In a post over at Gameplaywright.net, my friend Jeff Tidball celebrates his first year as a full-time freelancer. In his post, he quotes something I said to him a while back:
Day jobs seem permanent, but it’s an illusion. Matt said he preferred knowing right where the wolf was all the time, right outside his door. He’d rather dispense with the illusion of permanence and deal with the reality that there are no guarantees.
Earlier today, I spotted the full cover for Ghosts of Ascalon on the official Guild Wars 2 wiki. Speaking of which, if you’re at all interested in learning more about the upcoming Guild Wars 2 MMO, that wiki is a great place to find a solid collection of the bits that have been announced so far. The entry on the novel, for instance, is filled with good stuff.
While you’re at it, be sure to check out the newly launched Guild Wars 2 blog. The game’s actual designers are peeling back all sorts of veils there with every entry.
Anyhow, the cover for the novel looks fantastic, and the image I found includes not only the front cover but the spine and back cover, along with all the teaser text too. I cannot wait to see this thing on shelves and to hold an actual copy in my hands.
Soon. Soon.
Ever imagine what might happen if Superman and Lex Luthor lost their jobs and wound up having to live together? Well, wonder no longer. DQniel Kaufman just released a pilot for his new web video series Roommates. Besides Dqniel, it features my friends Miranda Horner as Lois Lane and Mike Selinker in a stunningly funny turn as Mr. Mxyzptlk. Be sure to check it out.
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.
Over at Booklife, Jeremy Jones interviews Ken Hite about two of his favorite topics: Cthulhu and creativity. The article includes kind quotes about Ken from Will Hindmarch and me. (Since Ken let me crash in his guest room last weekend during C2E2, it was the least I could do.) It’s a fun article that captures those specific aspects of Ken’s career well. Check it out.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.