Blog

If you plan to attend WorldCon 2025 in Seattle this year, the full event schedule is now available here. Some people may be interested in tracking me down. If some people are you, here is my schedule.

Continue reading “My WorldCon 2025 Schedule”

Continue reading “Play Log: Metal Gear Solid [PS1]”

To tea or not to tea, that is the question.

Continue reading “Review: Fire Emblem Three Houses Fódlan Teas [In Progress]”

Continue reading “Play Log: Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX2)”

Day 1 

I’ve actually taken a quick run at this before when I saw it was included in the Vita version of MGS3.  For reference, I bought that in 2017, so it’s been five years since then.  I got frustrated pretty quickly and put it down, but now I’m back for revenge – Snake’s Revenge.  I’m also using a guide so I don’t just wander around dying and losing all my progress repeatedly.  Ain’t nobody got time for that, I have a franchise to tackle!

Continue reading “Play Log: Metal Gear (1987, MSX2)”

On Hallowe’en Eve, 2022, I made a perhaps foolish decision, announced publicly in a thread on Resetera, that I was going to finally try and finish not only my first Metal Gear franchise game, but all of the canonical ones, and write up my thoughts and experiences while playing each one.

Continue reading “Metal Gear Project”

tl note: In this interview, Kanno is referred to as Kenno, as he was sometimes credited as “Yukihiro Kenno”.

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Full Translation of 並 列世界 [“Parallel Worlds”]
Interview With Kanno Hiroyuki
Sega Saturn Magazine, Vol. 24, July 18-24 1997

Aiming for a system that doesn’t blindfold you

―I know that some of our readers have never played YU-NO before. First of all, please tell us about the key aspects in YU-NO.

Kenno: A.D.M.S (Adams), a new multi-system, will be the key element. It stands for “Auto Diverge Mapping System,” which directly translates to “automatic branch mapping function.” In conventional games with branching narratives, it is difficult to identify the branching points in the story. It can be fun to look for branches, but at the same time, there are times when you have to look at the same scene over and over again, and you have to go through a sometimes annoying trial and error process. A.D.M.S. was created to solve this problem.

Depending on the player’s actions and decisions, the story will branch out and be created in a variety of ways. A.D.M.S. is a visual map that displays the branching situation in a tree (see previous page), and a chime (sound effects) is sounded when a branching point approaches, allowing players to grasp the situation with their eyes and ears. Checking your position on the map, collecting various items and information, and navigating various branching worlds…… This is [A.D.M.S].

Continue reading “Translation: “Parallel Worlds” [Interview with Hiroyuki Kanno, Sega Saturn Magazine, Vol. 24, 18 July 1997]”

At GDC 2018, I was hurrying through the convention center (frazzled, no doubt, about my upcoming talk about designing Frog Fractions 2’s narrative and alternate reality game) when an unobtrusive flyer on a table caught my attention.  “Get on board the early hype train for the new Narrative Interactive Fiction Adventure Games Convention” it read, and I was intrigued.

Continue reading “Why NarraScope? Motivations for Organizing a Game Narrative Conference”

On February 9, 2019, I interviewed Johnnemann Nordhagen of Dim Bulb Games about his game Where The Water Tastes Like Wine, the role of storytelling and narrative in interactive media, the politics of representation in video games and America as a national myth.  The interview was conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation research at the University of Southern California, and can be heard at the Red Pages Podcast website.