|  | In October 2000, the developer-centric magazine Edge brought out an
web-based version
of itself with original material. They chose as their
editor Steve Hildrew, a
former MUD2 player. As he had no budget to pay anyone to write
columns, his thoughts turned to people he knew who were egotistical enough to
be willing to work for nothing. Naturally, I was one of the first he
approached... 
The launch of the magazine was delayed by several months, which dated
the first article a little (but not excessively so). Subsequent articles
were written when Steve emailed me and said, "how about another column,
then?" and are more in keeping with the date they appeared.
 
The columns are edited for length, and therefore don't always match
what I wrote. The cutting tends to be less than in offline magazines,
though, which is a relief. Also, they don't have names - they're just
Column: Richard Bartle.
 
		
			|   | Column
                                1 October, 2000.
 I wrote this column using material I was
                                preparing for the
                                Online Games 2000
                                conference. I didn't get a lot of feedback
                                from it, but then it doesn't say a lot
                                that's controversial.
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			|   | Column
                                2 February, 2001.
 For the second article, Steve asked me to
                                be more provocative. I therefore reworked a
                                talk I had planning to give at the
                                Computer Games Developers'
                                Conference that they had rejected (no
                                reason given). I wasn't expecting many
                                people would read it, but hey, it was for a
                                friend so it didn't really matter.
 Was I ever wrong...
 I spent 2-4 hours a day
                                for the 3 weeks following its publication fielding emails
                                and forum postings about it! The biggest
                                discussion raged on Lum
                                The Mad's site. I took a snapshot of it before
                                it disappeared, and present it here
                                in its entirety; it clarifies a lot of the issues in
                                the article.
                                The version of the article I reproduce here is
                                the one I actually wrote, by the way; to see
                                it as published, check the
                                Edge Online Archives.
 An interesting counterblast
                                later appeared in Jessica Mulligan's influential
                                Biting
                                The Hand column. It makes some very good
                                points, although I think that likening player
                                killing to rape was somewhat ill-advised.
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			|   | Column
                                3 September, 2001.
 I wrote this article in June, 2001 and
                                contacted Edge Online to tell
                                them that it was ready. No reply. OK, so maybe
                                their email server was broken. I tried
                                again next day, and again a couple of weeks
                                later. Then I went on holiday and retried
                                when I got back: still no reply. I phoned.
 It seems that there wasn't anyone actually
                                responsible for the online edition of
                                Edge any more. Someone was
                                nevertheless deligated to put my piece onto
                                the site, so I sent him a copy. Two weeks
                                later, it still hadn't appeared... I finally cracked
                                and put the text here instead. It's the usual
                                provocative stuff you'd expect intended for
                                a magazine calling itself Edge.
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