|  | Published articles by me on MUDs. Most of these have been scanned from the
magazines in which they appeared. 
 
		
			|   | A Voice from the Dungeon Practical Computing, pages 126 to 130,
 December, 1983.
 This was the first article on MUDs published anywhere, although I
				put it together almost a year beforehand in response to an 
				earlier feature
				in Practical Computing which had hypothesised
				on the possibility of someday having multi-player adventures.
				The first third or so of what I wrote is irrelevent today (and wasn't
				especially interesting in 1983!), but it really picks up thereafter.
				I've changed all spellings of MUD from "Mud"
				to "MUD", since my original
				text capitalised it but the typesetter chose not to. I have,
				however, left in the results of my doing a late
				macro change on all occurrences of "adventure"
				to "Adventure" (sigh). The only other alteration
				is the correction of a typo (it had "fro" instead
				of "for"); I resisted the temptation to
				put <CITE>s around all the program names...
 |  
			|   | A letter in Micro Adventurer,
				referring to an article in their July issue. |  
			|   | Adventures
				on the magic network Commodore Horizons, page 37,
 February, 1985.
 Commodore Horizons was a magazine
				from the Micro Adventurer stable,
				and since I was already writing
				articles for that
				publication, they asked me to squeeze out
				another. What I gave them was edited a
				little to jolly up the text, and extra stuff
				about CompuNet was inserted; however, it doesn't
				have any obvious errors. The limit of 12
				external users was because of the number
				of dial-in modems hooked to the DEC-10
				(including 4 which were paid for by a
				whip-round among the players themselves!).
 The article comes with a map which is the
				same as the one in
				Micro Adventurer and a photograph
				of me in the Interactive Teaching Laboratory
				(ITL) at Essex University.
 |  
			|   | STUCK IN THE MUD Your Commodore, pages 86 and 97,
 March, 1985.
 I wrote this because I was asked to by the people at
				Your Commodore. I did it in the semi-jokey
				style beloved of UK computer magazines then and now,
				although it was edited a little (I didn't start a
				sentence with the word "And", for certain!).
				The title and linear separators aren't mine, either. It's
				accurate, of course, except for the 1979 start date which
				should have been late 1978 (an error I was to repeat for
				many years until I actually thought about it!).
 |  
			|   | MUD MAN RESPONDS Acorn User, page 40,
 June, 1987.
 A letter I wrote in response to an
				earlier article
				comparing MUD2 with
				Shades.
 |  
			|   | Who Plays MUAs? Comms Plus!, pages 18 and 19,
 October/November, 1990.
 Having spent some time putting together my summary
				a year earlier, I figured I may as well make something of it and
				send it off to be published. For the rest of the story,
				see the background to
				Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades.
 |  
			|   | PROBLEMS IN THE MUD OASIS Newsletter, pages 2 and 3,
 December, 1990.
 I joined the Organisation Against
				Sexism In Software (OASIS)
				when it began, more out of support than the
				expectation I would get anything out of it.
				After a while, though, I thought I may as well
				take the opportunity that membership afforded
				to pose a question which had been bothering me
				for some time (indeed, it still bothers me):
				what to do when someone types rape <player>
				at the game. My letter was printed as an article,
				and was followed in the next issue by a
				response from
				Paola
				Kathuria. Paola sent me her comments
				in advance, so I could prepare my own
				reply to them.
				Naturally, no sooner had this happened than
				OASIS immediately folded, and that was
				the end of that debate (sigh).
 |  
			|   | A RAPID RESPONSE OASIS Newsletter, pages 5 and 6,
 February, 1991.
 This is my reply to
				Paola
				Kathuria's response to my earlier
				problem statement about
				the "rape" command in MUD. I
				believe Paola prepared a counter-reply, but OASIS
				went under before it could be printed.
 |  
			|   | Bad Ideas for Multi-Player Games The Cursor, pages 10 and 11,
 Summer/Fall, 1998.
 I was "UK and Associate Editor" for
				The Cursor,
                                although it didn't entail doing much except reading articles
                                that had been submitted and commenting on them.
                                I wrote a column too. This one was originally for a
				double-page article, but I was asked to cut it down to
				single-page size. It was then printed double-page, and padded
				out with (unrelated) artwork (sigh).
 I used this piece as the basis for a talk I gave at
				Online Entertainment '97 (some 4
				months before this issue (#2) of The Cursor finally made
				it off the presses..!).
 As with many articles in The Cursor,
				this one comes with a short commentary from another
				author or guest reviewer; luckily for me, industry
				favourite
				Jessica Mulligan
				was the one to write it.
 |  
			|   | Even Movies Have Directors Imaginary Realities,
 December, 1998.
 Imaginary
                                Realities is one of the better online MUD magazines. They wrote
				to me asking for an article, and, pursuant to my belief that
				anything which promotes MUDs deserves all the help it can get, I
				wrote one. It's fairly short (probably too short!), but it
				does make a point.
 |  
			|   | A Wiz by Any Other Name Admiral Bombow's Chronicles,
 December, 1998.
 Admiral Bombow's
                                Chronicles is the house magazine for the
				mud2.com incarnation of
				MUD2. This is an extract from a piece put
				together by Tethys where wizzes were asked to
				explain the origins of their persona names; although the
				article is therefore properly Tethys',
				I don't feel too guilty for claiming this
				particular bit as my own as I did actually contribute
				it. I had, at the time, been looking for an opportunity to
				explain some of the early social engineering that I did with
				MUD; I'd have much rather not had to do so as
				it makes me seem rather a manipulative person, but I felt it 
				necessary to counter the popular notion among certain researchers
				that MUD1 was written by a couple of one-dimensional
				hackers whose only aim was to provide a medium for adolescent
				males to live out fantasies of bloodthirsty violence....
 |  
			|   | Avatar, Character, Persona. Muddled Times,
 August, 2001.
 Muddled
                                Times is another house magazine, this time for
                                mudii.com - and
                                very good it is too. I wrote this short piece
                                in 2000 for a different MUD2 site
                                (mud2.co.uk), but if they ever published it then
                                it wasn't linked to the outside world (or at
                                least I never found it whenever I looked). I
                                therefore sent it to Muddled Times
                                as a token of my support.
 |  
			|   | The next 20: what’s in store for videogames in the coming two decades? Edge,
 October, 2013.
 For its 20th anniversary, Edge
				wanted an article that made predictions about what the next 20 years had in store
				for videogames. I'm not entirely sure why, but they asked me to write it. This
				is the result. It's the original version I submitted; the published version (which
				was credited to "Edge staff") had minor differences following edits by
				the, er, Edge staff.
 |  
 
 
These are series of articles:
 
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