My friend Jesse Scoble has an excellent article up at Gameplaywright.com about the “Pixels to Paper” panel held at this past summer’s Gen Con. The panel featured my pals Jack Emmert (of Cryptic Studios) and Ed Stark and Dave Williams (of Red 5 Studios) talking about both video games and tabletop games and what they can learn from each other. Jesse does a fantastic job of encapsulating the event, and if you’re interested in any kind of game development it’s worth a read.
Citizens of Virtue
Today I stumbled across a website that’s just too damned funny: Citizens of Virtue. At first, it looks like your standard right-wing, evangelical Christian site, but you dig a little deeper and see that it’s actually a finely crafted satire. The add for Passionix–the drug for correcting rampant hormones in teenagers–should be enough of a tip-off for anyone.
This is, of course, part of a new ARG designed by a pack of geniuses I’m proud to call friends. I don’t know much more about the game than what’s on the site, but I can’t wait to find out.
Angry Robot Unleashed
My pal Marc Gascoigne–formerly of the Black Library and Solaris–was just recently named the head of Angry Robot, a new imprint of HarperCollins.
For fans (and writers) of genre fiction, this is, of course, excellent news.
Influences
Cinerati asked a number of creatives: “Was there a particular book (or television show, or film) that you read (or watched) as a child that inspired you into your current career?” Check out the responses from Susan Palwick, Richard Scott Nokes, Dale Launer, David Chute, and me.
Moore for Free
Michael Moore’s latest film, Slacker Uprising, debuts today. I’ve yet to see the film so cannot comment on its content. However, the most interesting thing about the film is how it’s been released: online, for free, to anyone living in the US or Canada (or willing to pose as such). Love Moore or hate him, at least now you don’t have to pay to see what his latest fuss is all about.
No matter how you plan to vote in the upcoming election, take the moment to register to vote–and then this November 4 go out and do it. If the past two presidential elections have taught us anything, it’s that it doesn’t take a whole lot of votes to sway an election one way or the other.
Next IGDA Madison Meeting
The next meeting of the Madison chapter of the IDGA is slated for September 30. Check the site for all the details. I plan to be there, and I hope to see any local game developers there too.
RIP Brian Thomsen
I received a couple notices this evening that Brian Thomsen passed away of a heart attack on Saturday. I knew Brian from his days as the head of the fiction division at TSR, and although I never had the pleasure of working with him, many of my friends did. I just saw Brian at this past Gen Con, only a month ago and chatted with him for far too little time.
For Brian’s family and and our many mutual friends, I’m saddened he left us so suddenly and so soon.
Pitching and Storytellers
My free monthly essay on writing just went up on Storytellers Unplugged today. This time around, I discuss the cyclical nature of freelancing and the “Season of the Pitch.”
GAMA’s Top Job Open
My friend Anthony Gallela recently announced that he is stepping down as the executive director of GAMA to join Bucephalus Games as its full time VP of Sales and Marketing. It looks like company president Dan Tibble‘s new venture is taking off, so it’s time for Anthony to jump on that rocket for the ride and hold on with both hands.
This, of course, leaves GAMA without an executive director, so the search for a new one starts… now. The board hopes to take résumés for about a month and then interview candidates at their board meeting in Columbus in November. If you think you’ve got the chops for the gig and wouldn’t mind living in Columbus too, give them a holler.
Multiple Causes
That’s our kids on the first day of school, just a couple weeks back. The one on the right is in fourth grade, while the four on the left just entered first.
When we first found out Ann was pregnant with quadruplets, we took the news about as well as you could expect. In other words, we were terrified. Soon after, we started digging around for answers and looking for help. One organization stood out as the best group of people to whom we could turn: MoST (Mothers of Supertwins).
MoST is staffed and filled with people who’d already gone through the long, strange trip on which we had surprisingly embarked. They helped us get our heads screwed back on to our spines and gave us the informational and emotional support we desperately needed. Now, they’re starting a new funding campaign, and they have a video (posted below) that tells about the kind of people the money goes to help. Check it out, if only to see photos of families with even more kids than ours.