Punching Snakes
Don't Do It
Feast or famine
I haven’t done much lately besides my regular First Person columns over on Joystick Division, because I was working on a big project since mid-July, which I can sum up with this:
Put simply, I got the first interview with Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts in over a decade, which was a hell of a thrill for me. Of all the developers I could ever interview, he’s the one who’s had the biggest influence on my gaming habits and predilections, so it was a pleasure personally and professionally.
The interview went for 2 1/2 hours, and was 44 pages transcribed in Word, so I got a lot out of it, to wit, a two–part History of Wing Commander feature, and an intervew/profile piece on Roberts, all of which were published on G4 this week. And there may be one more Roberts-related feature coming.
Once the ball was rolling properly on the Wing Commander stuff, I was able to take on a few other pieces.
First, I wrote what was one of the most personal features I’ve ever done, for The Escapist:
As expected, I caught a little flak from just a few people at my suggestion that the fans who quit the game played a part in its upcoming demise on December 15th, and as soon as I can I’ll be posting something here about the trip I took back to Galaxies replete with screenshots and tales of my embarrassingly-geeky exploits in-game over 5 years ago.
I also covered, for Gamasutra, another meeting of the local Boston-area dev gathering called Boston Post Mortem. I’m starting to get to know a few luminaries in the local development community, and it’s fun. I get the feeling there’s a lot more going on around here than I suspected, and I really enjoy hearing how developers think about games versus consumers. And writing for developers is always a challenge, and I learn a hell of a lot more than when I do commercial work. It’s nice to have a balance.
Interesting, I’ve read in an old mag that Killrathi comes not from “kill” and “wrath”, but from “kill” and “rat” – they are cats, aren’t they? – so that’s what they do.