voyage to mars
The show is over, but I'm staying in California for another five days, and hopefully I'll be able to post another update at some point during the next week. This year's E3 was great - both from a work perspective as well as a gamer perspective. The media and fans have been enthusiastic about what we've showed them of the Shadowlands expansion pack, and the games I've seen - especially from Nintendo - look promising. Right now, we're cleaning out our meeting rooms, and the show has wrapped up. I didn't get to do enough sightseeing (as usual), but I got to see the most important stuff. And tonight I'm off to see Spider-Man, finally! We're going to Universal City to see it on the giant IMAX screen. Yay.
It's been a busy, busy day. Lots of meetings with the press, talking about and showing a video from the upcoming Anarchy Online expansion pack, Shadowlands, and the response (so far, about 2/3 through this year's show) has been great. People are surprised about how much we're showing, and the direction we're taking with the expansion pack. I'll try and link to the different articles when they become available.
L.A. is sunny but a bit chilly, at least in the evenings. Colder, strangely enough, than Oslo was when I left.
Just a few quick words, inbetween meetings. I've made it to L.A. and E3, and so far so good. I'm looking forward to Mario Sunshine on the GameCube. It looks great. Zelda, too. And that's about all I've seen; we've just started, and the days are packed with presentations and meetings. Funcom has a closed area this year, but if anyone out there reading this site plans to visit E3, drop by and say "Hullo". Say Ragnar sent you.
Game developers are usually a modest lot, content with creating their magic behind thick walls, away from the limelight, away from the attention of the media. There, they toil on, night and day, emerging only when their work is done. They shy away from credit and acclaim, and speak only when spoken to.
And then there are people like me, who spend most of their time yakkin' to the media and pretending to be "designer gurus" and "gaming gods". Managers and leads and "directors" who take the credit for everything, leaving only scraps for the programmers and artists and designers who do all the hard work.
True or not - it sure looks that way sometimes. I like the spotlight, and I love talking about the work we do and the games we make. But it might be (mis)interpreted as self-obsession and -glorification. Until I have a body of work that warrants the attention, it's easy to get shot down, criticised and ridiculed for the way I "sell" myself. Even though, most of the time, I'm not the one instigating the attention.
Take
this article, for example. I was asked by our US PR manager to send in a little blurb about what I'll be doing at
E3, for
IGN's
RPG Vault. Turns out I'm the only one from
Funcom who's included in the article, and I'm at the top of the list. I didn't put together the
article, and I thought it was a fun question to answer, but I
know that it's still going to piss some people off, especially since I end up representing the entire
Anarchy Online team. And on that team, I'm just a writer and designer, and that's it.
Still, I won't beat myself up about it. Yup, I do
sell myself somewhat (after all, I have a website called RagnarTornquist.com!), and yup, I tend to get mentioned, and contacted, by the media because of that. I want to keep making games for a long, long time, and the only way to ensure that is to take some control over my future. Not to become "famous" (something that's a bit hard in this mostly faceless industry,
Peter Molyneux and
Shigeru Miyamoto excepted), but to be able to put together and produce the games that I want to make and play. There is a bit of selfishness in that, true. But if you want your vision to be seen, heard, and felt by an audience, you have to
push a little.
Hopefully, the games that you, the audience, get to play, and the stories I'll be able to tell you will live up to the image of myself I've helped create. Keep your fingers crossed. We've got a long, long way to go.
It took a little longer to finish up than I'd hoped, and I wasn't completely done with the video until around six thirty, but it turned out really well, and I look forward to presenting it next week at the L.A. convention center. We have a lot of cool stuff from the upcoming
Anarchy Online expansion pack to show off. I feel all excited about the game again, and I hope all our players will as well.
Just finished watching episode nine of
24 (I got hold of a few more episodes through a friend) and the show keeps topping itself. This latest episode was one of the most tense and best directed hours of TV I've seen in a
long time. The show actually reminds me of the first season of
Murder One, another groundbreaking series, though I hope the second season of
24 doesn't take a similar turn for the worse. Unfortunately, they're talking about changing the format, with each episode taking place within a separate 24-hour period. Too bad.
Ten-thirty, and I gotta run.
Downtime. Premiere is rendering, and I'm enjoying an ice-cold Coca-Cola. Top ten reasons why Coca-Cola is the preferred drink of presidents, prime-ministers, and poverty-stricken people everywhere:
10. Enough sugar in a can of Coke to kill a full-grown elephant.
9. Water is
so last century.
8. Two words: Crack cocaine.
7. Every bottle blessed by the Pope.
6. If you squint and shake your head, and you're really, really desperate, a Coca-Cola bottle looks like a naked woman.
5. It feels good to give your money to a gigantic, multinational corporate behemoth.
4. Drink enough Coke, and you start looking like the beautiful people in the commercials, except not really.
3. Spell Coca-Cola backwards, and you get Aloc-Acoc, which is probably part of an important prophecy or something.
2. It both causes
and cures cancer at the same time!
1. There's absolutely nothing else to drink.
Ta-da! And now I'm done with the video-stuff too, so happy-happy, joy-joy.
Spending most of the day today putting together a presentation video for
E3 next week. It has to be done this afternoon, since both Friday and Monday are official holidays: May 17th is
Constitution Day, and Monday is...uh, well, it's a
holiday. That's all I know. That's all I
need to know. Tuesday morning (at seven-something, gak!) I board the plane for London, and from there I fly to Los Angeles - a good eleven-plus hours. Non-yay. I
hate flying. I'm so tall that my knees end up just below my chin, and my body has locked up completely by the time we're crossing over Las Vegas. Never a pleasant experience. But, hey, it's California! It's worth the pain. And
E3 is always, always a lot of fun - I enjoy speaking with the media and the fan-sites, and I love walking around prodding and poking at all the games I'll be playing in the year(s) ahead. Double-yum.
Anyways. Big work-day, so don't expect any more updates until...later.
Listening to
Christophe Beck's
Buffy music, the sun is bright, the day is beautiful, and the air smells like summer.
A few readers wrote in commenting on yesterday's rant, and I'm happy to confirm that my readers - no matter their religious beliefs or nationality - are an intelligent and tolerant bunch. Thanks for the support!
I realised yesterday that my soapbox session wasn't prompted only by the
CCGR review. In their May issue,
E110,
Edge Magazine -
the best "electronic entertainment" news, reviews, and feature source there is, and probably the most-read monthly in the industry, at least in Europe - published an
article called "Minority Report" where they discuss the issues of bigotry, racism, and sexism in computer and video games. It's an excellent article, and it mirrors many of my personal views.
The Longest Journey is briefly name-dropped as an example of a game with a strong and realistic female character.
If you think this topic is important and valid, buy the issue. It's worth it for that article alone.
Today's topic is
The Longest Journey and
religion. And I quote (from
this review):
"From a Christian perspective there are a few issues with this game. My biggest complaint is the swearing. This games uses every word in the book, multiple times. I honestly think this game has more swearing than all of my games combined! I wish there was an option to turn that off. There are some drug and sexual references too. For example, your landlord is a lesbian and talks freely about her love life. Your best friend is "easy" and talks about hers too. I guess this is to help your great listening skills? My last area of concern is religion. Every one in the game refers to the balance. They will say things like "By the balance", or "May the balance be with you" etc. The whole belief system seems to be new age sounding. Christianity is mentioned, but only as an inferior religion. There's a priest in the game who plays both sides and mentions that he read the bible but it didn't make sense. Yet the balance was the truth and brought him closer to God. Umm yeah, whatever."Interestingly enough, and quite intentional on my part, the Balance is never presented as a religion. The Balance is more about spiritual mechanics, about how magic and science are, uh,
balanced out. It's about the tools used by divinity, and not divinity in itself. The Balance is a unifying force recognised by, and a part of, all religions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism. It's a force of nature. And at no point in the game is Christianity mentioned as an inferior religion. In fact, the priest referred to above - Father Raul - is a devout Catholic who also happens to be a follower of the Balance, a Sentinel Minstrum. He doesn't "play both sides"; I'd compare it to a minister who's also a scientist. Two perspectives are better than one, especially when one can give you a better insight into another. Finally, the reviewer is wrong: Raul never says that the Bible doesn't make sense. April Ryan, however, makes a joke about the sequel to the Bible - the Bible 2 - and how
that book didn't make much sense. Obviously.
In a way, the above-quoted review is a tragic example of how certain people use religion as an excuse to spread their
bigoted world view. I mean, what do a few curses - a permanent part of our modern vocabulary - and the fact that a couple of the game's characters are gay have to do with religion, or with being "good Christians"? April uses bad language and befriends gays, and yet -
blasphemy! - she still believes in God. And that's wrong...how exactly? Is the reviewer saying that God hates gays, that homosexuality is evil, and no one should ever be exposed to the searing sight of same-sex love? Come to think of it, is Emma (as the reviewer suggests) "easy" because she actually talks openly about her relationships, because she - like most young women - actually have sex with (
gasp!) young men? It's pretty funny that the guy mentions Emma's rather innocent, and certainly harmless, comments, and not Zach's. The latter is a really sleazy
guy who treats women like objects. So it's okay for a guy to talk about sex, but not for a woman? I guess they have to remain mothers and virgins.
I'm being a little confrontational here, but I get sooo fed up with narrow-mindedness. The point of including "adult" language (not very; I'd say kids are as proficient with four-letter words - if not more - as adults are) and homosexual characters in a game is to put a mirror up to real life. Face it, guy, people say "sh*t" and "fu*k" all the time. Get over it. You don't have to speak it, but accept that others do. And there are lots of people who, for very natural reasons, are attracted to members of the same sex. Again, no one's forcing
you to experiment in that direction. Live and let live - if you feel threatened by the presence of gays, maybe there are reasons for that.
Now...how many people did I manage to piss off?
I don't think we did something awfully important or hugely valuable by allowing a few animated characters to use real-life language, or by adding two lesbian characters to our cast. In fact, it's much more important to note that so few games have done this in the first place. Gay characters in computer and video games are usually effiminate men or butch women - cliches, included for "comedy relief", or simple bigotry. Like black characters who aren't sidekicks, or even women who aren't mere sexual objects, games are ridiculously white, straight, and male. Now, I happen to be white, straight,
and male, so I guess I'm the target audience. But I'd actually love to play a black lesbian character, or a Pakistani grandfather, in a role-playing game or adventure - why the hell not? It'd more fun than being Duke Nukem or Lara Croft...all over again.
When the eventual sequel to TLJ is released, expect a whole truckload of women, gays, and multi-hued characters, as well as more four-letter words than you'd find in a high-school lunch-room at noon. We'll put a sticker on the box: "Not for bigots", and still sell a million copies. Why? Because gamers are, in general, a very liberal and intelligent bunch. That's why.
24 - the
Kiefer Sutherland-starring series I spoke about back in April - keeps getting better and better. No
local channels are showing
it yet (
Norwegian TV is notoriously bad with American shows; when they eventually appear, it's often years after they're originally produced, and often the seasons are cut short or the series simply cancelled - the channel showing
Smallville is taking a summer-long break right in the middle of the first season), and so I'm forced to watch
it on
Video CD. That's not a huge problem - I like making up my own TV schedule - if I could only get hold of all episodes. Currently I only have the first seven, and eighteen through twenty-one (I just watched episode
seven; the cool plot-twists keep piling up), but we're working on getting the rest.
Anyways. The
show is very, very good. And I just read that
Fox is planning on releasing the complete first season on
DVD, with three alternative endings, so if you've missed it you'll get another chance (of course, you could just
download the episodes from
the Net, but that's illegal! Bad
pirate!).
The first time I posted this, it quickly disappeared under a whole bunch of other posts, so I'm mentioning it again. There is a brand new, fully redesigned
The Longest Journey site sitting around waiting to be released (it's actually been ready for months and months). I don't know why it wasn't published as part of last week's complete renovation of the main
Funcom site, but if you want to see the new look, you've got to let the marketing people know. Here's what I wrote earlier this week:
"Don't tell 'em I told you so, but use this
feedback form to send a message to the 'Web Editor' (under
recipient) and ask for the redesigned
TLJ pages. Just be polite about it. Polite but firm. Like a loving mother. The editor's a mate of mine, and a nice guy, but
TLJ isn't a priority with the marketing department, and it won't happen unless they feel that there's a real demand for a new site.
Go on, it'll be fun."
So what are you waiting for? The more, the merrier!
This impassioned plea came from a Regular Reader:
"I am a regular reader of your journal but recently I have been blocked because of a "banned phrase". Could you please do me a favour and edit it so it is misspelled or something because otherwise I will have to wait untill it is in the archives before being allowed to visit again."I never make a concerted effort to avoid cussin', but I usually make do without four-letter words (
The Longest Journey players may disagree, and believe me, I've received more flak for that than anything else I've ever done...except for the "gay themes" in
TLJ...and the [fill in blank here] in
Anarchy Online). I searched through the text in the journal, and I didn't find any serious words (the 'f's, 's's, or the, uh, 'c'). I did find a couple of 'da*n's, 'he*l's, 'he*k's, 'ar*e's, and a solitary 'por*ographic' (though I'm not sure if that qualifies as a Bad Word, or, indeed, a four-letter word).
I could rewrite all the text to conform to some middle-American ideal of unsoiled religious piety, but...nah. I'm a potty-mouth.
Still, though, I'm sorry that my journal is blocked to certain readers, and if there's a single word in particular that prevents access, I will, of course, change or remove the offending word. Just don't ask me to stop saying 'arse'. It's one of life's many pleasures. I need my arses.
A few comments about yesterday's "four! Ack!" posting. One reader by the name of Mark had the following to say:
"So, are you going to write, or are you going to whine about not selling your 'first' novel?"I'm going to whine!
Well, actually, my point was never to
whine, and if that was the impression I gave, then I'm sorry. With most of yesterday's last post, I was making with the funnies, but that was probably disguised by an appearance of bitterness from a sad, old git. And there's no bitterness! I'm all, like, 'yay', because I'm just really happy that: a) I managed to write a novel, and I'm not a novelist, so that's a pretty tall feat; b)
Prophet Without Honour has actually been read by thousands and thousands of people, and as a writer you're always worried that no one's going to read your stuff, that no one will care; c) Most people - at least the ones who've written me e-mails or commented on message boards - seemed to enjoy the book; and d) I'm always pretty happy, never bitter, it's summer, I have lots and lots of stuff in the pipeline, and (again) yay!
I
was hoping to increase sales slightly, though, simply because I'd like
Funcom to see the potential for a second (and maybe third) novel in the series. I currently don't have the time - or the inclination - to start writing a non-
Anarchy Online related novel. I'd like to write something completely different at some point in the next few years - maybe even,
gasp!, a non-genre novel - but not right now. There are a ton of other projects I'd like to dig into first; games, comics, films, and TV. But I've been working on a follow-up to
Prophet Without Honour for a while now, and I know exactly where the story is heading and how it ties in with the game's plot and, in particular, the first expansion pack, "
Shadowlands". And while writing a novel is never easy, it's a lot easier to finish something that's already well underway than starting with a blank page. So yesterday's plea was merely a cynical tactic to boost sales and prove to Funcom that there's a real market for the second novel in the series, not to complain about how miserably unpopular I feel (I don't), or how "four" is such an awfully low number (it is). Mostly I'd like to be able to publish a second novel just so that I don't have to buy any Christmas presents - it worked like a charm last year.
Yes, I know, it still doesn't excuse the whining, so sorry about that. Whining is never good. Like so many people have pointed out;
writers write. And I do. Day in and day out. It's what I love doing. I don't, unfortunately, do enough of it, especially since my duties as both creative director of
Funcom and designer on
Anarchy Online demand that I, uh, direct and design in addition to the writing, but I still have the best job in the world, and if it ever sounds like I'm complaining, smack me upside the head. Deal?
In fact; if and when I need a good smacking, send an e-mail to
smackupsidethehead@ragnartornquist.com - that way, I'll be able to sort out the smackings from the general hate-mail, and apply them to myself once every week (Wednesdays, for example).
Tuesday morning, the air smells like summer, and I'm eating a raspberry-jam sandwich and drinking a glass of orange juice.
My first
novel was published back in October, and has currently been available only through Funcom's
online store, which, I'm afraid, somewhat limits its sales potential. To say the least. Shipping costs are waaay too high, especially for customers outside North America or Europe, and the book is somewhat pricy to begin with (though not overly so for a hardcover novel). In addition, the novel has been
serialised on the
Anarchy Online story portal, it's being made available as a complete
PDF file in the upcoming
Anarchy Online Special Edition, and there's been little to no publicity. Emphasis on 'no'. Even then, it's disappointing to see that, in the past week,
Prophet Without Honour has sold only
four copies. Four! Eek! Granted, sales have slowed down dramatically since last autumn: the
AO players who were interested in reading the novel have already bought (or downloaded) it, and non-
AO players have never heard about it, nor have any particular interest in reading it. But still...four. That's...really, really pathetic. I'm not looking for
New York Times bestseller list numbers, but...four! Ack!
Prophet Without Honour ain't the best novel ever published, though it's (by far) the best
Anarchy Online tie-in novel ever written. Guaranteed. It's a fun read, and it's the first part of a longer story that I'd like to see completed. Thing is, unless sales pick up again, there's a good chance the next volume will never see the light of day. The storyline of the novel(s) is parallel to, but separate from, the in-game storyline(s), and so it's not a necessity in the grand scheme of things, but I'd still like to be able to continue - and perhaps, some day, complete - this story.
While thousands of people have read, and will read, the PDF versions of the novel, there's something to be said for a proper hardcover version, complete with a nice cover and lots and lots of pages, that you can read in the bathtub, on the toilet, or anywhere else in your bathroom (or even outside, in the sun, under a great, big willow tree. Or in your car. Or on a plane. Or in church, during an excessively long and boring sermon). If you've been thinking about getting it, stop thinking and starting
getting. It might go out of print, you know, and then it'll be a collector's item worth hundreds of thousands of...money. Maybe. And you'll be really upset that you didn't heed my advice and buy the damn book when you could have. See? I'm doing you a favour here.
I guess it's kind of low to use this journal to pitch my book. But, see,
four is a very, very low number (there are only three numbers that are lower, and a gazillion numbers (precisely) that are higher). I'd love to see sales reach double-digits next week. Ten, maybe eleven copies! Ah. A man can dream, can't he?
Sniff.
By the way, did any of you guys notice that
Funcom has changed its
website? We've shut down all the free web-based games, like
Backgammon and, uh, the other ones (I have to admit, I never played
any of them, but they were quite popular), and replaced it with a corporate-type site - boring and safe. I'd hoped that they would switch the old
The Longest Journey site with the new one, which has been ready for several months, but no luck. The new one's much better. Promise.
(Don't tell 'em I told you so, but use this
feedback form to send a message to the 'Web Editor' (under
recipient) and ask for the redesigned
TLJ pages. Just be polite about it. Polite but firm. Like a loving mother. The editor's a mate of mine, and a nice guy, but TLJ isn't a priority with the marketing department, and it won't happen unless they feel that there's a real demand for a new site.
Go on, it'll be fun.)
Monday "morning" (my alarm-clock decided to take a breather, briefly, at some point during the night, only to pick up the tick-tock again after about thirty minutes, thus appearing to be in fully working order by the time it
beeped, which it ordinarily does at 7:30 sharp, and which it appeared to do this morning as well. Consequently, blissfully unaware of the devious trap laid for me by my aging mechanical companion, I rose about a half hour later than usual, sensing immediately that something was dreadfully, horribly wrong, and arriving at work much later than I would have preferred, though still early enough to enjoy a café au lait, a brie sandwich, and a selection of
websites before 10 AM) and I've just returned from a meeting regarding
E3 - the
Electronic Entertainment Expo - which happens next week, in Los Angeles. As always,
Funcom will be attending the show, as will I, but unlike last year, we won't have an open booth. Instead, we'll be talking about
Anarchy Online's
Shadowlands expansion pack to members of the press in a closed room. There will also be alcohol. Hopefully.
Since it's Monday, and the start of a new week (brief though it is; this upcoming Friday Norway celebrates its independence in the only way it knows how: by drinking itself into a stupor - and Monday is another holiday), I'll browse through the RagnarTornquist.com inbox and answer some reader mail, something I haven't done in...quite a while. Yes.
This first one isn't really a question, but this reader agreed with me, and that's always a
big plus (for future reference), so it's worthy of inclusion. Besides, she touches on a topic that's quite interesting:
"I check your site every few months or so and I just read your April 16th rant in your journal about the guy who dissed adventure games, and I just wanted to tell you, I know *exactly* what you are talking about! I play a few strategy games here and there, including the Sims - sure it is fun for a while (I liked your sandbox analogy) but after a while I get so incredibly bored of the game that I wonder why I ever bought it in the first place! Adventure games never leave me with such a bad taste in my mouth at their conclusion."That's absolutely true, although some
TLJ players might disagree. A number of players have written me to complain about the ending, which they felt didn't answer enough questions, didn't live up to the rest of the game, or simply
sucked. But, yes, the finite structure of an adventure game, coupled with a progressing story and characters that grow, change, and reach a goal mean that adventure games are, potentially, more satisfying.
Yet there is much to be said for role-playing games - like
Anarchy Online (plug!) - where the character's arc is defined by the player, where the story is more organic and less linear, and where you can (theoretically) play forever without running out of things to do. An RPG done well may have greater potential than an adventure game, but that's like comparing apples and, uh, pizza. Both taste good, but only one of them is good
for you. No, wait, that's not like the difference between adventure games and RPGs at all.
Personally, I'll play any game, no matter the genre, as long as it's good, as long as it plays well, looks and sounds great, and offers me more than a few hours of entertainment;
PC,
Xbox,
PlayStation 2,
GameCube, or
Dreamcast - it really doesn't matter (although I'm starting to lean more towards console games, simply because they usually offer more than PC games, especially in terms of control, instant gratification and ease-of-use, and eye- and ear-candy). If it's an adventure, then great! Nothing's better than that. If it's an
RPG, yay. If it's a first-person shooter, that's fine, too. Racers, fighting-games, platform-games, survival horror...it really doesn't matter. A great game transcends genres. As a designer, any game, on any platform, of any genre, is interesting, because that game may teach me new ways to look at interface, control, content, learning-curve, or any or all of a million other elements.
Phew. I'll get off my soapbox in a second. My point is just this: It's all too easy to limit oneself to only one type of game, and miss out on a wide spectrum of intriguing titles that are available on a variety of platforms. If you're a
PC-gamer, go buy a
GameCube, or an
Xbox, or a
PS2 (just wait a couple of weeks and they're all $199 - if you live in the US, that is; or even better, a
Dreamcast can be picked up for 50 bucks - now
that's value for money!). If you're a devoted adventure gamer you might be surprised to find that there are actually adventure games available for those platforms too, although they're never called adventures. Instead, they're called role-playing games, or action adventures, or something completely different. But
Shenmue is still an adventure, and so is
Final Fantasy X. Broaden your horizons. The same goes for everyone else. Go on. It doesn't hurt. Much.
Stepping off soapbox, right...now! There. I'm off. Promise.
(More reader mail later on - got to get back to work!)
I had a barbecue to go to, so I never got around to finishing yesterday's post, but I'd like to pick up where I left off.
First of all, a few more words about Jobe (although nothing observant fans don't already know). My involvement with this brand new city - a sort of floating Hong Kong (before the reintegration with China), a self-governed city-state where the markets aren't regulated by Omni-Tek or the ICC - began with a concept document requested by the designer assigned to Jobe, Jarl Schjerverud, where I outlined the history of Jobe, listed the technical details of the city's inner workings (it does, after all,
float), described the different neighbourhoods and identified the key locations in the city. A concept is always the best way to begin the process of designing a new area or playfield; both verbal and visual. After the completion of this document, the designers had a few meetings with the artists and world designers (the guys who are actually creating Jobe), and we came up with a set of specifications everyone's happy with. The artists started producing a number of really, really cool sketches and visual designs that I hope we'll be able to include in the expansion pack. Right now, the city is in the amazingly capable hands of said artists and world designers, and my involvement will be minimal until it's time to write new NPC dialogue.
NPC (Non-Player Characters; the server-controlled people populating the world of Rubi-Ka) dialogue is one of the areas we'd like to make huge improvements, and hopefully I'll be able to talk more about that in the weeks and months to come. Yesterday I mentioned (as I've done in the past) our desire to shift more of the story into the game, and an important part of this will be to improve the quality and quantity of the NPC dialogue. Leading up to the release of the expansion pack, characters will begin to hint at the upcoming story, and inside Jobe in particular, players should be able to piece together what amounts to a very, very large jigsaw puzzle. We're also mapping out all the existing NPCs in the game, looking at how they currently relate to each other, and how they can contribute more to the story. But I'm going to keep a lid on the details, at least for now.
One caveat: All of this currently resides in the realm of "hopefully" (well, not
all of it; some of it is already in development). Time is always short, and resources are assigned to whichever task is the most important, or the most requested. But I'm convinced that NPC dialogue should be, and will be, an important tool in telling the story.
Before I sign off for now, just a few more words about the
Anarchy Online "Bible". This is not a document we'll be handing out to the players, not directly. First and foremost, the Bible helps us collect and coordinate all the story-, character-, and setting-related aspects of AO. The
timeline, for example, is one element that we've pulled out from the Bible and posted on the
official website. Other elements are for "internal use only", while most of the contents of the Bible will be communicated through NPCs, events, expansion pack(s), static missions and dungeons, and so on. The Bible will be constantly revised and updated as AO progresses, and the world changes. Our Bible ain't sacred. But it's secret.
I have a few minutes - my "four o'clock" never showed (no, I haven't switched jobs with the dentist upstairs; I had a meeting with Gaute G., the game director on AO, but I guess he forgot) - and I wanted to write a few words about what I'm working on. The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy, as I'm sure my Regular Readers have already guessed. Few updates, and a general lack of content on this site usually means that my attentions lie elsewhere.
First and foremost, the
Anarchy Online expansion pack ("
Shadowlands") is keeping all the designers extremely busy. My involvement thus far has been much more limited than I would've liked, but I've worked quite a bit on the Jobe part of it. Jobe is a brand new city that will, in the most poetic of terms,
kick arse. Yes, yes, I know; I have promised arse-kickings before. But Jobe is something everyone's excited about, and I'm confident that this will show when the city is finally revealed. Arse-kickingly good or not, at least it will provide the players with some original scenery. And there's some important story elements attached to Jobe...which will not be revealed. Yet.
Secondly, I'm putting together a revised and fully updated AO "Bible", containing information on everything from the broad history of the AO universe (going back more than 30,000 years, in fact, to the very dawn of mankind), to details on the upcoming storyline. There's stuff in the Bible that I'd like to share with all the players - how, exactly, I'm not yet sure. But I'd like to integrate this information more closely with the game, and avoid the "stick it on the website and forget about it" procedure we've often resorted to in the past. There's still some things that need to be added to the out-of-game timeline, and I still believe the website is an important resource, but I want to do most of the important upcoming storytelling inside the game.
Oops...gotta run. More later!
It's May 10th, and my apologies to anyone who's stopped by the last week expecting to find something, anything, and finding absolutely nothing, nothing at all, just a big, black void. Not completely unlike my heart and soul.
I'd write more, but that would take some effort, and I'm tired.
I'll be back to fill the void with something resembling, but quite unlike, actual content. Later. After I'm finished with my day, after I've had a relaxing evening barbecuing at my friend's place, after a good night's sleep. So, actually, tomorrow. Yes. After tomorrow, nothing will ever be the same. Sort of.
A movie-tip from Ragnar for the impending weekend:
Sexy Beast, starring a beastly (zing!)
Ben Kingsley. He is completely arresting in this movie; when he speaks, both the audience (i.e. me) and the protagonists are unable to look away. It's one of the most realistic portrayals of a truly dangerous person I've ever seen. Kingsley isn't just
pretend-bad, like the antagonists in so many other flicks; you actually believe that he's a real predator, someone you'd definitely not want to mess with under any circumstances. When he explodes, you flinch. And
Sexy Beast makes you flinch a number of times. But it's also enormously funny. It's a post-
Snatch British thriller, sans that movie's excessive - almost pornographic - visual storytelling techniques. When
Glazer cross-cuts between three different conversations to set up the back-story, the director isn't showing off; he's actually being wonderfully economic, quickly establishing a scenario in a third of the screen-time other movies might do it in. And that, believe it or not, isn't as easy as you'd think. Go
see it (or
buy it on
DVD). There are
no excuses.
I'm feeling decidedly under the weather today, and I have a pretty full evening lined up - my regular Friday work-out at six, party at nine - so I'll probably be completely wiped out tomorrow morning. Ack. It's just sooo typical that I get sick over the weekend. It never fails. I've had a sore throat all week, but it's only today that the rest of my body followed suit. It's probably just a cold, but I'm a cry-baby, so leave me alone.
Strangely enough, this morning I got up at 6:30 thinking it was 7:30. I'm never particularly bright and energetic in the mornings, but that's pretty ridiculous even by my low standards. So I ended up leaving for work at 7 AM. Yay, but not really. I just want to go to bed! Sigh.
Listening to
Shakira, and staring out the windows at the grey Oslo skies. It's pretty cold out today, and there's no sign of the spring-y-ness of last week. It went AWOL. I expect the sun to return at some point in July. Hopefully before my birthday.
Gloomy? Me? Nah.
It's Friday already? Holy crap. I haven't posted anything since Tuesday? Eek. The days pass as quickly as...really, really short days. Except the days aren't short anymore; they're quite long. What I mean is, they feel short, but they're not short. Because the sun gets up early and sets late. And there's lots of it. Sun, that is. Although most of that happens behind thick clouds. Sunlight, I mean. Yes.
(I'll stop now before I embarrass myself, 'kay?)
Been doing some really exciting work this past week, but (ack!) I can't write about it yet. See a pattern developing here? What's the point of having an online journal dedicated to my work and other creative endeavors if I can never talk about any of it? Seems quite, quite pointless to me. I'll answer some reader mail later today, and hopefully that will disguise at least part of this site's utter uselessness. Feel free to send in more. Content - especially when I don't have to come up with it - is always
appreciated.
Oh, and one last call for my informal survey. Lots of you (most of you?) have already submitted a reply, but if you haven't, here's the last reminder...ever:
If you're a Regular Reader of this site and journal, please let us (me) know! Send a (blank) e-mail (no subject needed) to
regularreader@ragnartornquist.com (all e-mails will be automatically deleted after being tallied up) if you visit this site on a regular basis: In other words, you've been here before, and you check in at least once every fortnight.
Thanks to everyone who's written in so far. You did good. My dark army is finally gatheri-- oops.
