Writing

Stuff that I have written.

Recent News

 Posted by (Visited 9798 times)  Game talk, Music, Writing
Feb 202002
 

It’s been a while, as usual. Well, here’s a major update for you. I’ve been working on the site for several days just trying to get it up to date, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the news portion.

Many of you may know about the two documentaries being made on the topic of online worlds. I was interviewed by both of them, as it happens. Avatars Offline will be screening at GDC–and that will be my first chance to see it, too! Daniel Liatowisch interviewed me many months ago and I don’t remember what I said. I hope nothing embarrassing.

The other one is called Real People, Virtual Worlds, and Tracy Spaight interviewed me for it at the recent UO Faire here in Austin. He’s got a video clip of part of my interview up on the website, retelling “A Story About A Tree.”

There’s also action on the print front. I got permission from Computer Games to reprint the interview with Mark Asher, so that’s up here now. But there’s also a question and answer I did for the IGDA website on junior designers up too. There’s a new book forthcoming, by Mark Stephen Meadows, called Pause & Effect which is on interactive design in general. I’m interviewed in it, as are other folks such as Harvey Smith. I also answered a brief interview for Eric Zimmerman (he of SiSSYFiGHT fame) and Katie Salen for their forthcoming book from MIT Press entitled Game+Design: An Interactive Design Handbook.

There’s more possible action on the book font, but nothing I think I can talk about yet.

In music news, once again, I’ve been asked if my music could be used on the soundtrack of those snowmobiling shows in Canada done by Lucas Productions Video. Once again, I said yes, sure! I also recorded a bunch of new pieces for them. No word yet on whether they’ll get used or where or when. Since the last update, I’ve gotten a full digital home studio up and running, so recording those new pieces wasn’t too hard. Audigy sound card, new mics to replace ones lost in the fire so long ago, new software–so I’m working on two CDs at once. One will be called “Longitude” and will feature all-new songs. The other has no title as of yet, but will be a collection of instrumental guitar work.

I should have updated the “Books Read” page because I have a backlog of literally dozens to include. But I didn’t just because I don’t know that anyone cares, and the backlog is so darn huge. Some of the notable things along those lines though–traded a few emails with Vernor Vinge after reading True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier, because he wanted to know about real-world antecedents to his story. I pointed him to the Online Worlds Timeline… also been trading emails with folks at the Oxford English Dictionary, trying to get Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer and Habitat credit for the VR use of the word “avatar.” the OED tried to credit it to Neal Stephenson and Snow Crash…

I’m in two writing workshops now. One is still Turkey City, birthplace of cyberpunk, yadda yadda yadda. The other is an offshoot called Tryptophan. This forces me to write fiction twice as often. However, since I’m going to actually try to publish some of those stories, I won’t be posting them on the website. What did get posted? Ah, glad you asked. Here’s a brief list:

GDC is coming up again, and I’m going to be there, running around like a checking with its head cut off. I’m doing a tutorial with Gordon Walton and Rich Vogel on running a Live service. I’m doing a panel with Gordon, Jessica Mulligan, and Rich Lawrence on 3rd generation online games. I’m doing a design lecture with Rich Vogel on “storytelling in the online medium,” and a production lecture with him as well. Plus there’ll be a MUD-Dev dinner, as usual, and I think also a storytelling designer’s dinner.

Which reminds me–that exact same dinner gathering at the last GDC led to hosting a two-day workshop on exactly that with a whole slew of folks here in Austin, in October of last year. Among the attendees: Steve Meretzky, David Perry, Ellen Guon Beeman, Particia Pizer, Eri Izawa, Warren Spector, Mark Terrano… and uh, more other folks than I can remember. It was great. I believe that at some point the transcripts of the sessions will be made public.

I’m sure there was more news, but if I keep going, I’ll have to change the date on the news post to tomorrow. So I’ll stop now… 🙂

I turned 30 years old yesterday.

 Posted by (Visited 13345 times)  Game talk, Music, Reading, Watching, Writing
Sep 082001
 

I tried not to think about it too much. Sure, a week ago I put down a down payment on a minivan. And I just bought two recliners (La-Z-Boy, no less, and they are rocking chairs too). Elena is going into kindergarten next year. There are some signs that seem like inexorable tidings of age.

I thought about having a birthday party themed around the refusal to grow up. We’d watch anime movies, play video games, and play loud guitars and make sangria and daiquiris like we used to in college. It didn’t happen, though. Instead, my wife and I went out for dinner and a movie. My presents were a few DVDs–ones about video games and about playing loud guitar, as if it can only be experienced vicariously now–and a new wallet and new watch.

I started to write a long thing about the things that I had planned for my next ten years, back when I was 20, and what’s actually come to pass. But I have to admit that by any measure, I’m ahead of what I had dreamt. Sure, I’m short on the writing scale, but other scales have gone well beyond that, so I have to call it a net gain. I guess I’ll have to pay more attention to writing in these next ten years.

So what’s new on the site? Well, it’s been forever since I updated, hasn’t it? There’s been a couple of interviews done. One was with Shift.com’s Chris Shulgan, on Gaming the Matrix. Basically, about the future of online gaming and whether we will all forget we’re playing, as in the movie. Then there was a very nice long one done by Mark Asher for Computer Games Magazine. The magazine version was pretty short but the full version was on the CG Online website. I have written to the editors at both places asking if I can reprint them here. We’ll see what they say.

The Laws have been updated with Dundee’s Law, Caliban Tiresias Darklock’s Laws, and the now infamous “Socialization Requires Downtime” law.

I have five new Snippets up. They’re mostly pretty long, and if you’re into the game design theory stuff, you’ll especially like On Socialization and Convenience and Jared Diamond applied to muds.

There’s a ton of updates to the Online Worlds Timeline including more on the history of D&D, events from 2001 filled out (did I give Richard Garriott the idea for his new company’s name?), updated dates for some stuff from the PLATO days, some history for Turbine from a founder, and lots more…

I was interviewed for a documentary film on online worlds, that the makers hope to submit to Sundance. I was also interviewed for a book on interactive design. I have no idea what the timeframe is on those.

I got videotape sent to me of the episodes of the snowmobiling show that used my guitar pieces. Now that was a strange feeling, to watch snowmobiles cruise through some gorgeous countryside with my guitar in the background. Very cool.

Since the last update, we’ve had the Game Developer’s Conference and E3. Both went very well. Based on the feedback from the GDC presentations, people enjoyed the lectures. Next year Rich Vogel, Gordon Walton and I will be doing a tutorial on running a Live game, and as usual Rich and I will do a production and a design lecture. The design one is going to be about narrative in online worlds, and it should be fun! As for E3, there was plenty of coverage at the time, so no need to rehash it. I will say, it would be nice if the various magazines spelled my name right!

The Books/Reading section has been updated with what I have read recently. It’s a long list, thanks to Amazon.com. In music news, I’ve acquired a nice new microphone (Audio Technica AT4033a/SM cardioid, if you care) for doing more recording, and I have a slew of new songs to get on tape. I’m working on doing someahat more rock arrangements for them, and have been writing bass parts. I also got a nice pair of studio monitor headphones since my kids keep breaking the cheaper ones.

In the last several months I went through a severe Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli addiction. I have now seen every film they have made, and am depressed that there aren’t more.

I think that’s all the news for now. I promise to update the site more often again. 🙂 March 11th, 2001 It’s been a while since I updated the site, but here we go! Lots of news and new stuff this time.

I attended a really good conference at The Annenberg Center at USC. There was a fair amount of press coverage, including one article calling me “the eloquent Raph Koster”… sheesh, stop, you’re making me blush! I spent most of my time hanging out with Warren Spector and Hal Barwood, especially a few fun hours traipsing all over the USC campus in search of a decent lunch with Warren… I have put up the transcript and slides from my talk there under Gaming/Essays.

While there, I was also interviewed by GamespotTV, now known as Extended Play, which airs on some cable networks on the TechTV channel. I have no idea when or if this will air, but it was basically a fifteen minute chat about online games and the future.

Some other additions to the Gaming section:

I’ve put up the transcript of the second Myschyf’s Roundtable under Gaming/Talks. The first one was about storytelling in online games, and this one is about economics and politics. There’s a bunch of well-known online game designers as attendees. This was originally posted on Lum the Mad’s, but I got permission to reprint it, so you may have seen it before.

I’ve been pretty active on the Star Wars Galaxies boards, posting as “Holocron.” One of my posts was a thing explaining the costs in massively multiplayer online games and explaining why we have to charge fees. Well, Brad McQuaid reposted it on the EverQuest boards, and then two separate World War II Online sites added it to their FAQs, and then other games started reprinting portions of it too… I figured, since this is all out of hand already, I may as well reprint it in its entirety on the site. So that’s under Gaming/Snippets. The Laws have seen the addition of Ananda Dawnsinger’s Law, “The less disruption that occurs in a community, the less able the community is able to deal with disruption when it does occur.” That’s under Gaming/Laws, of course. Speaking of the Laws, I’ve stopped doing the GDC presentation on them, and have handed it over to Anthony Castoro, also known as Sunsword. He’ll be running the roundtable at this year’s GDC.

What am I doing at GDC? Well, I’ll be helping run a tutorial on Community Building for Large-Scale Gaming Worlds with Amy Jo Kim and Rich Vogel. I’m also doing a lecture on Design Patterns for Online Worlds which is based on the design patterns presentation which you can find on this site under Gaming/Essays. Lastly, I am supposed to do another lecture with Rich on production needs for massivel online games, but he’s done most of the work himself already! I don’t know yet whether I can attend MERA ’01 but I am completely psyched about its existence. In any case, it’s a new research organization about online world environments, and it’s put together but a bunch of the MUD-Dev regulars. The Online World Timeline has become on of the top draws on the site somehow. It’s really brought PLATO users out of the woodwork too. This month I have a bunch of updates to it from Jason Downs on TeenyMUD, George Reese on LPMuds, and Don Gillies on PLATO, plus some notes on The Eternal City, plus I’ve fleshed out the year 2001 and some of 2000.

I attended Turkey City, the seminal science-fiction writing workshop that folks like Bruce Sterling, Don Webb, and now Paul DiFilippo are a part of. My story went over pretty well–well enough that I was persuaded to send it out for publication after some revision. I must say, that was a pretty cool and different experience–getting to go back mentally to the days when I thought that being a wrier was what I’d do with my whole life. In any case, I intend to become a Turkey City regular now.

Believe it or not, there’s more than one TV item in this news this month. Two TV shows made in Quebec are using my instrumental guitar pieces on the soundtrack. So keep an eye out for “Quebec en Motoneige” and “Passion Motoneige.” They’re both shows involving snowmobiles, and they’re in French. “Quebec en Motoneige” airs on Canal Evasion and “Passion Motoneige” on Reseau des Sports. The latter channel is only seen in Montreal, and parts of Ontario and New Brunswick, but the other broadcasts throughout Canada and apparently syndicates in Europe as well. Special thanks to Martin Lucas for being enough of a fan to use my stuff! I think that’s about it for this update. Seems like enough, at any rate!

Another year, another website redesign…

 Posted by (Visited 13692 times)  Art, Game talk, Music, Reading, Writing  Tagged with: , ,
Nov 262000
 

I hope you like the new artwork. That’s what happens when I take my first vacation in a year. I had meant to also do some recording this week, but I didn’t get around to it, unfortunately.

So what’s changed? Let’s see… first off, this (News) is now the front page of the site. This should make it a little easier to find out if I’ve bothered to update lately. The Guestbook is still around, but you have to go to the Main section to reach it. I also got rid of the old Bio section and old front page and moved that content into Main under About. I tried to save all the guestbook entries, but if you entered a message right when I was putting up the new site, yours may be gone.

Under Gaming, there’s plenty of new content. For a while now, I’ve been working desultorily on a book on online world design. Some excerpts were published at The Rantings of Lum the Mad a while ago, but now I’ve decided to go ahead and toss up more here on my own site. Look under the “Book” section for that. Also, I’ve been working on a breakdown of typical design patterns for online world design (mostly extracted from the book, actually) for a GDC presentation next year. So that’s up there under Essays as a set of Powerpoint slides.

Under Writing, I finally went ahead and put some actual content in under Poetry, Fiction, and Genre. Hope ya like it. If you’re an editor starving for an author, lemme know. In fact, out of all the stuff in the site updates, this is the area that I’d most like to see comments on. I don’t write much anymore, and the stories are mostly a decade old, but I started out as a writer and I am sure that someday I will go back to it.

I reorganized the Music section. I recently wrote a guitar instrumental that I titled “Alice” after the character in the comic strip, and I’ve put up the sheet music and guitar tablature to it. There’s also another small guitar instrumental piece there called “Memorial,” with sheet music and tab.

I got rid of the Teaching Materials section under Books. I can’t locate any of ’em (somewhere in the garage no doubt). But I did add a new page on what I’m reading lately. Only four books there right now, as that is all I got to over the holiday.

There’s a couple of new images under Art; a new doodle and two ink pieces from over ten years ago.

In other news, I recently did an interview for Joystick101.org. This site is devoted to academic critique of games, developing a critical vocabulary, etc, and the folks who run it are all involved in academia. Check it out, leave a comment, support the site, whatever. 🙂

Recent News

 Posted by (Visited 10309 times)  Game talk, Writing  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
Nov 022000
 

As usual, I did the annual live storytelling thing on LegendMUD this year. Every year since 1994, I’ve gone to the graveyard there, and in front of an audience, improvised a spooky story on the spot. This year the story was called Sugarheart, and I’ve posted it here under Stories/Live.

If you like these stories, head on over to and check out the spooky story contest. Alice is one of my favorite online comic strips, and voting ends today–the prize is some original artwork from the strip, I believe.

I got permission from the Rantings of Lum the Mad site to reprint the Roundtable on Fiction in MMORPGs so look for that under the Gaming/Talks section. I also reprinted the RPGVault interview I did a little over a month ago. You can find it under Gaming/Talks, as usual.

I’ve also updated the Online Worlds Timeline with a bunch of new info from folks like Daniel James (formerly of Avalon & Middle-Earth Online), David R. Woolley (long-time developer on PLATO), and a great set of dates for Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project supplide by KaVir aka Richard Woolcock. And more… so if you’re into the whole history bit like I am, you may want to check out the latest there. There’s even one new law, named Dundee’s Law, since he spotted it fly by on Mud-Dev.

Lastly, today I found a UO emulator shard that is using the “Advice to Virtual World Admins” from the article on Declaring the Rights of Players as the basis of their code of conduct. Yipes.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries