GDC round-up

 Posted by (Visited 10201 times)  Game talk, Music, Writing  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Mar 192000
 

Well, lots to talk about in the last two weeks! Let’s see…

I’m back from the Game Developer’s Conference. It was a lot of fun, but also very tiring. I spent pretty much all my time talking about game design, and basically none of it partying. 🙂 It was great to see a bunch of folks, of course, many of whose names I am about to rudely leave off my list of people it was great to see: Richard Bartle, J. C. Lawrence, Toby Ragaini, Brad McQuaid (and John Smedley, though I didn’t see him that much), Chris Allen, Serafina Pechan, Amy Jo Kim, Amy Bruckman, Mike Sellers… whew. And more. Also nice to meet folks like the guys from Loki (go Linux!), Mark Jacobs of Mythic, and so many other great folks. The online sessions were packed… special shout out to Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric, since I bet he’ll first see this when it gets reprinted on the Vault Network…

Tons of updates to the Online World Timeline–I’ve gotten info now from what seems like everyone in the online games industry!

The big news is that my CD After the Flood is now available via MP3.com. If you like acoustic guitar, you should check it out. But don’t think there aren’t any rock tunes on it, because there are. 🙂 Since I am in the middle of shameless self-promotion, let me point out that it’s only $10. Odds are you’re a gamer if you are reading this page anyway, so think of it as being just one monthly fee for UO, EQ, or AC–except you get to keep it after you pay, instead of using it up!

For those of you who never tire of putting death threats, obscene ASCII art, and bizarre rants demanding changes in UO on my site, the Guestbook is once again operational. Just keep in mind as you do it that I’m not working on UO anymore, and threatening me over changes to UO is about as useful as threatening your local squirrel with a shotgun if he doesn’t remove stat loss. 🙂 (I must be reading too much of The Bench over at Penny Arcade…

Tomorrow, I’ll be reprising last year’s MediaMOO conference panel. This year, the topic is the future of online worlds now that 3d graphics are in the picture, and just to make things interesting, Amy Bruckman and Carlos Jensen have set up a link between MediaMOO and a VWorld. Should be interesting! As before, I’ll see about getting a log up here on the site afterwards.

I think that’s all I’ve got for this update… see ya in a few weeks, if I have anything new to put up…

Recent News & GDC

 Posted by (Visited 10452 times)  Game talk, Music, Writing  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Mar 042000
 

Wow, it’s been a while since I updated anything here…. ah well, there’s new stuff today!

I’m going to be at the Game Developer’s Conference next week. I’ll be doing a panel on online community with a bunch of great folks including Brad McQuaid of EverQuest, Toby Ragaini of Asheron’s Call, Mike Sellers formerly of Meridian 59, Jonathan Baron formerly of Kesmai and Air Warrior, Dr Amy Bruckman of MediaMOO, and of course Amy Jo Kim. That should be an all-day thing and quite a lot of fun. I’m reprising the usual roundtable on the Laws of Online World Design with Rich Vogel, and also doing a production lecture.

As part of the tutorial panel, Amy B. was doing slides on history of muds, and it set me on an obsessive tear this weekend. So if you look under Gaming/Misc Writings you’ll find a timeline of important events in the history of development of muds, MMORPGS, and whatever else you choose to call them.

My CD should be getting released by MP3.com in the next week or so. So for all three of you out there who want it, keep an eye out on my artist page there for more info.

A special poke in the ribs goes out to Brad, by the way, for saying in his interview with CGW that he’d pick me to play Aradune in the EverQuest movie. I dunno, Brad, I just don’t see how audiences would go for that… after all, you look soo… California. And I don’t. : Oh well, I imagine that at least Mark Asher (who did the interview & who does Game Spin over at Gamecenter) laughed–I doubt the rest of the world got the joke. Mark, next time footnote the interview. 🙂

Halloween Story is Up

 Posted by (Visited 9381 times)  Game talk, Writing  Tagged with: , , , , , ,
Nov 041999
 

The latest Halloween Story is up.

Every year I do a live storytelling thing on LegendMUD where I improvise a short story in front of a live audience without any preparation. This year it was called Breathe.

I got to attend some of the local Austin Game Developer’s Conference yesterday. It was good to meet Serafina Pechan of Atriarch (we had lunch) and to see Chris Hecker, Warren Spector & Mike McShaffry and other friends. Jeez, some of these guys live here in town and I still never see them…! Warren said he couldn’t slip me a copy of Deus Ex… darnit, I wanna play that game…

GDC

 Posted by (Visited 12500 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Mar 261999
 

GDC went great, loads of fun. Lots of attendance at the various online game sessions, including the ones I ran. I picked up several new laws from Jonathan Baron which are now on the Laws page, and I spent a lot of time hanging out with the guys who are doing Asheron’s Call. Also added a few laws of my own to the page.

More GDC Info

 Posted by (Visited 10929 times)  Game talk, Writing  Tagged with: , , ,
Mar 131999
 

Realized that I dropped the info on the GDC presentation, so here it is again: at GDC I will be running a roundtable with Rich Vogel (producer of UO, former producer for Might & Magic Online and Meridian 59) on the “Laws of Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds.”

The roundtable will be run during Classic GDC, on Wednesday & Thursday at 10am, and on Friday at 11:30am.

I’ve added a new Misc Writing under the gaming section, dealing with the phenomenon of selling virtual property for real money.

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