Catching up (in lieu of better titles)
Despite all blogular evidence to the contrary, I am merely buried, not dead -- and nearly emerged. Since last we met, there was Thanksgiving (driving to San Diego), Christmas (see "Thanksgiving"), my father's 70th birthday (flying to San Diego), three Escapist articles, a two-month-long still-in-action sinus infection ("chronic sinusitis") with accompanying horse-pill-sized antibiotics, a game careening toward launch, and assorted press wrangling -- I did mention that I was appointed to the Board of Directors of the IGDA in November, right? Maybe not. Pop my name into google "news" and you'll find a bit of what's been eating my brain the last couple of weeks. And -- I'm two thirds of the way through the novel, pushing toward a March deadline.
You read (well, a lot of you did) the ever-inflammatory "Why Your Game Idea Sucks" -- joining it in controversy is "Riot Grrrls Wanted", which I will have more to say about later -- much more, once I shake off this blog rust, but for now will just say it's very peculiar how threatened boy gamers are when you say women should be making more games. A bit before that, the slightly less controversial "Ditching the V-Word", discussing why the word 'virtual' is dead and should be stomped on until it stops moving. Today, the (I think) entirely non-controversial but hopefully equally (or more) interesting "When the Stars Align", a piece on the development of the completely fascinating 1986 multi-platform Starflight -- Greg's first game. One of the many reasons I took this job was the opportunity to learn from, I now feel confident in saying, one of the most unique and excellent game designers alive today, and in studying his work (in order to understand his design aesthetic better so as to be better at my job as well as learn) I discovered how shockingly underappreciated and under-remembered Starflight is. So this is my attempt to share a small piece of what I'm fortunate to have access to.
In fiction: the good folk at Electric Velocipede were kind enough to select "Darkest Amber" for this issue's web fiction, so take a gander while you can. This story was the product of a writing challenge from jsridler and justinhowe, and is cyberpunk set in a world I hope to do quite a bit more writing in in the future. It has a talking baseball bat and Greek philosophy -- what have you got to lose?
In poetry: I am told that "Oneness" will be appearing in the latest Not One of Us special collection, called Hidden. It is yay.
...I think those are all the updates. At least the topline, anyway. I do not promise to bring no IGDA/Rockstar troublemaking over here, all things considered, though I expect the flurry to remain mostly on Gamasutra. And this is assuming I don't think better of my rather aggressive current opinion.
Hope that you all are doing well!
You read (well, a lot of you did) the ever-inflammatory "Why Your Game Idea Sucks" -- joining it in controversy is "Riot Grrrls Wanted", which I will have more to say about later -- much more, once I shake off this blog rust, but for now will just say it's very peculiar how threatened boy gamers are when you say women should be making more games. A bit before that, the slightly less controversial "Ditching the V-Word", discussing why the word 'virtual' is dead and should be stomped on until it stops moving. Today, the (I think) entirely non-controversial but hopefully equally (or more) interesting "When the Stars Align", a piece on the development of the completely fascinating 1986 multi-platform Starflight -- Greg's first game. One of the many reasons I took this job was the opportunity to learn from, I now feel confident in saying, one of the most unique and excellent game designers alive today, and in studying his work (in order to understand his design aesthetic better so as to be better at my job as well as learn) I discovered how shockingly underappreciated and under-remembered Starflight is. So this is my attempt to share a small piece of what I'm fortunate to have access to.
In fiction: the good folk at Electric Velocipede were kind enough to select "Darkest Amber" for this issue's web fiction, so take a gander while you can. This story was the product of a writing challenge from jsridler and justinhowe, and is cyberpunk set in a world I hope to do quite a bit more writing in in the future. It has a talking baseball bat and Greek philosophy -- what have you got to lose?
In poetry: I am told that "Oneness" will be appearing in the latest Not One of Us special collection, called Hidden. It is yay.
...I think those are all the updates. At least the topline, anyway. I do not promise to bring no IGDA/Rockstar troublemaking over here, all things considered, though I expect the flurry to remain mostly on Gamasutra. And this is assuming I don't think better of my rather aggressive current opinion.
Hope that you all are doing well!