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When game design is outlawed…
Allen Varney included my answer is his Escapist article I Will Survive. The question: if you were legally enjoined from making games, what would you do? My answer:
I’d play music in seedy bars, and write, and maybe draw cartoons. All the while, I’d secretly develop games, passing them around on illicit CD-Rs, always tempting fate. Sprites would be traded in back alleys with other like-minded ludotraffickers, and I’d be looking up algorithms on a loose network of pirate BBSes that would go up and down. Eventually, my counterculture existence would attract attention, and depending on how the roll of the dice goes, I’d end up raided by the FBI, a martyr to the movement, and a cause celebre; or I’d be vanished, to work for the NSA providing military-grade puzzle games to keep the troops amused.
Or maybe I’d be an accountant.
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A Theory of Fun milestone — and postmortem
Today I got my royalty statement for A Theory of Fun, covering July through December of last year. And to my utter shock (but great pleasure), enclosed was a check. Yes, that means that the book earned out its royalty, sometime between November of 2004 and December of 2005.
In one of the comments, Morgan asked if I’d recap the book process, and I figured this milestone is as good a reason as any to do so!
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A bit on how I think games work
Abalieno at The Cesspit reacted kinda negatvely to “The Healing Game” and raised some interesting points. But I think we’re talking past each other to a degree, so I wanted to take a step back, and make sure we agree on terms. The below is the framework that I am using in thinking about “How Games Work,” which I am thinking about a lot because that is, broadly speaking, the next book.
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The Sunday Poem: The Smile
She wore it like a sundress: loose
And casual, unashamed of all
There was beneath. It fit, like blue
Fits water — clinging close, a fall
Of folds and shining white. It dressed
Her, danced her, light and lonely, held
Her in herself, contained her, less
Than kisses, more than faces will.
She was no person. Her smile enclosed
Her, was her; smiles do that, steal
Your body, take your eyes. She knows
It happened; yes, it came off, sheer
And casual like a sundress, quick
And lonely for an instant, not
A person, making love to lack.
She ran away; she knew, she thought,
How smiles are, how waterfalls
Splinter on rocks, how blue can fill
The eyes — how right she was — that all
Smiles kiss more than true faces will.