Category: announcements

Contribution on Echo Bazaar

I’m delighted to say that I’ve contributed some guest content to Echo Bazaar, and it is now live in the game. EBZ is a favorite of mine, and so is their excellent, interactive narrative theory-rich blog. Likely more to come.

(To quote the EBZ feed about where my content appears: “Nocturnal fever: @emshort’s first foray into the Bazaar now live for fortunate and Fated scholars of the Correspondence.” If this is excessively cryptic, it is possible that you have not yet encountered the prerequisites for this storyline.)

Kill Screen #2 is coming out!

The Back to School issue, extensively discussing the ground between education and games, is now available to order. It includes an article by me, on teaching and designing; the discussion covers the IF game Voices of Spoon River among its examples. I’m also looking forward to the articles on Oregon Trail and Assassin’s Creed II, among others.

For those not already familiar with it, Kill Screen is an on-paper in-print magazine with high production values that looks great on the shelf. It talks about games in depth beyond the numerical scores, and is edited with dedication, insight, and tremendous raw persistence by Chris Dahlen. Seriously. Guy is not kidding around.

Hadean Lands

I was going to post here about Hadean Lands, the new game Andrew Plotkin is writing, and how you can contribute via Kickstarter to get this thing fully funded.

Events have outrun me, and it’s already fully funded — which is awesome. But it’s not too late to contribute anyway! And here’s why you should:

  • Contributing is the only way to get yourself a PC/Mac version of the game when it comes out. It’s otherwise going to be released for iOS only. There’s a short, playable trailer available, so you can see for yourself what kind of a thing this is going to be.
  • The more Andrew’s funding goes over minimum, the more time he’ll be able to devote to being a full-time IF author and tool-maker. And that’s important because, in addition to releasing the game, he’s planning to share the tools for other people to release iOS games.
  • Also on the agenda is to polish up the browser-based Quixe interpreter, adding CSS support, javascript integration, and graphics.

If you’re keen to see more accessible IF on more platforms, this is a great way to help make that happen.

Comp Games!

The 2010 IF Comp is now open.

It looks like a strong year. I just did my first pass to identify games I don’t plan to review due to lack of credited testers. Out of 25 26 entries, I only found two to skip for sure; there were two others where I couldn’t find a tester list but other indications suggest that a lot of work went into them, so I may give them the benefit of the doubt when I finish with the definitely-tested ones.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot of really polished-looking work in the collection, and quite a few familiar author names from past years. And a majority of the games can be played online, with a convenient link from the comp page.

Thanks to all the authors, testers, and comp organizing staff who make this possible for another year. This is going to be fun.

PS: Some places other than here where reviews are likely to appear, or are appearing already:

Pissy Little Sausages, Eat Lamp, Minimum Safe Distance, The Quiet Sunday, One Wet Sneaker, Paean to Wanderings, Cobaltnine, Philip Armstrong’s Games Journal, Farming the Apocalypse, The Gameshelf, The Stack, Cup of Joe, Gnome’s Lair, The Gaming Philosopher (warning: reviews not cut-tagged), Suppertime Sonnets (in sonnet form, no less), The Rest of Your Mice, Dan Shiovitz, Should I Play It, scratchm’s intfiction forum reviews, Rob “Flack” O’Hara’s intfiction forum reviews, Two Swallows, Iain Merrick’s LJ, Yoon Ha Lee, Monkey with Brain on Top, Another Mr Lizard / A Tonne of Feathers.

If you’re looking for reviews of a specific game, you can often find them linked from ifwiki (assuming any have been written yet).

IF Theory Book, update

Back in January, I was hoping to be able to revisit the long-dormant IF theory book project and give it an overhaul. At the time, I was applying for a fellowship that would have given me quite a lot of time to focus on new media work, of which I hoped this would have been a part. But that didn’t happen; instead, I am consulting for the video game industry and am enjoying myself quite a lot, but have very little time for major outside projects.

All the same, I was sad that I didn’t have time to finish something that I know a lot of people are still interested in seeing. If anything, the recent success of Aaron’s Inform 7 book has increased the amount of email I get from people about this project.

Recently, Kevin Jackson-Mead stepped forward to volunteer to work on the theory book, and I have taken him up on it, perhaps a little more vehemently than he originally expected. Kevin is an IF aficionado who does a lot of organizing for the Boston People’s Republic of IF group and also has substantial work background in publishing. I am stepping down as chief editor and handing the materials I had over to him. Dennis Jerz, who was working with me on the project way back in the early days, has chosen to remain involved.

Kevin is starting off by getting in touch with the original contributors. If you are one, you should already have received email from him asking about your interest in continuing to participate, and soliciting input about where the project will go from here. If you didn’t get his message, let me know and I’ll pass on your email to him, or you can contact him directly if you know where to find him. (I don’t want to post his email address here in the sight of the spambots.)

Many thanks to Kevin for being willing to take this up, and my apologies to everyone for not being able to bring it together some years back.