I have another piece up on GWJ, a little rant that sort of all tumbled out in one go on Sunday. I’ve um, been watching a lot of Ron Moore’s show. Right now just working my way through early season three. I expect to be caught up soon so I can start working through the current season. Oh Baltar. When will you ever learn not to trust the crazy Robo-females? There’s a life lesson in there somewhere I think.

“Battlestar Galactica” is important. It’s not just a fantastic television show, a landmark series in the history of the medium. It’s not just a high water mark for the concept of ‘reimagining’ older stories. It’s important because Ron Moore and the show’s production crew absolutely destroy the crufty sameness of what ’sci-fi television is.’ The tropes of Star Trek and Star Wars are so familiar, so well-tread, that they’re almost played out. Sci-fi TV shows are still being made as if one mediocre show from the 60s is the template for modern storytelling.

In many ways games are operating in the same model.

The folks at Gamers with Jobs were kind enough to invite me into their fourth chair, again, for the GWJ Conference Call podcast.

Dark Sector, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Mythos Revitalized, Rock Band Malfunctions, Michael Zenke From Massively.com, A Chance To Win A Limited Edition Risk: Black Ops, Your Glorious Emails and more! - We called and you answered! We got so many emails this week we’re dedicating the whole show to them. Not only do we have new GWJ contributer Michael Zenke joining us, he was kind enough to offer a limited edition of Risk: Black Ops (the upcoming Hasbro board game) for a glorious new contest! All you have to do is send in a funny picture that involves a board game of some kind to contest@gamerswithjobs.com! What could be easier!?

If you like board games you should totally enter. That version of Risk is pretty much kickass.

It is an unmitigated pleasure to drop a new offsite link on you today. The folks over at Gamers with Jobs were kind enough to ask if I’d be interested in writing with them. If you don’t dig games writing as much as I do, a decent analogy would be if one of your favorite bands asked you to join them on stage for a jam session. Not like, top-40s band. But not local, either. Something with regional appeal.

My first post with them went up today, detailing the on again/off again love affair I’ve had with console and PC gaming. Anyone who read the site last year will know of my tech troubles and the long stretch of time when I was writing about MMOs more than playing them but … this is written all fancy-like.

The PC became a workhorse, nothing more than my portal to work or whatever virtual world I was inhabiting at the time. Early last year, I wasn’t even really playing MMOs. I was writing about them, thinking about them, but my game time was spent with my hands wrapped firmly around a controller. At my lowest point I actually repurchased Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to play on the 360, because my PC just couldn’t handle the load Tamriel represented.

I enjoyed it, but I felt shamed. My sad old gaming rig had done so much for me, and I was leaving it to rot. Many long months passed, seasons changed, and the only reason I sat down to my PC was to put in few hours of work. For every decision there are consequences, and every week I spent ignoring my roots another mark was made on my karmic tally stick.

This kind of dude-ed up writing, with imagery and stuff, is the way I write in my head. It’s a lot of fun to see it on screen. Thanks for the opportunity, guys.

Just in case you don’t listen to the podcast: I’m going to be moving on from Slashdot pretty soon.

My goal of being a freelance games writer is something that - I feel - I’m within reach of realizing. So I’m jumping, with my last day on the site slated for April 17th. After that I’ll be purely focusing on Massively and other freelance projects.

Within the next few months you’re going to be seeing my name in some new places, including (shock) print mags. I’m really excited by the possibilities this represents. I’m hopeful it will mean a higher quality of writing everywhere I have the fortune to set word to electron.

What does this mean for MMOG Nation? MN is now officially a part of my professional career. As such, you can expect a level of dedication to posting that previously I’ve been more lax about. Content may not always be incredibly gripping, of course. I especially can’t promise that on weekends, when posts might tend towards the more casual (ala the Friday Film posts).

That said, at the end of the month you should be able to look back and see at least one post every day. That’s my new commitment to the site and my writing. Wish me luck. :)

A busy day, so to tide you over a few pictures from this past weekend. All of the stuff I shot will be up on Flickr eventually, but I like to take my time with that. Here you go, in the meantime.

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I just got back about an hour ago from the Indie MMO Game Developer’s Conference. It was a great trip; just four hours by car from home to Minneapolis, great speakers, lots of great conversations.

Quickie highlights:

• Dr. Bartle! In general, and in specific - his chat on government interference in MMOs, which dovetailed nicely with his keynote this morning about the future history of the genre, annnnd getting to interview him. We ended up talking pretty much all about World of Warcraft. Which, at least, I enjoyed quite a bit.
• Nick Fortugno, of Rebel Monkey, did a fantastic talk about the casual industry’s view of Massive games. Really engaging speaker, very fun to listen to, and amazing content.
• Gordon Walton did a more directed ‘future of the genre’ talk, and it was some amazingly inspiring stuff. Personally inspiring as well as professionally - just really really great.
• Interviewed Scott Hartsman, Brian Green, and Jonathan Stevens about various and sundry.
• Fantastic dinner with some fellow MMO commentators, fish and chips and Boddingtons, and a great argument about WoW’s older content that feeds right into my feelings about revamping old content. Also: Got pissed at and made up with Kendricke. Good times.
• Recorded MNB #7 on the way home in the car! So with some (hopefully quick) editing, next show will go up promptly.

Cuppy, Scott, and Cameron were all there as well, and have some discussion of the event. If you’re curious as to where you can see my coverage, that’d be Gamasutra - probably all week long. Got a looot of stuff to transcribe. I wasn’t sure before I went if the time was worth it for the reward, and I think I chose wisely.

Thanks to everyone I got to chat with over the weekend for stimulating my brain.

Michael, you might be saying to yourself, you were doing so well! You’d posted pretty much all month long with some more-or-less interesting content … and then this weekend was radio silence. Plus, where’s MMOG Nation Broadcast number 5? You promised us something on GDC, which was a month ago at this point!

These are all excellent questions. I’d like to offer a few things to you on this Monday night:

• Assurances that MNB #5 is coming this week.
• A preview of upcoming blog posts -
  • Mauradon, Exploded (a WoW design experiment)
  • Why Microsoft Doesn’t Get Massive Games (an attempt to explain their actions)
  • The “Comfort” Game (why online games do more than just entertain)
  • Fabulous Faydark (recent EQ2 exploits)
  • Fists of Ham Instance Report #1 (WoW gaming journal)
• A preview of upcoming MNB episodes -
  • The 7-11 Gamer
  • Slouching Towards Innsmouth
  • Putting Yourself Out There
  • The ‘Mass’ Effect
• A promise that I’m going to have an important personal announcement by the end of the month. If you like my writing (and since you’re reading this I guess I can assume that) you’ll really like my news.