Writing

The Chinese edition is in press as we speak, and is supposed to hit the street in time for ChinaJoy next week. Alas, I won’t be there. I was supposed to be, but I’m not going this year after all–just too much traveling.

However, I’m adding the introductions to the Chinese and Korean editions to the excerpt page so that readers in the rest of the world can read them. Also, you may have noticed that the cover to the Chinese edition now graces the front page of the AToF site. You can look at a giant version here if you like. Anyone who knows what my Chinese name translates to, let me know!

I’ve started seeing some press coverage in China as well.

Editions still to come: Japanese, Korean, and Italian. Once I know more about those, I will post about them as well.

A couple of press hits today.

First up, there’s this interview at NextGen which is mostly about the theory of fun and how it can be applied towards opening up new audiences for games.

The current games can be daunting to new players. “Look at what’s happened to the RTS market,” Koster says. “You have 300 buildables and 500 vehicles and your tech tree is enormous. To a novice, that’s just overwhelming. It’s like teaching a kindergartener to read with the Encyclopedia Britannica.

“New genres are exciting because that implies that they open new markets. It’s based on how games and brains work. Focusing only on the kinds of games that already exist really only caters to your existing base.”

Secondly, and less related to the book, is the streaming videocast of the IBM MMOG conference I took part in about a month ago. You’ll need to register for free here, and then go here to watch it. This talk is mostly about what I call “Moore’s Wall,” which is the notion that the advance of technology has in some ways been a barrier for us in game design, rather than an enabler, because of increasing costs. This has also been
Slashdotted and blogged about. It may seem less related, but taken in tandem with the above interview, might form a more coherent picture of some of the issues facing the industry today.

I can’t end this post without offering condolences to any Londoners who might be reading. 🙁

I’ll never understand the vagaries of Amazon sales. esterday and for the last few weeks, ATOF had been slowly slipping down the charts–the doldrums of summer, I thought, with no orders from universities for their classes, no press attention, and so on.

Today, it’s in the 3500’s on the charts, and the #12 bestseller in the computer and video games section.

I am told that Tim O’Reilly has a mystical formula that he can use to determine sales figures with exactitude based on Amazon sales rank data. From where I sit, it’s gotta be a heck of a formula, and probably involves eye of newt.

Time gets away from you, and you forget to blog.

I spoke at Supernova 2005. I will be speaking at Training Fall, and at Microsoft Meltdown.

I added a few more reviews to the site.

Hurray, E3 is over!

Latest press spottings of the book:

• George “The Fat Man” Sanger calls it one of his “very favorite books of all time,” but he rags on the cartoons.
• The Daily Pundit, of all places,
  discusses the LA Times article with the comment, “One practical payoff here is that Koster may have set the table for the first PC-acceptable justification for Booth Babes: luring males into teach/learn situations. If that angle ever gets traction it’s likely to find lots of creative applications.” Yikes.