Behind the Times, 3

On Thursday my last Paragon Times articles went up on City of Heroes, to a wonderful reception. Between this week’s and last week’s piece, I’ve certainly ended on a high-note. The Outbreak Plague / Foiled Breakout piece got 398 comments in the official thread, while the President Marchand / Dastardly Duo piece has received 299 posts and spawned at least two other threads of note. Not too shabby.

I spent of chunk of Saturday browsing the comments – it’s always exciting to see what people think, good or bad (just not indifferent) – about a piece. The most common theories seem to be:

* Alternate Timeline
* Parallel Dimension
* Multiple Timelines (Crisis on Finite Servers!)
* Jesse screwing with people on his way-out-the-door (can’t catch me now, suckas!)
* or a typo. Which is probably my favorite answer.

These articles were a lot of fun to write, as I’m sure is obvious. There was a lot to draw from. There are a number of subtle clues within them, many of which have been brought up. There are also a handful of in-jokes, most (but not all) of which have been mentioned.

People have also asked if there are mistakes in either piece (there were some typos in the first that have since been corrected – whew!). The only typo that I’ll acknowledge in the newest piece is “Columbian” should be “Colombian.” A few people didn’t like my Spanglish quote of “Los United States,” but in my defense it’s a bit of dialect taken from Across the Wire by Luis Alberto Urrea (great book), where he uses the phrase “los Yunaites Estaites.” Now I realize one is Mexico and one is Colombia, so I may be flat out wrong here, but it was an educated guess as to how a regular joe in the Colobmian army might speak.

Oh, and I *think* people are making an association between President Marchand’s power-armor and Iron Man/Tony Stark, because the reporter’s name is James Stark. Except, I’m not. James Stark has been “my” reporter since my first times, and was always intended to be the alter-ego to Arctic Sun.

I’m really thrilled at how much people enjoyed these stories. A shame my third piece – a 17 minute youtube interpretative dance clip involving mimes playing Citadel, Numina, Mako, and Snaptooth – was deemed too costly.

Posted in CoH, Games, Writing on September 30, 2007 by Jesse
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Technical Difficulties

Sorry the site was offline for the last two days. We were experiencing some technical difficulties. The tech-gods should now be appeased.

Posted in General on September 29, 2007 by Jesse
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Behind the Times, 2

Today marks the first of two special edition Paragon Times features. (Paragon Times: Outbreak Plague / Guards Foil Breakout)

As I said last time, I wanted to discuss the process of crafting an issue of the Paragon Times.

The Subject

I always believed the Paragon Times should focus on something eventful happening in the game. Ideally an edition would coincide with the lead up to a new Issue (game update), an in-game event, or the wrap-up of an Issue or in-game event.

I’m not very big on “slice of life” or “human interest stories” except when done very well (in this case it would have to be something that spotlights a player-character or group, and tells it in an engaging way).

(more…)

Posted in CoH, Games, Writing on September 20, 2007 by Jesse
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Behind the Times

The Paragon Times – one of the more challenging projects I’ve dealt with on City of Heroes.

It’s on my mind as we have a special double-length edition coming out this week. (Check the official site, natch.)

A Paragon Times article (“Statesman’s Strike”) was one of my first projects after I joined the City of team in Austin. It was to promote the end of beta launch event for City of Villains, and like many of my newspaper-style writings took a lot of influence from the headlines of the time.

After that I did just a handful – one for the Winter event, one for the relaunch of Pocket D (the combined space for Heroes and Villains to do the Time Warp again), then a huge gap until the next Halloween…clearly the Times was being left behind.

And it was. I was more focused on trying out different styles on the Backgrounders and pushing other elements of the web page. We added a few more Official Guides (and for awhile I was working on a number of others games as well as CoH, and just didn’t have the time). But a number of players would ask me, not often but regularly, “Hey, what happened to the Times?” I didn’t realize how important it was to them – because to them, it was another feature of the game, and one which helped convey the sense that Paragon City was evolving and organic, too.

And that’s one of the fascinating things about an MMO (or potentially any expanding game with a strong social network). People invest a lot into their characters and the world, and they (not all of them, of course, but many) want to see it expand and change and grow. We all know that developers never have enough time or resources to put in everything they want into a game, and we also know that players can’t be in the game 24/7 (again, most players), but tools like the Paragon Times are a way to serve both groups.

Web fiction can help developers expand their world-story in a relatively cheap and quick manner. One of the Cryptic Crew, Archon Voss (and I think also War Witch) has mentioned how they put in construction sites into the game for a time before they were ready to put in the arena buildings. The Paragon Times can be used the same way, and we did some of that for the most recent Rikti invasion event.

We actually had 4 newspaper articles to promote the event. During the lead-up we had a fan written “A City Remembers,” which was written without knowing the Invasion event was coming, but nicely reflected on the first Rikti invasion. Then we had the “Senate Questions Vanguard” piece, which suggested that some thought the paramilitary organization, Vanguard, was no longer needed – obviously foreshadowing that in fact it was definitely needed, and would be soon!

To coincide with the actual event itself, the Paragon Times exclaimed, “Invasion!” in the headlines. Then we wrapped it up with another player-written piece, “Vanguard Reports Success,” summarizing several players’ perspectives on the event.

Next entry, I’ll try to explain a bit more on the process of creating a Paragon Times article, and what I’ve learned in the process.

Posted in CoH, Writing on September 18, 2007 by Jesse
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Blackwater out of Iraq

Lots of people were reporting yesterday that Blackwater’s license was being revoked in Iraq.

From the AP article:

BAGHDAD – The Iraqi government said Monday that it was revoking the license of an American security firm accused of involvement in the deaths of eight civilians in a firefight that followed a car bomb explosion near a State Department motorcade.
…
Tens of thousands of foreign private security contractors work in Iraq — some with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bulletproof vehicles — to provide protection for Westerners and dignitaries in Iraq as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war.

Many of the contractors have been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys, but none has faced charges or prosecution.

I did a bit of research on mercenary groups when I was writing Silver Age Sentinels, and have come back to that research when working on a few of the villain groups for City of Heroes. At that time I was primarily reading about Sandline International and Executive Outcomes (which is basically defunct, and/or morphed into a new beast).

They are fascinating and scary, and stories of paramilitary groups now hit closer to home as they are so heavily integrated into US activities. We’re no longer talking about Latin American dirty wars or “protecting” diamond mines in Sierra Leone…Blackwater guys were prominent in Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans, fer chrissakes.

Blackwater (and similar groups) have taken up a lot of the responsibilities normally thought of as for the US army.

The wartime numbers of private guards are unprecedented — as are their duties, many of which have traditionally been done by soldiers. They protect U.S. military operations and diplomats and have guarded high-ranking officials including Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad.

They also protect journalists, visiting foreign officials and thousands of construction projects.

Blackwater has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq, and at least $800 million in government contracts. It is one of the most high-profile security firms in Iraq, with its fleet of “Little Bird” helicopters and armed door gunners swarming Baghdad and beyond.

It amazes me that high ranking army officers – like Gen. Petraeus – are bodyguarded by an independent firm (!!!). I mean, I’d guess that most of the Blackwater guys (at least those involved in a mission like this) are former US military, but c’mon, why can’t the US army protect its own guys, exactly?

Will Blackwater be thrown out of Iraq? Not really my focus, but a lot of people don’t think so. Pundits suggest they are too essential to the US mission, and thus either nothing will actually happen or perhaps a light slap on the wrist. We’ll see.

In the meantime, one of these days I need to pick up Jeremy Scahill’s book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Posted in Current Events, Underbelly on by Jesse
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Pitch Expo – Follow-Up

Last week’s Pitch Expo Toronto was a blast. Devinder and I went, not quite knowing was to expect, but it was a very positive experience over all.

There were about 17 companies represented (or 15 in person, and 2 who couldn’t make it but were taking written submissions). You received a booklet that detailed the companies, what they had done, and most importantly what they were (and in some cases weren’t) looking for. A lot of Canadians, of course, including Showcase, the Movie Network, and CBC, but a few Americans, and even an agent for the BBC.

We targeted 5 companies that seemed most suited for the Western Horror feature script we had in hand, and presented our logline and one-pager as best we could. There were moments when waiting in line felt a little “American Idol,” but overall we spent the time reviewing our notes and chatting with the people around us.

The five pitches all went quite well. Now, we need to burn through the 2nd draft and get it out to a few people.

Posted in General on September 11, 2007 by Jesse
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Bioware: Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

I regret not being able to hit AGDC this year, as it was a tremendous learning experience last year. However, being in Toronto, and still recovering from GenCon and post-GenCon travels, it wasn’t to be. Still, I got to go to Pitch Expo Toronto, which may well have been more worthwhile.

But I saw this article today, on Slashdot. Zonk covers Bioware’s Writing Seminar from the Austin GDC.

How They Do It

The core of the BioWare writing process would sound familiar to most programmers: iterate, iterate, iterate. To that end, the company aims to get writers involved in a game’s creation early in the process. They make it a point to have a writer in the room during the broad concept stage of game creation. From an org char perspective, writers are a part of the design department. Currently the company has 73 designers on 5 projects, with 26 of those folks being members of the writing team. Titles on the writing team include lead writers and managing editors, writers, and technical editors.

Projects are broken out into three distinct phases: Prototyping, Pre-Production, and Production. Prototyping is primarily early story and setting concepting, looking for new ideas, trying to figure out how to do things in a different way. They ask how they can explore the IP they’re working on while staying true to the core concept. This is the ‘cheapest’ phase of the work, by far. Pre-Production, then, is about nailing things down: defining characters and story arcs, and working out systems and work pipelines. Production is the longest phase by far, with several distinct sub-phases making it up. This is all about generating the guts of the game, and the goal is to know what the company is going to make before they get here.

Posted in Games, Writing on by Jesse
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Trickster Makes the World

Starting collecting info on tricksters again for another script project – in a fit of madness the other night, I labeled the project an “urban fable.” Kind of pretentious really, but what the hell…

Nice Wiki page on Tricksters. Though it’s kind of an odd-mash-up of info, with an extended section on Coyote, but no one else (on that page). The few sub-pages I clicked through seem pretty decent, though.

On the same motif, I recently reread Charles De Lint’s Someplace to be Flying this past spring. De Lint’s Crow girls are terrific, as are most of the animal people in that book.

Of course I also picked up Tim Power’s Last Call again, because it is awesome.

And I should also reread Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore – some great scenes in Vegas.

On the to read list:

Trickster Makes the World, by Lewis Hyde

Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman

Hustler Days, by R.A. Dyer

Declare, by Tim Powers

But I’m always up for recommendations.

Posted in Underbelly, Writing on September 10, 2007 by Jesse
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Come Out And Play!

Sometimes writing is the hardest thing in the world.

“There’s nothing to writing. It’s dead easy. All you have to do is get a piece of paper and stare at it until your forehead bleeds.”
–From an unnamed American sportswriter, quoted by Douglas Adams

(Although the Interweb also attributes the quote to Gene Fowler, but I don’t have the energy tonight to figure out the truth. The Douglas Adams answer feels right).

I just updated the City of Heroes web site tonight with my write-up for The Warriors.

(You can read the backgrounder, if you so choose).

This update has seemingly been months in the writing. That’s not entirely true, but I started it at a really bad time. I began the project right before we began the marketing push for Issue 10, the last big update to City of Heroes. I had to turn my attentions away from this and to the numerous fiction updates we used to promote I10. (The Invasion piece was my favorite)

And as soon as the I10 launch wrapped, I had to prepare for GenCon – which was a tremendous amount of fun as ever, but it killed 2-3 weeks of my focus. And immediately upon returning from GenCon, I’ve been involved in several High Level brainstorming sessions for Issue 11.

Furthermore, starting a piece is always the toughest part. I need an angle, or hook, to figure out how I’m going to tackle it. The Knives of Artemis were comparatively easy, as they have such a rich mystical tradition, and several well-established archetypes in comic lore.

Similarly the Sky Raiders were easy because I’ve done a lot of reading of paramilitary groups for other RPG projects, and have read a fair bit about groups like Executive Outcomes (now defunct) and Black Water. The Sky Raiders are scarey when put in the context of the real world, and that’s always a great hook for me.

One of the things that did help was going through the character testimonials and seeing how the players view this group. Looking at their toughness and resilience and grit, in the face of such amazing super powers, was a good starting point. While framing up the character testimonials, I was able to get into the proper headspace long enough to get through the rest of the update. Overall I’m happy with it, though it’s far from my favorite.

Now to figure out my next angle…

Posted in CoH, Writing on September 6, 2007 by Jesse
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Preparing to Pitch

Dev and I spent the day together working on our pitch for the upcoming Pitch Expo Toronto, working out a logline and a one-pager. Amazing how tiring it can be to write so bloody few sentences — and how hard it is to condense 30,000 words into about 30. Yoikes!

I spent a large part of the weekend looking for advice or suggestions on how to create the logline. There’s a fair bit out there, and of course some of it is contradictory, but in essence you want to boil your story down to 1 or 2 sentences, roughly 20 to 30 words. You’re not trying for the High Concept (that’s the “it’s like Jaws meets The Big Lebowski” line) or the tagline (“You’ll believe a man can fly…”).

The logline is intended to convey the dramatic story of your screenplay in as tight a manner as possible. You want to convey:
Who is your protagonist or hero?
What is the protagonist’s goal?
Who or what is the antagonist? (The force preventing the protagonist from achieving his goal.)

Simple, right?

Across my search, I found these resources:

* The Inside Pitch is a blog by Christopher Lockhart that seemingly is no more, but it had a good article on sample loglines and decent criticism.

* Christopher Lockhart also has this essay, “I Wrote a 120 Page Script But Can’t Write a Logline”

* This essay by Rob Tobin, “Make Your Log-line Shine,” is selling a course (which I always find a bit dodgy on the net, but whatever…), but had some good elements.

*This forum thread at Absolute Write had some good ideas, too.

* “Writing Longlines that Sell” by Jonathan Treisman.

* “Tips on Loglines” on Inktip.

Posted in Writing on September 3, 2007 by Jesse
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