact fatal.

The final email in the Leo and Dennis series comes from "upper management" notifying employees of two open positions formerly held by Leo and Dennis, the latter of whom is not mentioned by name because "it is company policy to no longer mention [him] by name since the recent verdict"—implying some sort of legal proceedings that found Dennis guilty of something. Probably murder by kale.

This is the kind of quality storytelling you get from reading the totally optional emails in CSD2.

What's with that email in your chart with the Chinese characters? I don't remember reading anything in Chinese in CSD2.

Oh that? Originally the entire email was going to be written in Chinese characters about how Dennis somehow made it so Leo's computer only wrote in Chinese. Not only does this not make sense (how would he be able to navigate his computer or send the email?) but it wasn't practical, since the game only supported the English alphabet and Google Translate can only get you so far. Instead, the email was rewritten so that Leo was thanking people for the help in getting his computer set back to English from Chinese.

So just for kicks, here's what the original email was going to translate to:

Subject Line: I detest someone in this office
Body: I'm only saying this publicly because it turns out that nobody in the office understands Chinese. Dennis, I hope you lose your job and live a very, very unhappy life.
Regards,
Leo H

So that's it! I hope you've enjoyed this brief peek behind the curtain into how CSD2 became the crazy fun game that it is! Be sure to check out my two previous blog posts about writing for CSD2:

• My First Writing Credit - Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!
• My Experience Writing for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!

And be sure to check out Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! when it releases on Early Access on January 29th!

-Ryan

My Experience Writing for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!

After working on it for years, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! (henceforth referred to as CSD2) was finally released on September 13th. The user ratings on Steam are "Very Positive" and according to David (the game's developer), in its first week it sold double the amount of copies that he hoped to sell by the end of the year. By all measures it appears to be a success, and one I'm proud to have been a part of creating.

I was hoping to hit 10,000 sales by the end of the year, as that would be a break even point for me.

I did double that in less than a WEEK

— David Galindo (@chubigans) September 22, 2017

I've often been described by others as a talkative person, so you can imagine just how happy I am to finally be able to tell you about the whole process of writing for CSD2. I've been keeping my lips shut since April 2015 – there's so much to talk about!

This post is a bit longer than I usually write, so to help you navigate it and/or get to the bits you're most interested in, here's a list of links to everything I talk about:

• How I Got Involved with CSD2
• My Experience Writing for CSD2
• Initial Assignments
• Unveiling the Game and Second Writer
• Moving On from Emails to Food Descriptions
• Crunch Time
• Delays
• Restaurant Descriptions
• Post-Launch Reactions
• But Wait, There's More!
• Historical Object Emails
• Game-Affecting Emails
• Further Behind the Curtain
• Hidden References
• My Personal Favorites
• My Favorite Jokes that Didn't Make the Cut
• The Hard Data
• But Why Bother with Any of This?
• Closing Thoughts

How I Got Involved with CSD2

I've already blogged about how I became a writer for CSD2, so I'll just quickly summarize it by saying that it came down to having a connection to the developer from many years before, remembering how cool it felt to have contributed a very little bit of writing to the original CSD, and some incredibly lucky timing.

My Experience Writing for CSD2

Writing for CSD2 was unlike any other writing I'd done in my professional or personal life. I had written only seven emails for the original CSD, and they were all admittedly pretty low-effort because I had discovered David's call for contributions on his fan message boards mere days before the deadline, but I had to leave to go to dinner pretty soon and didn't want to forget to contribute, so I quickly churned out as much content as I could. This included gems such as:

Subject Line: Have you seen my cat?
Body: Has anyone seen my cat? He's black and white with a patch on his face.
If you see him, ignore him immediately.

That's probably the best of the seven that I wrote, which should give you a pretty good idea for how surprised I was that David wanted me back for the sequel. Anyway, I was super excited to be a part of the game and very eager to do my best with this amazing creative opportunity – my full-time job at the time had me writing product descriptions for ramps, so the creative freedom offered by writing random emails for a video game was a huge breath of fresh air.

Initial Assignments

My first assignment was to write 25 in-game spam emails. As if my self-imposed pressure to impress wasn't stressful enough, David told me that he had hired another writer as well, but wouldn't offer any further details on who they were or how much better they were than me. Due to various personal events going on in my life (such as moving into my house) I wasn't able to complete and send the batch of emails until a month later. I wanted to really narrow down what David was looking for and willing to include, so my first 25 emails were all over the place and full of experimentation. Some were genuinely annoying spam that was almost unreadable, some were simple jokes, and some referenced pop culture. For most of the emails, however, my style of humor mirrored the above example from CSD1 and was as follows; use a vague but realistic subject line, draw the reader in with some mundane story, and then execute a wacky twist in the last sentence.

David gave me feedback on each individual email, which gave me a really good idea for exactly what type of content he was looking for. Afterwards, David and I brainstormed some ideas for "series" emails we could include – unlike in the first game where the emails were largely disconnected from each other on account of being written by about a dozen volunteers, David wanted the sequel to include emails written to and from recurring characters or referencing similar themes as if to simulate being subscribed to an email service (akin to Kickstarter project updates, weather alerts, and movie reviews), which led to me writing a series of email exchanges between two characters who appeared in the first game's emails; Leo and Dennis. The basic premise was that Leo and Dennis send a series of passive-aggressive emails to the entire building that the game takes place in, in which it is apparent that Leo is an inconsiderate idiot but apparently nobody in the office notices except for Dennis, who responds with a series of escalating pranks targeting Leo.

Unveiling the Game and Second Writer

In the midst of writing my third batch of emails, David announced the game to the world through a reveal trailer. It was at this time that I learned that the other writer that David had hired was none other than Nicholas Kraak, another longtime fan of Vertigo Gaming Inc. from David's freeware days, and one whom I had built up a friendship with through the fan message boards and stayed in touch with over the years. It turned out David thought it would be funny to keep each other's identity a secret until we saw our names in the credits somewhere – he was right, it was pretty funny.

From there on, although Nick and I continued to write our own emails, we established a revision phase wherein we would check each other's work for stuff like spelling and grammar, as well as opportunities to improve upon each other's jokes and ideas. It was important to establish that no work was sacred – all of it was subject to improvement or changes. This is an important lesson for any writer or practicer of the creative arts: your creations are not your babies. You should be ready to accept and learn from a better idea at the drop of a hat. Here's an example of one such email that was improved because of such collaboration:

(click to enlarge)

That being said, Nick's emails were hysterical in their original form, and it honestly took me a while to get over my insecure feelings of jealousy that his were better than mine. I had to learn to understand and appreciate that we both had something different to offer, which would ultimately result in a better game with content that appealed to a wider audience.

Moving On from Emails to Food Descriptions

In December 2016, David approached Nick and I with a problem; he had posted an alpha build screenshot of the new food page in a Steam update, and he was worried that a few people thought the included description for the origin of sub sandwiches was real. His intention was to craft silly fictional origins for all of the foods in the style of a encyclopedia entries, and he was worried about balancing the line between plausibility and absurdity. After Nick and I shared our thoughts, he asked us if we'd be interested in helping to write descriptions for all the foods in the game, which of course we were totally on board for.

This is when things started getting serious. David had a release date in mind and it was time to give us some solid deadlines for our work. The email deadline came first, and because Nick and I had already written so many, we decided to wrap them up where they were and focus all of our attention on the food descriptions.

Crunch Time

The task of writing descriptions for the nearly 200 foods was daunting; unlike the emails for which we had over a year to leisurely create over 500 (surpassing David's initial goal of 300), the food descriptions were due in two and a half months including the time to figure out how to actually write them. On top of all that, given that it was summertime, we had several vacations planned between the three of us during which time we would be unable to work on the game, and Nick was moving to live in a new country and hemisphere! To say things were about to get busy would be an understatement.

For those of you unaware at this point, I'm a writer. I have a day job as a writer and during my lunch break is typically when I work on writing my own fiction stories because I like to use my evenings for relaxing and running errands or doing chores with my wife. Fiction story writing is a huge passion of mine. I tell you this because I need you to understand how difficult it was for me to make time to write for CSD2 on a more regular and consistent basis. I ended up putting my fiction story writing on hold for months to get the job done, which is another lesson for you; sometimes you have to make sacrifices to make things work. At least in this case I was sacrificing doing something that I loved for doing something I really enjoyed that, by the way, also helped me pay for the basement renovation my wife and I were in the middle of.

After a short period of trial and error, Nick and I found our groove with writing food descriptions and became more collaborative than ever; sending each other our work to look over and improve upon as soon as it was complete. Our method typically included first researching the origin of and any noteworthy facts about the food, and then taking the most interesting information learned to craft a fictional origin or story behind those details. In this case, we found that it was very effective to start with something true about the food (typically whatever interesting fact we would base our fiction around), tell a story with ever-increasing absurdity or stakes, and then wrap it all up in a neat punchline or reference that brought the story full-circle. Occasionally, however, and especially in cases where we could find nothing particularly unique and interesting about the food, we would just tell an elaborately ridiculous story.

Here's a great example we collaborated on that blends fact, fiction, and a ridiculous story. Let's see if you can tell what's fact from fiction without consulting the internet:

(click to enlarge, or read below)

Pancakes - Origin: Greece
Breakfast pancakes were first invented in Ancient Greece, though they were called “Tagenites” and were made with wheat flour, olive oil, honey, and curdled milk. Despite their incredibly simple composition, many experts now believe pancakes to be among the greatest of the Ancient Greek inventions alongside philosophy, geometry, and alarm clocks. 

Though modern pancakes are often served with syrup, this practice was not widespread until The Great Syrup Flood of January 14, 1919 - an event which has gone by almost completely unheard of due to it being upstaged by the larger Great Molasses Flood a day later - during which a syrup manufacturer’s entire plant erupted into a volcano of syrup, which then slowly traveled down the road to a breakfast diner at the bottom of the hill. First responders described the scene as tragic yet surprisingly delicious. 

Today, syrup is drizzled onto pancakes as a solemn memorial of the lives that were eventually lost by those who fell into the syrup while trying to retrieve their food.

It's probably pretty obvious that putting syrup on pancakes is not the result of something called the Great Syrup Flood, however it is true that January 15, 1919 is the date of the Great Molasses Flood, which, despite how silly it sounds nowadays, was a real tragedy that resulted in 21 lives lost. Furthermore, not only is it true that pancakes were created in Greece, called Tagenites, and made of wheat flour, olive oil, honey, and curdled milk, but the Ancient Greeks actually did invent alarm clocks. Yup, that thing you thought was a punchline at the end of the first paragraph was actually a history lesson. Who says games can't be good for your brain?

As you might guess, due to their length, complexity and the research required, it takes much longer to write food descriptions than emails. Needless to say we were very, very busy for two and a half months drafting them, punching each other's up, getting feedback from David, rewriting them as appropriate, and going through it all again. Yes, we took these silly jokes very, very seriously, and there were several that were heavily rewritten or rejected and restarted outright. But more on that later.

Delays

It's no secret that CSD2's launch date was delayed, once publicly and several more times privately. David explained to us that, while he was confident he could have a playable build of the game by the original August 24th release date, that build would very likely be riddled with bugs even though he'd be developing the game right up to the hour of its launch. He asked us for our thoughts on delaying the game to give him more time to polish it up, worrying that the fans would be enraged at him breaking his promise of the original release date. Ultimately, we all agreed it was best to delay the game to September 14th rather than deliver a game that's incomplete, especially given the relatively recent No Man's Sky launch debacle.

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." 

 -Shigeru Miyamoto

Fortunately, this delay not only gave David more time to code, promote the game, and test with a closed beta, but it also gave us writers more time to finish writing our food descriptions. We took a deep breath, completed them, and then gave them an extra look-over for shine. And then, on August 31st, David reached out to us with yet another task.

Restaurant Descriptions

In the new game, players are able to work as a "chef for hire" for any of the 30 other restaurants in the fictional Teragon Tower. David wanted descriptions for each of these restaurants, giving us free reign to write them like a wiki article, from the perspective of the customer-hungry business itself, or really any other relevant way we could think of. David had already written a few descriptions, but he needed our help to write the rest.

With the release date fast approaching, I looked over the descriptions that David and Nick had already written, then consulted a local restaurant's actual description of itself to reference when writing a description for a similar establishment in game. I got the hang of the tone and style pretty quickly, and didn't end up consulting any real-world examples for the rest of the descriptions I wrote.

As far as collaboration goes, Nick and I were constantly looking at each other's descriptions and trying to add one more joke or absurd detail. When one of us felt like we were struggling to come up with something clever or interesting, we'd bounce ideas back and forth until we found something unique and funny that worked, then write our own versions based on that idea and take the best parts of each version for the final.

We finished writing the restaurant descriptions in a relatively short time due to how few of them were required compared to the food descriptions and emails. This was great news, especially because David soon told us that he'd unfortunately be unable to include the emails at launch, but the food and restaurant descriptions would be prominently featured on day one.

Post-Launch Reactions

Aside from some poetry and short stories published in my college art and literary magazine, I'd never had any of my writing be made available to a wide audience before, and unlike that magazine, people were going to be responding to CSD2. I was excited to see what the fan reaction to the game would be, and even more excited and nervous to see what the reaction to our months of writing. In the real world, I'm generally considered to be an "odd" person with a "unique" perspective and "interesting" sense of humor. David and Nick enjoyed the content I wrote, but I had to accept the possibility that people wouldn't understand or enjoy my content at all.

Fortunately, that hasn't been the case. CSD2 was launched late at night on September 14th after David spent an inhuman amount of time without sleep so he could focus on bug-squashing up until the very minute of launch.

David's reaction after squashing a particularly troublesome bug shortly before launch.

Almost immediately, people on Twitter and the official CSD2 Discord server were talking about how funny the food and restaurant descriptions were while sharing their favorites. I went to bed that night feeling invincible, and in the morning I woke up to several messages from Nick (whose timezone permitted him to stay awake for more of the initial reactions) sharing similar messages from fans that he'd read.

The writing in Cook Serve Delicious 2 is AMAZING. Thank you @chubigans ! pic.twitter.com/DzANGb85g3

— AccountingNightmare (@AccNightmare) October 20, 2017

The food and resturaunt descriptions in Cook Serve Delicious 2 are easily the funniest things I've ever seen in a game 😂 @chubigans #CSD2

— Pat Almeida (@PatAlmeida85) September 17, 2017

Someone check on @chubigans and make sure he's doing ok. pic.twitter.com/E4srN1aFwj

— braktheman (@braktheman) September 20, 2017

I love all the dish descriptions you've put into the game. And I burst out laughing after seeing the origin of lamb chops. A++ work!

— Stephen C-K (@apinchofweird) September 16, 2017

"The Gree/Itali description, oh my God"

"The description of Taiwanese shaved ice is fantastic"

"I'm honestly just enjoying the Food descriptions. some of these are rather funny"

"the descriptions are comedy gold"

I simply cannot describe the feeling of knowing that so many people are out there reading and enjoying my creative work.

But Wait, There's More!

Launching the game didn't stop David from development. Not only did he continue to squash bugs (after some much needed rest), but he got to work reading reviews and reactions to determine how the game could be changed or what additions could be made in order to closer align the game with what fans were looking for and expecting. Throughout all of this research, a common complaint and suggestion arose – players wanted more direction. CSD1 was a very linear game where the player started with a small unknown establishment and grew it into a classy 5-star restaurant. In CSD2, however, the bulk of the game on launch day consisted of playing "chef for hire" at the many different restaurants with little guidance as to what order to play them in and no narrative thread pulling the player along. David began brainstorming a game mode with more direction like the first game, and he reached out to let us know that he'd need more writing in order to complete his vision.

Historical Object Emails

David pitched us a few different ideas for how the new mode work and what he would need from us. At least two separate times, Nick and I got to drafting up content for scenarios that ultimately were dropped. In the end, it was decided that emails would be the primary means of introducing and fleshing out the new setting of CSD2.

We got to drafting up an introductory email meant for the player to receive at the start of the game that explained the change in setting without giving too much detail or reading too much like narration. This was great fun, especially since the game takes place in the future after a series of cataclysmic events and something called the Blue War, but the real fun came in writing game-affecting and historical object emails.

David explained to us that he had recovered several visual assets that he thought had been lost forever. These assets were intended to be used by the player as decorations when customizing the look of their own restaurant, and included various seemingly random objects preserved inside of shadowboxes. His idea was that the items would be historically-significant within the setting of the game and be given to the player at random with a story detailing their significance. Given that players were very vocal about enjoying and wanting more information on the background setting of the game, despite it having no impact on gameplay itself, and especially because we knew that the overwhelming majority of the emails we had written which were set to be released soon had little to no reference to the game's setting at all (as a simple result of the setting not being fully determined at the time of writing the emails), Nick and I decided to use this as an opportunity to further flesh out the setting for the player.

Referring to a master document with the entire history and setting of the game written out, we got to writing emails explaining each "historical object" with the specific intent of dropping vague hints about the world they were from. A simple pair of shoes revealed the fate of Washington DC, a pink tee shirt hinted to a war that forever changed the world's demeanor, and a french horn warned not to remove from the shadowbox or risk being poisoned by radiation.

Game-Affecting Emails

The other category of emails that David wanted us to write post-launch was actually one that we had intended to write all along, but hectic schedules and shifting priorities had simply resulted in delays. They were emails that would affect the gameplay itself by either boosting buzz, customer patience, or gifting the player with a bit of in-game money.

The "free money" emails were by far the easiest to write of the game-affecting emails, but they still took some time to get used to. Relatively speaking, it had been so long since I wrote an email completely off the top of my head that I struggled to think of anything at first, and obviously I didn't want to re-tread the same ideas that I'd already written. I'm not going to pretend like I had some sort of clever plan to get back on track – I just tried a few ideas until finally one of them worked. The only real restriction I had was that the content of the email had to somehow relate and/or lead to the fictional sender giving the player an unspecified amount of money. The thing is, you'd be surprised how hard it is to think of twenty different and amusing reasons that someone would be sending you money.

I studied advertising in college, so the "added buzz" emails were only slightly more difficult for me to write since they pretty much amounted to several different publicity stunts.

However, the "added patience" emails were much more difficult. You see, everyone exchanges money at some point in their lives, and so everyone has at least some frame of reference for why someone might give someone else money. However, a relative few amount of people are experienced in developing methods to make mass amounts of people more patient. This is why several of the "added patience" emails have to do with something frightening being outside the restaurant that causes people to not be in a hurry to get back to it, like a horde of ferrets or a visiting president. There's just not that many creative reasons that a bunch of people in a restaurant would be particularly relaxed on any given day.

Nonetheless, Nick and I did our best, and before long we had finished not only with the game-affecting emails, but with writing for CSD2 altogether. Funny how things just end anticlimactically like that. Movies make it seem like I should have discovered myself, or fallen in love, or got a huge opportunity out of the experience, but I'm always learning about myself, I'm already married, and huge opportunities continue to show themselves at their own pace.

Further Behind the Curtain

So now you know what happened. It was a thrilling experience for me, even though it consisted entirely of me staring blankly at a computer screen while listening to music and clacking away at my keyboard. Do I have regrets? Sure. I regret not working as hard or as often in the beginning as I did in the end. I regret not looking over each item just one more time to see if there was something else that could be added. I regret not including even more pop culture references and inside jokes.

Hidden References

Speaking of, did you know that I made a conscious effort to include lots of pop culture references and inside jokes? I mean, obviously my humor and creativity is influenced by pop culture, but I also purposely put a few references in there that might totally go over people's heads. I'm not going to tell you exactly what's what, because that would be no fun, but here's all the ones I can remember off the top of my head that you should watch out for:

Pop Culture References:

• Aliens
• American Psycho
• Arrested Development
• Blade Runner
• Deadmau5
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
• Fight Club
• LOST
• Machine Man
• Office Space
• Portal
• RedLetterMedia
• The Shining

There's probably more, and you're going to go insane trying to figure them out!

In addition to pop culture references, I couldn't help but hide some references and inside jokes to my friends and family. Obviously these couldn't be too obscure, since the majority of players are not the people who would get the direct reference. To ensure this was the case, I let David and Nick revise everything before telling them what I was referencing. That way, they could look at the email or description as if it were any other and judge it on its own merit. These references range from the obvious, such as naming a fictional cheese empire after myself and giving my home state a unique backstory, to the incredibly subtle, such as name-dropping people in my life in relation to topics they love and writing a line-by-line parody of my actual marriage proposal, 

My Personal Favorites

As with any project, I have my own opinions on what succeeded and what failed, and they probably don't line up with what you think succeeded or failed. For example, some people loved the original food description for the Taiwanese Shaved Ice that only appeared in the first day or two after the game launched, despite the fact that it was written to be about an entirely different type of shaved ice due to some miscommunication during development, resulting in an immediate rewrite. A failure in my eyes, but a funny joke in yours.

On that note, here are a few of my absolute favorite pieces of content that I myself wrote for CSD2:

"Memo from the CEO" Emails:

(click to enlarge)

It's kind of a miracle that this series made it into the game at all, since they were literally the last emails I wrote for the game before moving on to food and restaurant descriptions. I say "miracle" because at that point I had written so many emails that it's amazing I was still able to come up with something halfway decent from almost nothing at that point in the process. They weren't even meant to be a series at the outset; I just wrote one called "Memo from the CEO: I’ve Transcended" based loosely on Cave Johnson's ridiculous quotes from Portal 2 and had so much fun with it that I wrote several more from the same perspective. Of all the emails I wrote, these were easily the most fun to write, and continue to be fun to go back and read, probably because we all have worked for or knew someone who just seemed like the most unapologetically punchable person in the world at some point in our lives.

"SubSolutions" Restaurant Description:

(click to enlarge)

Does this restaurant description make it obvious that I've had several jobs in the food service industry? Because I have and it's kind of gross. More to the point, I actually spent my college years working at a place that made submarine sandwiches. I know what it's like to serve a cold turkey sandwich on white bread to an upper-middle-class adult who could make the same thing, except tastier and for a tenth of the price, in the comfort of their own home. I knew how fresh the ingredients are. I knew how hygienic, sober, and smart the employees are. It was impossible not to draw on my own experiences for this sarcastic restaurant description.

"Pulled Pork Sandwich" Food Description:

(due to length, screenshot does not include full description)
(also, click to enlarge)

Does this food description make it obvious that I love fiction writing? Because I do and it's kind of amazing. The longest food description in the game at a whopping 437 words, the pulled pork sandwich description takes players through a short and silly yet engaging detective noir story – at least I hope it does. I remember writing this one during my lunch break in the middle of a particularly stressful day at work, and I was just staring at the empty page with the header "Pulled Pork Sandwich" without an ounce of motivation or inspiration in me to come up with yet another unique and clever food origin story.

I found myself fantasizing about getting paid to write my fiction stories, when it occurred to me that David was so open to ideas that he probably wouldn't mind having one in his game. I had never written a noir or mystery/detective story before, but it seemed like a hardcore cooking simulation video game was as good a place as any to try. The original ending to this description was actually terrible, as I had lazily tried to wrap everything up with some vague supernatural nonsense. Fortunately, David disliked the ending and asked me to rewrite it, and I somehow managed to come up with a much better ending that made sense while retaining the grounded setting and tone.

"FUNDS HERE" Email:

(click to enlarge)

Okay, David actually wrote this one, and it probably will never be as funny to you as it always will be to me. You see, I had been practically ripping my hair out trying to think of clever reasons that a person would send the player in-game money, and then David came along with this gem that totally and effortlessly subverted all that hair-ripping work I was doing. This email is the equivalent of me spending four hours trying to fix a lawn mower that won't start, only to have David stroll by and casually say "you forgot to put gasoline in." It's simple and freaking brilliant.

My Favorite Jokes that Didn't Make the Cut

As with any project, lots of fun content didn't make it into the final game for various reasons. In two specific cases, I was especially bummed to have my ideas be kept from the masses. Here are those two cases:

"Salad" Food Description Joke:
The description for salad that I had originally wrote ended on a much more edgy joke, which was ultimately cut by David for being too off-tone with the rest of the game. It was the right decision not to include it, but I can't help but wonder how it would have gone over with players to read the original ending.

You see, I wanted to end the description with a list of different types of salads, ending on on a "salad" that had nothing to do with food. For full effect of context, here's the original draft:

Although salads are often thought of as a mixture of vegetables, the term can be used to apply to just about any dish with a mixture of small food ingredients. Although quite vague, this definition of a salad is actually one of the reasons that salads have endured the test of time; without any strict definition, the salad has been free to evolve with the changing times, tastes, and available ingredients. Examples include the Greek salad, Caesar salad, pasta salad, potato salad, meat salad, and lead salad that killed Tupac.

You get it? Because it's a lead salad! That's another term for a whole bunch of bullets!

Okay, yeah, it's definitely best that we changed it to "word salad," but I still like how the original version turns around and quickly goes from silly to very, very dark. In fact, if you're wondering who wrote which items, you can probably assume that anything where the tone gets very dark very quickly at the end was written by me. For some reason I find that fun.

"Tamale" Food Description:
Honestly, the tamale food description is my absolute favorite of all the food descriptions I wrote. Unfortunately, the food was ultimately completely axed from the game, though David has told me he may include it in later updates. The tamale food description is just one of the silliest bits of content in the game with one of the absolute funniest twists I've written, if you ask me. If you want to read it, however, you'll have to beg David to put the food into the game, because I simply do not want to spoil it for you here, outside of the context in which it was written to be.

The Hard Data

For those of you who like data, here is some hard data:

39,000 words written for emails
30,000 words written for descriptions
4,000 words written for restaurant bios
73,000 total words written

556 Emails
190 Food Descriptions
30 Restaurant Descriptions

But Why Bother with Any of This?

CSD2 is an independent cooking simulation game. The bulk of the gameplay takes place inside a two-dimensional restaurant where you take, prepare, and serve orders for your customers, and outside of that you can manage your own restaurant and its menu as you try to build it up into something great. These are the primary reasons that people buy CSD2 – for the gameplay. So, that all being the case, why are spam emails, food histories, and restaurant descriptions included at all? You could take all of it out of the game and it's still a really good and fun cooking simulation. On top of that, it cost a considerable amount of time and money to include.

And yet, David felt that the writing was so important to the players' experience that he hired us two nobodies, because simply put, the writing is important. It makes the game better. And I'm not just saying that because I've got a massive bias.

Can we please talk about the Cook Serve Delicious 2 lore because it is the part of the game I never thought I'd be loving pic.twitter.com/NE3C1drWi5

— braktheman (@braktheman) September 14, 2017

The writing in CSD2 makes the game feel bigger. It makes it feel like there's a living, breathing world outside of your little two-dimensional restaurant. That things are happening. For a relatively "little" game, the writing helps to make the game feel big.

The writing also adds to the tone and the mood of the game. It helps establish the game as a silly, fun, and absurd romp. It shows you that the game doesn't take itself too seriously. On top of that, it offers players a fun break from the sometimes stressful gameplay of taking, preparing, and serving hundreds of perfect orders. Finishing the day not only gives the players a sense of personal accomplishment (or failure – I'm not judging) but it rewards them with an opportunity to laugh at the wacky hijinks and history of the world inside the game.

Closing Thoughts

Phew. That was quite a long story. I originally intended for this to be a one of my average-length blog posts, but as I outlined everything that happened and started writing it just became apparent that there was too much to tell. I want to thank those of you who made it all the way until the end, and for laughing at my dumb, stupid, idiotic jokes.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also take this moment to thank Nick for punching up my jokes, telling me when something didn't work, helping me with ideas, and trusting me to do all the same for him. A huge thanks needs to go out to David as well, since he's the reason that all of this happened. It's funny to think that this big thing that spans over two years of my adult life wouldn't have been possible had I not discovered David's freeware video games and signed up for the Vertigo Gaming Inc. forums on Tuesday December 21, 2004 at 5:06 pm.

(click to enlarge)

A lot has happened since then, but if you had told me back then that in the year 2015 I'd get a job working on the sequel to the retail-version of what was then known as Ore no Ryomi, my jaw probably would have hit the floor and then I would have asked you how it is you traveled through time.

(click to enlarge)

So what's next for me? Well, there's nothing big and official that I can talk about right now, but I'm proud to say that my career as a writer will continues in one form or another. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter @RyanMatejka for updates, and until I get the best ones imported over to my incoming new website, you can currently read several of my short stories over on Reddit at r/Yackemflaber. You can also feel free to comment below if you have any thoughts.

Thanks for reading. It's been fun.

-Ryan

My First Writing Credit - Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!

Well I can finally talk about it; I'm writing content for an upcoming video game called Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!

The Kinda Funny And Long Story About How I Got My First Writing Credit

This all started back in 2004 when my friend turned me on to a small but rapidly expanding community of amateur game creators using a program called "Game Maker" to put out micro-sized games for free on the internet. If memory serves, many of these games were less than a gigabyte in size, which was good because my internet at the time could only download so many megabytes per minute.

As I browsed a seemingly never-ending selection of free games for something I could really get into, I stumbled upon a developer whose games I found to be very imaginative, ambitious, and just plain fun. This developer went by the username Mr. Chubigans and created his games using the developer name Vertigo Gaming. I was such a fan of his that I became a very active member in his tight-knit forum community of like-minded fans.

I was such a fan, in fact, that my first online purchase ever was of a t-shirt with the Vertigo Gaming logo of the time emblazoned upon it:

As the years wore on, Mr. Chubigans (actual name David Galindo) pursued his passion of game developing, and I pursued my passion of writing. I kept in contact with him and a few others from the community over the years; especially to check up on new game developments. David slowly revealed to his long-time fans that he was working on a full-sized commercial sequel to two of his most popular free indie games, Ore No Ryomi 1 & 2, which he had decided to call "Cook, Serve, Delicious!" and in May 2012 he posted on the forums asking his fans to submit short "fake emails" that would appear in the game with credit given.

I remember happening upon this open request days after it was posted (I only checked the forums every few months at this point, so it's quite lucky that I saw it at all) after my last college class of that afternoon, and I spent a quick five minutes submitting three top-of-mind ideas so as to secure my place in Vertigo Gaming history before heading off to a scheduled dinner with my would-be wife. A few weeks later, remembering that time was running out to submit any more, I hastily submitted four more ideas with equally little thought or revision.

Cook, Serve, Delicious was released in October 2012 and slowly but surely became a hit for its deep and rewarding gameplay that was stressful to learn but very rewarding to conquer. Though my actual name does not appear in the final game, my username is listed among the other fans who contributed writing to the silly in-game fake emails.

My username is the long nonsense one starting with "Y"

The game went on sale as part of a Humble Bundle this past April, and it suddenly hit me again, after having forgotten, that I had contributed to a commercially successful video game. This was a really, really awesome feeling which I immediately decided I wanted more of. I sent David an email re-introducing myself and offering my writing services in any way he could possibly use them, wanting very much to help someone who I viewed as an old friend to achieve his own dreams while chasing after mine. As a back-up, I planned to send out similar emails to every independent game developer I could think of or find, but didn't have to when David responded to my email sounding very intrigued only two hours later.

After some back-and-forth emails and a non-disclosure agreement, David revealed to me that he happened to be looking for a writer for his upcoming then-unannounced video game, and that the video game in question was a sequel titled Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!

So that's how my name ended up on the bottom of the official Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! website, as also seen in the following screenshot, which I took so I could share it with everyone I know:

The game has just been announced with a tentative early 2016 release date, and I'd highly encourage you to check it out if you're into really awesome and addictive but accessible computer games. You can learn more about it at www.CookServeDelicious.com and see my name at the bottom while you're there!

Okay, But How Does It Make Me Feel?

The process of writing for such a cool, family-friendly game has been fun and challenging compared to my hobby of fiction-writing more mature subject matter, and seeing my actual human name at the bottom of that website is extremely rewarding unto itself. It seems kind of surreal that, in some small way, I've transcended from a desk-sitting office-worker to a multi-project juggling writer like many of the people I look up to – I've never wanted to be stuck or content with a single linear career path, and though I've been working on my stories and other abandoned projects all the while, this first writing credit somehow makes it all real for the first time. I almost feel as though I've been in a cage whose door has just been opened for the first time to allow me to run free and discover the limits of my abilities and accomplishments.

There's only one way to go from here, and that is onward.
-Ryan