The Austin Chronicle published an article about games and storytelling today, written by Joey Seiler, frequent contributor to Virtual World News. I'm quoted in the article, and while I won't go so far as to say the quote was out of context, it doesn't reflect what I would have said given the context the quote now appears in.

In the article, I talk briefly about extending the Halo game universe across multiple media, but neither I or the article mentions the groundbreaking Halo Alternate Reality Game known as "I Love Bees." As an ARG writer and designer on the award-winning Fallen and Regenesis games, I am well aware of this precedent, I just didn't think to mention it in the interview, although it was obliquely referenced.

My interview, in its original context as an email thread, follows for the record.

Continue reading: For The Record:  Walsh on Writing Alternate Realities

Gamasutra features a fascinating rundown of what was involved in bringing World of Warcraft to the tabletop as a role-playing game. Written by Luke Johnson of White Wolf, the article identifies "content" as being the biggest challenge in extending Warcraft's world--apparently, Blizzard wasn't comfortable giving White Wolf freedom to invent their own Warcraft lore. Johnson explains the process:

1. We would write the books [...] making stuff up when necessary.
2. The good folks at Blizzard would check the manuscript to make sure that a) everything in it was consistent with both their vision of the Warcraft setting and the information that had already been presented in some other format (the video games, the novels, and the like); and b) that we didn't add anything that they didn't like.
3. The writers would then alter the manuscript as per Blizzard's requests, and we'd return to step 2.

Sounds painful, doesn't it? It's a shame a reputable game maker like White Wolf wasn't given more freedom to expand the Warcraft universe. Blizzard might own Azeroth, but that doesn't mean it has a grasp of what works for tabletop role-playing.

"Security screeners at airports might do a better job spotting weapons if they spent their downtime playing video games - specifically, wasting aliens in lurid first-person shooters like Halo 3," The Boston Globe's Christopher Shea wrote yesterday. The 3-page online article resonates quite well with my quickly-written 2006 proposal "Airport Screening Is A Badly-Designed Game."

Specifically, Shea finds, as I mentioned last year, that even trained security professionals have trouble distinguishing harmful from safe objects; the human people have trouble finding exceptional objects (like guns) amid a sea of common objects (like toiletries). Additional information Shea gleaned from scientific sources shows that moving objects are easier to spot--yet X-ray scanners show stationary objects; first-person shooter gamers erred less in threat-identification tests than non-gamers. A number of interesting solutions are summarized in the article, none of which seem to involve making airport into an MMO (that was my semi-serious proposal), but some of which suggest that gaming might not be as unrelated to crucial security tasks as we might have thought. Sweet, sweet validation.

Also see my proposal for turning prison surveillance into an MMO and Dave Edery's article "Using Games to Tap Collective Intelligence."

Simon Carless, editor and publisher with the CMP Game Group (Game Developer Magazine, Gamasutra, GameSetWatch and more) was cornered by independent art-game maker Tale of Tales earlier this year. Tale of Tales published the interview over this past weekend, touching on Carless' background, his shift towards business/product management of CMP's many game-related initiatives, and discussing today's independent game scene.

As Chairman of the Independent Games Festival, Carless helps to shape the future of indie gaming. He told Tale of Tales that the rise of independent developers is due both to game-industry veterans forming their own teams, and "bedroom programmers" publishing on the web and making money by running ads. Although not business-focused, Tale of Tales is a very strong artistic contender in the indie arena, having launched the acclaimed Endless Forest microworld in 2005 and The Path, its entry into the 2008 Independent Games Festival.

• SLPTO Offers Second Life Content Creators Suite of Intellectual Property Protection Tools
  Unofficial, powerless organization intends to "offer a full suite of intellectual property protection tools" including copyright protection. Ergo, further confusing what is protected by copyright, trademarks and patents.
  (tags: law places secondlife synthetic.worlds policy organization ip tools)
• Industry Employment Solution VirtualWorldsJobs.com Launches
  I don't think we're quite at a point in virtual world history where an online job market/portal is really needed. Anyone worth their salt gets work based on word of mouth. Besides which, word has it some developers aren't paying talent properly.
  (tags: employment work freelance online synthetic.worlds networks business)
• "COMPLETE FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT": VIDEO GAMES AS GENDERED PLAY SPACES
  Henry Jenkins offers "a cultural geography of video game spaces, one which uses traditional children's play and children's literature as points of comparison to the digital worlds contemporary children inhabit."
  (tags: books games gaming youth article development gender play design synthetic.worlds places)
• Independent Games Summit: Valve's Kim Swift - 'From Narbacular Drop To Portal'
  Crapload of IGS 2007 video links posted on Game Set Watch for leeching. Viva indie!
  (tags: download media video list resource research games gaming design development presentation events)

• We are not producing the Virtual Worlds Forum, clearing up any confusion
  In an arena packed to the rafters with virtual worlds conferences, will the real "Virtual Worlds" conference please stand up? The original should have picked a more unique name and trademarked it.
  (tags: bullshit wtf events conference synthetic.worlds business law griefing)
• Giving your Facebook profile a Second Life [iAlja]
  Two Facebook and Second Life beta-stage mashups reviewed. Both seem to link SL people to FB people in slightly different ways.
  (tags: facebook secondlife software technology mashup groups socialsoftware networks)
• Dallas Snell Talks Dungeon Runners, Free to Play and NCsoft 2.0 [Free To Play]
  Free to play MMO Dungeon Runners will soon be sodden with in-game ads. The only reason this could work is that DR is a "comedy" rather than "serious" virtual world, therefore a Coke ad in the town square isn't entirely objectionable.
  (tags: mmog business advergaming synthetic.worlds game gaming article)
• XBOX 360 vs PS3 (and Wii) - Power Consumption Report [hardCOREware.net]
  Which game console hogs the most power? In excrutiating detail.
  (tags: consoles hardware ecosphere consumption wii ps3 xbox gaming technology comparison reference list)
• Lessons about failure [Lost Garden]
  Excellent case for iterative, rapid prototyping. "Give yourself a short period of time to 'find the fun' in a design... If the fun isn't there, move on... If you do fail, it isn't the end of the world."
  (tags: games design development prototyping casestudy)
• This Game Is Not Yet Rated: Inside The ESRB Ratings System [Gamasutra]
  How the ESRB works.
  (tags: business software society ethics culture politics policy games gaming ratings)
• Xbox 360 Achievements Lead to Higher Scores and Sales
  A pat on the head goes a long way to increase sales, according to a new study: "...in general, game titles that have a higher volume of Accomplishments correlate with both a higher Metacritic Metascore and higher gross sales in the United States."
  (tags: design development games gaming xboxlive rewards psychology business commerce reviews)

Former Perplex City ops-team member Guy Parsons has posted a web version of a recent presentation entitled "Text, Drugs, and Rock'n'Roll," wherein he engagingly argues that stories can become more participatory by injecting rock'n'roll--loosely defined in the context of his presentation as "jumping off the author's stage and diving headlong into the crowd..." -- a crowd Parsons knows (as do others in the ARG, live-game, and participatory fiction space) from first-hand experience is capable of "waiting to catch you with open arms" and co-authoring the experience.

I'd like to see more rock'n'roll in more forms of media, but I don't think that sort of mashup is necessarily a superior form of culture. I'm a bit tired of futurists telling us how one-way media is "dead," but I think Parson's barking up the right tree in explaining why participatory culture is an attractive and satisfying option for engaging contemporary audiences.

• Gamasutra - AGDC: Haro On Making Habbo A Success
  Habbo's Sulka Haro gets surprisingly specific about user demographics and interaction styles. Concludes with 6 tips: create something to play with (i.e. LEGO); kill the UI; don't punish failures; "players know best"; shared social setting; safety.
  (tags: business mmo casestudy casual design habbohotel groups statistics data youth)
• Why We Eat Strangers' Candy: A Reflection on the ARGFest 2007 Keynote by 42 Entertainment
  Summary article. "How is trust established?... Why should puppetmasters care if the players trust them?... Why do ARGs require trust?" Contains links to 2 YouTube videos of original presentation.
  (tags: arg games gaming groups trust presentation article)
• Alternate Reality Games Need a Generation Iteration
  A bit of classic discussion over the merits of the TINAG philosophy. "The TINAG aesthetic should blur the lines between day to day life and the game to the point of being eerie." It's all fun and games until someone calls in Homeland Security.
  (tags: arg design games gaming immersion)
• Kids Movie Creator, educate kids to make 3D animation movies and game
  Allegedly kid-friendly game / virtual world creation tool with built-in machinima recording and exporting. Windows only, it seems. Single license costs $15 USD. Buy additional content packs. No user-created assets as far as I can tell. Pity, that.
  (tags: software games gaming synthetic.worlds machinima animation youth development design)
• ParaEngine Website
  Chinese studio behind 'Kids Movie Creator' tool-set, creators of ParaEngine "distributed computer game engine." They believe that "game technology is the driving force to a new 3D Internet or web 3D." Everybody has to have a dream. Mine's to be taller.
  (tags: business development games gaming engine 3D internet web)
• Twitter Fan Wiki / Use Cases
  "Here is a list of Web pages that discuss productive, interesting, innovative, lifechanging and/or otherwise cool uses for Twitter." There are only 7 such pages listed. Does that say something about the utiity of Twitter?
  (tags: technology internet networks socialsoftware list)
• ‘Aimee Weber’ ™ Gets USPTO Stamp of Approval for Pigtails, Tutu, Wings, Tights, and Stompy Boots
  'Second Life' cybercelebrity trademarks her avatar appearance, apparently locking her into that appearance for eternity. Now she's obligated to go after any virtual world resident with a similar look (or name, I guess). Worth it for the PR? Doubt it.
  (tags: secondlife business law marketing avatar identity)

• Click Nothing: On Authorship in Games
  Clint Hocking offers an outstanding, thorough, intelligent and wise rebuttal to Ebert's dead-horse "games aren't art" argument. If you read only one rebuttal to Ebert's argument, make it this one! Two thumbs up!
  (tags: design games art discourse criticism emergence authorship participation interactivity)
• Smart people can rationalize anything
  Chip Morningstar: "It is nearly impossible to solve a problem for someone if they don't believe they have the problem, even if they really, really do." Although it seems to be standard marketing practice to offer solutions for problems we never knew we h
  (tags: article development psychology people)
• Thor Towers
  Simple but fun block-stacking mechanic: Use the space-bar to release a block being lowered erratically from above. Stack blocks to succeed.
  (tags: game games gaming game.mechanic design)
• SLCC Stream Information
  List of URLs for streaming audio of SLCC panels (education, social, business, machinima [what, no 'gaming?']).
  (tags: list audio events conference secondlife sl internet online)
• "How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days" [Gamasutra]
  "Juice": Persistent, plentiful interactive feedback. "A juicy game feels alive and responds to everything you do... it coaches [players] through the rules of the game by constantly letting them know on a per-interaction basis how they are doing."
  (tags: games gaming design development interactivity article prototyping)

• The History Of Activision [Gamasutra]
  David Crane (Activision veteran) interviewed in this in-depth article. Plenty of nostalgia to wallow in, oodles of details and insights. This is Gamasutra's second interview with Crane (last one was in 2005).
  (tags: article interview people games business consoles development design history)
• Is artistic style a new type of Video Game IP?
  Actually, the post doesn't talk about Video Game IP at all, but does raise the specter of artistic style as a form of protected IP. In a world with a bazillion artists, there are only so many styles, after all. Owning a style would kill art, I think.
  (tags: law copyright art)