This is a collection of work I’ve done outside of this blog.

A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games (2012)

A Mind Forever Voyaging is a full-length book that examines the development of video games a storytelling medium by taking a close look at thirteen landmark titles. The book was initially written and 2010 and finally edited & published in 2012. You can find a more detailed synopsis on the book’s Amazon page.

Digital copies of the book are freely available to download and share. You can download it in PDF, epub, and mobi formats.

Nightmare Mode (2011-2013)

Nightmare Mode was a games website founded in 2010 by Tom Auxier, Fernando Cordeiro, and Patricia Hernandez. I joined in the summer of 2011, and after finding its sea legs, the site gained a focus on critical games writing & new games journalism. Its lifespan was brief and glorious; it gained notice within the alt-games-sphere in late 2011, and became outright successful in 2012, before collapsing from internal drama and staff redirecting their focus on paid work. After some final publications in early 2013, the site abruptly went offline. You can find an easily browseable backup (sadly, without any of the pictures) at http://nightmaremode.thegamerstrust.com/.

While some of it skirts juvenalia, I remain proud of the work I did there, and am honored to have shared space with so many talented writers and thinkers. I have linked my articles from the Wayback Machine (when available) and otherwise to the imageless versions at the Nightmare Mode archive.

The Wonderful Accessibility of Dear Esther (January 2013).
We Ride at Dawn: A Story of Emergent Gameplay in Planetside 2 (December 2012).
Play is Excavation: The Search for Game Poetry (November 2012).
Love in the Time of Shooters: A Conversation with Brendon Chung (September 2012).
Falling in Love: A Review of Thirty Flights of Loving (August 2012)
A Life of Game Design: An Interview with The Real Texas’ Calvin French (July 2012)
Review: The Real Texas (July 2012)
Why I Ignored E3 (June 2012) Save
How the Greatest Shooter in a Decade Failed to Find an Audience (June 2012) (This got boosted by Rock Paper Shotgun as among “the best games writing this week)
“Unlocks” and the Gamification of Gaming (May 2012)
The Campfire Presents: The Longest Climb (April 2012)
Testing the Waters: Five Games from the Molydeux Jam (April 2012)
The Artist: A Conversation with Cart Life’s Richard Hofmeier (March 2012)
The Comfortable Return: An In-Depth Review of Battlefield 3’s Multiplayer (November 2011)
A Sincere Thrill Ride: A Review of Battlefield 3’s Singleplayer Campaign (October 2011)
10 Tips and Tricks to Become a Better Battlefield 3 Player (October 2011)
The Ten Greatest Video Game Theme Songs (October 2011)
My Kingdom for a Horse Armor Pack: What We Lost with the Rise of DLC (October 2011)
When War was Fun: A Battlefield 1942 Retrospective (October 2011)