Something About a Nehru Jacket

Writer Clint Hocking, who tackled both script and design duties on Ubisoft’s stellar Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, found my most recent article in The Escapist, which uses the dialogue he wrote as an example of really fine immersive simulation through simple text. (I say “simple” knowing full well that it’s, you know, not that simple.) Anyway, he’s written his thoughts on the article into his design journal site. They are flattering, these thoughts.

But, seriously, Clint. You lose all credibility when you refer to Mr. Wright as “the other Will.”

Second Person Preview

Noah Wardrip-Fruin has posted the Table of Contents for Second Person over at Grand Text Auto, the interactive storytelling and art blog that’s so good I read it even though it’s over my head. Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media is the sequel to First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. First Person is a great survery of articles touching on everything from the old ludology-v-dramatism debates (which, it seems, may be behind us) to the successes and failures of interactive fiction (IF) experiments.

The new book, besides containing a metric slew of articles by the brilliant likes of Ken Hite, Chris Crawford, Bruno Faidutti, Eric Lang, Kevin Wilson, Greg Costikyan, Rebecca Borgstrom, Paul Czege and Jordan Mechner, also contains three complete RPGs by John Tynes, Greg Costikyan and James Wallis. (Want to know which ones? Check the Table of Contents, you.) Somehow, an essay of mine is in there, too. It seems we may see the actual book sometime this fall.

Noise: David Bowie, “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson”