I don’t have much to say other than what’s in the official stuff.

Here is the joint press release.

Here is the Devlog from our CEO that went out last night to our community.

The thread in our forums has reached 30 pages, almost all of it positive.

Rich Bryant tagged me, and I actually started my blog right after the last one of these hit, so I guess I’m due. Here’s how Rich describes the meme:

The task is, name the books that changed your life. As far as i know, there’s no upper or lower limit on the number of books. It’s also a tough call. When first challenged, i thought it’d be easy. Then i got stuck. Then i really, really thought about it and realized that life-changing books are rare and also that they tend to happen when you’re young enough that your life changes on a day-to-day basis.

I don’t remember enough of the books I read in school to fall back on them like Rich. Maybe that’s an indictment of our crappy American public schools, or maybe it’s just because most of the classes that involved reading books didn’t involve much math or science so I didn’t pay more attention than I absolutely had to. There are still books that changed my life, though, and here they are in no particular order:

1. Effective C++ by Scott Meyers — This is an excellent book for a C++ programmer to read, and it’s packed full of useful tips. That alone wouldn’t put it on this list, though. I’ve read plenty of useful books for programmers, but this one was the first one I ever picked up of my own accord and read cover to cover. This book taught me about C++ pitfalls, but more importantly it taught me to read for personal and professional enrichment. This might actually be the first non-fiction book I read without being forced.
2. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien — This book changed my life in many ways, most of which happened before I actually read it. Without Tolkien we wouldn’t have Dungeons and Dragons, which was an important escape for me during my miserable high school years. Without it we wouldn’t have Men In Tights-style games, which is what started the entire MMO industry. Without LotR the Middle-Earth project wouldn’t have been there to get me into the game industry. For all of these reasons, this book has been a huge impact on my life, and on the world as a whole.
3. Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes — When I was in high school I was introduced to a live-action role-playing group called the International Fantasy Gaming Society, which was founded by people trying to recreate part of the Dream Park experience. 15 years later I met my wife at an IFGS event. If that’s not life-changing I don’t know what is. These books also colors much about what I think about virtual worlds and the way they will eventually fit into society. When I eventually get sick of computer games, I might just move on to virtual world-style location based entertainment.

And here are some books that I almost put on the list above, but ultimately decided not to:

1. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card — This book makes me look at education and authority with a much more critical eye. I don’t think it had nearly the impact of the books above, but it still deserves a mention.
2. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein — This book describes a future that seemed about 10 years out when it was written in 1966. Unfortunately the space race ended and we lost interest in space as a nation, so it’s still about 10 years out. Of all the hard science fiction I’ve read, this is the one that really made me believe the world it was describing could actually happen. It’s also the book I compare all other science fiction against.

So that’s my list. It’s not long (in fact it’s so short that I felt the need to pad it with a couple of also-rans), but these books really did change my life.

I suppose I ought to pass the love along to:

Sara Jensen Schubert

Justin Miller

Kevin Maginn

Brandon Reinhart

Damion Schubert

(You may want to read parts one or two first if you haven’t already.)

In spring of 2001 I went down to San Jose, California for the Game Developer’s Conference. In the car rental terminal at San Jose airport I was in line next to a couple guys who were obviously coming into town for the conference. We made small talk while we waited our turn and then once we got our cars we went our separate ways. Meeting game developers is hard not to do in San Jose during GDC, so this was a pretty ordinary encounter.

We were staying at Motel 6 that year in an attempt to save the company money, so after I made it to the motel I had to spend a hour or so yelling at the clerk to get them to actually set aside the rooms we had reserved. The rest of the company was flying in the next day, so I wanted to make sure there would be someplace for them to sleep. Once the rooms were set, I went off in search of dinner.

2001 was a bad year for California electrically. Enron, wildfires, and record temperatures where conspiring to cause rolling brownouts for about a year, and this GDC was in the middle of that. None of the businesses in the state had their external lights on to conserve power. After driving around for 45 minutes, I still couldn’t find any place open to eat, or at least any place that had their lights on, so I ended up at the Denny’s out in front of the Motel 6. Staying at Motel 6 and eating at Denny’s. Boy that was the life.

Well it turns out that these two guys from the airport also ended up in the same Denny’s. They were just about finished, but didn’t have any place else to be so I took a seat at their table and ordered dinner.

We got to talking about about games we had worked on, and when I mentioned Middle-Earth Online, one of these guys got an excited look on his face. His name was David Michael, and he was a founder at Samu Games. Samu had a game out called Artifact, which is a 2D online strategy game. It seems that about a year earlier, in the spring of 2000, Sierra had approached Samu Games about doing a version of Artifact with the Middle-Earth license. They paid for Samu to add a few new features to their game and reskin it with hobbits and elves so they could show it off as Middle-Earth Online.

It seems that the licensing agreement between the Tolkien people and Sierra specified certain milestones at which Sierra had to show forward progress on Middle-Earth Online. One of these milestones was in 2000 and they needed to show something to Tolkien’s estate or they would lose the license. They laid off the entire Middle-Earth team in the fall of 1999, so they obviously had nothing internal to show, but by throwing a few hundred thousand dollars at Samu Games, they could get their hands on an online game set in Middle-Earth.

Samu used the money to build this reskinned Artifact and then after delivering the Middle-Earth game to Sierra, pulled all the hobbits and elves out and changes it back into Artifact 2.0. I don’t know if Sierra ever showed the result to the Tolkien estate. They certainly never released the game. They eventually lost the license, and after a few years it made its way over to Turbine. Samu didn’t know why this strange project had fallen in their laps until that dinner at Denny’s… they just knew that Sierra wanted a vaguely Middle-Earthy game, but didn’t seem to care at all about the gameplay or anything else about the game.

What a bizarre little industry we have.