Game Design, Personal, Writing

Wow, haven’t updated in a while.

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It’s been a long time since I last updated, let me summarize what has been going on. I’m still in community college, though I am no longer at Santa Monica College. Now I’m taking my courses at El Camino College which is much closer to where I live and I am thriving there. I’m finally going to have enough credits in my major to apply to a four year school. Currently I plan to apply to USC, UC Irvine, UCSB, UC Davis, UC San Diego, CSU Long Beach, and University of Texas – Austin. The vast majority of these schools either have programs that will help me with my ultimate goal of becoming a video game designer or are close to video game studios I can intern at.

I am sad to say that my hectic schedule has left me little opportunity for creative ventures. It is something I hope to remedy soon but it is unlikely I will get anything done in what I really want to do anytime soon. My mentality is that I’m eating my vegetables so that I can enjoy my dessert but I fear that I must finish these vegetables quickly before my dessert gets cold.

Writing

Submission time!

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Let it be known that the work on my new story still continues.

I have submitted the story I wrote for the Writer’s Digest story competition to Clarksworld, a science-fiction webzine. They’re certified as a qualified short story venue by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), which means they’re legit and getting a story published on their website counts as a single credit toward getting a membership in the SFWA.

The SFWA is the same organization that hosts the Nebula Awards so I trust their judgement.

Thanks to the online submission system they’ve implemented I can find out if I’ve been accepted or rejected sooner rather than later. I will find out if I’m in consideration for publishing later this week if I’m lucky!

Game Design, Writing

The Goal Has Been Set

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 I ran across this the other day:

http://www.arts.gov/grants/apply/Lit/GrantProgDescription.html

Apparently, every two years, the NEA awards a $25,000 grant for creative writing in prose and poetry categories. Unfortunately, I am too late to apply for the 2010 grant but I can still start work for the 2012 grant.

In order to qualify I must either write and publish:

  • 5 short stories published in at least two different publications
  • A collection of short stories
  • A novel or novella

I can’t self-publish anything, I can’t collaborate with anyone, and I can’t be employed at the publisher that publishes my work.

Sounds like quite the challenge, but I’m up to it. This could well be the incentive I need to write enough stories to either get this grant or get hired at Blizzard or Cryptic as a quest/content designer. I’ve started my first story this week and if it progresses at the speed it’s going right now I should be done with it by the end of April.

Writing

Bad News

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Unfortunately it appears that I did not win the Genre Short Fiction competition being held by the Writer’s Digest. I’m not disappointed because I knew getting into it I would be up against a lot of tough competition.

Still I would have been happy to have gotten that $2,500.

Video Game News

Mass Insanity

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Last week, Fox News aired a segment on the sex scenes in BioWare’s game Mass Effect seen above. In the segment Fox has two “experts” discuss the sex scenes in Mass Effect. One is Geoff Knighley, host of Spike TV’s GameTrailers TV. The other is Cooper Lawrence, author of the book The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace With Your Inner Overachiever. In the segment, Cooper Lawrence grossly exaggerates the nude scene in Mass Effect and even suggests that a game which was clearly rated M was actually marketed to young teenage boys. Geoff Knighley then asks Ms. Lawrence if she has ever played Mass Effect to which Cooper laughs and says bluntly, “No.”

It was disgusting. To criticize any work of art without ever seeing it is unprofessional. Yet here it was, right on national television.

Naturally, many gamers were disgusted by this act and responded by posting negative reviews of her book on Amazon.com. Many of these reviews mentioned that they had never read the book.

Some would say it is a taste of her own medicine, but isn’t this just stooping to her level? When we go down to their level, no one has the higher ground. As a community surely we gamers are better than this. Give them your opinion directly. Write The Live Desk w/ Martha MacCallum and write Cooper Lawrence about their unprofessionalism.

Live Desk w/ Martha MacCallum (martha@foxnews.com)

Cooper Lawrence (ItsCoopy@aol.com)

The world is watching…