In the fall of 2007, I was involved in a class project to create a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. The mod we worked on was called High Noon. I was assigned to create first and second tier art assets for the Graveyard level. Naturally, a graveyard has to have tombstones, so I created several different types to populate the level. Given that the game takes place in a Steampunk setting, and the church next to the graveyard is dedicated to a religious sect that believes God is a robot, I figured one of the tombstones ought to be a gear rather than a cross. This idea also inspired the etching on the tombstone, "deus ex machina"; literally "god from the machine."