I am very pleased to announce that after some discussion about changes I would like to see made to GameDev, the automatic locking of old topics was turned off for this forum! [smile] Now you can all feel free to add more wisdom to our forum stickies, and you can even revive old threads IF you have important new info to add, don't just revive them with a pointless bump. I would also like to repeat my usual encouragement - posting in this forum is pretty slow, and there hasn't been much in the way of interesting theoretical topics lately, but if you're bored please try reading through the post archives of this forum, there's some really neat stuff buried in there! [grin]

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Original post by sunandshadow I would also like to repeat my usual encouragement - posting in this forum is pretty slow, and there hasn't been much in the way of interesting theoretical topics lately, but if you're bored please try reading through the post archives of this forum, there's some really neat stuff buried in there! [grin]

Yeah, I've noticed that there's been a bit of a slowdown as of late. And most ideas that are coming forward in the threads have been done before (including my most recent one), but... Hey, now that we can go back into the deep end of the archives and revive old posts, maybe we'll come up with somethin' new to add to those old ideas. Thanks for makin' that available for us, shadow! :)

It's been very slow lately. I think it's mostly due to the lack of the very verbose people. We spent most of our time getting mad at him, but at least it was something.

There is a lot of n00b-ness going on now, too.

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Original post by Kallisti We spent most of our time getting mad at him, but at least it was something.

Mad at who? I missed that little argument, whoever it applies to...

It was supposed to be about Estok. That post made no sense, did it?

No, no it didn't. [lol] Personally I would say the forum is quiet because no new English majors or literary theorists have joined recently. The person I really miss is Landfish, although probably none of you remember him because he was the moderator before me, way back in 2000. Me, I've mostly used up the theory topics I wanted to discuss, and the few topics I'm still interested in (character archetypes and personality type theory, psychology of how a player forms an opinion of a character, plot theory, interactive fiction) are too advanced for most posters and didn't get much of a response last time I tried to start a thread about them.

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Original post by sunandshadow No, no it didn't. [lol] Personally I would say the forum is quiet because no new English majors or literary theorists have joined recently. The person I really miss is Landfish, although probably none of you remember him because he was the moderator before me, way back in 2000. Me, I've mostly used up the theory topics I wanted to discuss, and the few topics I'm still interested in (character archetypes and personality type theory, psychology of how a player forms an opinion of a character, plot theory, interactive fiction) are too advanced for most posters and didn't get much of a response last time I tried to start a thread about them.

shadow, bump the threads; remember, we can do that now to old posts! :) I would be very interested to discuss those topics with you, as I have officially declared myself an English major as of late. Originally I was just going to do a major in Computer Science and a minor in Creative Writing, but the English Major isn't much further off from the CW minor, so I bumped my intentions up. Now I'm double-majoring, which is a lot of work, but I'm enjoying it (I'm a Junior, btw).

I remember Estok (the name, anyway). Never got to know him, but it's a shame nonetheless to hear that he (or anyone) has left. I'll just have to settle myself in and keep this forum company...

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Original post by Omega147 I would be very interested to discuss those topics with you, as I have officially declared myself an English major as of late. Originally I was just going to do a major in Computer Science and a minor in Creative Writing, but the English Major isn't much further off from the CW minor, so I bumped my intentions up. Now I'm double-majoring, which is a lot of work, but I'm enjoying it (I'm a Junior, btw).

That's interesting. My university didn't offer a specific creative writing program, instead there were several tracks of courses you could take within the major: publishing, technical writing, creative writing, british literature, american literature, and other specific types of writing. I did publishing, british literature, and started the technical writing series but found it to be extremely annoying. My main focus was structuralist models of fiction and narratology, but there wasn't any sort of course in that so I just read all the books in the library on the subject and laid the groundwork for writing a thesis on it. Didn't actually write the thesis because by the time I finally graduated I was too exhausted, broke, and traumatized to even think about postgraduate work. The reason I chose that focus is because as a writer plot is my weak point, and I wanted (and still want) to understand how plot works so I can figure out how to create good plots and finally write a novel, which I've been trying to do for years. :/

Currently, I'm extremely busy running my game design project, Xenallure. I haven't been able to find enough skilled concept artists, so I end up doing a lot of drawing myself, reading art and architecture books to help with the drawing, writing alot of emails and IMs, and writing documentation. So I haven't really had any time to think about literary theory in the past few months. I have this neat-looking book called _The Story-Shaped World_ sitting on my shelf, if only I could get around to reading it.

Another problem is that by this point I've read about all the books there are on plot and I still don't really understand it, so I'm kind of beginning to despair of ever understanding it.

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Original post by sunandshadow Another problem is that by this point I've read about all the books there are on plot and I still don't really understand it, so I'm kind of beginning to despair of ever understanding it.

shadow, just give me until Friday afternoon (have crap-loads of homework and whatnot goin' on this week) and I'll start a discussion on plot. I feel I have an understanding of the subject, so I'll convey what I've learned, and then the community can discuss, and then we can sit down for some tea and chatter about the weather and the likes, and perhaps play some croquet with the Wellingtons. Yes, quite.

Lol, sure, I can wait. You might want to look at the section on plot in The partial game design book I've written first so you can see what I think about plot so far.