Two weeks ago, my book came out on Amazon!

Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of an Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft

and I drew the cover myself! (sketched it from screenshot references with an ipad2 and a stylus, imported into photoshop and colored with a bamboo tablet)

—

With the new year, I resolve to be more proactive at work since I’ve been feeling stagnant for a while now. I also plan on looking for grant money to start a lab focused on arts and humanities games. I haven’t decided if this should be with UW or independent or what…

Basically, it’s been tough finding a position that fills my needs, so the only thing left to do is make it myself.

—

In other news, I’ve been playing a lot of Star Wars: The Old Republic. What I’m finding interesting is that I actually care about the dialog decisions I’m making in the game, and I really like the companions and main story arcs each character class comes with. More interesting is that these things basically make me feel like I’m playing a solo game with a backdrop of a whole bunch of other people. Bioware always sucked me in with story, and I like it, but I’m not sure this is a proper MMO… Jury’s still out.

Also, even with the built-in light/dark choices, they really only appear through dialog during plot moments that don’t actually affect the gameplay. I still go around killing everything under many suns even while saying that violence isn’t the answer (as a goody-two-shoes trooper). Ah well.