Publications I have written for.
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Other publications I wrote for.
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My most recently published articles:

Gamasutra
Q&A: Aspyr's Adams On Mac's Gaming Challenges
12/12/07
Aspyr Media started its business porting AAA Windows PC games to the Mac, and the company did so back in the days when the Mac was not as popular (and as well-sold in numbers) as it is now. Thanks to Aspyr, Mac users have enjoyed quality ported versions of The Sims and Quake franchises, and other popular Windows PC titles, for their computers.
[Read the rest]

LinuxWorld
Bringing one SimCity per child to the OLPC
12/11/07
Don Hopkins ported SimCity to Unix in 1991. Today, he is putting the finishing touches on a GPL version of this classic computer game for the One Laptop Per Child project's XO laptop.
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Divining The Next Guitar Hero-Style Phenomenon
12/11/07
Music games have grown from a niche to one of the most dominant genres in 2007. Rock Band and Guitar Hero III are fighting the most publicized battle of this holiday season. The third installment in the Guitar Hero franchise launch netted Activision's biggest sales week ever for the company.
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Will There Ever Be One Console To Rule Them All?
11/16/07
Recently, there has been talk about the idea of a standardized game console platform -- whether this would be unified hardware specifications or development tools.
[Read the rest]

GamesIndustry.biz
In-game advertising a billion dollar industry by 2010, says Stolar
11/14/07
AdSense for Games' Bernie Stolar anticipates that videogame advertising it will become a billion dollar industry by the year 2010. After working for the likes of Atari, Sony, and Sega, Stolar became an advisor to Adscape Media in 2005. In 2007, he helped convince Google to purchase the company, which it renamed AdSense for Games.
[Read the rest]

LinuxWorld
A second life for 'Second Life' with open source?
10/31/07
Until recently, the business news media fawned over the Second Life online virtual world. Stories fixated on Second Life "residents" who got rich brokering virtual real estate, or on the numerous corporations and consumer brands rushing to claim their presence within it (by building virtual kiosk centers or "islands"). Virtual world hype trumps open source hype, so little virtual ink has gone into discussing the open source initiative that Linden Lab, the company behind the virtual world, established to further its development.
[Read the rest]

JavaWorld's Java Technology Insider (audio podcast)
Michael Stonebraker on why row storage is obsolete
10/18/07
Vertica co-founder Michael Stonebraker Dr. Michael Stonebraker recently made waves with his claim that the traditional RDBMS is a legacy system, and that row-based data storage is insufficient to the needs of the enterprise today. In this episode of JavaWorld's Java Technology Insider, Howard Wen speaks with Dr. Stonebraker about the advantages of switching to column-oriented data storage, and also gets his candid thoughts about the future of data management in the era of Web 2.0.
[Listen to the podcast]

Computerworld
Five tips for making a popular (and maybe profitable) Facebook app
10/16/07
Since Facebook Platform launched in May, more than 5,000 applications that run on Facebook have been developed. And the number is steadily growing by the day. A big reason why this has been happening? Money -- or the hope of it, to be exact.
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
"Analyze This": A Progress Report on the Console War
10/02/07
We are approaching a year since all three of the current generation consoles have been battling it out in the market. We wanted to hear how the analysts generally feel about what has been going on with the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3... summing up a "progress report" for each console, thus far, as the industry heads into the holiday season.
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Are Game Publishers Late To The (Wii and DS) Game?
08/30/07
The Nintendo DS is approaching 50 million units sold worldwide, and the Wii is about to soon match the sales number of the Xbox 360 (approximately 10 million worldwide). The early hype for the current generation of consoles originally focused on the Xbox 360 and PS3, and, thus, most publishers banked their game development futures on these two platforms. But now business plans of the major third-parties are shifting towards the Nintendo consoles.
[Read the rest]

GamesIndustry.biz
EA's Casual Attitude
08/29/07
As the video game industry shifts significantly towards producing more casual gaming titles, Electronic Arts has followed suit. In June 2007 Kathy Vrabeck was hired by EA Games to lead their Casual Entertainment division. As the president for this newly- formed label, she oversees not only packaged retail games, such as those utilizing the Harry Potter license, but also the company's popular online games site, Pogo, and its mobile games service (EA Mobile).
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
QuakeCon 2007: An Audience With John Carmack
08/06/07
During the QuakeCon keynote which revealed a lot else besides, id legend John Carmack sauntered out on stage for a fascinating set of comments about id's next project Rage, software patents, tech, and the DS, and Gamasutra was there to capture his in-depth remarks.
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Will Hardcore Gamers Be Pushed Aside In This Console Generation?
07/09/07
Microsoft recently announced that it would broaden the customer base of the Xbox 360 by trying to appeal to the family demographic. Sony has also indicated that it would market the PS3 to a wider audience beyond hardcore gamers, by publishing more casual games and introducing Wii-like peripherals. Obviously, Nintendo's success with its DS and Wii appear to be looming heavily over its competitors.
[Read the rest]

The Escapist
Curt Vendel: The Escapist Interview
06/05/07
The Flashback 2 was indirectly born from the active community of homebrew Atari 2600 game programmers and fans who pine for the classic era of Atari gaming. (A few of the games on the Flashback 2 are originals created by homebrew programmers.) Among them, Curt Vendel is one name to remember: He designed both the Flashback and Flashback 2. For all intents and purposes, Vendel is the current caretaker of the classic Atari gaming hardware. He runs the Atari History Museum, which is dedicated to archiving the legacy of Atari's classic gaming era.
[Read the rest]

GamesIndustry.biz
Turtle Power
05/31/07
Turtle Rock was founded by Michael Booth, whose prior credits include having created Nox and doing technical direction on the Command & Conquer series. Because of all the acclaimed work that his company has done for Valve, the 13-member Turtle Rock team got to create its own original title, Left 4 Dead. This zombie shooter, featuring online team-play mechanics, is planned for release later this year. 
[Read the rest]

GamesIndustry.biz
Massive Opportunities
05/01/07
For the past five years Garriott and his team at NCsoft Austin have been working on Tabula Rasa, an MMORPG with a science fiction theme which is due to launch later this year. It marks a departure for the man who's most often associated with Ultima's epic medieval fantasy setting and is Garriott's most ambitious project to date. But will the pioneer of the MMORPG be able to score a second hit? 
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Is There Anything Wrong with the Sony PSP?
04/06/07
The Sony PSP has been out for over two years, and has sold over 24 million units. Yet sentiment for it remains mixed: Gamers and developers appear to put up with it, but not clamor for it. And a recent rumor has it that one major retailer even threatened to stop selling it (if Sony didn't initiate a price cut, which is did this month). At best, it's been characterized as a mediocre success.
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
"Analyze This": How Exclusive Will Exclusive Games Be in This Generation?
03/12/07
In the last game console generation, emphasis was placed heavily on establishing platform exclusivity for a number of high-profile third party titles (e.g., Grand Theft Auto). But how important will exclusive titles be for this generation fought among the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii? We asked Ed Barton of Screen Digest, Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies and Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities:
[Read the rest]

The Escapist
Peter Molyneux: The Escapist Interview
03/06/07
To say Peter Molyneux is a moral game developer is to be interpreted literally. The idea of incorporating morality - the choices one makes between "good" and "bad" behavior and the results of such personal actions - into gameplay has fascinated him throughout his career. While his work spans various genres (either as designer, programmer or producer), he is most known for his "god games," of which Populous and Black & White are best associated with his style and creative passions.
[Read the rest]

GamesIndustry.biz
Ritual Revisited
02/08/07
In December, GamesIndustry.biz conducted an interview with Ken Harward, who at the time had been recently announced as CEO of Ritual Entertainment. Since then, the studio has been acquired by casual games company MumboJumbo, also based in Dallas, Texas. The situation with regard to both of these matters has since drastically changed, so GamesIndustry.biz asked Harward to clarify what's next for Ritual and MumboJumbo.
[Read the rest]

GamesIndustry.biz
Leagues Ahead
01/30/07
Nearly 10 years ago Angel Munoz founded the Cyberathlete Professional League with the idea that could get gamers to pay money so that they could play against one another. At the time, most gaming meets were informal affairs among friends and held at somebody's house, where everybody would LAN up their computers and deathmatch to Quake.
[Read the rest]

The Escapist Daily
Welcome to The Escapist First Annual Slammy Awards...
01/30/07
All this week, the Slamdance Film Festival has been going on in Park City, Utah. Curiously lacking in the gaming press has been coverage of the festival's Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition. That's probably because all the big news about the event already unfolded over the months leading up to it: Slamdance's initial invite to the creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG! to submit his controversial game, the game's nomination as a finalist in the Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition, and then, well, let's be blunt: Slamdance chickening out and dropping SCMRPG from consideration due to what they claimed were concerns over legal threats.
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Which Console Will Win 2007? (...And Other Humble Guesses for the Year)
01/26/07
As we enter 2007, we at Gamasutra wondered what overall predictions the analysts have for the industry. Obviously, this is a very significant year for each of the three console manufacturers. So we asked Mike Wolf of ABI Research, David Cole of DFC Intelligence and Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities the following:
[Read the rest]

GamesIndustry.biz
The Next Episode
01/25/07
Soon after his appointment, GamesIndustry.biz sat down with Harward to ask him about the rumours. Things have changed since this interview was conducted, but we also talked about the experience of developing a game in the episodic format, the issues surrounding distribution via Steam and the challenges of running an independent studio in today's environment - read on to find out more.
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
Go With the fl0w: Jenova Chen on Console Independence
01/22/07
To describe the experience you get from playing Jenova Chen's games as "serene" would be an understatement. Serenity is implied even from their titles: Cloud and flOw. Both games were created by Chen (AKA "Xinghan Chen") as part of his studies while he was a student of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. His aim was to elicit emotions beyond the medium's typical kill-or-be-killed and win-or-lose game play mentality.
[Read the rest]

GamesIndustry.biz
Machinima to Mobile
01/15/07
Fountainhead's founder and CEO, Katherine Anna Kang, also co-founded The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences and, prior to Fountainhead, worked as director of business development for id Software, creators of the Doom series. She has another connection to id: her husband is John Carmack.
[Read the rest]

Gamasutra
Raising the Dead, Again: Can Howard Marks Revive Acclaim?
01/11/07
With a storied history including relatively fondly received titles such as the early Turok games for N64 and the Extreme G series, alongside less well-reviewed licensed properties and numerous movie tie-ins, Acclaim Entertainment finally shuttered its business in 2005. The game properties it still owned were sold in a bankruptcy sale, and relatively few in the gaming community mourned its loss.
[Read the rest]

Articles published in 2006...

Sample portfolio of past published work:

Salon
Atari Lives!
The Atari 2600 ceased production in 1989. But practically speaking it never really went away. The abandoned system has been adopted by online fans, who nurture it with loving care. And they're doing more than just keeping it on life support; the Atari 2600 is actually growing -- new games are being written, and new hardware is being manufactured.
[Read the article]

Salon
Do-It-Yourself "Star Wars"
Have you seen "The Dark Redemption,"  the "Star Wars" prequel film set days before the events of the original "Star Wars"? What about "Bounty Trail,"  which features the further adventures of "Star Wars" intergalactic bounty hunter Boba Fett? If the above sound like fanciful ideas dreamed up by fans, that's because they are. These are products of the "fan film" scene -- an offshoot culture of independent digital filmmaking.
[Read the article]

Linux Magazine
Playing for Keeps
Over the years, NetHack fans with programming talent have dreamed up and realized all kinds of clever ways to enhance the basic game, including adding player character races, monsters, and spells. Two notable projects that enhance gameplay and graphics are Slash'EM and Falcon's Eye.
[Read the article]

Salon
Battle.net Goes To War
Is an open-source version of Blizzard Entertainment's online gaming service an illegal copyright violation? Ross Combs and Rob Crittenden, two of the lead developers on bnetd, say all they ever wanted to do was create a place to play best-selling Blizzard games like Starcraft and Diablo in a friendly online atmosphere free of the technical bugs that plague Battle.net. Blizzard sent a cease-and-desist to the ISP that hosts the Web site for bnetd.
[Read the article]

O'Reilly LinuxDevCenter.com
Building Freeciv: An Open Source Strategy Game
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Freeciv is clearly a labor of love among its many volunteers. Since the code for this open source version of Civilization was released in 1995, hundreds of volunteers have added to it and improved it, even though the original developers haven't been heavily involved in years.
[Read the article]

Wired
Blade Runner Run-On
Why will Blade Runner aficionados want to "retire" Jeter's book? Largely because Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human reads like a treatment for a "typical" Hollywood sequel - short on new ideas, heavy on brainless action. Quiet moments like those that made the original film a classic are not only few but irrelevant. Instead, whenever there's a lull, Jeter piles on the action: explosions, gunfire, characters getting busted up real bad.
[Read the article]

GameSlice
Serious Sam: Made In Croatia?
You'll probably find yourself running backwards a lot when you first play Serious Sam. That's because, in this first-person shooter, there's plenty of space to run around in but few places to hide. Herds of strange cattle-like creatures called Werebulls try to mow you down with their huge horns -- that is, unless the armies of decapitated zombies, who lug their severed heads like bowling ball bags, don't do you in first.
[Read the article]

O'Reilly LinuxDevCenter.com
The Hacker Behind "Hacking the XBox"
Hacking the Xbox, as the title of Huang's tome sums up, details how-tos for modifying your Xbox, and provides various insights into the security and other inner-working code of Microsoft's game console. John Wiley & Sons was originally set to publish the book, but the company became concerned over the legality of hacking and reverse engineering—practices that have since been muddled by the DMCA—and dropped it.
[Read the article]

Salon
New Life for Old Games
Video-game emulators intriguingly blur the lines between hardware and software, PCs and game machines. Do they also promote piracy? Straddling the legal line between reverse-engineering and software piracy, scores of programmers are coding freeware programs that emulate the hardware of video-game consoles, arcade machines and even other personal-computer formats.
[Read the article]

O'Reilly LinuxDevCenter.com
AbiWord: Open Source's Answer to Microsoft Word
Tired of putting up with Microsoft Word's bloated file size and price, but still need to deal with documents in Word format? Then you should take a serious look at AbiWord. This open source word processor is able to read and write most documents in Word's *.doc file format.
[Read the article]