It does, it does! Origins, as an aghast look at my desk calendar reminds me, is just eight days away! Here, as far as the event grid on the website can tell me anyhow, is my seminar schedule for the show:

Thursday, May 31

11:00 a.m.: History (Invented, Alternate, Dramatic, and Real) in Game Settings:

When it comes to game worlds, the best-mapped with the thickest sourcebooks is good old Earth. From ancient astronauts to Nazi Mars colonies, starting with history lays foundations for even the wildest fantasy worlds. Kenneth Hite lays out some principles for using history in game settings, whether starting from scratch with fantasy or SF worlds, or pure historical gaming in the Wild West or WWII. What can you change for variety? What should you change for drama? Where should time travelers go to get a good deal on cinematic violence? (C212)

1:00 p.m.: Game Design Panel

Discussion with James Ernest, Kenneth Hite, and Mike Selinker (C212)

4:00 p.m.: Fundamentals of Setting Design

The setting -- be it a whole galaxy or a single palace -- helps define your game, your story, whether you're a game designer, a writer, or a GM. Designing a good setting helps you shape the experience you want; it can make the difference between a great game and a bunch of twisty passages all alike. This seminar takes setting design down to its fundamentals, and builds up from there. (C212)

Saturday, June 2

11:00 a.m.: Game Design Panel

Discussion with James Ernest, Mike Selinker, Kennith Hite, Peter Lee, and Chris Dupuis. (C212)

3:00 p.m.: Genre Emulation in Game Design

How do you make a game feel like pulp, or like a martial-arts movie, or like a spaghetti Western? Recreating a genre experience in a game begins before the dice come out. This seminar examines ways to design genre feel into a game -- whether a whole RPG or just your campaign -- from the jump. (C212)

When I'm not in C212, I'll be rambling around the Dealer's Room or maybe playing wargames with Doug Sun. I'm not sure where I'll make my base camp at just yet, so if you need a booth cat, leave me a chair!

Crowdfunding

This is news to no one, but crowdfunding really is the wave of the future. Or rather, the present and the future. This morning it occurred to me that it is both forward-thinking and prudent to start mentally allocating money that I would normally spend on cool stuff  and use it to fund crowdfunding projects at Kickstarter and elsewhere. Why? Here's my own, personal reasoning in three points:

1. Bang for My Buck. Funds go directly to the project and the people working directly on the project. I often think about "bang for my buck" when I spend money, and up until now that's been a rating for how much enjoyment or time (or both) I get for my money. With these kinds of projects, however, I can look at it both that way and a new way. If my money is going directly to the creator, to support this project, a greater percentage of my money is going directly to what I want, and not to marketing, sales, administration, or other things. (Middle managers in creative industries beware. Crowdfunding spells the end of your usefulness.)
And, on a personal level, I still benefit more, and get more bang for my buck because that creator is then that much more likely to do more stuff I will like later on, because he or she has been rewarded for their talent and creativity.

2. Active Fans. Before crowdfunding, we as fans of things were mostly passive. Someone, somewhere, tried to make something, and  probably (95% of the time or so) had to go to some "gatekeeper." This was a financier, an editor, a manager, or some other person who got to say "yes" or 'no" to the creator before he or she could make it (or at least produce and distribute it). We've all heard the stories about great writers whose fabulous works were rejected before getting published. What if they'd stopped trying when one of these gatekeepers said no? Millions of fans would not have got what they wanted. In a post-Kickstarter world, some suit at FOX doesn't get to decide to cancel Firefly--it's entirely fan supported (I know... I can dream, right? But you see my point.) With crowdfunding, fans can actively support a project ahead of time, rather than after the fact, and they can do so with power and meaning. 

3. Cool Projects Get Cooler. Before crowdfunding, if someone needed $10,000 to create a project, and it somehow makes $20,000, that extra money often just goes into someone's pocket (and it's rarely the creator's). If, in a Kickstarter campaign someone needs $10,000 but then reaches that, they can then start looking at "stretch goals" so that if they raise $20,000, they can enhance the project in some way. This benefits the project, and everyone who is going to enjoy it. (It's also brilliant because it benefits the people who already funded--so when you fund, you're incentivized to help spread the word to your friends.)  

It's also clear to me that smart creators are realizing that those funding their projects should get more bang for their buck, and so generally I will get more for money I spend with them directly than buying something online anyway. No, I'm not advocating doing away with brick and mortar stores, online retailers, or anything like that. Crowdfunding is to get projects off the ground. In fact, even as we speak, smart retailers online and in the physical world are making sure that they work well alongside crowdfunded projects not in competition with them. Really smart retailers are actually contributing to projects that they know will sell well in their own stores.

Lastly, it's worth noting that there are people out there who still think that crowdfunding is "begging for handouts." To them, I say, "the meteor has struck, dinosaurs." I have donated money to Kickstarter projects here and there already, but I am going to be using my dollars even more from now on to support the projects I want to see made. And I'll be using crowdfunding to help get my own new projects off the ground, to be sure.

I don't know much about social media. I don't have a facebook or twitter account. But I've been told a few people have them, and that some of those people like to play social media games. I'm told the biggest social media game involves running a farm.

Surely, I thought, there must be something one could do on social media that would be more fun that growing turnips and feeding chickens. Like, say, scheming and plotting, murders and marriages, contesting for power.

HBO shared the feeling, and together we have granted the license for a social media game based on GAME OF THRONES to a great new start-up company called Disruptor Beam ((http://disruptorbeam.com/ )) Game development is already well under way.

Jon Radoff, CEO of Disruptor Beam, says:

"This will be the first Facebook game based on the TV series and books and, trust me, this game isn’t just going to be another Farmville! George RR Martin is working very closely with Disruptor Beam to ensure the game will deliver an authentic experience. I can tell you that it will not only be highly story and character-driven, but Game of Thrones Ascent will give you the chance to experience the world from your own perspective and with your own friends."

"Sounds fun, right!? Want to know more? Well, additional information about the game will be released in the coming months, including details about how to participate in a pre-release beta program. To follow its progress, be sure to “like” Game of Thrones Ascent on Facebook (http://facebook.com/gameofthronesascent) or follow on Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/GoTAscent)."



I saw several early versions of the game demonstrated, and Jon and his designers took great pains to make sure the flavor of the novels is here. I saw alliance building, treachery, marriages, murders, and most of all the constant struggle to be the greatest house in Westeros.

So create a character, pick a liege lord to swear to, and start playing the game the way Tyrion would, because in this game you win or you die.

(No turnips will be involved).

Tonight, we had midnight launch events for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Various Red Storm folk went to various local Gamestops and hung out, signed autographs, talked to folks and generally celebrated the fact that GR:FS was, as they say, a thing. 
Me, I went to the store closest to my home, which is to say the Brier Creek one. I've spent a lot of money there over the years, gotten to know some of the folks who work there, and so it was a cool thing to share. I'd never done a midnight launch, you see. They were always kind of for other people. Various games I've worked on have had various degrees of launch pomp and circumstance - anything from massive star-studded launch parties in Hollywood to "wait, that came out? Really?"
So tonight was kind of special. This game has been a long time coming, and there's a lot of blood and sweat and tears and other, possibly less identifiable fluids that went into it (OK, there was a memorable trip to Harry's New York Bar in Paris, where the fluid in question was an absinthe cocktail served up by the greatest bartender in the history of humanity, but I digress), and to see it finally real - and to see folks that eager to play it, well that meant a lot.
And the best part was, as we signed posters and game cases and discs and bandannas, that so many of the folks who were there thanked us for making the game."We know you worked hard." "I appreciate how hard you guys must have worked." "Ghost Recon was the first game I ever played online - thanks for that." "I came here straight from work." Yeah, I know it sounds corny, but that really did mean something. The understanding that a lot of people - actual people, who busted their butts for a long time to make this thing happen and deserve recognition for the long hours and late nights they put in - made this, instead of a faceless company, well, I like to think that's a good thing.
Which leads me to say this: thank you, to the folks who showed up tonight, and to the folks who are excited to play the game. It doesn't happen without you, either. 

V: I'm stuffed again. I guess there's nothing else I can do but watch weather channel (.com) videos

Originally published at Cura Te Ipsum - the continuing adventures of Charlie Everett. Please leave any comments there.

Tomorrow, May 22nd, Greg Rucka’s new novel Alpha drops, introducing new protagonist Jad Bell. You should really get out there and buy it, or click on your digital readers and order it.

If you don’t know Greg’s work, he’s known for many things, from writing every major hero in comicdom to the supremely awesome Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether. He writes books, too, great books, and every one of his novels feature a great eye for detail, jargon, place, and character. Exciting plots. Great stories. If I could, in all honesty, turn and point at the author and writer I want to be, I’d point at Greg. I study his work to try and improve mine, and anything I do well of late, I can pretty much lay at his feet.

I was fortunate enough to get a look at Alpha, the first Jad Bell novel, before it hits the streets. I don’t think it’s unfair, having read everything else Greg has done with prose, to say that he’s created his best action hero yet. We walk with protagonist Jad Bell through a damned spectacular set of confrontations with a series of terrorists, who take over WilsonVille (essentially a variation of Disneyland) and start doing all those terrible things we see in our post 9/11 nightmares. There is a complication, I won’t spoil it, that makes the conflict personal between Jad and the terrorists, and it changes duty-bound conflict into personal moral terror. The end result is a satisfying tension that I envy, I envy, I envy the man’s ability to create, and a satisfying read.

As a breakout novel for a series character, this is an amazing debut. As a standalone novel, it blew me away. I say, without being glib, that I’m looking forward to the day not long from now when I see this on a big screen, because if this book doesn’t get the treatment, there’s no damned justice in the world. Yes, I know there’s very little justice in the world, but live in hope. If we can have Battleship, I will see an Alpha movie.

It’s the subtle touches that make the book. The prose is masterful. The flow is superb. Jad is a wonderful, technically spot-on character, and his family and crew grant flavor that makes you truly care. The world, even, gains a character that I’ve rarely seen in prose, with such attention to the surroundings that you start to feel a part of the scenery, but without that awful sense that the writer is describing wallpaper to pad the word count. Every inch of WilsonVille feels real, and the details surrounding it are used to enhance the peril and give you a precisely cinematic feel of the world you’re mentally walking around in.

From the establishing moments to the exciting climax, this is a book I’ll study in the years to come, and have already studied, to learn how to do what I want to do better. If you don’t, it’ll be your loss.

Go! Buy!

Full disclosure: Greg and I know each other. Even fuller disclosure: I don’t plug a thing unless I really, really dig it, even if someone I knew wrote it, so ignore the first disclosure as journalistic duty.

Oh thank god, tomorrow I'm working. TOMORROW WE HEIST!

Coming next Sunday, to a television near you.



I'll be watching from Montana.