My Austin GDC Talk

Killing two birds with one stone here -- I am both responding to Speedman's complaint that I haven't updated in a while, and pimping my AGC talk.

I haven't been updating because I had expected by this time to have something to talk about with Heatwave. Surprise surprise, there's nothing to talk about yet. We're still at the funds-seeeking stage; although we keep getting good referrals and having good meetings, nothing tangible has happened yet. Once we're funded and able to start working on our own title, though, Anthony and I have discussed switching over to a collective Heatwave blog, where he and I (and maybe some of the other members of the team) regularly update on the process of development. We thought this would be interesting, particularly for folks who want to make games but are not in the industry. What do you think? Comment form is below, God (& Blogger.com) willing.

About my talk: I submitted a proposal to give a talk at AGC this year. The talk is called Dupes, Speed Hacks and Black Holes: How Players Cheat in MMOs. It's a hands-on look at actual problems I encountered on Ultima Online, what caused them, and how we fixed them. The talk is not in the bag -- they are doing something new this year, called "People's Choice". Instead of deciding what talks to feature at the show, they have set up an online poll to let participants vote. I applaud the idea, though I don't think they've done a very good job communicating it (if I had read their newsletter, I would have known about it, but the TOC didn't make it clear what this was and so I hit delete). So: if you're going to GDC, and you'd like the opportunity to heckle me, go sign up and vote before July 27. Even if you're not going to vote for my talk, you should still do it -- help pick the lectures that you want to see at this year's conference.