Welcome

“Don’t let anyone tell you that gaming is a waste of time. Clearly it isn’t. My early gaming years have had a direct and massively positive influence on my career. Gaming means you aren’t getting into trouble anywhere else. It’s only anti-social to those who have a) never tried or b) never actually been online or linked up on a LAN. Surely this is more productive than sitting round a table in a pub with a few mates, sending texts to other people.” — James Barclay

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Welcome to Grinding to Valhalla. If you’d like to learn more about the project and perhaps participate, head over to the About page and go from there.

I’ve started interviewing some authors about their gaming backgrounds and how this has influenced their work. You can find a list of who I’ve interviewed at the Reading the Text page.

Along with this, I’ve started doing some One Shot interviews as well. Here is where you’ll find those bloggers/podcasters who for various reasons declined to participate in the Valhalla project or never received an invitation from me but were still willing to be interviewed.

RC

Reading the text: Luke Cuddy interview

Luke Cuddy is the co-editor of  two books on pop-culture and philosophy: World of Warcraft and Philosophy and The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy.  He is also a philosophy instructor, a copywriter for Vandusen Design, and a freelance writer.  In this interview Luke answers some hard-hitting questions about World of Warcraft and Philosophy, talks about how he plays WoW and what the rest of his gaming background has been like.

Luke’s website: Neo-Philosophy

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Could you take a minute and explain what World of Warcraft and Philosophy: Wrath of the Philosopher King is about? 

The book is a collection of essays (and a couple of stories) that, in a very informal tone, explore some aspect(s) of WoW as it relates/connects to a particular philosopher or philosophical idea. In some cases, greater social issues are explored—for example, the relationship between Blizzard execs and the players themselves, or the real-world economic implications of in-game actions (like Gold-Farming). 

Forgive me here, but how would you respond to someone who said that “philosophy” and “World of Warcraft” don’t belong on the same title page together let alone in an entire book discussing the two? 

First, I would ask for this person to give me some premises rather than a conclusion alone. But I think this question really goes back to the distinction between those who believe philosophy itself is a specialized activity, only fit for a select few, and those (like Rene Descartes) who believe that philosophy should be brought to the masses in whatever way possible. Given that I’ve edited two books for Open Court’s Pop-Culture and Philosophy series, you can tell which side I’m on. 

Or maybe the person has another intention that goes beyond WoW. Maybe she is implying that the nature of games is such that philosophy cannot help us understand them, and vice versa. After all, the person might argue, it’s only a game; it’s not real. Of course, claiming that the game is real or not is itself taking a philosophical stand on the issue. And even if it were argued that the game is, in fact, not real we could still ask why so many people experience it as real. All of this can help us address a key philosophical question: what is real? If WoW can help us understand this question, what else can it help us understand? Well, that’s what WoW and Philosophy is for… 

How do you see World of Warcraft as an ideal environment for exploring philosophical concepts? 

It’s a virtual environment with over 11 million users, each with a real life identity as well as an in-game identity. Although players have some limits in terms of creating a toon, they are not limited the way they are in many console RPGs. Furthermore players can do so many things as they play, like raid or gather herbs or terrorize noobs or explore. This vast amount of player freedom creates an ethical minefield. What will players actually do with this freedom? Will they adhere to the moral standards of “good” and “bad” behavior we observe in daily life, or will they hide behind the anonymity of a toon to become a “murderer” or a “tyrant” (as a guild leader, for example)? And these are only the ethical implications… 

So, does the book target WoW fans specifically, or did you have a wider audience in mind? 

It’s definitely for fans primarily. We want players to see the way that WoW participates in the long history of philosophical inquiry. We want players to think about what they’re doing in the game and why. Other readers can still get something out of the book, but they might feel a bit out of the loop when they come across references to the greater WoW community, like the Gnome Tea Party. 

Ruminating on the books subtitle, how would you say Arthas stacks up as a philosopher king? Would he make Plato proud? 

Well, despite living an interesting life, Arthas unfortunately doesn’t indicate a direct interest in the quest for knowledge and philosophy. Plato’s philosopher king is just that, a philosopher. I guess we don’t know enough about what Arthas did in his spare time, but my guess is that a detailed study would show that he doesn’t quite stack up. Plus, I don’t remember Plato suggesting that a philosopher king should kill his own father and mentor:) 

Based on the reviews I’ve read of the book it seems those who have read it find it impossible to play WoW in the same way as they had before. Would you say the book was then working as intended? 

Absolutely. As fans of philosophy, we want people to think about their experiences instead of just experiencing them, at least sometimes. Hopefully people who see WoW differently will eventually see life differently too. 

Okay, so you’ve got Plato, Saint Augustine, Kant, Nietzsche and Marx running a 5-man heroic of Icecrown Citadel. Who would be the tank and who the healer? Also, who would most likely be the one to walk out with the phattest loot? 

Haha, great question. To prevent a class struggle from occurring, Marx would be the healer, providing potions and buffs for all. And Kant, of course, would be the tank, given that he has a moral obligation to his fellow philosophers. I think Nietzsche’s ability to propel himself “beyond good and evil” might lead him to leave with the phattest loot. 

You’re obviously no stranger to World of Warcraft. What has been your experience with the game (when did you start playing, what is your playing style, etc.)? 

I love WoW. I think it’s one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. However, I’m told that I play differently than many other people. Although I’ve been on my share of raids, I prefer solo play. To me, it’s just amazing that there is this entire world to explore in the game, and sometimes it’s easier to explore on your own. I’ve built several characters up to about level 60 mostly by myself, then started an entirely new character and did the same thing. The thing is, I’m really an explorer, in the real and virtual worlds. I got deep into WoW a couple of years ago, but before that I had played one of my friends’ accounts (roommate at the time). Before WoW, I experimented with the original real-time strategy Warcraft games. 

Would you mind giving us an overview of your gaming background? 

Luke Cuddy

I was a child when video games were coming into their own, consoles anyway. My brother and I had an Atari 2600. Later we got a Sega Master System which I still like despite having been virtually forgotten by the gaming community—the original Phantasy Star was my favorite. Later a friend got an NES. I remember waiting for school to end each day in 2nd grade so we could go home to play Zelda. As a teenager I got into first person shooters, beginning with Doom and Doom 2. Role playing games, of all kinds, are my favorite, though, and I’ve been playing them my whole life. I also play board games with some friends when I can. I like Settlers of Catan and the expansions. 

Is there anything else you’d like to share with this gamer/reader audience (assuming they truly exist)? 

Sure, I am working on Halo and Philosophy to be published next year. Any ideas?

Reading the text: N. K. Jemisin interview

N(ora). K. Jemisin is a writer of speculative fiction who recently published her first novel. In this interview she discusses The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, how she got it published, what she particularly enjoys about writing, and of course her gaming background.

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Could you take a minute and explain what The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is about?

Sure. Basically, it’s an epic fantasy set in a secondary (non-Earth) world in which human beings have, through various circumstances, enslaved several of their own gods. One family in particular controls these gods, using their power to rule the world. The focus of the story is on a young woman who is a member of this family, though she was raised in effective exile; she gets brought back to the family seat and is forced to deal with politics she can barely understand, much less survive.

The book is the start of a trilogy, all set in the same world.

Would you mind describing what the process was like for you in getting this published?

Well, I originally wrote a version of this novel 10 years ago. It was very different then, but still had the same core ideas. But I wasn’t as good of a writer then, and so it didn’t sell; I couldn’t even get an agent with it.

I trunked it for awhile, wrote a few other books and found an agent in the interim, then decided to take a second look at it. Now, as an older and hopefully wiser writer, I was able to see what was wrong with the original version. I changed a number of things, wrote the whole thing over from scratch, then sent it off to my agent. This time it sold. =)

Are you or have you ever been a gamer? What has your gaming experience been like (board games, pen & paper RPGs, console & computer games, etc.)?

As a kid I was sort of interested in Dungeons and Dragons, but never really found geeky-enough friends to play it with me. In college I did, but we didn’t play D&D — the local campaign was some kind of superhero thing. I don’t remember the publisher or name (that was 15 years ago!). I played a woman with electrical powers named Live Wire… who got killed about six months in, as I recall.

Also in college, I got introduced to the Super Nintendo by a friend, and played Zelda and various games. Didn’t get hooked on anything until…::drumroll:: Final Fantasy 2, which I think was actually FF4 in Japan.  That was the beginning of a very long love affair with Squaresoft (later Square Enix), which continues to this day — I’m still working my way through FFXII. Have promised myself an XBox 360 when I finish Book 3 of the Inheritance Trilogy.

I’m also a big fan of Atlus’ games, in particular the Shin Megami Tensei series and its spinoffs. My current favorite among those is Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2.

In addition to RPGs, I’m a big fan of survival horrors like the Silent Hill series and Resident Evil (though I refuse to play RE 5), and action games like the Devil May Cry series. I’ve also got a taste for “art games”, for lack of a better descriptor — Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, and so on.

Why do you refuse to play Resident Evil 5?

Because games are supposed to be fun, and racism and sexism aren’t.

Have you ever ventured into online worlds? If so, please explain what that experience has been like.

Nope. I prefer games with specific plots and established characters. It might have something to do with me being a writer; I spend so much time having to do worldbuilding and character development on my own that when I relax, I prefer to use something already developed!

As someone who obviously appreciates the written word and the art of narrative, do you tend to read the quest text and immerse yourself into the story of the game you are playing?

Yes, definitely. I really don’t have much interest in games without a story. I’m also not fond of games that are badly-written or, in the case of Japanese games, badly-translated. ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US is funny the first time or two, but after awhile incomprehensibility gets old.

Would you mind sharing an interesting and/or amusing story from your gaming past?

One of my BFFs in college was a guy who loved to talk smack about his gaming skills — with a particularly macho, “you’re just a girl, you can’t relate” undertone. One of the game loves we shared was World Heroes, for the Neo Geo. He challenged me one day, and I mopped the floor with his ass. What’s amusing is that he’s still mad about it even today, 15 years later! Any time I bring it up, he bristles. It’s so cute.

Would you say your gaming experience has had any effect on you as a writer?

Yes — I’ve been utterly fascinated by some game worlds to the point of writing fanfiction based on them (yeah, I’m admitting it!). I tend to use fanfic as a practice ground for narrative techniques which I later use in my original fiction, so basically I work out the kinks there first.

Also, I think the kinds of games I’ve loved best have been those which challenged my assumptions on some level. For example, one of my favorite games is an old Japanese survival horror called Galerians. The hero is a drug-addicted anorexic teenage sociopath with psychic powers, who spends most of the game exploding the heads of anybody who gets in his way (think the old Cronenberg movie “Scanners”). I think I spent most of the game with my mouth hanging open, wondering how the heck this got published in the US.  But it really worked, and that made me more willing to write stories about heroes who weren’t very “heroic”, and characters who were overall more complex.

Would you say there is grinding in the writing process?

Of course there is. I usually start out a novel with a very clear idea of its beginning and end, and a few “cool bits” in between. But getting from point A to B to C often involves painstaking outlining and writing and rewriting. There’s nothing to be done for it; just gotta put your head down and keep it going. I try to do at least 1000 words a day, 2000 when I’ve got a looming deadline.

By contrast, what would you say is one of the most rewarding things about being a writer?

Seeing how people react to my work, even if they don’t like it. Maybe it’s my time served in fanfic, but to me, the worst reaction I can get from a reader is apathy. Anything is better than that.

When do you find time to write?

Well, at the moment I’m a full-time writer, so every day! But back when I was doing a 9 to 5, I generally wrote in the evenings after work, and sometimes on the weekends. It took me a lot longer back then to finish a novel — a year and a half to two years. Working full-time I can finish a book in six months or so.

How do you tend to escape these days?

Writing *is* an escape for me, even though it’s also a job at the moment; I wouldn’t do this stuff if I didn’t love it. But if you mean how do I escape from that, I read a lot, travel, am a “foodie”, and hang out with friends.  I still play video games. At the moment I’m replaying several old favorites.

Would you have any words of advice for the would-be-writers out there?

Heck, there’s tons of that out there, from people who are more established than me and have a better idea of what they’re doing. Go listen to them. =)

But I guess I’d have to say that the main piece of advice any writer should keep in mind is… write. Don’t say you’re a writer, *be* a writer. If you write, you’re a writer.

You wake up to a world where The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has been made into a video game. Which character would you play and why?

N. K. Jemisin

Oooh, fun. =) Well, I don’t know if this means anything without people having read the book, but I think I would play Sieh. Sieh is the god of childhood — he’s literally aeons old, older than the planet, but he looks like a ten-year-old. His powers derive from his ability to maintain a childish persona at all times; he literally *has* to have fun, or he grows weak. Something about that really appeals to me, as a thirtysomething adult with grownup concerns. I like his attitude.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with this gamer/reader audience?

Blowing up (virtual) stuff is cathartic and good for you, in a psychological sense. Go and be healthy!

Valhalla Project: What are they playing now?

Many months ago I went about the MMO blogosphere making a nuisance of myself and asking quite a few bloggers and podcasters questions about their gaming lives and habits.  Somehow this became known as The Valhalla Project (a name which I’ve grown to like).  In thinking of ways to continue with this project I thought it would be interesting to check back in with many of these participants to see what games they were currently playing and which ones they were looking forward to. 

The answers I got were quite varied and seemed to cover a wide range of gaming tastes and habits. From nuns with standing offers to kiss Craig Zinkievich’s backside, to burned-out tri-boxers, to those not currently playing any MMOs, to those not playing any games at all, the replies were interesting to say the least.

Enjoy.

RC

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What game/games (not necessarily MMOs) are you currently playing?

Aaron Miller

I’m not currently playing anything. I’ve given up gaming, at least temporarily, as my last blog post explains. As much as I love games, I believe the vast majority of them are nothing more than entertainment. Though they might be more engaging than a typical movie, they have little value beyond passing the time. Games don’t have to be that way — they could offer deep insights and inspiration, like good literature does — but they are generally not a productive use of my time. So I’ve decided to devote that time to other things.

Almazar

Dragon Age, Assasin’s Creed II, Dawn of War II, Left 4 Dead

Anjin

I’ve been playing four games with some regularity this month. They are (in Steam menu order):

• Grand Theft Auto IV
• King’s Bounty: Armored Princess
• Borderlands
• Plants Vs Zombies
• I’ve also been playing a lot of World of Warcraft, but I just unsubscribed again yesterday.

Ardwulf

Dragon Age: Origins

Brent

Left for Dead 2, CoD: Modern Warfare 2, Prince of Persia (that latest one that came out ahwile ago) and Warhammer Online

Brian

I am currently playing: Lord of the Rings Online, Champions Online, and a Twitter game called Echo Bazaar. I’ve also been beta testing Star Trek Online.

Cuppy

Right now, I’m currently playing through Dragon Age:Origins. I’m also playing World of Warcraft a little bit still on a baby Draenei alt. I’m about to start playing Mass Effect in preparation for Mass Effect 2 coming out. And I’m playing a slew of casual Facebook games such as Island Life, Castle Age, Kingdoms of Camelot, and Treasure Madness.

Darren Love

- Currently playing World of Warcraft again to ramp up for the expansion. Good to go there. I’m finding my eyes aren’t bleeding from raiding anymore…go figure.

- Testing out the Star Trek Online beta…getting ready for launch.

- Playing some really great strategy titles: AI Fleet War, Gratuitous Space Battles, Hearts of Iron 3

David

I just started up Dragon Age: Origins for the PC, along with Fight Night Round 4 and NHL 10 on the Xbox 360.  MMOs are on the backburner for now, probably until WoW: Cataclysm comes out.

Esri

World of Warcraft, Dragon Age, Star Trek Online (beta)

Euripedes

I suppose this is probably common knowledge by now, but I have been playing a significant amount of Dragon Age: Origins recently. I do quite like me some RPGs, especially of the Bioware flavour. I cannot even begin to fathom how much time I’ve clocked into things like Neverwinter Nights and Mass Effect. Hundreds, probably thousands of hours.

As always, I dabble with console games, largely Rock Band, whenever I go to a friend’s house. Very recently, I gave Saints Row 2 a try and it was… cathartic. Absolutely cathartic. There is little quite as satisfying as taking a cute asian girl and hunting FBI agents with a rocket launcher. Better yet, there is actually a quest in the game to do just that.

Saints Row 2, huge thumbs up. It’s basically what GTA should have been, instead of the “i r srs game about hookers” the GTA series is trying to be right now. The writing is surprisingly good, the characters in the game are especially well written and extremely entertaining. This is a game where you are given a quest to soak neighbourhoods in poop, and yet it contains multiple heartwrenching moments.

Or maybe I’m just sentimental towards hyper violent psychopaths.

I haven’t tried any other MMOs in a while. The abject failures of everything from Tabula Rasa to Age of Conan to the mind boggling stupidity of the games that haven’t been failures yet (Warhammer, Aion) to the successful games being, essentially, a copy+paste of World of Warcraft (Lord of the Rings Online comes to mind) has turned me off the idea completely.

It feels like, besides WoW, I have a choice of either playing (pardon my irish) the shitty ripoff, the shitty failure, or the ripoff that is boring instead of shitty.

Foolsage

Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft, EverQuest II, Vanguard, EVE, Wizard 101, Aion, Fallen Earth, Sims 3, (as well as a few betas) Allods Online, Star Trek Online

Geldon

Currently, I’m mostly playing Dungeons and Dragons Online after a recent decision to stop investing in monthly subscription MMOs games.  In addition, I’m dabbling with a deluge of cool but cheap games I picked holiday sales including Majesty 2, Swat 4, Braid, and Ben There, Dan That!

Gnomeaggedon

World of Warcraft & Dragon Age: Origins

Gordon

Non-MMOs: I just finished Dragon Age: Origins and am currently playing Fallout 3.

MMOs: I’m only really playing WoW at the moment although tempted to resub to EVE Online.

Hatch

I’m currently playing World of Warcraft, Dragon Age: Origins, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Final Fantasy Dissidia.

Hudson

Fallen Earth, Star Trek Online and Global Agenda eat up my time

Ixobelle

I play World of Warcraft; it’s basically what I play. WoW has effectively destroyed any other game’s chance of squeezing into my free gaming time, so there you go. I poked around in the Allods beta (a nice WoW clone!) for a few days, and that was kind of neat, but the beta ran out and now I’m back to WoW. I bought Aion when it went live after having a pretty positive experience with the Chinese Client before it was available in the states, activated my account, and managed to actually play it one day out of my entire free month.

I’ve been working a lot in the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset, creating something that I intend to shop around for a position in the gaming industry, so I guess you could say that I’ve been playing NWN2, but ugh…. that game is horrendous, and I file my time spent in that engine as work, not play.

Jaxom

I’m currently sucked into Dragon Age: Origins. I just finished my second play through of Mass Effect and moved onto this other great Bioware RPG. I have dabbled from time to time with Cities XL, picked at Knights of the Old Republic, and flirted with Bioshock. Unfortunately my MMO of choice, Lord of the Rings Online, is on hiatus right now. After 3 years of consecutive and almost exclusive play, I needed a break. Hopefully I can soon add it back to my currently playing list.

Jonathan Morris

Dragon Age: Origins, Fallen Earth, Fallout 2, and a nostalgic return to Kings Quest 5 with my kids.

Julian

City of Heroes

Kelly

I’m not really playing an MMO at the moment–the holidays involved a LOT of traveling for me, my finals involved 5 10-20 page papers, and it was just too much to have an MMO going too. So while I WAS playing World of Warcraft for a bit, I’m now messing around with Diablo II (lol), Neverwinter Nights II, and an iPhone game called Inotia II: A Wanderer of Luone. …That’s a lot of sequels! Until things settle down a bit, I probably won’t be playing another MMO.

Makkaio

World of Warcraft, EverQuest2, Star Trek Online Beta, Earth Eternal, Heroes of Gaia, Farmville, Dragon Age: Origins, Grand Theft Auto IV, Team Fortress 2

Matticus

Torchlight, Defense Grid, Mass Effect, Call of Duty: MW 2.

Pete

Bouncing between Star Trek Online open beta, Lord of the Rings Online and Dragon Age Origins. With a sprinkling of Borderlands on the 360.

RC

Taking a break from Lord of the Rings Online; currently on my fourth tour of duty in World of Warcraft and playing Dragon Age: Origins.

Riknas

Champions Online, Dragon Age: Origins

River

World of Warcraft, Star Trek Online. Saint’s Row 2, The Witcher. Dragons Age: Origins.

Saylah

I just recently canceled all subscriptions.  I had been tri-boxing World of Warcraft in an attempt to get two Shadow Priests and a Mage as options for 5-boxing TBC 5-man instances.  I got them to level 53 before losing interest and free time.  I once again subscribed then unsubscribed to EVE Online.  At the moment, I’m out in the cold.

Sente

Champions Online, City of Villains/Heroes, Star Trek Online (well, have beta tested anyway, will play at release also), Fallen Earth

On PS3: Uncharted (the first one) and Brütal Legend.

Sister Frances

I’m currently playing, what I have been playing for the last 4 years…World of Warcraft. That’s about it. I played Champions Online for a while, but lost interest. I played Aion Online for a while but lost interest. I played Warhammer Online for a while but lost interest. The only game that has KEPT my interest is WoW. I almost hate to say it, because so many people poo-poo the game, but it just has the elements that seem to hold my interest.

Sister Julie

World of Warcraft, but only on Wednesdays nights for raiding. Rob Pardo is in league with the devil and I hate myself for having gone back (even though it was at Fran’s invitation to raiding night).  I have threatened to unsubscribe from WoW but Fran told me to lay down until the feeling goes away.

Star Trek Online (beta): I was there afor closed beta (thanks Cryptic), and I am there for open beta. I have pre-ordered the collector’s edition. I have been waiting for this game for a LONG time.

My offer to kiss Craig Zinkievich’s (executive producer for Star Trek Online) butt on mainstreet for helping to save the game still stands.

Fallen Earth: It’s post apocalyptic and I get to ride motorcycles and shoot zombies – it is probably the perfect game and ICARUS STUDIOS ROCKS!!

Champions Online: Only so many subscription dollars to go around and something has to give. This will probably give.

Alganon: A good game off to a good start and fun to play.

Fallout 3: My favorite single player game (and hey I know how to re-program it!)

Oblivion: This is sort of my fall back Swords and Sorcery game when I can’t get online anywhere.

Stargrace

Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft, EverQuest II, Vanguard, EVE, Wizard 101, Aion, Fallen Earth, Sims 3, (as well as a few betas) Allods Online, Star Trek Online

Syncaine

Currently playing mostly DarkFall, although I still play a little Torchlight (have yet to finish it once), and I just picked up King’s Bounty off steam. Also playing New Mario on the Wii.

Tipa

I am currently playing Monopoly, Scrabble (board games), Dragon’s Lair and Tap Tap Revolution (iPhone), Legends of Zork and Echo Bazaar (browser-based), World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Wizard 101 and Star Trek Online (MMO).

Tobold

World of Warcraft

Troy

Everquest II and a little known german web game called Ogame

Werit

Currently I am playing Warhammer Online and when I get a chance, Fallen Earth.

Wiqd

World of Warcraft – Just raiding until we kill Arthas to end the Lich King expansion. Not sure if I’ll play Cataclysm, but I WILL buy Collector’s Editions of it, just in case.

Aion – Gives me a nostalgic feeling of Everquest, which I enjoy. The game is also beautiful.

Everquest 2 – EQ was my favorite MMO of all time, so continuing it goes w/o saying. Even after it reverted to an easy-mode MMO, the lore is great and I love seeing places I used to frequent in EQ, updated.

Ysharros

– Everquest 2, have been for most of a year now (again). Currently my only MMO.

– EchoBazaar, a fun little game I discovered through an RL friend a week or so ago. In the last week about a dozen of the people I follow/who follow me on Twitter have joined, since you can tweet descriptions and actions from the game.

… Sad to say, that’s all right now, unless FreeCell counts. I played Dragon Age: Origins for a while and was very enthusiastic about it (lots of blog posts ), but at some point it somehow lost its grip on me and I haven’t even finished it. The Sims 3 languishes similarly unplayed.

Zoso

Been a bit of a funny time recently, the phone line went out 11 days ago in heavy snow and still isn’t back, so no broadband and no online gaming.  I blogged a bit about three sandbox-y games I’ve been playing, Grand Theft Auto IV, Saints Row 2 and Red Faction: Guerilla, and after finishing the main Saints Row story I’ve been heading back in to chip away at various other activities.  Also dipping into Dawn of War II (not really convinced by it so far), and Men of War, which is a bit rough around the edges but really good.  Once the internet’s back I’m looking forward to getting back into Dungeons and Dragons Online with a few other bloggers, and also a bit of Champions Online.

Zubon

The Lord of the Rings Online, Torchlight, Team Fortress 2

Reading the text: J. Patrick Williams interview

J. Patrick Williams is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and coeditor of the books Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games and The Players’ Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming.  Here he talks about his experience working on Gaming as Culture, the challenges an ethnographer faces when doing video game research, his personal views on video games as well as his own background in gaming.

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Would you mind explaining what you do for a living?

I am Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where I do research and teach in the areas of social psychology, culture, and new media.

You are coeditor for the book Gaming as Culture. How would you describe the book? Why was it put together and who was it written for?

Gaming as Culture was intended to provide a serious, in-depth look at the culture of contemporary gaming. I’m a sociologist and social psychologist and so I had a clear interest in a certain way of studying games, but I was quite open-minded about what the book might end up looking like. I actually have a diverse intellectual background—I earned an undergraduate degree in anthropology, two graduate degrees in sociology, and also completed doctoral coursework in cultural studies in education. So when I decided to edit a book on gaming, I knew that there would be many different ways to approach games academically: anthropology, business, cultural studies, education, geography, media studies, psychology, sociology, and so on…each of these disciplines has scholars who have scholarly interests in games. At the same time, what constitutes “games” is equally as broad, and I had that in mind from the beginning as well.

The book’s existence is a tribute to the camaraderie that exists within the breadth of the games community. In 2003 I had just started as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Georgia and my wife had just started the doctoral program in linguistics there. One weekend I accompanied her to a linguistics graduate student party. As the night progressed I found myself standing around a campfire talking to my future friends and co-editors, Sean Hendricks and Keith Winkler. Sean had a PhD in linguistics and ran a media lab in the education college; Keith had an MBA and had just begun working on an MA in linguistics. We quickly discovered our shared love for games and began discussing all sorts of games we’d played previously: including D&D, Magic, and arcade and console games. I also remember lamenting how I never read any research on games and how it seemed like an untapped area of social-science research. What I was thinking was that gaming is oftentimes a very important part of people’s lives…so why weren’t scholars publishing much research on it? A week later I had spent a lot of time in the office scouring databases for games research and found that, except for a few monographs, there was little/nothing out there to serve as a resource for scholars interested in doing games research. I guess this gets at the second part of your question—why it was written and who it was written for. I wanted to give something to gamers who were interested in seeing their leisure pursuits from an academic perspective. I also wanted to legitimize games as a object of study for scholars and simultaneously to give something to students who might become tomorrow’s games scholars.

Are you pleased with the way it turned out?

It was my first experience as a book editor and certainly nearly six years after having started the project, I would do things a bit differently, but overall I am happy with the result (as are my co-editors). With Sean’s interest in education and linguistics, Keith having a background in business, and my own studies in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, we wanted to spread the word widely to see what kind of breadth we could capture. We made sure to clarify from the beginning that we were interested in what we called “fantasy games” scholarship so that we wouldn’t receive submissions on “mainstream” games like poker or Monopoly. We specified role-playing, collectible, and video games….games through which individuals entered a fantasy world of play. Even in something like Magic the Gathering, there is an underlying assumption that players enact the roles of battling wizards. We found that to be the most important criterion for inclusion.

When the closing date for proposals arrived, I was a bit surprised at how many scholars were actively doing videogame studies specifically versus other types of games. We had more than fifty submissions and in this regard were forced to be very picky; there just wasn’t room to include so many papers. It was also apparent that all the papers not related to video games, as well as many of the videogame papers, were qualitative and micro-oriented. That’s why the subtitle of the book ended up being “reality, identity and experience in fantasy games.” That highlights the type of studies presented in the book.

If you had a chance to work on a newly revised edition, what additional topics would you like to see covered?

All of the studies in Gaming as Culture were North American, though it was not my intent to produce something only about North American gaming. What I found when reviewing all of the submissions was that the European scholars seemed to be focusing on video games. That’s not an accurate representation of fantasy games research, but it’s what I had to work with at the time. I remember one of the first reviews of book criticized it for not including Nordic studies of role-playing games. But no Nordic studies were submitted for consideration…. If I were to work on a revised edition, I would spend more time seeking out contributors from around the world in order to better represent the field.

The other shortfall I would try to address is the range of substantive topics. For some genres, like LARPing, we didn’t receive any submissions. I would like to stretch out in order to include a wider variety of game genres.

Would you mind giving us a brief overview of your own gaming background?

My mother was active in taking my brother and me to the library regularly as kids, and he and I both became pretty avid fantasy readers. By the age of twelve I was tearing through all of Ursula LeGuin’s and Anne McCaffrey’s books, as well as struggling with Tolkien’s prose. Fantasy books led me to fantasy games, and I had a group of friends that tried to make sense of Dungeons and Dragons without any real contact with an adult gaming community. I also got into painting D&D miniatures in the early 1980s, but had some problems with religious elements in my family who saw D&D as irreverent if not just plain evil. I moved away from games in the mid-1980s, but came back to them in the late-1990s while working on my Master’s degree in sociology. My next-door neighbor came over to introduce himself right after I had moved to this rural Appalachian town. He saw my Wheel of Time books and asked me whether I played Magic. I had heard of it but not played before. Twenty minutes in to his tutorial I was hooked. He got me into community and competitive play and I ended up doing research on a local network of Magic players (which you can see in my research chapter in the book). The next year (1997) when it came time for me to choose my MA thesis topic, he had just bought Ultima Online and I was fascinated by the idea of an online gameworld. I proposed to do an ethnographic study of UO but the proposal was rejected…there just wasn’t faculty support for doing that kind of research at that time/place. Looking back I really think it’s a shame because that study would have been ahead of the wave, so to speak, in the sociological study of online games.

Since then I’ve played pretty actively. I burned out on Magic and moved to Mage Knight around 2003 and invested just in time to watch it crash and burn. The next game from there was the card game Anachronism, which also crashed. I miss both of those games a lot and still play them whenever I get a chance. Now I spend most game-related time playing World of Warcraft, though thanks to eBay I’ve collected several playsets of Anachronism and try to pull people into playing it.

At your peak how much gaming did you do? How about now?

It’s hard to talk about peaks, because they’re different for different games. The first really heavy involvement I had was playing Diablo II. I had a few top-level characters and even got into farming items to sell on eBay. For Mage Knight and Anachronism I got into tournament play, so I was playing a couple of times a week at Tyche’s in Athens, GA, plus a couple of additional evenings a week building armies and decks. After I moved to Arkansas in 2006 (Mage Knight was dead by then) I ran tournaments for two groups of Anachronism players…so yea I was playing a couple of days a week for several hours plus prep time. I guess right now is another kind of peak because I’m raiding end-game content in WoW on two characters, which keeps me busy. The first two years playing WoW I literally played one night a week and that was it. But once I got into end-game content I found guilds necessary and thus there was a step-up in commitment in order to get to see the content at all. I probably play 15 hours a week currently—some weeks less depending on work and family life.

Are you a particular fan of MMOs? What has your experience with them been like?

I’ve played Diablo II, WoW, Guild Wars, D&D Online, and looked at a few others, here and there, including a little beta testing. I’ve really enjoyed WoW…it’s become the game for me. Actually I admit to struggling sometimes not to play. Even when I have other things to do, I tell myself “well, just do the fishing daily quest” or “just jump on and make a new epic gem.” Then I blink and I’ve been on for an hour when I really meant it to be on for ten minutes.

As someone who has done extensive research on gaming, do you find it difficult to separate gaming for pleasure and gaming for research?

Yes! But then again, I don’t know that they need to be separated. As an ethnographer, I do my best work when spending a lot of time immersed in the everyday life of whatever culture/social group I am studying. That is how an ethnographer learns to develop an insider’s perspective on things. I think this question forces me to expand my answer to the previous question: my “gaming” self and my “social psychologist” self battle sometimes over definitions of MMOs and their role in (my)everyday life.

As an ethnographer/social psychologist, I’ve focused my research on the significance of games in everyday life while working past what I consider narrowly-defined concepts like “addiction.” The videogame-addiction literature is extensive these days, but most of it relies on experimental designs or surveys, neither of which do much to improve our understanding of what MMOs mean to the people playing them. The “Internet Addiction Questionnaire,” used by researchers to decide whether someone is addicted to the internet, is a great example of what I dislike about psychological science today. It has been used to measure gaming addiction as well. Now if you take a look at the original questionnaire, it had eight questions to answer. If you answered “yes” to five or more, you were an addict. Some scholars will say “it’s been tested; you can see statistical significance between respondents’ answers and their reported behaviors….” But I suggest taking the survey and replacing the word “internet” or “game” with “wife,” “boyfriend,” or “child.” Suddenly you’re answering 7-out-of-8 or 8-out-of-8 with “yes.” But it’s silly to think that I’m addicted to my daughter or wife just because I think about them or want to spend more time with them.

Now back to your question: I see problematic behaviors associated with videogame play, just as with many other parts of life. As a social psychologist I recognize that I play too much sometimes or that I get too involved in the day-to-day life of the gameworld. My “gaming” self gets pleasure out of playing for hours at a time—I’ve got friends online to catch up with, or to help with quests, achievements….whatever. My “social psychologist” self recognizes that my playtime negatively impacts other parts of my life to some extent. So right now I’m working on making sense of my and people’s motivations for playing MMOs vis-à-vis the immersive aspects of game design. Bringing my “gaming” self and “ethnographer/social psychologist” self back together for mutual benefit, I’m doing a two-year project to study the concepts of motivation and immersion in MMOs.

On your website you mention MMOs “have the potential for new forms of learning among young people and adults alike.” Would you mind expanding on this idea a bit?

I don’t see games as separate from everyday life. A lot of people do…they see games as an escape, a way to take a break, or whatever. But even leisure is important—what we do for fun impacts the rest of our lives and vice versa. The same goes for learning: learning is something we do all the time, not just in school. Our schooling effects other parts of our lives, just as what we do outside school effects what we do in school. So I want to constant keep that idea out in the open….games, internet (or whatever) are integral parts of our selves. Sherry Turkle’s book Second Self gave a lot of examples of how people learned to develop aspects of themselves through their internet use. Today, I think James Gee does the best job describing this in a way that almost anyone can understand. He shows how playing videogames is a form of learning. Playing on the playground teaches kids basic social norms about reciprocity, friendship, status, inequality, and so on. They learn informally through doing. MMOs are social spaces where people do all these as well. So the point in what I wrote has to do with recognizing games as an important part of people’s everyday lives that has consequences not only for how we learn about the world, but what we learn as well.

How would you say video games have influenced you as a teacher? How about as a writer?

I have tried various ways of importing games into my sociology courses, oftentimes in small ways to help illuminate certain points. I use “serious” flash games as think pieces sometimes, but would love to spend an entire semester having students study a specific MMO and deploying their sociological knowledge to make sense of what they see going on. Games have also helped me as a professor outside the classroom, mainly in terms of service. I’ve served as the faculty advisor for student gaming associations at two universities, and actually started such a group at another university as a way of helping people who love games get to know each other. Going to university is a big moment for teenagers, and I have found that helping them get in touch with other students who share similar interests helps them settle into university life, sparks some of their creativity, gives them a social venue in which to de-stress, and provides a peer group for support. I’ve always seen games as a wonderful resource for bringing people together. As for writing, I can’t think of any effects video games have had to be honest. /shrug

Would you have any words of advice for aspiring writers wanting to publish articles or books on video games?

I think my first piece of advice would be: be serious about your research; learn about methods and theory and how to use both to your advantage. As a reviewer for several sociology journals, I get sent manuscripts on games to review and I end up rejecting most of them because the author’s “gaming” self overshadowed their “academic” self. In other words, they wrote about games because they love them, but not necessarily because they had something important to say about the empirical world or theory or method in their discipline (which is what academic journals publish).

Is there anything else you’d like to share with this gamer audience?

Having a baby that’s just a couple of weeks old makes it hard to be coherent in an interview about games right now. I hope I made enough sense that you and the readers will find something I’ve said useful. And thank you for taking the time to put this resource together. I’ve already gotten some good insight by reading your interviews with other people!

Reading the text: Jeff Howard interview

In this interview Assistant Professor of Game Development and Design at Dakota State University, Jeff Howard, discusses his book Quests, his personal gaming background, what he thinks about the current quest system in MMOs and what current game has renewed his faith in the potential of online games.

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Would you mind talking a little bit about your book Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives?

Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives is a book about strategies for designing more meaningful quests by drawing on the traditions of allegory and symbolism in classical myth and literature. The book consists of a theoretical component dissecting the main components of quests in the history and theory of quest games and quest narratives: spaces, items, actors, and challenges. The book’s theoretical component is closely tied to a set of corresponding practical exercises and tutorials in level design, object creation, dialogue, and scripting. The main aim of the book is to help quest designers balance meaning and action, finding a middle point on the spectrum in which quests are both highly interactive and purposeful in ways that shift according to each player’s interactions.

Interested readers can learn more about the book at designingquests.com, and the book can be ordered from amazon.com

According to your website, your dissertation was on Gnosticism, post modern fiction, and computer-assisted teaching. How much of Quests was born out of your research for your dissertation?

Very little of the text in Quests comes directly from my dissertation, and few of the specific topics in the book were covered in the dissertation. However, Quests did begin as an attempt to bridge the gap between the binary pairs in the dissertation: technology and mythology, game and narrative, literary theory and educational practice.

The dissertation was called Heretical Reading and had a lot to do with a second-century Christian sect called Gnosticism, which was labeled by the church as a heresy, as well as experimental postmodern novels. I’ve moved away from those specific interests while both focusing on and deepening my interest in game design in Quests. I think the main thing the dissertation gave me was a love of heresy in the positive sense of the word: going against the majority view or mainstream practice in order to assert a deeply held belief or value. I’ve tried to do that in Quests and my other ongoing work.

What audience did you have in mind when writing the book?

Anyone who wants to design better quests. This includes game designers, academics, teachers, and students.

Would you mind describing what the process was like for you in getting the book published?

I started writing the book as an independent effort, and one of the editors at a publishing company called AK Peters was kind enough to take an interest in my description of the book in a biographical note that I wrote for an ACM SIGGRAPH conference, where I presented a paper on quests. I talked to Klaus Peters, who owns the company in conjunction with his wife Alice, and then submitted a formal proposal along with an early, partial draft. A committee of reviewers read the proposal and draft and then provided me with suggestions for extensive expansions and revisions, which I did. This process was followed by many drafts and revisions, assisted by frequent correspondence with my excellent editor, Kevin Jackson-Mead, and the help of a good copy-editor.

Writing and publishing a book is a complicated endeavor, but the great work of AK Peters made it much easier and more pleasant.

What is your professional background?

I am Assistant Professor of Game Development and Design at Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota. I have a BA, MA, and PhD in English from the University of Tulsa and the University of Texas, respectively. I’ve been teaching in various capacities since I entered graduate school in 2000.

Would you mind taking a minute and talking a little bit about your gaming background (board games, pen & paper RPGs, console & computer games, etc.)?

I am primarily a console gamer (Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox, PS2). I especially like action games (e.g. Assassin’s Creed II), horror games (Eternal Darkness and the Silent Hill franchise), and action RPG’s (e.g. Demon’s Souls and Oblivion). I have been gaming since I was young, when I was influenced by tabletop RPG’s, arcade, and adventure games.

Have you ever ventured into online worlds–more specifically MMOs? If so, please explain what that experience has been like.

Prior to a few weeks ago, I would have said that my experience of online games was unpleasant, but then I bought Demon’s Souls for the PS3, which has quickly become one of my favorite games. I have long believed that there would eventually be an online RPG that I liked, and this is the one, which re-kindles my hope for the genre.

I have played MMO’s, but they are not my personal favorite games generally speaking. When playing World of Warcraft, I was struck by the degree of mundane, repetitive tasks (kill eight Foozles and bring me back their tusks so that I can give you a sword for no particular reason). I was also distracted by the talking of thousands of people running around, which for me detracted from the solitary experience of what Joseph Campbell would call the hero’s journey: a voyage away from the everyday world and into a deeply personal encounter with the transcendent. I found it hard to look for the Holy Grail when constantly being forced to hunt for boars’ tusks and tune out the noise from multiple chat channels, which have to be at least partially attended to in a game where soloing is difficult and in some cases not possible. I had slightly better experiences with Lord of the Rings Online (because of its Epic Quest Line and the good company of my Fellowship) and Age of Conan (for its dark, mature world that was unfortunately marred by a broken launch and lack of end-game content).

Based on mostly negative experiences with MMO’s and a deep passion for other genres, I have tended to stick with what some have called “Massively Single-Player RPG’s,” like Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV and Morrowind or to gravitate toward non-RPG genres (e.g. console action games).

That is, until Demon’s Souls. Demon’s Souls is not an MMO but rather a single-player RPG with a massive and innovative online component. Because the game is so difficult, progressing in it at all requires a player to rely on hints left by other players as glowing runes (like “watch out for the ambush around the corner and try not to fall of the cliff into the pit trap with the gigantic leech monster”). By activating bloodstains left by other players, a player can watch spectral re-enactments of these players’ deaths and (hopefully) learn from their mistakes. Finally, when a player dies, he shifts from his live, physical form into a dead, phantom form. He is then able to assist other players as apparitions (i.e. multiplayer coop) and to duel them (i.e. PvP) in order to return to physical form. Demon’s Souls revolves around a single-player experience so complex and challenging that it is enhanced by online play rather than marred by it. Its combat and magic systems are also refreshingly sophisticated, combined with a dark, strange world and quest system that are both stripped down to their haunting, archetypal core and quirkily detailed. The game is difficult to describe and probably not for all tastes, but I love it.

I’d like to see more games like this in which designers find new ways to incorporate online play.

How would you say video games have influenced you as a teacher? How about as a writer?

My job is to teach game design, so by definition video games pervade every aspect of my teaching. From a very early age, games have served as a metaphor for me about the ways that people change a written text imaginatively by making interpretative choices.

There’s been a great deal of criticism aimed at the quest system in current MMOs. I’m sure you’ve heard the popular lament that no one reads the quest text anymore. As someone who has spent considerable time studying quests and quests systems, what do you see as ways to make this a more meaningful, integral process of the game?

Communicate the meanings of your quests through mechanisms other than dialogue and journal entries.

For example, use your world and level design to suggest to players the goals and purposes of their journeys. For example, designers could use the ascent up a lofty mountain peak bathed in light to communicate a player’s struggle to redeem himself or his world.

Design quest items that communicate the meanings of quests visually and through their function within gameplay, rather than having a player collect a generic placeholder quest item that takes up a slot in their backpack and then rewarding them with a +10 Longsword of Shinstabbing. As a positive example, remember Frodo’s ring: a simple gold circlet that communicates the corrupting influence of absolute power through an invisibility ability that attracts evil enemies and slowly drives its bearer insane when used too often or carried too long.

Use scripting (event-based programming) to implement quests that alter players and their worlds according to the moral and philosophical choices that players make. These choices don’t have to involve long branching dialogue trees but can take place behind the scenes as scripted flags that track player behavior and respond to it, either as an aggregate of group behavior on a server (cf. EVE Online) or of individual/party behavior in an instance.

When you do write quest dialogue, keep it concise and focused on enabling player choice rather than giving paragraphs of quest background with only the option to accept or decline the quest.

I formulated this suggestion in part out of a GDC workshop on interactive dialogue given by Daniel Erickson, the principle lead writer of BioWare, a company that has skillfully put their own advice into practice recently in Dragon Age: Origins. Most MMO’s probably should not have the volume of dialogue as Dragon Age given the existing problem with people not reading quest text, but I think it would be possible to practice a stripped-down version with short, punchy dialogue and quest updates that offer a lot of choices.

To be fair though, do you think that part of the responsibility for making the questing experience more meaningful falls on the player?

Absolutely. Because games are interactive, player experiences are largely derived from players’ choice and only partially shaped by designers. If players are frustrated with dull and repetitive quests, then there are many ways for them to enrich their own experience. For example, a player could join a role-playing server and affiliate himself with a guild of players who want to act out their quests in dramatic ways, plan out strategies for completing them, or memorialize their achievements in a guild hall.

Another suggestion might be for players to slow down a little. Rather than hoarding a long grocery list of quests and speeding to their conclusion, be selective about the quests that would most appeal to your character. If you’re interested in a quest, this interest might even justify stopping to read a bit of quest text. Quest text may often be bad, but the writing will only get worse if nobody reads it and gives feedback to the people who took the trouble to write it. That’s a vicious circle.

On that note, if a player is dissatisfied with the current state of quests, they should consider designing their own with one of the many toolsets and level editors currently available. The Aurora Toolset, the Elder Scrolls Construction set, or (more recently) the Dragon Age toolset are all examples; and there are also opportunities to build and program persistent worlds and private servers in some MMO’s.

Lastly, I’m not sure that I’d phrase players’ ability to make quests more meaningful as “responsibility,” but rather as an opportunity. I want players to have fun. If players would prefer to skip quest text, that is their right. If they enjoy grinding or raiding more than quests, then designers should provide ways for some players to level and progress without having to do quests. In that case, players who don’t like quests at all could ignore them, allowing designers to improve the quality of quests based on feedback from the players who do.

You are currently developing a game entitled Arcana Manor. What can you tell us about the game?

Jeff Howard

In Arcana Manor, the player wields a uniquely immersive and symbolic magic system to defeat the demons of a surreal Gothic mansion and unlock its secrets. Arcana Manor is a ceremonial magick simulator with an elaborate system of gestural sigils, tarot cards, colors, and sounds that makes players feel like true adepts, not mere button-pushers. In genre, the game would be closest to an action-adventure game or first-person action RPG, but neither genre label quite communicates what I’m trying to do. The game grows out of my interest in magic systems, which are the primary focus of my own current research and design. I started designing and prototyping Arcana Manor about a year ago, which involved teaching myself to operate the Torque Game Engine Advanced, do 3d modeling, script/code/debug code, and edit 2d textures and GUI elements. The game has been on hiatus during my past semester because I’ve had to prioritize grading student work, but I’m currently returning to Arcana Manor with a vengeance.

I also blog and tweet about Arcana Manor on designingquests.com and @arcanamanor

 

Is there anything else you’d like to share with this gamer audience?

I think there is a lot of hope and promise in the future of games, both single-player, multi-player, and all sorts of new systems of interaction that are only just on the horizon. If we keep an open mind and be positive, there will be different games for every taste and audience.

And last but not least, when was the last time you rolled a 20-sided dice?

November 2009 at Nanocon (DSU’s yearly gaming convention). I had the privilege of playing a D&D module-in-progress designed and Dungeon Mastered by a Wizards of the Coast employee. It was really fun.

One shot: Drew Clowery interview

Current lead game designer for Flying Lab Software, Drew Clowery talks about his professional background in the gaming industry, his current hobbies and favorite pastimes, including sleeping on couches, and what advice he has for those hoping to get into the video game industry.

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If it’s not too much trouble, would you mind discussing your background in the game industry?

Sure, I got started in the computer game industry in December of 2001 when I was hired as a Customer Service Representative at Mythic Entertainment for the MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot. At the time I was just looking for a full time job, and as an avid MMO player, the thought of turning one of my hobbies into full time employment sounded great, but not nearly as good as the regular paycheck and medical benefits that came with it (Mythic treated their Customer Service people very well at the time, I don’t know if this is still the case).

In the year I worked at Mythic I learned a lot, but I think the most valuable lesson I learned was that the guys who made this game were nothing special. I mean they were smart, talented people, but they weren’t magic. I was a smart, talented guy, I could do what they did. I also learned that I needed to know a whole lot more about the technical side of software development, and so in January of 2003, I left to go back to school.

I spent about a year in community college before heading off to Full Sail in Orlando Florida. Full Sail is a private, for profit college, accredited as a technical school. There are people who have really strong feelings about whether or not for profit colleges are valid institutions of learning, and whether or not Full Sail in particular is a good school. You could write a book on the topic, or at least a long blog post, but I’ll tell you my take away: I learned a ton at Full Sail, because I applied myself and worked hard. It was the right school for me, for where I was in my life, but I wouldn’t recommend it to kids coming right out of high school.

After Full Sail I moved home and slept on my parents couch for 8 months before I landed a job at Flying Lab Software. Once here I spent almost two years as a Game Systems Designer on Pirates of the Burning Sea, before moving on to be Lead Designer of Upper Deck U.

How did you get on with Flying Lab Software?

It was fall of 2006, I was living in Virginia, sleeping on my parents couch, and unemployed. I’d been looking for a job for 8 months without success, and I’d come to the conclusion that no one was going to hire me from across the country for an entry level job. I’d spoken to a hiring rep for Blizzard at GDC and he’d strongly implied that if I lived in L.A. I’d have an interview for a Game Master job at Blizzard immediately. They needed experienced GMs badly, and I had experience as a GM.

I’d made the decision to move out to L.A. and start looking for a job, hopefully something in Game Design, but with a willingness to fall back to being a Game Master if it got me into the industry. I had called a buddy from college who lived in L.A. and he agreed to let me stay on his couch for a couple of weeks. I cashed in the last of my savings, said my goodbyes and started packing.

The week I was supposed to leave I saw a job posting on the Flying Lab website for an entry level Game Designer come open. I decided there and then that I was going to make a detour on my way to L.A. I put together a cover letter and resume and sent it in. I told them I was leaving for Seattle tomorrow, and asked them to please interview me when I got there. When I told my World of Warcraft guild about the change in plans a couple of my guildmates, who I had never met in real life, piped up and insisted I stay with them when I got to Seattle. The next morning I left for Seattle.

I stopped to visit family in Chicago over the weekend, then continued on to Seattle the next week. In Wyoming I got an e-mail from Flying Lab with a written design test, I spent an extra day at the motel there to write the test, proof read it, and send it back. I arrived in Seattle that Friday night, spent the weekend with my guildmates (I would end up sleeping on their couch for three weeks before I found my own place, talk about kind hearted people). Monday I got an e-mail scheduling an interview for Tuesday afternoon, I interviewed Tuesday, and got an offer letter Wednesday night. I started the following Monday.

What has been your involvement with Pirates of the Burning Sea?

I was a Game Systems Designer on Pirates of the Burning Sea for about 2 years. Shortly after I was brought on board I was given the Avatar Combat system. When I was given the Avatar Combat system I was still extremely junior, far too junior in fact. What I couldn’t see at the time was that the system was not, despite what I was being told, fully implemented. Further, the design I had taken over was not a complete system, but rather a system that was built as a living argument for features that had already been cut. Obviously this put me in a pretty tough situation.

When I stepped in to Avatar Combat I was told “the system’s done, you just need to make the skills,” which aside from being factually untrue is like saying “we’re done with WoW’s combat system, you just need to make all the spells, combat abilities, and talents. You have a month.” I death marched from December 2006 through March of 2007 trying to get the Avatar Combat system into something resembling a working order. Unfortunately I ran into the problem that what we really needed to do was finish implementing the system. I attempted to do this through clever use of data driven scripts, but the results were not good.

I would continue to focus primarily on the Avatar Combat system until after Pirates shipped, when I briefly worked on the Skirmish system (writing the first draft of the spec), before moving on to the Upper Deck project. I worked on a lot of other, smaller projects on Pirates, but my time was dominated by Avatar Combat. The system was wholly ripped out and replaced less than a year after launch (something that should have been done long before launch).

Would you be able to talk a little bit about the game you are currently working on for Flying Lab?

I can’t talk about the game I’m currently working on, but I can talk about the game I was recently working, Upper Deck U. Upper Deck U is a casual kids MMO, targeted at 8 to 12 year old boys. It was conceived primarily as a marketing device for the sports trading cards of the Upper Deck company. A complete post mortem on the Upper Deck project is a task for another space (and something I hope to make the subject of a conference talk) but the short version is: the project did not have enough grounding in reality and we suffered severe communications issues with our client.

How would you say this game differs from other MMOs targeting younger players like Free Realms?

Well size and scope to begin with. Free Realms is a huge triple A title, Upper Deck U was a small casual ad game. Polish for another, Free Realms is a highly polished game, Upper Deck U, not so much. But the one place where we win, hands down, is this: no client download. There are certain magical phrases that will allow you to get the attention of MMO executives, and these phrases change over time. Right now, one of those phrases is “no client download.” Upper Deck U was a game with no client download, and that’s pretty huge.

Would you mind taking a minute and talking a little bit about your own gaming background (board games, pen & paper RPGs, console & computer games, etc.)?

Sure, I’m a giant gaming nerd. I learned to read in order to play D&D. I had some older friends (they were in 3rd grade, quite the old men to a six year old), who promised they would let me play with them if I could read the rulebook by myself. I went straight from “see spot run” to red box D&D, with a whole lot of bothering my mother about what words meant in between. I played Chess, Shogun, Axis and Allies, Risk, and Strat-o-matic Baseball with my father and god father.

When I was a teenager I practically lived in a Games Workshop store, until Magic: the Gathering came out, when I moved to practically living in the card shop. At that store I learned Settlers of Catan, Nuclear War, Twilight Imperium, Titan, and about a dozen others I only half remember. Plus every weekend we played some role playing game or another, Rifts when we were younger, then Vampire and the rest of the World of Darkness when we were angst ridden teens.

On the electronic side I got a Nintendo when I was 8, but I was never a super heavy console player. My sister and I used to drive each other nuts playing Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo, and my buddies and I would often play console games waiting for the weekly RPG to start, or after it had wrapped up, but outside of that, I was mostly a PC gamer. On the PC my games of choice were always strategy: Civilization II, Alpha Centauri, Master of Magic.

Not long after Everquest came out I had a friend who got me hooked and ever since I’ve been an MMO addict. I’ve played Everquest, Everquest II, Dark Age of Camelot, and World of Warcraft extensively, but I’ve dabbled in City of Heroes, Horizons, Warhammer, Vanguard, and probably a half dozen other freebies I can’t recall off the top of my head.

Assuming you’re still a gaming enthusiast, what are you playing these days?

Work has been really busy the last couple of months, so my play time has been limited, so these days my game time is restricted to my bi-weekly pen and paper group (currently playing Shadowrun 4th edition), my weekly poker night, and a little bit of Magic the Gathering: online here and there. I’ve really found I enjoy Magic: Online quite a bit, especially the draft formats. They take out the “buy your way to victory” aspect of magic I’ve always disliked, and I have a lot of fun playing them.

I’ve gotten pretty serious out playing poker, my weekly game isn’t exactly nosebleed stakes, but it’s not nickel and dime either. The guys there are all very serious about their poker, and it’s a very competitive environment. We play every week, and one to two weekends a month, so that’s a pretty serious game outlet for me. I also occasionally do a trip out to a casino or a Magic tournament with some of those guys (the crossover, both in players and skill set, between Magic and Poker is astounding).

I also play an occasional bout of Counter Strike or Team Fortress 2 if I feel like a little ultra violence, and I fire up a round of Civilization IV about once a quarter. I’ve honestly been missing MMO gaming recently, but I just haven’t had the time to spend on one. I’ve been thinking about trying out WoW’s new group matchmaking system, but I haven’t taken the plunge.

Would you say working on games has in some ways lessoned your enthusiasm for playing video games?

Well, I wouldn’t say that working on games has, but sitting in front of a computer 40+ hours a week I frequently have the experience of looking for hobbies that allow me to not be in front of a computer. It’s definitely driven me to spend more time on pen and paper, board, and miniature games. It’s not that I never want to play video games, but my tolerance for sitting in front of a computer is definitely lower when I’m working 40 hours a week. It goes down significantly if I’m working more than 40 hours a week.

I will say, when I worked in customer service and spent all day in game in Dark Age of Camelot, it was very hard to play Dark Age for fun. It very much felt like being at work whenever I was logged in.

Would you care to share a particularly memorable experience from your game design days?

When I interviewed at Flying Lab they had me interview with several different members of the team, which is fairly typical of most company’s interview process. During one of the early interviews I had mentioned that I was a big fan of the pen and paper RPG Unknown Armies, which had been co-authored by John Tynes, who was the Producer at Flying Lab. So later on John is one of the people interviewing me, we’re introduced, I tell him I’m a big fan of his work, he’s very gracious, we sit down and start the interview.

Throughout the whole interview he blinks one eye at a time, in sequence. Blink right eye, blink left eye. In one smooth motion. Unknown Armies, if you don’t know, is a game of high weirdness, so through the whole interview I’m trying to figure out if he’s fucking with me, if there’s something wrong with his eye, or if this is just how he blinks. I just go through the whole interview acting like it’s not there, but I spend the next day until I get the job freaking out in my head about what the hell that was about.

A year and a half later, John is leaving the company for greener pastures, and I finally ask him what was up: bad contacts. I spent a year and a half wondering about contacts.

What advice would you have for someone wanting to get into the field?

When it comes to entry level hires there are four things that employers look for, in this order: Skills, Availability, Passion, and Fit. You have to have the skills to do the job For Programmers this is the number one requirement, and the toughest one to crack. Availability means that no one is flying you across the country to interview for an entry level position. If the economy does a sudden about face (unlikely), and you’re a programmer from a well known school this *might* happen, otherwise you have to be local, or close enough to drive to the interview. It also means you have to be ready to work on the day the job starts, not graduating in 6 months. Passion means you’re going to work too many hours for not enough pay. The game industry is an exploitative employer, and they know the only way that works is if people are taking jobs not for a paycheck but because they love what they do. This is the hardest thing for designers to demonstrate, and the biggest stumbling block I find in designer resumes. Finally Fit is just a matter of how well your personality fits with the team. It’s a matter of being not a douche bag. If you need specific advice on this, it’s beyond the scope of my reply.

If you’re going into the game industry you need to understand that you are not going to get rich. People in the game industry universally make less money than their equivalent counterparts in other industries. If you’re serious about working in the game industry start by getting a strong technical background. If you want to be a designer, learn how to program. You don’t need to be a great programmer to be a designer, but you need to know how a programmer thinks, and what software can and can’t do. You need to be able to read someone else’s code, and talk to a programmer in his language. If you want to be an artist don’t just learn how to use your tools, learn how to support your tools. The artists who can use Maya are valuable. The artists who can build Maya scripts are invaluable. If you want to be a programmer, you need to be a great one. Game programming is one of the most challenging programming disciplines, so you better be on top of your game.

Next, start making games. With the advent of flash, it’s really easy to make games on your own, but the quality of those games may not be great. If you don’t want to take on a project yourself join a mod team. Mod teams are a great way to get some experience while working as part of a bigger team. Alternately you can make a level for an existing game (Neverwinter nights was the classic candidate, but I’m guessing Dragon Age is about to supplant that), or a simple UI mod for your favorite MMO. The important thing here is get out and do something game related that your future employer can download, install, and play.

Drew Clowery

Finally start applying to jobs that are local to you. If you’re outside of one of the few major industry hubs (Montreal, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles/San Diego), you may have to face moving in order to apply for jobs. Keep trying. I applied to something like 50 jobs before I got one, and that was before the economy went to hell. That’s not unusual. This is about the worst possible time to be looking for a job in the game design industry. People with years of experience are out of work and have been for some time. Until the economy recovers, something I’m extremely pessimistic about, it’s going to be hard to find a job anywhere, let alone the game industry.

Reading the text: Greg Keyes interview

Greg Keyes is the author of many fantasy and science fiction novels, including the two fantasy series, The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone and Age of Unreason. He’s recently published the first of two books set in The Elder Scrolls universe. He talks about The Infernal City, how he came to write it and what the experience was like writing a book set in the world of a video game.

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It appears you are working on a pair of novels set in the Elder Scrolls universe. Could you talk a little bit about how this project got started and how you came to be the one writing them?

Well, to be brief, I was asked if I wanted to write them by Keith Clayton, an editor at Del Rey. Apparently some of the guys at Bethesda had been reading my Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone books and thought I would be a good fit. They sent me Oblivion and some written materials to review, and after doing so, I thought they were right – it looked like a fun universe to play around in.

If it’s not too much trouble would you mind describing what the first book, The Infernal City, is about and where it fits in Tamriel’s history?

It happens about four decades after the Oblivion crisis, and involves a flying city – Umbriel — which arrives in Tamriel and begins to wreak havoc. Various characters – for various reasons – set out to stop the city and its master.

How much involvement has Bethesda had in this project?

A lot. There were many conference calls. I made short outlines, they chose the one they liked best, and we went through several versions of a longer outline. I had email access to Kurt Kuhlman and Bruce Nesmith – two of the developers – and of course they all read the various drafts of the manuscript.

Have you found writing novels based on a video game series to be particularly challenging?

No more so than anything else I’ve ever done. One hug bonus with TES is that if I want to know what things look like at some location, I just go into the game and run there. At the same time, I wasn’t restricted by that, because the developers and I agreed that the game represents a simplified, scaled down version of the “real” Tamriel, which still leaves a lot to the imagination.

You mentioned just having to run to any place in the game if you needed to see what it was like. Having played the game myself, I found that easier said than done—meaning, there were locations that were very difficult for a low level character to access. So, I guess my question is this: did you get to level your own character up in the game or did Bethesda provide you with a high level character file which would allow you to travel to any part of Tamriel from the get go?

I just started playing the game, and didn’t understand at first that you could travel any way other than running. So I ran everywhere, avoiding encounters when possible, just eager to see the game world. By the time I figured out the other way to travel, I was really good at running. Running and conjuring and shooting my bow.

Eventually, of course, I had a high level character (or several — I played through with more than one) and i now use those if I need to have a look at something.

Are you or have you ever been a gamer? What has your gaming experience been like (board games, pen & paper RPGs, console & computer games, etc.)?

My brother Tim and several of my closest friends started playing Dungeons and Dragons in probably about 1979. We heard about the game first, and were so excited we cobbled together some makeshift rules while we tried to find a copy of it in Meridian Mississippi. We finally ended up with the original booklets, and when AD&D came out we latched on to that. We tried other RPGs – Traveler, Gamma World, and so on – but AD&D was the one we stuck with. Later, in graduate school, my friends and I played several of the World of Darkness games. Those were a lot of fun. I’ve always liked face-to-face rpgs for the social aspect. I don’t watch football or anything like that, so games always filled that niche in my life.

Computer games I sort of try to stay away from – not because I don’t like them, but because I like them too much. I played DOOM and QUAKE back in the day, and more recently Neverwinter Nights and TES. With Neverwinter Nights I was really more interested In the tool set than the game, at least in the first iteration – and spent hours scripting and so forth. And there’s the rub – my job is to write, and if I spend all my time playing games, I never get anything done. So I don’t buy games; my brother gets me games so we can play them together when he visits. The great thing about the Elder Scrolls was that I could play the games without feeling guilty – it was part of my job description!

Were you a fan of the Elder Scrolls series before writing these books?

No, for the reasons I just gave. But once I got the game, I thought it was fantastic.

As someone who knows a thing or two about fencing, how did you find sword combat to be in Oblivion?

I’m not really sure how to answer that. As a gamer I like it pretty well – as a fencer I feel my low-level character ought to be doing better because I could do better.

How much would you say your experience playing the Elder Scrolls games went into your writing of these stories?

Some, but one of the goals in writing the books was to not make them “Gamey”. The guys at Bethesda didn’t want to hear the dice rolling, so to speak, and neither did I. I got good feel and background from the games, but I wanted the people in the book to be characters, not player characters.

Just for the record, are you in the Morrowind or Oblivion camp?

I don’t see why I have to make a choice. I like them both.

Turning to writing, would you say there is grind involved in the writing process?

Sure. It’s not always fun. In any book there are things that you want to write and things that you have to write. For me, that’s why revision is most important – once I have something down, out of my head, then I can tinker with it and make it into something I’m glad I wrote.

By contrast, what would you say is one of the most rewarding things about being a writer?

Right now, being able to work at home. I have a four-year-old-boy and a twenty-month-old girl, and I love hearing them downstairs while I work. The flexibility of writing allows me to be with them more – and in more ways — than a rigid day job. I also like being my own boss.

When do you find time to write?

Until the kids came along, I had all day to write, so there wasn’t really a problem. I haven’t had a real day job since 1997. Now I have a sitter who comes in a few hours a day so I can work solidly. I also work at night – and when pressed – on weekends. But I generally like to leave weekends for family time, when I can.

How do you tend to escape these days?

My whole life is an escape! I still fence and teach fencing. We go to pub after fencing. I travel, sometimes alone, mostly with my family.

Would you have any words of advice for the would-be-writers out there?

I wrote a novel a year for five years. I wrote them and sent them off. The first four did not sell, and the fourth did, and since then things have been pretty good. While I was writing those books I was also working, doing graduate school and so forth, and I never counted on being able to make a living at this. Write because you want to or because you want to get published,. Writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Sure it happens, but don’t count on it. And don’t re-write the same book for ten years. Finish, and start something new.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with this gamer/reader audience?

I wish I had some genius thing to say here, but I don’t. Thanks for asking for my two bits.

Reading the text: Rusel DeMaria interview

Rusel DeMaria, founder of Prima’s strategy guide division and a strategy guide veteran in his own right, is now Assistant Director for David Perry’s Game Consultants. An advocate of positive impact games, Rusel talks about his book Reset: Changing the Way We Look at Video Games and delves a bit into his own gaming past and shares some of his optimism for the future of video games.

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Could you take a minute and explain what your book Reset: Changing the Way We Look at Video Games is about?

Reset was the result of many years of thinking and discussing the potential of games to teach and inspire people while remaining true to their entertainment and marketing goals. I first started thinking about this conscious approach to game design in the mid 1990s when I was working on a game set in the French Resistance. I realized that I could create a game that modeled the tension, the action and the conflict of that time, and it could be a totally killer game, complete with assassination missions, escort missions, espionage and sabotage. There was plenty of action and strategy in the game design I came up with. However, I also realized that the game could teach. It could teach history in a variety of ways, and I worked with two French historians and interviewed several survivors of the Resistance in developing the game. I also realized that the game could model the danger and tension of being in an environment occupied by a relentless and brutal enemy, where the slightest misstep could end in death or imprisonment, and yet you had to reach out and find and recruit people to the cause. This was a very human element to the game I came up with.

After designing my Resistance game, I realized that a game designer could look more deeply into the structure of the game and create elements that could in some way enrich the player, above and beyond the entertainment value of the game.

Now I also want to make it clear that I had already been inspired by other great designers. Games like SimCity and Civilization were great models for me, as were the series of “games with consequences” from Peter Molyneux. Various financial games, starting with the old Blue Chip games like Millionaire and culminating with more recent games like Zoo Tycoon also inspired my thinking.

So I want to be clear that I didn’t invent anything new in Reset, but I tried to introduce it as a conscious design element – that you could add content that teaches, models, simulates or in some way inspires people just the way you would add Easter Eggs and other bonus elements to a game. It’s a design mindset more than any one method or technology.

Why did you decide to write this book?

Back in the late 1990s I had become passionate about the idea of what I now call “positive impact games,” but that I was calling “games for change” back then. I had done a couple of roundtables at GDC, and the turnout was decent, including some experienced game veterans who supported the idea. However, I didn’t know how to make that interest grow into something tangible, and ultimately I gave up on promoting the idea.

Then, a few years back Will Wright wrote me and told me I should check out the new Serious Games initiatives, including one called Games for Change. I went to some of the conferences put on by the serious games people and realized that, while we had a lot in common, and I was inspired by their work, we also were looking at the subject from different perspectives. Many of the people fueling the Serious Games development were academics who were exploring ways to use game technology to accomplish specific goals. In contrast, I wanted to design, and to inspire others to design, mainstream games that contained elements that accomplished similar goals, but with the fun and the marketability as the first order of business.

So, I wanted to have a way to codify and promote my ideas, and being a book writer, I naturally decided it was time to put it down on pages and see if I could inspire people that way.

What audience did you have in mind when writing this?

At first, I wrote the entire book with industry professionals and gamers, parents, educators and politicians in mind. In other words, gamers and non-gamers. After reviewing the first version of the book, my publisher and I decided that it was not possible to write to both audiences in the same book. Non-gamers would not be interested in (or would not follow) the level of detail that gamers and designers would expect, and gamers would find the information needed to reach non-gamers to be insufficient or rudimentary. So I completely rewrote the book with non-gamers in mind, as we decided that we wanted to reach that audience with the message, not only the fact that games had a positive potential, but how and why that could be implemented. In the end, I did my best to deconstruct games in terms of theories of learning and play.

Are you yourself a gamer? What has your gaming experience been like (board games, pen & paper RPGs, console & computer games, etc.)?

Of course, I am a gamer. I played my first video game in 1967 (Spacewar!) and once home consoles hit the market in the early 1970s, I began playing and have never stopped.

Of course, I grew up playing card games and board games, as I grew up in a time when video games did not exist. However, I have played on nearly all the console systems to date, and have lived through the history of PC games. I still play games on consoles, PC and now iPhone. I can’t really tell you how many games I’ve played, but it’s a lot, and of course, I written several dozen strategy guides in which I was even more deeply immersed in those games than normal.

Have you ever ventured into online worlds? If so, please explain what that experience has been like.

Of course I have. I played turn-based online worlds on the Fido networks in the 1980s, and began playing MMOs when Meridian 59 first appeared. I played pretty much every MMO for years, at least until WoW, though today I can’t keep up with them. I still try to get a look at the new online games when I get a chance, but I don’t have time to get sucked in completely anymore.

Would you say your gaming experience has had any effect on you as a writer?

That’s a bit of a strange question. Everything I do in my life has an effect on me as a writer, and given the thousands of hours I’ve played games, there’s no doubt that they’ve affected me. Of course, most of my published writing has been in the game field, certainly in the past 20 years or so, meaning that games have been the central theme of my writing. But if I were writing fiction again, I know that games I’ve played would inspire some of my thoughts. However, if I write about politics or self-help, for instance, I probably wouldn’t draw to heavily on my game experiences.

Speaking of gaming, are you still a gamer these days? If so, what do you enjoy playing?

Because of time issues, I mostly play iPhone games, though I am also checking out several of the Facebook and casual games that come out. Sometimes I only spend enough time to understand the basic structure and design elements of a game. Other times I get sucked in and play the game until I’ve pretty much maxxed out my experience of it.

How else do you tend to escape these days?

Besides games, I practice tai chi, watch movies and take walks in forests. Sometimes I also climb trees, but not so much recently.

Would you have any words of advice for the would-be-writers out there?

Write. (As my mentor Theodore Sturgeon used to say, “A writer will write in the dirt with a sharp stick if nothing else is available.” He also used to say “Ask the next question.” That was his motto, and a great one for a writer.)

As someone who is no stranger to writing strategy guides for video games, there’s something I’ve often wondered about the authors. Do you basically play the game to death, backwards and forwards, learning and experiencing everything you possibly can so that you can write as detailed a guide as possible, or does the company making the game often help out with the content or at least allowing the author access to tools and information that make life easier for the author?

It varies. Sometimes I’ve had to completely master a game and figure out all its secrets. Often I did that with other players of exceptional skills. Sometimes I did it on my own. More often than not, these days, you get a lot of help from the company, which is necessary in getting the strat guide on the market the day the game releases. In the old days, when I first started Prima’s strategy guide division, there was no fixed deadline for the book, though we tried to come as close as possible to the release date. But there were no rules for strategy guides then. Now there are all kinds of expectations, and the art of writing them has evolved considerably. Back in the early 1990s, I was very experimental, trying different formats and approaches to strat guides, including writing them as novels in which the hints and clues for completing the game were embedded in the writing, or in which the story of the game was expanded, as I did in both the X-Wing and TIE Fighter strat guides. I don’t think anyone tries those techniques now, nor do they have time for too much extra work.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with this gamer/reader audience?

Continue to expect the game industry to evolve, and as a gamer or designer, continue to push the genre to go further, not only technically, but in terms of meaning and relevance to our lives. Think of the evolution of movies, which very quickly began to tackle the most critical moments of our times and to create commentary on the human condition. Today, there are movies for all kinds of purposes, and many of them are pure fluff, but there are many movies that touch us, make us think or document what’s going on in the world for all to see. Games can do that, too, and with the extra power of giving us choice over our actions and a chance to see different consequences to different decisions.

I was recently present when Clint Hocking was being interviewed, and the interviewer mentioned how uncomfortable he was playing Far Cry 2, where he was essentially playing the bad people in an African setting. Hocking’s answer? “Good. You should feel uncomfortable.” This is a brilliant example of using a great game to make someone think and feel and question a real issue in the world. There are a lot of ways to add value to our gaming experience. I can’t think of all of them. I’m hoping a new generation of game designers will level up our industry to become more powerful and more relevant to our lives, to our society, and to the world as a whole. It’s always fun to blow things up or cut down a mob of enemies, but we can do more, and I think it’s a requirement of our future growth.

Reading the text: James Barclay interview

British author James Barclay is perhaps best known for his high fantasy Raven novels. Thanks to Pyr, who has recently published the first trilogy here in the states and will soon be publishing the second trilogy, James’ work should be readily available at your local bookstore or library. Check him out.

No stranger to the world of gaming, James talks unabashedly about his gaming background, what his long road to publication was like, offers some helpful advice to the would-be-writer, and recounts his adventures playing Boot Hill with a gang of incompetent outlaws.

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Author’s website:

http://www.jamesbarclay.com/

Could you explain what your Chronicles of the Raven series is about?

The Raven are the premier mercenary team on the Northern Continent of Balaia. Peerless in their trade, they have been fighting together for ten years. Six warriors and an elven mage who make a habit of never being on the losing side. But after a decade of fighting, they are just beginning to lose their edge. That’s age for you, particularly when your job is standing in line, fighting all day.

Thinking of retirement, they take just one more job, body-guarding a mage named Denser who is carrying a valuable artefact to deliver to his masters. It is a fateful decision. Without going into enormous detail, Denser isn’t quite what he seems and he leads the Raven into an increasingly desperate bid to save the world.

And so it goes… The Raven never do quite get to retire but they aren’t really mercenaries any more either. They are a group of people who, for better or worse, find themselves at the centre of conflict and cast as heroes or villains at every stroke. They are old friends. They bicker and moan, they fall out. They are mortal and fallible. But they are utterly loyal to each other. They have an unbreakable bond which sets them apart from the rest.

While the four colleges of magic bicker and fight, the Wesmen from across the mountains are gaining in strength and unity. To the south across the ocean, the elven nation is stirring as an old magic rears its head. Amongst it all, the Raven do what the Raven do. Because it’s all they can do. For some people, the world will never become a place that no longer needs you.

The books are written to be fast-paced heroic action fantasy. The Raven are characters readers have grown to love because they feel real. They are heroes but they are vulnerable. You get thrills, you get joy and you get sorrow. You get love and loss. You get men, elves and dragons, but not as you might expect them. You get betrayal, battle, desperation and the sweet taste of victory. What you don’t get is bored.

Pyr is just now publishing your first US editions of the series which were originally published in the UK almost 10 years ago. It’s very nice to see the books coming out here, but I’m just curious how this all came about. Would you mind explaining it?

Well, the wait to be published in the US has been a long and frustrating one. I never really worked out why they didn’t sell in the US in the early days but that’s just life, I guess. So you wait and work and never give up. I have an excellent US agent who felt the same way. That sometime, if we kept at it, we’d find a publisher. Then Pyr and the magnificent Lou Anders happened along. A newish imprint for science fiction and fantasy who looked across the Atlantic and were interested in what was happening here as well as finding talent closer to home.

They’d already enjoyed success with new UK fantasy authors like Joe Abercrombie and Tom Lloyd (both splendid people. Joe is a big gamer by the way, not sure about Tom) and when Lou enquired about the US rights to The Raven he was surprised and delighted to find they were still available. He snapped them up and the rest of history. The Chronicles trilogy, Dawnthief, Noonshade and Nightchild are all published now and we have just tied up a deal for Pyr to publish the Legends trilogy, Elfsorrow, Shadowheart and Demonstorm, beginning late in 2010. This is great news. I’m very excited about it.

Stepping back a bit, what was the process like for you in getting your first novel published?

Oh blimey, it was long. That’s what I remember most. And frustrating and depressing. It required the acquisition of a very thick skin and a firm belief that the sheaf of rejections meant nothing and that I would get a deal sometime…

Loads of writers have experienced that and all you can do is work harder, improve and resubmit. Eventually I got a bite. I submitted letter, synopsis and chapters as requested to Gollancz and heard back that they were really interested but wanted more development of the idea. What my editor-to-be said was that the work as it stood was fine but was like a skeleton without the flesh on the bones. He wanted to feel more about the world and what The Raven’s actions meant. So, off I went and did considerable redrafting, finally delivering a complete manuscript for consideration sometime in mid-1998.

The call to say I was to be published remains among the happiest moments of my life. I was at my desk, being an Advertising Manager for an investment company at the time. A decent job but not my dream job. I took the call standing up and had to sit down sharply before my legs gave way. ‘You’re now an author,’ said my editor. ‘How does that sound?’ I think I was wearing a stupid grin and there were a few tears as well. When the phone went down and I convinced myself it was not all a dream, I took the department out for champagne.

Funny thing is, after that, there is this interminable wait to be published. What with contracts, editing, copy-editing, setting, covers, final proof-reading and all that, Dawnthief did not appear on the shelves for a year. Of course, I had another book to write because Gollancz bought the whole trilogy but the desire to see my book on the shelves just grew and grew.

Two other moments of great emotion were seeing my books for the first time, actually getting my hands on a copy. And seeing one on the shelves of a bookstore for the first time. That made me well-up too. These are feelings to savour because they only come round once. I still love seeing my books on shelves but the first experience is truly unique. I hope as many of your readers as possible get to experience it.

Are you or have you ever been a gamer? What has your gaming experience been like (board games, pen & paper RPGs, console & computer games, etc.)?

I have been a massive gamer for thirty years now. I’m forty four and I first picked up percentile dice at the age of fourteen when my brother ran a Dungeons and Dragons night for his mates round our house. I totally fell in love with it and it wasn’t long before I’d set up a group with my own friends and we were playing far too much for my parent’s liking since we were all supposed to be studying for exams and the like.

Thinking about it, my gaming past goes right back to my early years. I’m one of four children and our whole family used to sit round a table on a Sunday afternoon to play a board game. Cluedo, Totopoly, Mine A Million, Helmsman, card games as well. Some of those games may be totally unfamiliar.

But I guess the die was cast. From D&D, we went to AD&D of course but never really liked the system. Eventually, we moved to the brilliant Dragon Quest system and we played that for six years until college was over and we all went our separate geographic ways. During that time, though DQ was the central plank, we played Bushido, Boot Hill, Car Wars, Space Opera, Toon and Gamma World too.

My history of video games is no less long. I was brought up on the coast, in a town called Felixstowe in Suffolk. We had a couple of arcades and I spent far too much time and money playing sports and shooter games there. That led directly to playing games on the earliest of computers and consoles. The ZX Spectrum, Commodore PET and Commodore 64, finally settling on the Commodore Amiga which was a fabulous console for its time. Late 80s I think.

Then PCs happened. Oh Lordy. I’ve played games on PCs since the late 80s and early 90s. Real classics like Red Baron still spring to mind. I’m primarily an FPS, sports and strategy game player and I won’t bore you with every title. Some highlights are Command & Conquer, FIFA Football, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, Dungeon Keeper, Lemmings, Severance, Championship Manager, Grand Prix, Medal of Honour, Call of Duty, Medieval: Total War, Civilisation, Ghost Recon. There’ll be others but you get the picture

Right now, I’m playing Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and, the moment it drops through the door, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Have you ever ventured into online worlds? If so, please explain what that experience has been like.

Yes, occasionally. A game I left out of that last list is Guild Wars. It was good fun. A few of my old gaming mates and I used to meet up and do quests. But I haven’t played it for months now and doubt I’ll go back to it. I’ve sampled Call of Duty online but to be honest, I find it all rather random and don’t bother with it too much. Maybe I’m just rubbish at it but I spend far too much time dead. I prefer campaign based games these days. I still get together with three friends every now and again. We link our PCs up and sit around a table and reminisce while playing games like Ghost Recon and Call of Duty. Great fun.

Would you mind sharing an interesting and/or amusing story from your gaming past?

There are many that I still smile about. I think we were the most incompetent bunch of outlaws in Boot Hill history. We’ve dropped lit dynamite in the wagons we were driving, gone to sell grog to the Indians and found ourselves wandering the plain in just our long johns, tried to rob a train only to grease the wrong part of the rails and get taken apart by a Gatling gun. But the crowning idiocy was trying to get bounty on a notorious gang, follow them to their hideout, spread ourselves around to cover every door and window and only then decide to discuss in loud voices exactly what we were planning to do. Following the countdown, we rushed the place and were terribly surprised to find them waiting for us. Not a one of us survived.

I’ve got so many more. Some real triumphs from DQ, like managing to hack the forelimb clean off a basilisk while looking in a mirror to avoid being turned to stone. That caused serious celebration and spilled coffee as I recall.

Would you say your gaming experience has had any effect on you as a writer?

Yep. Huge. The Raven is based on the group of characters from my Dragon Quest days. Hirad, The Unknown Warrior, Richmond, Ras, Thraun, Erienne, Ilkar and Denser. All were rolled up characters when they started, immortalised now in print. The influences are all there to see in Dawnthief, which is a classic quest novel in many requests. But the link fades as the novels progress.

Would you say there is grind involved in the writing process?

Occasionally. Not every day is a good writing day. Reading and re-reading your work does get dull. It is a solitary profession and that can mess with your mind sometimes. But look, no job is all joy and no sheer hard work. No job worth doing anyway. Those who work hardest at their craft tend to get the best rewards. For a writer, that means spending countless hours in front of the PC getting words on paper. When it’s going well, it’s beautiful. When you can’t see the way to the end of the scene, it’s horrible and frustrating. But a writer writes. If you walk away the book won’t write itself.

Don’t get me wrong, I utterly love my job as a writer. I am extremely lucky to be getting paid for doing the thing I love most. If I could get paid acting work, I’d be even happier but you can’t have everything (though I’m working on it…). The point is, a professional sports person only reaches the top through practice on the training ground. Ask Tiger Woods why he’s the best. Roger Federer, Phil Taylor (if you’re a darts fan), Venus and Serena Williams. A writer only improves by writing, rewriting and rewriting again. Not all of it is joyful. That’s life and I’m not complaining.

By contrast, what would you say is one of the most rewarding things about being a writer?

I’d say right up there is getting an email from a fan who has really loved my work. Someone who has got from the book everything I hoped they would. Reading such messages makes all the off days and difficult stuff so utterly worthwhile. Please, write to your favourite authors and tell them why you enjoyed the book. I don’t care how big they are, the personal stories always matter.

There are also the days when you sit down and never want to stop. Days when you’ve written three thousand words by lunch time and you know that they are all good. Days when the work is finally done and you are so buzzed you can’t concentrate on anything.

That’s two things but there you go.

When do you find time to write?

Well, I’m lucky enough to be a full-time author so I get four days a week. On a Tuesday, I look after my son, Oscar. There is no better way to spend a day off than with him. He’s three next birthday and the reason why I get up in the morning and do what I do. He goes to nursery the other week days and that’s when I get writing. I also tend to do some work in the evenings. Emails, interviews, reading. Not too much. Wind-down time is really important.

How do you tend to escape these days?

There isn’t too much time for escaping but when I need to I will still put on a game and get lost in the action. That still works. I watch films on DVD, things like Flash Forward on the TV. I also turn off the mobile phone and leave the house. Being out of contact is liberating. Just for an hour or so. We have a dog I walk every morning and that is a good way to get rid of any demons and tension before the day starts. I play tennis occasionally and we go out on our push bikes as a family when we all need a change from the walls of the house and garden. I’m not a big reader these days. I do read but time is so short and I’m normally knackered come the end of the day and end up snoozing into my book, however compelling it is.

So its lots of small things used to break up a day. Best of all is being with Oscar. Children are amazing and watching him grow and learn and blossom is the best way to forget anything bad ever happened.

Would you have any words of advice for the would-be-writers out there?

Picking up on some of what I said earlier, I think there are a few things every writer needs to know or appreciate. Some of it sounds really glib but I’m surprised how often I hear from people who don’t apply the basics.

For starters, a writer writes. If you don’t write, you aren’t going to finish a book, a short story a poem or even a letter. That means you have to sit down and do it. Just a bit every day until it’s done. A great piece of advice I got from another author, Stan Nicholls, when I was starting out was “write to a finish”, another way of saying this is, “don’t get it right, get it written”. A basic error is to go over and over and over the section you’ve done, trying to get it perfect. For one thing, it never will be perfect and for another, it’s stopping you getting to the end. That is the time to go back, read, rewrite and improve.

And here’s a quick editing tip. When you reread, read out loud. If you stumble over words or they don’t sound right in your ears, they probably aren’t. Time to change them.

When you’re submitting, submit exactly to guidelines. Generally, that’s a letter, a synopsis and the opening three chapters but publishers and agents have individual quirks. All of it is equally important. My editor says that if you can’t write a letter you can’t write a book and he will judge a writer on that because he gets such a high volume of submissions. He doesn’t have the time for anything else. He needs to be interested enough to move to the synopsis. Always, always send in the first three chapters. If you don’t it only begs the question, why if you don’t. The opening of your book has to grab editors like it must readers. But you know all that.

Another quick tip. Try and find the name of the editor or agent you are sending your submission to (this is after you’ve established that they will be remotely interested in your sort of work). This gets it to their desk, not merely the department in general. A quick phone call to the publisher or agent should get you the info you need. Also, importantly, this does mean that you can expand your possible number of submissions. If a publisher has four fantasy editors, there is no reason why you shouldn’t submit to each one in turn. Just not all at the same time. Ever.

And finally. Getting rejected is hard. Waiting for responses is interminable. Most of us get knocked back a few times. Even such giants as JK Rowling and Stephen Donaldsdon have been turned down before being accepted (and boy are some editors regretting those decisions). All it means is that one person on one day didn’t like your stuff. You just have to suck that up and submit to someone else (after you’ve made sure your submission is absolutely as good as you can make it). Believe in yourself. If you don’t , no one else can be expected to.

You wake up to a world where your Chronicles of the Raven series has been made into an RPG. What character race and class would you play and why?

Elven mage. Definitely. I get to live a long time, though not necessarily forever. I’m naturally good at casting because mana, the fuel of magic, is an integral part of me. I have an excellent range of spells I can learn, both offensive and defensive, healing and harming. I’m pretty tough in terms of constitution and if I’m really scared, I can run back to my homeland and call on some seriously hard bastards who will come to my aid… probably.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with this gamer/reader audience?

Yeah. Don’t let anyone tell you that gaming is a waste of time. Clearly it isn’t. My early gaming years have had a direct and massively positive influence on my career. Gaming means you aren’t getting into trouble anywhere else. It’s only anti-social to those who have a) never tried or b) never actually been online or linked up on a LAN. Surely this is more productive than sitting round a table in a pub with a few mates, sending texts to other people.

Be proud of the genre you read. For some reason I still can’t fathom, there are authors who deny they are sci-fi or fantasy authors and readers who deny they read the genre. Fantasy and SF contain nearly all the best ideas, wonderful imaginations and beautifully realized worlds and characters. I am proud of what I write. Join me!

Oh, and finally, go look on the Xbox live site and find the trailer thing about Project Natal. This is the future of console gaming…. It’s controller-free, it really is.