There will be little writing done this week, I fear. My parents are visiting from the Midwest this week so I'll be socializing with them after work instead of working on revisions. Add in work and...well, I'll be lucky to get my second revision done by October. Not much chance of getting revision 3 done. Grr.
There were some interesting panels at PAX on writing for video games. Naturally a panel like that drew me. I got to meet the writer for the game 'The Witcher', which I highly recommend. Rather than an arbitrary alignment scale like Bioware games use, The Witcher simply keeps track of what your character has done and adjusts the world and character's reactions to your character accordingly. Kill a bunch of Elves? Don't expect them to be friendly to you any more. Save a necromancer? They may not aggro to you any more and even might join you to help on a quest. That kind of world consistency is wonderful and rare. Its the kind of thing I do naturally in pen and paper (or IM these days) gaming but most video games don't try to model.
I did toy with the idea (again) about trying to get a job at a game company. Writing or designing a game, and getting paid for it, would be a dream job. On the other hand, I can probably fulfill most of my internal desires by just keeping at software testing, sticking to a 40-hour-a-week schedule and getting my creative rocks off by writing novels in my spare time. Well, in any case, I won't close any doors if I get a chance to write for a game company but I won't hold my breath, either. I think my best shot at that kind of job is to create Intellectual Properties (books and characters in other words) that may lend themselves well to game adaptation. I'll talk more about game writing tomorrow, if possible.