See Second Skin
To say that video games, particularly massively multiplayeronline games, are popular is like saying Oprah has decent Nielsen ratings. According to Strategy Analytics, in 2008 they generated $1.5 billion in wolrdwide subscription revenues, a figure that’s expected to balloon to at least $2.5 billion by 2012. Variously abbreviated as MMOs, MMOGs, and MMPOGs (or, if of the roleplaying kind, MMORPGs), these games have become an integral part of our social revolution and evolution, altering how we actand interact. But for good or evil?
This is the question I ask in my book "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks." And it's one asked by Juan Carlos and Victor Piñeiro Escoriaza, creators of the award-winning documentary Second Skin.
Every now and again, a film comes around that helps you understand your world a little better. Such is the case with Second Skin, a documentary that focuses on various groups computer gamers "whose lives have been transformed by online virtual worlds" -- be they addicted players, couples who meet and fall in love online; disabled players; or those toiling overseas as "gold farmers" to make digital goodies for richer (and western) players.
For the documentary "Second Skin," filmmakers took six months searching for subjects obsessed with online role-playing games. Eventually, they settled on four subjects, intercutting between them to explore the appeal of the massively popular "World of Warcraft" and "EverQuest" games.
Many potential subjects refused to participate, fearful of the geek label, said writer-producer Victor Piñeiro Escoriaza (in an article I wrote about them for the Boston Globe). He had to reassure them that he and his co-filmmakers were sympathetic gamers themselves. "We're emphasizing the human aspect of the people behind the game."
This month, Second Skin hits the theaters in Somerville (Boston); Austin, LA, and Colorado Springs. Check here for dates and showtimes in your town. In theaters August 7th. On DVD (with Liberation Entertainment) everywhere August 25th.
Roll for damage (extra bases)!
In an interesting piece in the NY Times about APBA, a board and dice baseball game is, if not going strong, at least holding its own against video and fantasy league versions of sports games. Like all great subcultures, it's got a devoted following; a recent tournament attracted 76 players. According to the article, "Video games have become increasingly sophisticated, and fantasy sports leagues have surged in popularity, but APBA, like its rival Strat-O-Matic, has stuck to the basic format that made it successful."
APBA, which once stood for "American Professional Baseball Association," is about as old-school as it gets: dice, cards, and dice shakers. And what's most interesting is this geeky twist on who plays--- yes, folks who self-identify as "nerds" and "geeks," lovers of statistics "in statistics-related careers like accounting, teaching math, tax law and financial advising." Nerdy sports nuts --- and as we know, sports is celebrated in our culture. Conjuring magic spells, not so much.Of course, with APBA, no dungeons or dragons are required --- just the fantasy of imagining a winning team (or playing center field for one). An acceptable fantasy for most boys, men (and girls and women, too).
The article points to an interesting turn, too. Brian Wells, the 16 year old kid who has won the tournament a couple times, has been "begrudgingly" accepted by the men. A kid's game is co-opted by adults who then let the kid back in as a member of their tribe.
But also this point -- can an old-school board game (or for that matter, a miniature soldier wargame) capture the imagination of kids when most are used to the spoon-fed action and eye-candy of XBox and Playstation? It's an issue I discuss in Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, specifically whether a wargame like Chainmail can entrance a 12 year old boy, or whether he's start craving Warcraft after the first hour of snail's pace action.
In the Times article, the kid says that his friends stay home with video games. “They don’t make fun of me,” Wells said. “But they don’t want to get into it. Because some of my friends just don’t have the attention span for all of this.”
Kirkus Reviews feature
FANTASY FREAKS AND GAMING GEEKS by Ethan Gilsdorf is featured in Kirkus Reviews’ “Big Book Fall Preview” section (Aug 1, 2009).
The full-color, center spread piece features the book’s cover art.
“Ethan Gilsdorf was made fun of a lot in high school. In the late ‘70’s, playing fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons put the author in equal social footing as the AV club. Thirty years later, though, fantasy films rule the box office, J.R.R. Tolkien is considered essential reading and games like World of Warcraft are pop-culture phenomena. “When I was a teenager this stuff was looked down upon,” says Gilsdorf. “Now it’s everywhere.” But there are still pockets of fantasy culture – Lord of the Rings conventions, Society for Creative Anachronism battles, LARP (Live Action Role Playing) camps – that the casual fantasy nerd wouldn’t even dare to tread. But Gilsdorf, spurred on by the discovery of his old D & D guides, decided to dive elf-ears first into the deepest geek pools. “I wanted to know why a 40-year old man is still so interested in this stuff that he’d dress up in armor on the weekends,” he says. The author traveled from the woods of South Carolina to libraries in Wisconsin, from battlefields in Pennsylvania to the mountains of New Zealand – all in the quest to find some answers. His conclusion? They get to the heart of why any of us, geeks or not, become involved with any group. “It’s all about a sense of belonging,” says Gilsdorf. And maybe a bit about killing stuff. Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms (978-1-59921-480-1; September, 2009; $24.95; Hardcover) by Ethan Gilsdorf
Proposed Gygax monument
As reported in the Janesville Gazette (WI) today, the family of E. Gary Gygax has announced plans for a memorial to Gygax in his hometown of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the town where Dungeons & Dragons was founded. (In Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, I head off to Lake Geneva in search of Gygax and his legacy.)
Apparently, Gygax was into the idea. And who wouldn't be? (and who wouldn't want to be memorialized in this way?). What would the monument look like? Perhaps a statue, perhaps something else. A maze? An animatronic wizards or dragon spewing fireballs? An endlessly rotating d20?
Upon hearing the news, in a spare moment at my local cafe (where much of my book was written), I scribbled down a possible design idea. Thoughts?
Lost Tolkien / Lewis manuscript notes found
Archives keep unearthing treasures. Texas State University recently announced that Steven Beebe, Regents’ Professor and Chair of the Texas State Department of Communication Studies, discovered the opening pages of an unpublished manuscript that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were to collaborate on --- to be called Language and Human Nature. The pages were discovered in the Oxford University Bodleian Library.
According to the story, the partial book manuscript Beebe found was "in a small notebook on which Lewis had written the word “Scraps.” Included in the tattered notebook are early fragments of two Narnia Chronicles, The Magician’s Nephew and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader along with unpublished ideas about a variety of topics."
"What if two of the most famous and widely read 20th Century authors who have each individually sold millions of copies of their books had written a book together?" posits the University News Service. Interesting question.
In Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, I discuss my pilgrimage to Marquette University, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the heart of wargaming country, and an hour from Lake Geneva, where Dungeons & Dragons had been invented. Marquette's Department of Special Collections and University Archives has a J. R. R. Tolkien Collection that includes “holograph renderings (manuscripts in the hand of the author), various sets of typescripts with corrections by Tolkien, and page proofs or galley sheets, also with corrections in the hand of the author” of his major works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, plus two lesser works.
The recent publication of an old and near-vanished work by Tolkien, “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún," recently edited and published by J.R.R.T.'s son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, makes me wonder what other treasures remain in the Tolkien/Lewis universe, and what corners of their literary creations are still out there to be discovered.
geek camp in Boston
A couple years ago I reported on a martial arts studio in suburban Boston called Guard Up. Meghan Gardner, founder of the company, had begun to offer classes in Sport Sword. She and her instructors began playing with padded swords and ''armor" cobbled together from motocross, ice hockey, and lacrosse gear. They studied medieval sword-fighting and adapted the techniques to the nonlethal world of injection-molded plastic, Velcro, and spandex. They created a series of Sport Weapon programs, such as Sport Sword and Sport Armor, as well as kids' classes like Little Knights. I went there to learn how (and wrote about my meager efforts for the Boston Globe).
Last summer, in 2008, Gardner launched her Wizards and Warriors Camp, a sort of live-action role-playing adventure for kids, which I visited during the research of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. This year she offers a day camp and overnight camp versions of the experience, which introduces kids to the concepts of role-playing. In a solid story, the Globe recently reported on this.
What I appreciate about what Gardner is doing is not simply that she's having campers stay in costume for the entire week, solve puzzles, and go on quests. Her camp counselors are teaching values such as camaraderie, honor, compassion and courage. And, in a way, she is indoctrinating a whole new generation of gaming geeks—only these geeks are running around outside, and they are learning how to kick ass with swords.
Harry Potter comes to Boston!
The Museum of Science in Boston made this announcement today:
"This fall, Harry Potter fans will get the chance to step inside the famous wizard's magical world through Harry Potter: The Exhibition, which opens at the Museum of Science, Boston on October 25, 2009, at 9 a.m. Tickets are now available online at mos.org or by calling 617-723-2500, 617-589-0417 (TTY). Visitors will be able to experience dramatic displays inspired by the Hogwarts™ film sets and see the amazing craftsmanship behind authentic costumes and props from the films. Harry Potter: The Exhibition will run in Boston through February 21, 2010."
Cool stuff includes "display Harry Potter artifacts in settings inspired by film sets, including the Great Hall, Hagrid's hut, and the Gryffindor common room" and "a 500-pound, 10-foot tall chess piece"
Great news. But it raises the question: what business does a science museum have displaying movie props and special effects displays? Don't get me wrong: I love these movie magic exhibits. The MOS hosted both a Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movie show. But I wonder if, in the words of Ioannis Miaoulis, President and Director of the Museum of Science, "This exhibit will spark their curiosity and imagination, leading them to experience the excitement of discovery that's also at the heart of the Museum's science and technology exhibits and programs."
Or maybe, just maybe, it will net the museum a crapload of money. Which isn't a bad thing. But I'd rather Miaoulis just call a spade a spade and say, hey, this is going to pay the heating bills and help update our cutting-edge technology displays that date back to the 1980s.
Hobbiton under construction
Yes, it's official. Despite on-going legal battles between filmmakers and the Tolkien family estate, it seems production on The Hobbit is moving forward -- with backhoes. TheOneRing.net and stuff.co.nz reports that "fruit trees are being planted, hedgerows are being groomed and new hillocks are being marked off as the sites of more hobbit homes."
The site in Matamata, New Zealand does not yet seem blocked off, as the folks who operate tours of the Hobbiton movie set, ain't saying they are closed for business. Not yet anyway.
But the pictures of the backhoes etc suggest that the place is all torn up. In Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, I visit the Matamata Hobbiton set. You can also get a tour of the place from whence hobbit come in my video.
Newsweek and Penthouse sexing up the con scene
In an effort to reach out to the geek community, or perhaps as a nod to the fact that geeks ARE a force to be reckoned with, both Newsweek and Penthouse magazines recently posted articles attesting to the hotness of Comic-Con and other cons. Newsweek's piece sez: "Something about open-bar events, en-masse hotel bookings and spandex costumes just encourages people to pair (or triple) off." 
And Penthouse journo Shari Goldhagen (in "sexy Robin" costume") wants to sex-up the con scene: "Once I get past the fact that my T&A are on display, there’s something exhilarating about being Robin. People line up to take photos with me. A pack of teenage boys hums the “dun nun ah dun nun ah” theme from the sixties TV show starring Adam West; I get three more marriage proposals than I’ve gotten in real life."
A bit like my fond memories of Dragon*Con from last year. Frustrating ones, as I set off in search of a lady geek. You'll have to read about it in the book --- Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
The best fantasy franchise is...
Harry Potter?
According to a poll conducted by the website Moviefone and Bebo, Harry Potter has been voted the Best Fantasy Franchise in a new Internet poll. The result are striking: Harry got 73 per cent of votes, Lord of the Rings got 16, Twilight eight and lowly Chronicles of Narnia nabbed just three percent of the votes. Of course, this is probably a classic case of short-term cultural memory loss. Because of the frenzy surrounding the Half-Blood Prince release, everyone has Harry on the mind. Had you asked folks at the height of Rings mania back in 2001-2003, you might have gotten a much different answer. And probably fewer teenage girls voting. The other issue being, none of the news reports of this poll stated how the data was gathered, how many or who was surveyed, or anything else about the methodology. Maybe only catholic girls schools were targeted in online banner ads showing a half-naked Daniel Radcliffe.
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
wizard rock radio!
If you need your fix of Harry Potter-themed "wizard rock," look no further.... thanks to the coolness over at Paste magazine.
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
PSAs from the future
No explanation needed. Just watch 'em.
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
cardboard tube war
Not quite a LARP, but close enough. Who doesn't want to get involved with this? This is Seattle ... So what ya waitin' for? Let's start a cardboard war in our own city! Hu-yah!
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
Egad! someone who does not like Harry Potter?
Ok, so let's say you hate Harry Potter. Bryony Gordon, the author of this story (originally appearing in the Telegraph UK) bravely if foolhardily admits he'd enjoyed a blissful period thinking that Harry Potter did not exist at all, because no book or movie had been released in ages (ages for Harry Potter fans, anyway). "For two blissful years my life has been a Harry Potter-free zone. No talk of muggles, or quidditch, or Hogwarts or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." And for this London resident, "nobody has made any really unfunny jokes about the train leaving from platform 9¾, which is good, because it means I have had less cause to hit people over the head with a rolled up newspaper." Yuk yuk.
Which just goes to show you, you can't force geekdom on anyone. You can't make a person like a book, a movie, a pop cultural phenom. But this author goes out on a limb a little further, to say, "it won't surprise you to learn that I don't understand grown adults who like Harry Potter... It's a bit sinister, actually. In my mind, you may as well sit on the train reading a Thomas the Tank Engine picture book making choo-choo noises." Then the "escape" claim: "I know that mature fans of Harry Potter claim it allows them to escape to another world, that it helps them to feel young again."
For me, there's nothing wrong with that. But for Mr. Gordon, I sense the kid's play that Harry Potter evokes is shameful.
Gordon cleverly exits on a joke "But when the first one came out I was 17 and by the time that the final movie instalment is released I will be 31. That doesn't make me feel young. It makes me feel really, really old. And there's nothing magic about that." And leaves me wondering if there's something else here, unexamined, that explains his aversion to all things Hogwarts.
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
Mommy, I want this for my birthday
My buddy JP (one of the key characters in my book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks) turned me onto this at Geekologie. And I've decided for my next birthday party, I want a huge cake in the shape of a Robotron coin-operated video game kiosk and, sitting on it, big red dragon guarding a d20, a light saber, my old DM's guide, and a bottle of Henricks gin, with a big One Ring wreathed in fire suspended above, through which Gollum, Ian McKellen and Barack Obama are playing leapfrog. Mommy, can you make that for me? Pleeeezzzee???
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
Comic-Con turns 40 years young....
One of the heavyweights of the con scene rolls into San Diego again: Comic-Con. And it's an older granddaddy than I originally thought. The con celebrates 40 years this year. Funny-- D&D celebrates its 35th this year (not to mention 30 years since I first learned D&D, and 25 since I graduated from high school. Yikes! But that is another story...
Comic-Con is a fanboy and fangirl paradise, with guests ranging from Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Tim Burton, Robert Zemeckis, Ray Bradbury, Seth Green, Stan Freberg, June Foray (voice of Rocky in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show), a screening of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog" (which I experienced at Dragon*Con last year -- very silly and fun) ... more highlights here.
Sigh... wish I was going. But I can't. I will be headed to Gen Con in August. More on that later...
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
some fries with that...
the image gallery that goes with my excursion to New Zealand, Welligton, "Wellywood," etc.... 
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
The Author in New Zealand
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Under smoky-blue cloud cover, they raise their ladders, and thrust their siege towers toward Helm’s Deep. From all sides, like a stream of mercury, hordes of orcs pour through the crumbled curtain wall.
In my elaborate reverie of battlefield glory, I vault up the stairs, light-footed, graceful, deadly, ready to face my foes. Of course, I can’t stop them alone. I have an army of heroes on my side. I can’t stop the theme music trumpeting and drumming in my head, either. What fantasy freak can, especially in New Zealand, land of so many memorable film locations? ... read more in my article for the Boston Globe
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons
10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons
Some good advice here, especially this one:
The best quests require a mixture of skills in the party. Find new friends and cultivate ancillary skills. That pesky little hobbit thief may eat you out of house and home, yet sometimes he comes in pretty handy. This is the point of all those tedious "diversity training" exercises from your HR department; perhaps the message would get across better if they talked about the apparently-weak wizard and the bard with those amazing negotiation skills.
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
Harry and the Potters in a cave
If you happen to be in the Boston area, come help celebrate the July 15 release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with "A FREE SHOW in a CAVE!" Well, Harry and the Potters say, "Actually, not a cave, but a chasm. CLOSE ENOUGH! How cool is that? You gotta come!" This is an unplugged concert/hike/sing-a-long in a place called Purgatory Chasm (which, coincidentally, I wrote about ages ago for the Boston Globe). Anyway, their event info is here:
07.14.09 | Sutton, MA | Purgatory Chasm | ALL AGES | 8:15pm | FREE!!! | Facebook
Here’s the plan: Meet at 8:15pm in the parking lot of Purgatory Chasm. Bring a flashlight! At 8:30, we will hike up into the chasm (it is a very short hike - <10min). Once we're in the chasm, Harry and the Potters will play a bunch of unamplified songs. Sing-alongs galore! Bring your voice! After we've done a bunch of singing and stuff, we will go to the movies together! We're planning on attending the 12:05am screening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at the Blackstone Valley 14 in Millbury, MA which is only about 10 minutes from the Chasm. Follow this link to buy tickets to the 12:05am screening!
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks