The Roads Out of Appalachia

This is part of the So Far Appalachia book project. If you enjoy what you read, please vist my Kickstarter page (and pass this along to any friends who you think might find this interesting). * * * Growing up, I always considered Appalachia as some mystical place forgotten in time. I say this full well […]

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Revelation Trail

A few years ago, a former colleague of mine started working on a little movie project. Before long, he had a big movie project. And now, well, he has this: Revelation Trail: You can check out the film’s YouTube site or it Facebook page.

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A Return to Ultima (ish)

A few years ago, it seemed as if the MMORPG world had passed Richard Garriott by. He’d had two rather contentious breakups with corporations, Electronic Arts and NCSoft, and he seemed more interested in pursuing his dream of going to outer space. Two years ago, Garriott re-emerged at the SXSW Accelerator, an event I emcee […]

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A Very SXSW Interactive 2013 Recap

Every year, South by Southwest Interactive changes for me. When I first started coming in the mid-1990s, I wrote about music and stumbled upon technology. By 1998, I’d largely abandoned the music conference for what we now call Interactive. I was a journalist, then a moderator, then a panelist, and now I’m a mixture of […]

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Games, Violence, and What We Know

In 2001, John  and I were approached by McGraw Hill with a book idea that explored the research behind video games and violence. As fate would have it, we were nearly finished with a proposal about games and communities. While we rejected the idea of a book based on violence, we did include a chapter […]

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The Strangest Phone Call I Ever Made

This is apropos of nothing: Ten years ago, I called a friend of mine. I hadn’t spoken to him in several years, and I don’t exactly remember why I was calling him. I know I was visiting my home, and I probably wanted to go have a drink. What made the call stranger was that […]

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Space: The Final Frontier

Like so many in my generation, I grew up watching the launch of NASA’s Space Shuttles. For years, we would gather in lunch rooms and classrooms to celebrate the triumph of American science ingenuity as we rocketed into space. I remember watching in awe as those massive shuttles fired into space. I was memerized by […]

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The Tenth Year Edition

The more we do this, the more I think we sound like Axl Rose…but for the first time in a long time, I’ve blocked out 1/2 a month work exclusively on the Second Edition of Dungeons and Dreamers, which now also makes it likely the Tenth Anniversary Edition of the book. Regardless of delay and […]

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