Another legend gone.

I just heard from a friend that Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died. Damn. I eulogized, if I can call it that, Gary Gygax a while back, and now Dave…

Dave never really got a fair shake, or appropriate credit, or his due as one of the creators of roleplaying, but he never let that get him down, at least not around me. He was one of the sweetest, kindest, humblest guys I ever met. And, man, did he loves games. He was an ace designer, by all reports a creative player (though I was never lucky enough to play with him), a dedicated teacher and a mentor to scads of up-and-coming game developers. He always had time to chat, was always interested in what others were doing, how they were doing, what they were playing….

It’s unlikely the mainstream press will report Dave’s passing the way they noted Gary Gygax’s, which is a real shame. Those who knew him, and those who know the facts behind the legend, will remember Dave with equal, maybe greater, affection. He was one of the Good Guys, an all-around fine fellow, as my wife would say, and he’ll be missed. More important, he’ll be remembered as long as people roll those funny dice and create characters and tell stories together in a way they might never have been able to if Dave hadn’t arrived on the scene.

Dave changed things, but was never changed by them. I can’t think of a better epitaph than that.

I’ve joined a cult – the iPhone cult

My AT&T Tilt gave up the ghost last week (you should see the screen — it looks like something Jasper Johns might have painted) so I decided to take the plunge and replace it with an iPhone.

The decision was pretty straightforward, really. If this year’s SXSW and GDC did nothing else, they convinced me that the iPhone’s a legit gaming platform and, to keep current, I need to know what’s going on in that space. Plus, everyone I know is joining the iPhone club and I’ve been feeling a little left out.

So I’m now in Day 4 of cult membership and, I have to say, though the experience has been largely positive, I have mixed feelings about my new digital pal.

One the plus side, as a phone it’s really pretty rockin’. The call quality is terrific and I seem to get better signal strength than I used to, even though I’m using the same provider and going to all the same places.

As an internet device it’s amazing. I feel like I’m really web-surfing for the first time ever on a phone.

As a game platform, it’s swell. I already have more than a screen of games of high enough quality that, if I were Nintendo, I might be a little bit concerned. And the ease with which I’ve been able to acquire those games (along with a bunch of cool apps) is astonishing — the App Store is everything online commerce should be and usually isn’t. If I’m not careful, I’ll go broke — a buck here, a buck there adds up quickly.

As an entertainment device, the iPhone is as cool as everyone says it is. That screen! It’s beautiful (at least it was for the first three hours I had it, before it got all thumbprinty). Movies look great. Pictures look great. Music sounds great. Books — hm, nice, but I’m spoiled by the Kindle.

(A brief aside — anyone who thinks the iPhone is a great ebook reader hasn’t played with a non-backlit e-ink device. There’s simply no comparison and people should just stop talking about how the iPhone’s going to make the Kindle and devices like it obsolete. This Will Not Happen.)

E-book lameness aside, the iPhone is really remarkable, if what you’re after is seamless connectivity and constant distraction.

However, as a “smart phone,” at least as I use smart phones, the iPhone actually seems kind of dumb.

For the longest time, I was a Treo guy. If not for a falling out with my service provider which doesn’t warrant discussion here, I’d STILL be a Treo guy. After that, I became a Tilt and Blackberry guy. And I’ll tell you right here and now, no virtual keyboard can match real buttons. The iPhone comes as close as anything I’ve tried and it’s not remotely comparable.

The iPhone’s inability to sync with Outlook Notes and Tasks is deadly. I use Outlook’s Notes and Tasks functions as brain-extenders and have a hard time living without them (especially Notes).

The fact that I can’t create and edit Office documents is causing me amazing grief already. The fact that I can’t seem to just get a list of documents I have stored on my device is totally weird. And I’m really having a tough time to adjusting to what seems to be a complete lack of menus that allow me to do things like Select All from a list of emails or documents and such like. I mean, I get that Apple and Microsoft are enemies, but hurry up and get iPhone OS 3.0 out there so people can start making some real productivity apps for this thing!

It’s like the iPhone is working so hard to be my friend it’s incapable of being my co-worker. It’s all fun and games when, at times, I want it to be serious. Still, there’s enough to like that I’m trying to stay calm and make do. Until 3.0 comes along and MS Office or Documents to Go or QuickOffice or something becomes available, I’m messing around with Evernote and a couple of other note-taking apps that seem promising. And I’m experimenting with Google Office for document, spreadsheet and presentation work. It’s too early to say if this’ll work, but I’m trying — really trying – to embrace the iPhone.

Right now, the device is feeling a little “emperor’s new clothes-ish” to me — amusing but not necessarily what you want in a ruler, and everyone’s too afraid of looking un-cool to say anything. I hope I’m wrong and come to love my iPhone as unreservedly as the rest of my fellow cult members. I hope it’s just too early in this relationship to be reaching any conclusions.

I hope that’s the case. For now, if you can help me learn to love the iPhone (as opposed to just liking it pretty well), lend a hand. If you’ve found games you absolutely love or apps you can’t live without, feel free to comment and let me know about ‘em! And if ANY of you have found ANY way to get an iPhone to sync with MS Outlook Notes and Tasks, PLEASE let me know — that’s just killing me.

Yes, that’s me on page 55 of Time Magazine!

Okay. I’ve received enough emails about “the guy who looks like me” in Time Magazine, the issue with Obama on the cover (not that that narrows it down much these days!) that I figuerd I should offer up an explanation, in an attempt to slow the flood…

First off, yes, it’s me. Second, I was as surprised to see me in the magazine as some of you were.

See, I did a photo shoot for Wired magazine a couple of years ago with a freelance photographer who had me sign a model release that, to my everlasting regret, gave her the right to sell my image to anybody she wants, any time, for any purpose. Without my permission. It sucks, but legally there’s nothing I can do about it. (Lesson learned: Always read contracts before signing them!)

Those of you who were paying an unhealthy amount of attention may have noticed that my picture (no name or attribution or anything) showed up last year in a Microsoft web ad for some enterprise software I don’t know anything about, with a made-up quote and everything! Same deal as this Time Magazine thing. Advertising a product I don’t use was bad enough, but it REALLY sucks that I’m being used now to illustrate an article about the lengths to which old people will go to maintain a semblance of youth and remain viable in the marketplace. Heck, I was always (if I may say so) a bit of a wunderkind — the youngest person in most of my personal and professional circles. Quite a change to be the “before” shot, as it were, in an article about old people trying to look young, I can tell you!

Oh, and as a note, I’ve had NONE of the procedures and done none of the stuff the article talks about. I mean, I work out two or three times a week, but as you can tell by looking at the photos, I was between trainers when the Time photo was taken!

I guess it’s cool, in some sense of the word “cool” to be part of a stock image library. Immortality is mine at last (sort of)!

My how time flies

Well, so much for posting weekly. It’s been almost a month since I managed to update the ol’ blog…

The whole acquisition thing has kept me a little busy. And then there was that side trip to Siggraph where I gave one of the keynotes at the Sandbox event the weekend before Siggraph proper. (Gotta post about Siggraph and Sandbox soon…).

And right now I’m prepping for… let me see…

– A September 4th fund-raising event for the University of Texas Center for American History’s new Videogame Archive. I’ll really have to post about the archive some time soon, but for now you can find more information about the event at Video Game Archive Fundraiser. Click on the About the Archive link at the top of the page for more about the archive itself. It’s a very cool deal…

– A course I’m co-teaching at the University of Texas this fall (Master Class in Video Games and Digital Media).

– And there’s a big presentation coming up at work that I’d love to tell you about but that’d just get us all in hot water!

I haven’t even had time to respond to all the great comments you folks have been leaving to my earlier posts. Gotta get around to that some time, too!

You know, when I decided to do this blog thing, friends and colleagues warned it was going to be tough to stick to a regular schedule. I had no idea just how right they were. It never occurred to me this would so quickly turn into a “meta-blog”–more about the act of blogging than about games or anything else.

I still hope to turn this around before you all abandon me and go back to Raph Koster’s blog and Clint Hocking’s and all the rest of my more reliable compadres!

Thanks for your patience.

Warren