If by chance you don’t know that, you have never spent any time talking to me. Don’t worry though, I’ll clear that up right now.

The truth is, I like role-playing games. I like them a lot. I don’t mean WoW or Final Fantasy 9000. I mean games like Dungeons and Dragons. I never write about it, because I find it hard to take any pride in it.

I think, that I’ll write about it anyway though because it’s one more topic for me to blather about and, well, I really shouldn’t give a shit anyway.

My first exposure to a role-playing game was really on a MUD. MUD stands for Multi-User Dungeon. They are completely text based and played through terminal. You go from room to room, reading descriptions and writing your own.

I don’t know if it’s possible to make that sound any more lame, but let me try.

I played for years. I played long enough that I became a developer for it. I did fixes on the code, added to the world, and helped run the role-playing parts of the game too. I even wrote the book on how to role-play in the game.

Through people I met there, I got introduced to Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. Get this, I thought that was lamer than what I did. I actually assumed a hierarchy to this stuff, and that I was higher on the ladder.

I was hooked after my first session.

It was better than any game I had ever played. It was better for one simple reason: There are no limits in the game. It’s not like a video game where there are doors you just can’t go into, or you walk to the edge of the map and hit a wall of hard air, or you can’t be a total bastard to someone just because.

I spent all day gaming today. I had a really good time with it playing games I had never played before with people I had never met.

My only complaint is this: I wish gamers would stop trying so hard to be so god damn unlikeable.

If it weren’t for that I think the hobby would be a lot better received and accepted.

So, if you’ve ever wondered about it, find someone you like that plays and give it a shot. You might be surprised to find out you had a good time by the end of it.

Now before anyone does something silly like try to tell me how sorry they are, please read what I have to say first.

I’m not upset, and I haven’t stopped working for the company. Here are some highlights of my 11 months of being employed: I went to SOE and worked with their engineers for a week, I’ve been on tech calls with senior developers at 3 different MMO companies, I’ve spent the day with some of Valve’s team and got all of their games for free (Though I still need a computer to run them).

Crazy right? Here’s the deal. We knew for a while now that our company was out of money. We kept going because we thought we were going to get a break. Unfortunately we didn’t get the break before it was impossible to make payroll again. So we were all laid off.

That isn’t the end of the world because we knew it was coming. Also, not two days prior we had a meeting where we talked about, “If you had to swing one time for the fences, what would you do?” I had previously voiced my ideas, and they were tolerated but not accepted. However, someone else had a really good idea that we just had to give a fighting chance.

I’m not going to talk about what that idea is, but since getting laid off a few weeks ago we have come a long way in getting it done.

Enough talk of that though, because I have had a second interview with a pretty cool company and I think I’ll be able to get a job with them. Then everything will be gravy again.

I started an iPhone game a few weeks ago, something I’d tinker with on the weekends. It’s been coming together at an alarming rate and I hope that as soon as I get some art for it it will be a quick turn around to get it on the app store. Though the cruel reality is that I’ll just abandon it like many of my other projects.

I have nearly finished a little experiment on player immersion. I got the idea when I was listening to Robert Rice‘s talk on video game immersion at TGC. He broke down elements of immersion and helped draw connections between technology and it’s impact on player’s experience.

Anyway, I still have 3 things to do. I’m going to be getting art from Ciara Livingston, someone I work with at the bookstore, whose style is perfect for this, edit all of the text for better style and impact, and finally get the final voice recording for the closing.

I can’t count. The fourth thing I need to so is create a Google form to collect information on the experiment so I can get an idea of how good it is or how much of a waste of time it is.

Anyway, here’s the link.

This is a new paragraph.

I know kung fu.

After being inspired at the Triangle Game Conference, I decided to open up some projects.  First, I’m writing a simple little experiment that will hopefully prove some ideas I have on immersing players in a story.  I’ve already done the technical work, so I just have to create content.  Thankfully I made it a point to do this rather low tech, so it wont’ require much, but I have got an artist to help.  Her name is Ciara Livingston and I think her artwork will only make this better.  I’ve also convinced my wife to do a voice recording.  Exciting stuff!

In the job world, I’ve started a project that involves actual software development.  Web development specifically.  I’m creating a web tool that will modify apache configurations live.  I don’t think anyone has done this before, mostly because it isn’t something you want a lot of people to go around doing.  Either way, it’s an exciting change of pace from my normal system administration work.

On Sunday my wife and I will have been married two years.  Holy shit.