Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Eek. We might be about to find out if Tim Schafer’s crowd-funding of a game is one-off lightning in a bottle, or a viable alternative for developers to work outside of publishers. Chris Avellone, the lead developer of isometric RPG classic Planescape Torment and current creative director of Obsidian Entertainment, responded to Michael Antonelli’s suggestion on Twitter that “I’d kickstart $500 for an old school isometric RPG. For Planescape 2? $1000” by stating:

Hmmmm. I admit, I’ve got Kickstarter fever now. I feel like a bunch of doors suddenly appeared in game development.

I took his temperature, readers, and he was boiling hot.

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Hmm. It’s proving quite the day for PC Game/Sequential Art cross-over. Following on from the L4D2 comic I noticed an interview at Comic Book Resources with Obsidian’s Chris Avellone about writing the Fallout: New Vegas prequel comic that Dark Horse are publishing. There’s been an upsurge of gaming comics in the last few years, with the first issue of Wildstorm’s Gears of War comic being apparently the biggest selling of the year… but it’s still relatively rare that they’re actually written by the creative minds behind the games themselves. It’ll be out on in Hardback on October 19th – the same day as its US release – and has a rather lovely hyper-detailed Geoff Darrow cover. If you’ve got an Iphone or Ipad, you can view a full preview here. I haven’t so, will just have to twiddle my fingers. Of course, with an Eisner-nomination for his Clone Wars comic work, Chris is hardly a newcomer to the medium, so it will hopefully be acceptably nifty.

Since the second-string to my bow is a comics writer, I obviously scanned the Eisners list to see if any of my mates, peers or people who I bought drinks for once had been short-listed for anglophone comics most prestigious awards. So I’d seen Ivan Brandon’s 24/7 anthology, Jonathan Hickman’s Nightly News and Jason Aaron’s Scalped got nods. Hell, even my eye-rolling at Casanova not getting nominated again was leavened by Fraction getting a little appreciation for his Spider-fellow pictorial narrative and his Immortal Iron Fist with Mr Brubaker. But I didn’t realise, until commenter Briosafreak mailed me, that Obsidian’s Chris “Will forever have Planescape Torment in this gap” Avellone is included in a nomination. Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures is in the best Kids comic category, to which Avellone contributed stories in issues 7 and 10. So a hearty congratulations to him.

And while we’re talking developers and comics, someone call Grant Morrison, yeah?

[A version of this feature was originally printed in UK videogames bible Edge. It's about the use of Text in videogames, both in the mainstream and over in the world of Interactive fiction. It features material from Chris Avellone (Planescape Torment), Sheldon Pacotti (Deus Ex), Adam Cadre (Photopia, Shrapnel) and Emily Short (Galatea, Floatpoint). I've expanded it to fit in in some of the quotes I couldn't fit in Edge's word-count. Which were many. If you've read my Planescape Retrospective, you'll recognise some key riffs. This feature very much grew from that one. And enough waffle. Let's do this thing.]

In the beginning was the word. And the word begat a phrase. And the phrase was “Avoid Missing Ball For High Score”. Gaming’s public relationship with words started here, and continues to this day. It’s these first furtive fumblings which produced the most lasting signifiers which define games in the public eye, and will continue to do so as long as the form continues to exist in its current state. Icons like “Extra Life” and “High Score” are as much a signifier of gaming as any of the corporate mascots.

But this isn’t about that.

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