A new year, a new millenium… whee!

 Posted by (Visited 12087 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
Jan 072001
 

Let’s see, what’s up.

I’ll be speaking at the end of January at Entertainment in the Interactive Age. The official invite looks like this:

The University of Southern California’s

Annenberg Center for Communication

&

The Interactive Digital Software Association

Present

Entertainment in the Interactive Age

Join leading game designers, critics, researches and educators for a

two-day exploration of the art and craft of interactive entertainment

and game design.

For conference information and to register online, visit our web site

at:

http://www.annenberg.edu/interactive-age

Some of the other folks who will be there include Geoff Zatkin, Warren Spector, Will Wright (keynote for him, of course!), Drs. Greg & Ray from Bioware, Janet Murray of Hamlet on the Holodeck, Hal Barwood, Tim Schafer, and more. It should be a lot of fun, and it’ll be nice to see some of these guys at a place other than E3 or GDC! The project is going well, but I can’t talk about it. But check out the official Star Wars Galaxies website for info. I have been posting there under the name Holocron. Yet another handle to add to the ever-lengthier list… *sigh* I have a bunch of updates to the Online World Timeline to do, but I didn’t get it done for this update. I kinda want to rearrange how I did the timeline, since it seems to have turned into a somewhat more widely used resource than I expected.

Crossroads of WWII Online recently reprinted a little thing I wrote on monthly fees being necessary for online games as part of their FAQ. I hear it also made the news at Evil Avatar. Maybe I should add it to this site too. 🙂

Got a note asking to use Declaring the Rights of Players as a debate topic in a debate society on Cybertown. That should be interesting, but I never heard about it again…

Recent News

 Posted by (Visited 10344 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.

Recent News

 Posted by (Visited 10575 times)  Game talk, Misc, Writing  Tagged with: , ,
Sep 112000
 

Another year, another birthday. Next year will be the big 3-0. Ah well.

I’ve done a big update to the Online Worlds Timeline (under Gaming/Essays). A bunch of info on PLATO, Minitel, MTrek, new info in the year 2000, and a somewhat nicer format.

Saw lots of citations of the Laws (& a nice quote from “Current and Future Developments in Online Games”) over at the Games Domain Review.

Recent News

 Posted by (Visited 10524 times)  Game talk, Misc, Writing  Tagged with: , ,
Aug 272000
 

Well, a major new essay is up. I hope I don’t get in too much trouble over it. 🙂 We’ll see! You can find it under Gaming/Essays/Declaring the Rights of Players.

I have several big updates to do to the Online World Timeline; I just got in a bunch of new data on PLATO to incorporate.

The machine the website is hosted on moved locations today, from Austin to Chicago. The domain names should still work fine, but the IP address has changed.

There’s now a search facility on the main LegendMUD site which also spiders these pages, so if you need to search the site, you can do it from there.

It’s time to submit talk proposals to the Game Developer’s Conference again. Any developers out there who have requests for topics to cover, post on the Guestbook and I’ll see if I can get it past Alan Yu! 🙂

GDC round-up

 Posted by (Visited 10224 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…

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