The interview I did with PC Gamer UK has been posted in its entirety on the Games Radar site.
PC Gamer UK/GamesRadar interview
(Visited 5574 times) Game talk
May 052005
May 042005
Been a litle while here–but there’s plenty of news.
The book is now also going to appear in Italian. I don’t have a timeframe for this, but it’s still pretty exciting.
Masaya Matsuura, designer of games such as Parappa the Rapper and VibRibbon has agreed to do the foreword for the Japanese edition. The Korean edition will feature a new foreword that I am writing aimed specifically at the Korean market.
The current print run is almost sold out! So the book is going back to press. I’ll get to fix those two egregious errors in the end notes (Debussy and Ravel, and whether Deathrace inspired the movie or vice versa).
A few speaking engagements are coming up. I’ll be on a panel at Supernova 2005. Not much to do with the book, though. The one that is is Training Fall, which is mostly about e-learning. This will be a version of the original “Theory of Fun” talk.
I am starting to get email related to the book. Of course, it’s hard to send me email since I haven’t actually published my email address on the website. Maybe I should have a forum for discussion here somewhere? Hmm.
Lastly, I have to point to Steven Johnson’s new book:
He recently wrote a wonderful little bit on games on his blog. I asked him whether he’d read AToF, and his reply was that he came across it very late in the process of writing, but he’ll be recommending it to people as he does his book tour. Much appreciated! I very much enjoyed his earlier books, so I am looking forward to this one.
Apr 202005
I just returned from China and Taiwan. All too brief a trip. To my dismay, I find that apparently, even Microsoft has read the book!
Today I got word from Keith, the publisher, that the book will be translated into both Japanese and Korean, for publication in those respective countries. Exciting news! The book does seem to be going international–I’ve been asked to speak in Finland and Tokyo this year. I’ve found book reviews in Hungarian. It even seems to be selling well and getting good reviews on Amazon.co.uk.
Apr 072005
Looks like today, the site has been invaded by the French! Among the discussions of the book and the related presentations, we find:
Both quote phrases from the book in French–somehow, they sound much nicer.
«Un jeux ne pourra pas être une oeuvre d’art tant que les jeux n’auront qu’une solution.»
«Le fossé entre ceux qui veulent que les jeux amusent et ceux qui veulent que les jeux soient un art… n’existe pas.»
Board Game Geek has also been discussing “A Grammar of Gameplay.” By and large, the geeks like it, which is nice. They’re a tough crowd. 🙂
A mini-review of AToF has popped up on the Learning Circuits blog. This is the blog for the American Society for Training and Development. I was surprised to see the very positive reception the book has gotten among the e-learning crowd. I’ve been asked to speak at MIT, at various e-learning conferences, at conferences on training, and so on.
On Sunday, there’s a game design brunch up in LA which is spending the day discussing game design atoms. The list of folks coming is impressive–I hope to make it.
I’ve added a bunch of reviews from folks like Dan Arey of Naughty Dog, and Dave Sirlin of Backbone to the Press page.
Mar 302005
A quick blog hit at Dispataching the Dungeon Master–the hits from the AToF talk at GDC keep on coming…
The mention on Slashdot led, of course, to a nice little jump in book sales and to a ton of inbound traffic… I really must find a way to arrange for that to happen every month. 🙂
