Games and Fiction

I just launched into a new series of articles over at The Escapist. The plan is to sit in the crossroads of games and fiction and toss around a few Molotov cocktails to see what bursts into flames. Having written more than a few games, novels, and gaming novels over the decades, I’m curious to find out.

In this month’s column, I cover the history of gaming fiction. It turns out that hobby games and fiction have been rooted together since their very first moments, and we can lay the blame for that squarely at the feet of H. G. Wells himself. I always knew I liked him.

Be sure to check it out, and if you have suggestions for future bits, be sure to let me know.

Quiet Storytellers

I just posted “Quiet, Too Quiet,” my latest piece for Storytellers Unplugged. In it, I talk about why I haven’t been posting too much over there lately, which is the same reason you might see some large gaps in time around here every now and then too. Check it out, and try to be as understanding as you can.

Then maybe I’ll write a con report on C2E2. Short Version: I had a great time. Long Version? Coming soon, I hope.

Producer Too

Looks like my credit as a producer on the Brave New World: Revolutions film finally cropped up on IMDb.com. I spent a good deal of C2E2 hanging around with some of the Reactor 88 Studios guys, and things are coming together.

Speaking of which, it turns out there’s now an embeddable YouTube version of the Brave New World: Revolutions trailer. You can enjoy it right here.

Music from College: Steven Mark and Ronan Lynch

The music of a couple college pals turned musicians cropped up this week. Back in 2006, I revealed that I’d borrowed the name Ronan Lynch – the main hero of Deadlands – from an Irish exchange student I’d met at the University of Michigan. Ronan had worked as a journalist for a while but had moved to Germany to take up singing in a roots reggae band. Recently, he’s helped launch Irie UP, a new magazine dedicated to the international reggae scene. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but Ronan’s always been one of the sharpest, funniest writers I’ve ever known, so check it out if you get the chance.

Better yet, I stumbled across the music of Steven Mark, an alternative folk artist (far too simple a classification, but it fits) out of New York City. That’s him in the photo. Turns out I knew Steve under a different name back at U of M. (Doppelt, for those few out there who might remember living on 4th Tyler-Green in East Quad.)

Steve has released four albums over the past decade, and the tunes bring me right back to listening to him and my old roommate Dan King strumming their acoustic guitars back in the day. I’ve only worked my way through the most recent of the four discs at the moment, but Steve’s come a long way since then and matured into an amazing musician. You can listen to one of his latest tunes for free at his website, or many more on his MySpace page. You can also pick up copies of his music through iTunes, CDBaby, and Amazon.

New Makeshift Prodigy Album Out

Makeshift Prodigy – the band that played a fantastic set at the Brave New World: Revolution teaser trailer debut at last year’s Gen Con – released its second album today: Mathematica. You can listen to the whole album for free online, or you can buy a CD for $5. If you’d rather download it, it’s available in a stunning variety of music-file formats (including MP3, of course), and you can pay whatever you like for it, down to a bare minimum of $4.99.

The album comes with a new version of “Revolution,” which was a big part of the Gen Con show. The band played a number of the other songs at the show which make their recorded debut on Mathematica too.

Anyhow, they’re a great band, and Mathematica is going to be my soundtrack while I polish off the latest draft of the screenplay for Brave New World: Revolution. Check ’em out.

Conduit 2 Coming This Fall

This week, Sega spilled the news that my friends at High Voltage Software plan to release Conduit 2 – a sequel to last year’s The Conduit, an FPS for the Wii – this fall. I helped develop the story for this game about a year back, before the original game debuted, and I’m thrilled that it’s finally been announced. Just wait until you see what the team has in store for you. The original game only scratched the surface.

Sega’s running a free contest for the game right now, and entrants have a chance to win a spot on a Wanted poster in the game, plus some other cool prizes. It ends on May 13, so you still have some time to drop your name in the hat.

I also learned that the game I helped name last year – Tournament of Legends – is coming out from High Voltage and Sega on July 6, 2010. I had nothing to do with the game other than pitching in on that monicker, but I’m proud to see it out there too.

I got that name-this-game gig the same week I picked up a job writing a bunch of material for the upcoming Puppy Tweets toy from Mattel. I have a fun, strange job, but shifting back and forth among so many cool projects keeps me fresh and excited about them all.

The 100 Best Games Breakdowns

Family Games: The 100 Best should be on shelves Real Soon Now, I’m told. To hold you over for this smorgasbord of essays, check out Alan De Smet’s stunning and thorough breakdowns of both this book and its predecessor, Hobby Games: The 100 Best. Alan goes over the books in terms of writers, designers, and publishers to see who’s inspired the most love.

The graph that shows the most popular publishers is pretty cool. It’s not surprising to see Milton Bradley in the lead, tied with Rio Grande Games at 17 games. If you add up all the companies that come under the Hasbro umbrella these days, though, the total comes up to something around 56 entries instead. The company really is a gaming juggernaut.

The stunning graph that Alan came up with, connecting writers and designers by the games they loved or created, is all too cool.

Blurbs: Jim Lee

If you’ve read a comic in the last 20+ years, you should already know Jim Lee. As an artist, he defined the look of the X-Men in the early ’90s. His X-Men #1 (written by Chris Claremont) is still the best-selling comic book of all time, having racked up 8 million copies in print. He parlayed that into becoming one of the founders of Image Comics, his portion of which was known as WildStorm and which published titles like Astro City, Planetary, Gen13, The Authority, WildC.A.T.s, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. After a successful run producing several Marvel comics – including Captain America, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, and The Avengers – he sold WildStorm to DC Comics. He recently became the co-publisher of DC, the top creative job in the entire company.

Throughout all this, Jim kept drawing. His recent runs on Superman and Batman became instant classics, as has his work on All-Star Batman and Robin with Frank Miller. On top of all that, he serves as the executive creative director of the upcoming DC Universe Online MMO. He also got married last year, merging his family with his wife’s to join together a total of seven kids in their home. He’s a busy man.

I first met Jim back in WildStorm’s heyday. He and Drew Bittner had come up with a collectible card game, and they needed a professional game designer to help them develop it. I signed on, and the WildStorms CCG went on to entertain a lot of people and make the company a good chunk of change.

I’ve kept in touch with Jim and many other members of the WildStorm crew, mostly catching up at conventions. A couple years ago, I sat next to him at a comic convention and watched him sign his works for a huge line of adoring fans. He treated every one of them with utter class and respect. He makes a better rock star than most rock stars.

In that vein, he took the time to read Amortals for me, and he wrote this blurb:

“Matt Forbeck takes the plausible and pulls out all the stops in this mind-blowing, high-concept thriller.  It doesn’t get any better than this … especially in the near future!”

–  Jim Lee

[This is the last bit in this series of posts about the blurbs I collected for Amortals. I started it to say thanks to all the friends who were kind enough to help me out by telling people about my book. I hope I managed that, and I hope you enjoyed coming along for the ride.]

Geek.Kon Guest

The fine folks at Geek.Kon have announced that I’ll be a guest again at their show this year. I had a great time with them last year and agreed to join them again. The line-up of my fellow guests so far includes Bill Bodden and Aaron Pavao, both of whom were there last year, so it’ll be like getting the band back together. If you’re around Madison next Labor Day Weekend, come on out and join us!