I recently finished some backstories and narrative work for the upcoming Amazing Birds Sea Surfers game from Burnin’ Ape. This was a really fun contract for me, working with good people and getting to play with really cute bird characters!
The game has six surfing bird characters for players to meet. Here are some of their background stories:
Obligatory press pass photo!
I got to go cover Animazement with Faith, one of my editors at Geek, and it was great to meet an internet friend in person. We also compared stories about random copywriting jobs. Weigh in, friends: Which is less likely to be ever be read: a training manual for fast-food employees or a press release with “e-greetings” as the keyword?
I always think that getting a press badge is a fluke. Maybe the con organizers happen to have one pass left over, and they decide to give it to me so it won’t go to waste. Or maybe they mixed up my name with a real journalist and let me in by accident. Maybe the conference organizers just very quickly scanned my clips, and if they’d had more time, they would have realized it’s all a big mistake and they’d really regret allowing me to attend. Also I’m pretty sure that anyone I’ve ever run into at a show is just pretending that they have read my work, just to be nice. I am not saying this is terribly rational, just saying that I’ve been covering industry events for years, and I’m always convinced that I’m some blogger who got in by mistake.
I don’t know if it was attending a show with a colleague, or my newfound familiarity with the Raleigh Convention Center (I was camped out in the Marriott Starbucks while lesser journalists were still cursing the convention center’s lack of wifi!), but I felt like a real working journalist at Animazement.
Overall, I really enjoyed going to Animazement. I liked seeing fans sharing their hobby with their parents or children, I liked being part of a subculture that is so accepting of fluid gender, I love that anime has led fans to learn more about illustration, or costume artistry, or to study Japanese language and culture. I would not mind some more showering and bathing by some of the attendees, though.
I recently interviewed Emily Farquharson of the International Geek Girl Pen Pal Club for Geek Insider, as well as Spiderweb Software’s Jeff Vogel for Hardcore Droid, and Sky Horse Interactive’s Dave Stafford for Indie Game Mag. Even though I got the chance to talk with some really interesting people about heir amazing projects, it turns out that talking to people I don’t know is not exactly my comfort zone.
Working on a new piece for Geek, in which I get to play with a model Delorean! Like any good journalist, this is what I did:
Edit: Here’s the final article, with even more pictures of toys driving the DeLorean.
I recently reviewed Anne Michaud’s ‘Girls and Monsters’ over on Yahoo:
The strength of Anne Michaud’s Girls & Monsters
…
I usually just roll my eyes when bloggers and Tumblrs dictate certain topics should only be posted under a trigger warning. Partly because it implies that that only victims or folks with past traumas can be upset by something offensive like dickwolves, and partly because it reaches precious-snowflake levels in certain places, ahem, Tumblr. … So, readers of horror fiction like Girls & Monsters will be expecting dark, but the second story in the collection is an upsettingly beautiful self-injury story. Michaud’s genius is in blending the mystical and macabre with very real teen moments, and her Scarlet is simultaneously worried about fitting in at her British youth hostel and about being followed by a black dog that no one else can see, for a dark story that stays with the reader. Plus, it begins with one of my very favorite Winston Churchill quotes.
The five stories in this collection, Death Song, Black Dog, A Blue Story, Dust Bunnies and We Left At Night can all stand alone. No characters or locations cross over, but reading the whole book does hint at a complete narrative, a coming-of-age story with girls and monsters.
My sister Bethie, a grad student at Columbia and the teller of my favorite joke ever, asked Amy Poehler if she’s going to cure cancer and Alzheimer’s. Here is the gif set going around Tumblr today:
My sister is so awesome! (Amy Poehler is OK too.)
Via We Will Predict Your Future! w/Amy Poehler! | The Chris Gethard Show.
Harold loves the old Incredible Hulk TV show. Last night, we watched an episode called Terror in Times Square, during which I ignored most of the plot to watch the lovely backgrounds of Manhattan. I liked trying to identify the locations. Is this 1970’s Park Ave in the low 30s? Or is it a movie set in a less-trafficked area, made up to look like Park and the low 30s? I watched the show, thinking happily about adventures in the city, but Harold empathized more with the crowd-induced Hulk rage.
Tonight, we are watching The Amazing Spiderman, and Harold wants to know why, if Spiderman lives in Queens, he’s taking the Coney Island train?
The island is full of strange characters for players to interact with and get to know. Early on, Lili discovers that friendly Construct Bellringer is not terribly bright, and the island’s evil mayor is a mustache-twirling villain. One Construct is a budding poet, and his verses are hilariously awful. The Spirits have a surprising amount of personality even in their one line of dialogue after victory or defeat, and Lili’s magical-hipster commentary is always a delight. It’s well worth reading all the optional item text, too, BitMonster has added some real gems in the descriptions, with nods to other adventure and indie games.
Lili involves “combat” with dangerous spirits on the island. In a pre-release discussion, BitMonster’s Lee Perry promised that Lili’s combat would be bloodless and would take advantage of the way players are already interacting with their tablets. The game delivers on both of those: Lili fights spirits by jumping aboard their backs and trying to collect flowers. Players need to tap and drag flowers, just like they’ve done all over the island, but this time, the target moves as the spirit tries to shake Lili off.
It’s a delightful battle, although the novelty does wear off as Lili is sent to repeatedly defeat Spirits. The difficulty increases in a familiar casual games pattern, as Lili gets faster and holds on better, she needs to catch more, faster Spirits and collect more flowers. (Players can switch to child mode for an lighter difficulty curve, or purchase in-game power-ups if hunting down Spirits isn’t your favorite pastime.) Overall, it’s hard not to think of LucasArts’ classic PC adventure game, Monkey Island, when playing. Monkey Island also included a unique bloodless combat — insult swordfighting — and quirky island characters.
Found a cache of Electronic Games magazines from the 1980s at a flea market. They were in surprisingly good condition and I’ve had a really great time reading through them. I wrote for Geek about what’s changed and what really hasn’t.
A new games studio called “Electronic Arts” is featured for their innovative new workflow patterns…
Although my Geek colleague Michael Westgarth has come up with the top five classic EA franchises, and I unashamedly love EA’s The Sims, their reputation has changed pretty drastically since this 1982 article. EA’s now also known for “winning” worst company of the year two years running, for the EA Spouse anonymous letter, and Geek writer Mohseen Lala has written about the five worst things about Electronic Arts.
I also found a CES ad from 1982, with a bikini girl, of course, and some other gems, but my favorite was this header from the magazine’s reader mail section.
I love this because I worked just up the street from this address at when I was at Next Island. And, like anyone else who writes about games on the internet, I daydream fondly of a time when commenters would have to write a letter, get an envelope and a stamp, and actually mail it in to express their opinions. The magazine mailbag included some players who wrote in to say they’d found an Easter egg and describing how to get it, and although some readers were writing to express disagreement or to add information on a previous topic, the quality of the letters was much higher than the typical internet comment U SUXORS THIS IS THE BEST/WORST GAME OF ALL TIME, AND YOU ARE CLEARLY A MORON FOR NOT AGREEING!
Via ‘Electronic Games’ From The 1980’s on Geek.
The Avernum world is full of wonderful and zany things, from a hive of cheerful spiders all called Spider, to an entrepreneurial barkeep looking to open a hot springs spa. There are epic battles against the usual high fantasy cultists and drakes and the like, but there’s also a foreman looking for some cheap wine for his workers. It’s worth noting that Avermun women are soldiers (Wearing practical armor, even!), armorsmiths and mayors.
