Writing

Stuff that I have written.

Press round-up, including Dutch

 Posted by (Visited 5916 times)  Game talk, Writing
May 242005
 

And more May 24th…

Anyone read Dutch? ‘Cause there’s this review… Freetranslation.com renders the conclusion as “…as an introduction for the practical side of the ludologie an absolute must-property.” I think that’s good. 🙂

(Also, is tic-tac-toe really called “Butter, Cheese, and Eggs” in Dutch?)

I have gotten my second Wikipedia link, and this time it’s as the only cited book reference in the “Game Programming” article on the French Wikipedia. Very cool.

Over on Machinima.com a bit from the book is serving as the starting point for a discussion of whether machinima can be art. The answer had better be “yes,” duh, especially coming from that crowd! I don’t see why anyone would think that machinima couldn’t be art given that it’s essentially an animation technique, and we know that animation can be art…

Lastly today (I hope), the Detroit News seems to have reprinted the editorial from the LA Times. At least, they reprinted around half of it. It almost reads like they ran it through MS Word’s auto-summarizer–which is not a knock, that tool is surprisingly good.

 Comments Off on Press round-up, including Dutch

LA Times editorial

 Posted by (Visited 4980 times)  Game talk, Writing
May 152005
 

I’ve got the front page of the Opinion section of the LA Times today! It’s mostly a brief summary of the content in the book, put in the context of E3, which is about to start in LA. I imagine the link will soon vanish behind their pay-for-archived-articles policy, so read it while you can…

For the curious, see if you can spot which paragraphs are mostly the editor’s words and not mine. 🙂 (The title’s not mine either).

It’s unfortunate that the editors chose to attach a sidebar with the old “MMOs are addicting” theme on the
side of the article. It’s not entirely apropos, given the subject of the editorial itself.

Masaya Matsuura will do the Japanese foreword!

 Posted by (Visited 8750 times)  Game talk, Reading, Writing
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.

Japanese and Korean editions coming…

 Posted by (Visited 7047 times)  Game talk, Writing
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.

French attack!

 Posted by (Visited 6790 times)  Game talk, Writing
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:

  • Piqué aux jeux which mostly describes Will’s Spore, but which spares a paragraph near the end to talk about the Grammar of Gameplay presentation.
  • Some discussion over at the Gaia guild’s forum, which seems to drift into a discussion about videogames taking up time versus TV.

    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.

    •  Older Entries  Newer Entries