Game talk

This is the catch-all category for stuff about games and game design. It easily makes up the vast majority of the site’s content. If you are looking for something specific, I highly recommend looking into the tags used on the site instead. They can narrow down the hunt immensely.

Recent News & GDC

 Posted by (Visited 10576 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. 🙂

Website Moved!

 Posted by (Visited 8487 times)  Game talk, Misc, Music  Tagged with: , ,
Jan 082000
 

As the banner headline at the top of the page says, this website has moved! As you may or may not know, my personal homepage is hosted on the LegendMUD website. Well, Legend just got its own domain name, which means my site did too. In the process, it also got a new Net connection and a new hosting machine.

The old site address of mud.sig.net will work until February or so, and in the meantime it will redirect people to this location–but if you want it to work in the long term, update your bookmarks now!. The new domain name is www.legendmud.org.

Not too much other news. Work is work. 🙂 Been playing Ultima 9: Ascension a bit and a lot of Unreal: Tournament. I got my copy of the PvP book on Christmas day, too! I’ve actually been a character in this strip, so it is near and dear to my heart. 🙂 I’ve also been doing some writing design aspects of muds and mudlike games (that’s MMORPG to most of the commercial world) but I don’t know if anything will come of it.

Lastly, lots of stuff is up at my mp3.com website so if you like acoustic guitar and singer-songwriter music, check it out. 🙂 I did locate the version of “Stones” I did for Ultima IX in the game–it’s the one on the clock-radio right at the start of the game. Of course, you can barely hear the guitar… ah well!

Halloween Story is Up

 Posted by (Visited 9503 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…

Recent News

 Posted by (Visited 12892 times)  Game talk, Misc, Music  Tagged with: , , , ,
Oct 131999
 

Whew, been a while since I updated. Let’s see, the latest news:

We’re in a new house now. I have to replace the deck, but other than that it’s nice. I’m very glad to be out of temporary apartment housing… The VR Worldcon thing was a lot of fun. It was great to hang out with Dr Cat again. It had been quite a while since I had spent any time with him… Also, I have to say that I think Furcadia is probably the most successful non-gaming, socially oriented graphical mud I’ve seen. I was promised a log of the two things I did (a roundtable on managing obnoxious behavior online, and a general q&a session) but they haven’t materialized yet.

Thanks to Richard Bartle, looks like I’m heading off to London in a couple of weeks to give the opening address at Online Games ’99 on the 3rd and 4th of November. I am supposed to speak on “Current and Future Developments in Online Games” as well as (another) panel on managing obnoxious players (something everyone seems to want to know about!)

This is my first trip across the Atlantic–all my travels thus far have been in the Americas–and I am looking forward to it!

My CD is mastered! I’ll be duplicating it soon. I am not sure what I am going to do with it once I duplicate it, though (other than give it as a Christmas present to friends and family). Are there any of you out there who want it? Post on the Guestbook if you are interested in it. (I bet I see no activity whatsoever). To help you decide, I’ve put up a new mp3 in the Music/What I Play section, called Maybe Free. It’s the opening track on the CD.

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