January is such an awful, awful month. Christmas is over, it's back to work, and there's no break to look forward to for a long, long time. It's dark outside -- and I mean really dark, obscenely dark -- and the winter here in Norway is long and cold. The weather usually doesn't improve until April. Happy days!

As for work? Development of Midgard has slowed to a crawl (i.e. temporarily halted) so that Funcom can focus completely on Anarchy Online. Wheee! Okay, sure, it's a smart move, but it does mean that Midgard won't see the light of day anytime soon. It also means that my days are mostly about AO's evolving storyline.

A few words about AO and story: about a month ago, I was quoted in an interview as stating that Anarchy Online wasn't my type of game, and a lot of people took issue with that, seeing as I'm involved with AO on a daily basis. Well, heck, context is everything. The interview was primarily a Midgard interview. And, yes, it's true: Midgard is more my type of game. I suck at the traditional massively-multiplayer online role-playing games, and I don't have the time to really get into them and gain enough levels to have fun. That doesn't mean I think AO is a bad game. Quite the contrary; I'm impressed with all the work that's gone into it, and I think it's a hell of a lot better than most of its competitors. In fact, I do play AO -- not nearly enough, true, but that's usually how it is in this business; working with games all day long means you prefer to do other things when you get home at night. When it comes to the story, my work lies primarily with the top-level story; the major story-arcs, and the history behind the AO universe. My notes, plans, and suggestions are passed on to the people who create the content and events, and the Game Director then decides what to do with the story and how to implement it in-game while I focus on the out-of-game story experience. So my influence on AO is very limited, and though it's true that the MMORPG genre isn't my favourite genre, my work is peripheral to that as it focuses primarily on the story-technical side of the game.

Now. What's happening in the future? Like I said, as far as Funcom's concerned, it's all AO right now. No Midgard, no The Longest Journey II, no top-secret online project. Which means that, while I have more than enough to do, I'm also going to spend more time with my, uh, extra-curricular activities. I'm rewriting my "The Dark Places" screenplay, and I will try to shoot that this year, in addition to finishing up a number of other screenplays that have been in the works for ages now. I'm also going to start working on my second novel soon; what that's all about, you're going to have to wait and see.

When the dark, cold, and miserable winter lies heavy on the land, it's important to keep busy. The busier the better.  ¶ 12:10