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SDCC 2010: A SWTOR Managing Editor who doesn't solve problems by killing all the kittens
We all know that know that story is the fourth pillar for The Old Republic. We also know BioWare has the reputation for having some of the most compelling stories in the gaming industry. In fact, story is written into its mission statement: "BioWare's vision is to deliver the best story-driven games in the world." So it is no surprise at all that when the team came to Comic-Con this past weekend, it consisted of mostly writers. Massively's Dan O'Halloran nabbed the Managing Editor on SWTOR, Alexander Freed, for a conversation. Freed has scribed much of the story and dialogue for this epic MMO, as well as been the writer for the exciting adventures of Teneb Kel in The Blood of the Empire webcomic. Continue on after the break to catch Alexander Freed's insight into what the different types of quests will be available in SWTOR, what compelling choices players have to make, and what it takes to write for a project of this magnitude.
Blizzard Global Writing Contest now open for submissions
Fan fiction writers, gather round! Well, first, close out of all those Word documents you've been agonizing over for the past few months. You know the ones we're talking about. The ones which involve throbbing. And quivering. And Sonic the Hedgehog. Why not put your unique skill set to good (and infinitely less creepy) use, and participate in Blizzard's Global Writing Contest? The company is accepting 2,500 to 7,500-word pieces of fiction set in the Diablo, StarCraft or WarCraft universes until August 23, 2010. The grand prize winner will receive a tour of Blizzard HQ, where they'll meet the team's writing staff, and will walk away with some sweet Blizzard collectibles. Also, though the contest's FAQ doesn't explicitly prohibit it, we'd strongly advise against sending in your steamy, Kerrigan/Thrall-fronted erotic fantasy-thriller.
myTexts for iPad, distraction-free writing to go
A while back, I shared my discovery of myTexts, a robust distraction-free writing application ... well, as robust as a stripped-down, no-frills editor would want to be. Now, myTexts has shown up on the iPad, with iTunes syncing of your text files between your iPad and the desktop version. To make the deal sweeter, if you pick up the US$2.99 iPad app, you can get the Mac version (normally $19) for free. The iPad app is good-looking, and has two different editing modes. The first one you're presented with is a more illustrated interface, with faux-paper and a wooden desktop background. If you'd rather be completely undistracted, there's a full-screen mode that has nothing but your text and a keyboard (and a nearly-invisible button to go back to the menu). In the main menu mode, your files are presented on the left, and your text is on the right. You can switch files quickly, and flip from writing to the file's attached notes with a button at the top. You can export files on the iPad, and it's necessary to do so before syncing a file back through iTunes. When you export a text or myTexts format file, it shows up on your Apps screen in iTunes, where you can add and transfer files of either type. The latest version of myTexts on the Mac can read the original-format files from the iPad, maintaining any notes as well as the text. The desktop version can then interpret any Markdown, and output PDF, Word, Rich Text, HTML and more. While we're waiting for Writeroom for iPad to be finalized/approved, myTexts has swept in and offered an alternative with some great functionality and a clean interface. There are a few glitches, mostly related to attaching and detaching an external keyboard, but it's safe to assume they'll be smoothed out quickly. It's a pleasure to use as it is, and quite useful for writers. Combined with the desktop version, it's pretty powerful as well. If you pick up the iPad version, be sure to head over to moApps to get your desktop version for free!
Call for submissions: Top tips for healers
Early this year, we ran a guest post on top tips for DPSers. Just last week, we asked for your articles on top tips for tanks. (We're evaluating those submissions as we speak; the article should be published this weekend.) This week, we're going to complete the triad with a call for articles on top tips for healers. We've all heard the basics a million times ... Tell us the secrets of the very best healers! Maybe you have a list of little-known tricks used by the most experienced healers, or you'd like to share some tips to calm the nervous first-time instance or raid healer. What about the savviest moves for healers in ICC hard modes? Whatever your angle is, it should stand out and provide a top 10 list worthy of bookmarking; we'll only be accepting the very best article. Submissions should be between 500 and 1,000 words. Artwork is not mandatory, but should you choose to include a screenshot, please make sure that it is your own work or from creative commons; images should be 580 pixels wide and between 175 and 350 pixels high. Update: We will not accept articles submitted under player names or pen names; please use your real name and email. Ready to submit? Read up about our guest post program, then sign up for Seed and submit your article here. (You can't see the article page unless you have a Seed account.) Unfortunately, we are currently only able to take submissions from individuals living in the United States; we hope to be able to accept international submissions in the future. We'll accept submissions for this assignment until 11:59 p.m. EST on Thurs., June 3. Good luck and good writing!
Calling all authors: How to sell your books in the iBook store
Have you got a novel or two in your bottom desk drawer? Did you participate in the National Novel Writing Month competition last November? Are you a budding author who needs that last nudge to actually get writing? If any of these describe you, Apple has just given you a way to get your masterpiece into the iBooks store for the iPad, and you can do it yourself. You don't need a publisher, distributor, agent or anything else for that matter. You can decide how much to charge and which countries (that have an iBook store) to sell into. You also get the same deal as the app publishers, meaning that Apple takes 30% and you keep 70% of the revenue. There are some requirements though but help is available.You'll need to have: ISBN numbers for the books you want to distribute the ability to deliver the book in EPUB format the book pass EpubCheck 1.0.5 a US Tax ID (sorry world, this is only open to the US at this point) an iTunes account backed up by a credit card a fairly good idea of where you'll sell and how much you'll sell an Intel-based Mac running OS 10.5 or better (sorry PC users, their game, their rules) and meet some reasonable technical requirements
N-trig's Digital Pencil plays pen and fingertip roles, claims mastery of both
It's hard to justify rolling into summer school with just an electronic wooden ruler, but pairing that with one of N-trig's new Digital Pencils just seems like a match made in detention heaven. The company responsible for pushing out that snazzy DuoSense technology back in 2008 is hitting back with yet another digital writing instrument, with this particular one designed to work with multitouch devices. Being a part of the DuoSense family, the battery-powered device can actually act as either a fingertip (you know, for those capacitive screens) or a digitizer pen, enabling it to play nice with a smorgasbord of third-party peripherals. The company claims that the two-pronged approach will give users far more flexibility, and the DuoSense software identifies the position of the Pencil and the pressure level, removing the need for an excitation coil within the DuoSense digitizer. Curiously enough, there's no public mention of a price, but we're guessing it'll sell for far more than you're willing to pay here in just a few days.
Massively's EVE Online Tyrannis contest, part 3: Fiction-writing contest
Over the past two weeks we've been running some awesome weekly contests for readers to win EVE Online game time courtesy of CCP Games. In celebration of the upcoming launch of EVE's Tyrannis expansion, we gave away 10 PLEX in our planet screenshot contest two weeks ago. Last week, we ran a caption competition with a 15 PLEX prize total and received a flood of entries. So many in fact that we're still debating which captions should win a prize. The winners of that contest will be posted as an update to the second contest post within the next few days and the winners will all be notified via email. This week marks the last week of our Tyrannis contest trilogy and to end on a high-note we're giving away a whopping 25 PLEX. Ten top prizes of two PLEX are available and a further five runner-up entrants will get one PLEX each. To enter, all you have to do is write a short piece of fiction based on the planets and moons of New Eden and submit it to the comments on this post. Entries are limited to 200 words or less as we're sure to get a huge number of entries and we want to give each one the full attention it deserves. Your entry can take the form of a short story, a poem or any other type of written fiction. Prizes will be awarded based on creativity, writing style and presentation. As with the previous two competitions, this contest is open to readers from any country. UPDATE: Entry is now closed. We are now reading through the submissions and picking winners! UPDATE 2: Winners have been selected! The list of winners has been added to the end of this post. Each winner will be contacted via email to arrange delivery of their prizes. Skip past the cut for the contest rules and full submission guidelines.
BAFTA-winning God of War writer working on Shank
While you wouldn't think a game with a title as brutally simple as Shank would need a heavyweight in the whole "writing" department, Electronic Arts recently announced that Marianne Krawczyk, who won a BAFTA award for her work on the God of War franchise, will contribute to Klei Entertainment's action-platformer. In a recent EA press release, Krawczyk said, "we are creating a story that will allow gamers to explore a world where values like integrity and loyalty take on their own twisted meanings." We assume said story will be related between opportunities to stab things using two knives simultaneously -- a genre which is quickly becoming Krawczyk's literary bread-and-butter.
TUAW's Daily App: Space Miner: Space Ore Bust
Space Miner: Space Ore Bust is a terrific game for the iPhone -- it's an arcade game that's basically a one-stick shooter, where you move a ship around a 2D field (rendered in colorful 3D), collecting asteroid ore and taking down alien robots. But though the basic premise of the game is quite simple, there's actually a lot of depth that builds up over time, as you navigate around various zones, and upgrade your ship, your ore collector, and all of the other various parts of your space ore business. And while the gameplay is tight and fun, the best part of Space Miner (in my humble opinion) is the brilliant and hilarious script. Not only does the story of the game give you great reasons to keep going out there and blasting ore, but it's legitimately creative and funny. Chicago poet and performer Robbie Q. Telfer is listed in the credits as story editor, and that really paid off for the game -- some of the dialogue is just perfect. So yes, the game is worth a buy even at the normal $4.99 price -- but wait, there's more. Starting tomorrow, Space Miner: Space Ore Bust is going on sale for just 99 cents for a limited time to help promote the Venan Arcade's upcoming second game, the strangely titled Ninjatown: Trees of Doom. At that price, it's worth a purchase just to play through the tutorial. Definitely be sure to grab it.
Crysis 2 writer Richard Morgan hopes to avoid 'the Big Mac aesthetic'
In an interview with VG247, science fiction author Richard Morgan had some interesting things to say about his writing role on Crysis 2, the upcoming shooter set in a crumbling New York City. It's an industry role with a "soft" template, he explained, and it's not one without some familiar challenges. We're still dealing with a sequel and a superguy shooting aliens, after all. "I hate the Big Mac aesthetic of pop culture," Morgan said, "which is, you know, sequelitis: 'We're going to give people exactly what we gave them last time, because they liked it, so let's do exactly the same.'" Avoiding that aesthetic and eating healthy, as it were, requires some fresh ingredients. "If we can beat that Big Mac mentality and keep delivering fresh stuff, and something fresh gives the consumer something really fresh to do, then I'm happy, because when I'm doing fresh stuff that's when I'm most awake. With the Crytek experience so far, I'm very awake." We like the Big Mac explanation, but it's still big talk before Crysis 2 launches this holiday. Admittedly, seeing a game's writer cast in the spotlight at this stage is still uncommon -- and possibly a display of publisher EA's confidence.
Found Footage: How to write a screenplay on the iPad
Nate and Biagio over at jokeandbiagio.com have come up with a Pages hack for writing screenplays on the iPad. At this time, there are a few iPhone apps for writing screenplays, but none of them exist in an iPad version... yet. As you can see in the video above, the solution that these two Hollywood hotshots have come up with is not perfect -- they gripe about the lack of the toolbar in landscape mode in Pages for iPad as much as I do -- but it proves that screenwriting on the iPad can be done. Nate came up with a template in the Mac version of Pages '09 that includes a bunch of screenplay styles, such as CH for character, PA for parenthetical, SL for slug, AC for action, TR for transition, etc... You can download the template here -- note that if you're reading this on your iPad and have Pages for iPad installed, you can open the template directly in Pages and get started on that Oscar-winning screenplay today.
EVE player runs fiction writing contest with billions in prizes
EVE Online is a game known for its tight-knit community and emergent professions. We've seen players take on the roles of thieves, graphics artists, spies, video editors, drug runners and much more in an effort to make themselves a little ISK. Perhaps most interesting is that good writers can use their talents to make ISK through publications like EON magazine and EVE Tribune. While EON is a glossy printed magazine and EVE Tribune enjoys a purely online format, both pay volunteer writers with ISK for their articles and stories. EON in particular has always had a regular fiction segment that showcases some of EVE's best fiction writers. In the first of what he hopes to be an annual event, an EVE player by the name of Silver Night has decided to give back to the community with an EVE fiction-writing contest. The first place prize of a rare faction battleship plus 300 million ISK's worth of fittings will go to the best piece of fiction submitted. Two second place prizes of unfitted navy issue battleships are available for the second and third best pieces. With an additional four navy issue cruiser prizes for the next best four pieces, that's seven chances to win something. The competition runs until March 21st and players can submit their entries via the competition thread on the official EVE events forum.
Uncharted 2 wins Writers Guild of America games writing award
We've lived with an unspoken fear in the back of our minds since the middle of January, when the nominees for the Writers Guild of America video game writing award were first announced. We weren't sure if we could live in a world where X-Men Origins: Wolverine was decorated over Assassin's Creed 2 and Uncharted 2 for having the year's best in-game writing. Fortunately, this fear has been dissuaded: Last night at the WGA awards ceremony, Uncharted 2 writer Amy Hennig took home the prize. In a way, though, we feel bad for Ms. Hennig. How frustrating must it be to know that you can't get comfortable in your seat for too long at one of these awards shows? And can you imagine how many acceptance speeches she's had to write over the past month? The poor thing. [Thanks, Fintan!]
Anti-Aliased: What it's like to sit in the staff chair
So I drove the Aion community up a wall again. I seem to do that a lot when I talk about the game. AionSource was a little miffed at the "disappointment" award the staff and readers gave them, and decided to rip into me. So, in an effort of good faith, I dropped by the flame thread and tried to lighten things up while explaining my position on the game and how it isn't all doom and gloom. Well, after having 9 pages of people not reading what I was writing and electing to call me a nyerking nyerk, I bowed out with a new column topic on my mind: my job. If there was any common theme in all of the screaming, it was how I sucked at my job because I said Aion had a grind, I sucked at my job because I was only level 17 in Aion, everyone on that fansite could do a better job at my job than I could, and I was the reason mainstream reviews were going downhill. (Awesome.) Amazingly enough, I too thought pretty much those exact same things before I got a job here. But writing here for two years has been one heck of an experience, and maybe today I can give you some insight to the things I see on the staff side of the fence.
Felicia Day says The Guild comic is coming in Spring 2010
Felicia Day told us back at BlizzCon that she was going to go undercover for a little while as The Guild's latest season wrapped up, but undercover for this woman seems to mean that she's only in two TV shows and prepping for a comic book release. She showed up in last night's Lie to Me episode, singing, and in this interview over at Newsarama from the Video Game Awards with Sandeep Parikh (who himself just showed up in Tiki Bar TV -- slightly NSFW, language) she says she's still working on the unfortunately canceled Dollhouse as well. So that's where Eliza Dushku got her addiction from. She also says that the Dark Horse published Guild comic book is due out in spring of next year -- Jim Rugg is working on the art right now -- and fans of The Guild may even get a little Christmas present from the show and Microsoft. We'll keep an eye out for that for sure. So even though we're in between seasons (and we assume that season 4 is upcoming next year, even though we haven't heard an official announcement on that yet), there's lots of Guild goodness to go around.
Friday Favorite: Ommwriter, the Zen word processor for writers
More Friday Favorites, the apps, tools and accessories that we love to share. As a writer, I love Scrivener. It's great for managing large and complex projects. But for shorter pieces, this blog post for example, I've found a new favorite, Ommwriter. Brett first mentioned the beta of Ommwriter here a few weeks ago. Ommwriter is unique as a word processor for several reasons. It only has a full screen workspace. It lacks several of the options of most other word processors (you can only write in three fonts and three font sizes). Even when you minimize its window, there is no Mac-like genie effect – Ommwriter just fades away. But its Zen-like minimalism and lack of options are the point. Ommwriter puts you in the middle of a secluded snowy landscape on a foggy winter's day. As relaxing music calms you, the words you type appear on your screen as if you were writing them in the sky. It's just you and your thoughts for miles around. And, from just three writings, I can tell you Ommwriter does its job exceptionally well. When I write in it, within minutes I no longer hear the sounds of busy London city life zooming past my flat. You really have to use it to get a good idea of how well it works. For a quick look, check out the video below. In addition to the snowy landscape there are seven built-in soundtracks and images you can choose from. The guys at a Barcelona creative agency called Herraiz Soto & Co. [Ed. note: this link is now broken, sorry for the inconvenience] originally designed Ommwriter as an in-house tool to help their creative people get their thoughts flowing. Now it's available in beta to Mac users here. Let me know what you think of Ommwriter in the comments! Thanks, Charlie Omniwriter from David Wogan on Vimeo.
The Daily Quest: Guild switching
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Everyone's playing guild musical chairs: Sheep Blink Invis just disbanded one of their guilds, We Fly Spitfires wants to find one, Nibuca's working on names for hers, and Hots and Dots is seeking mages for theirs. Hopefully we made at least one match in there somewhere. Good luck to you guildless folks! Grandpappy Frostheim says Hunters these days have no respect, I tell ya. Planet of the Hats has a nice long post up about "gear pollution," a growing problem in the game. And OutDPS tells you how to hunt for Heroic Northrend Beasts. The encounter, not the actual beasts themselves. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Prince of Persia dialogue writer wins UK Writer's Guild award
The 2008 reboot of the Prince of Persia franchise (which, apparently, is getting shut down) featured some of the most enjoyable snark and pith we've ever heard in a video game. Fortunately, Andy Walsh, the man responsible for the Prince and Elika's sharp-tongued exchanges, was recently recognized for his witty dialogue when he won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Games Award last night in London. Normally, this is where we'd drop in a quote from Walsh about how excited he was to receive the award, but it doesn't seem that anyone initiated the optional dialogue with him following the Writers' Guild awards ceremony. Too bad, something tells us we've missed out on the best part.
Ommwriter, an extra helping of zen for writers
As part of our Back to School series last year, I covered some of my favorite writing tools. Many of the writing applications I've mentioned there and elsewhere have full-screen, distraction-free editing modes, ala WriteRoom, which gets plenty of mention here at TUAW. The full-screen editing feature now seems to be a standard, and most apps that offer the option do a fine job of implementing it. Therefore, if one was to write an app along the lines of WriteRoom, it would have to do something out of the ordinary to get any traction. Ommwriter, a new single-purpose writing app, does just that. The whole idea behind Ommwriter is to provide a zen-like atmosphere, not just a blank screen. While conforming well to standard text controls in OS X, it creates an interface that's quite pleasing to the eye. The ears are not left wanting, though, and the app provides a choice of several background soundscapes to help block out distractions. You only have 3 fonts to choose from, and they cannot be intermingled. There's no access to the menubar, just a series of rather elegant controls to the side of the resizable writing area. The background is gray, with optional faded landscape scenery. It's quite pretty, and is quite conducive to concentration ... and writing, of course.
World of WarCrafts: The storyteller
World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations. Tight-knit player communities are what keep many WoW players logging in day after day, week after week. These lucky realms are woven together by energized individuals, tailors of camaraderie who give generously of their time and creativity. Korialstrasz player Snuffy wrote to WoW.com recently to throw some light on one of his realm's unsung heroes: "Tazeria is a well known Alliance rogue who has taken the server by storm through her stories. Using players from the realm, she has written 13 chapters in her story, each one gaining the praise and admiration of those that read. It's become an honor when Tazeria whispers you to ask you questions about how you would picture your character if he/she was real." Tazeria posts her tales, blending the in-game and real-life foibles of Korialstrasz players, on the realm forums as well as donated space on the Vindication guild forums. "I was lucky enough to be asked to host her stories on our website," wrote Snuffy. "Nothing brings the server together like the stories that Tazeria has written."
