The (fictional? real?) town of Kingsmouth has popped up in connection with The Secret World – and, you know, on the official TSW Facebook page – so I guess there is an actual connection. Not that I would know. I can’t keep a secret.

Now, if this was part of a viral marketing stunt, I’d expect the Kingsmouth site to contain lots of clues to the game: important characters, key locations, lore, missions – future events. Or it could just be completely meaningless. I mean, who knows? After all, who would go to all that trouble of creating a website for a fictional town in a game? It just doesn’t make sense.

At any rate, I’m sure we’ll learn more about Kingsmouth and Solomon Island soon, so stay tuned. To, you know, whatever channel you get your information from.

UPDATE: Oh, look, we’ve tuned into one of those channels already. Massively has spoken with Mr Ellingsen of Funcom fame, and he’s confirmed there’s going to be more information – and a video – available this weekend. How about that?

In brief: the iPhone 3Gs is the best mobile phone I’ve ever owned. It’s also, probably, the best gadget I’ve ever owned. Here’s why (in no particular order of preference).

a. The Kindle app. I’ve become completely addicted to my Kindle (second best gadget in my gadget bag) and roaming library, and now I can read every single book in my ever-growing digital collection no matter where I am, because I always have my phone. Also, I can buy and download books from Amazon even without wifi. Who needs Whispernet?

b. Google Maps and the GPS. Navigating Ireland would have been a lot more difficult without it, and while I don’t have much use for a GPS in my daily life – I know my way to the office…and back – it’s a fantastically well integrated feature. The fact that there are tons of apps featuring location services makes it even better, and I’m sure we’ll also see a bunch of intriguing augmented reality apps in the near future. Dedicated GPS devices will soon be a thing of the past.

c. The camera. My previous phone had a much better camera. 5 mega-pixels, proper flash, plenty of cool (though often useless) features, a pretty decent lens. Except I rarely used it. It was the reason I bought that phone, but I found it annoying and fidgety to use, particularly when it came to transferring pictures to iPhoto. And the video camera was awful. The iPhone takes decent photos and pretty good videos, but more importantly, it’s easy and fun to use, and I’ve already taken tons of photos and videos, uploaded them to Flickr, emailed them and transferred them to the Mac. All of it completely painlessly. It just works.

d. Text messaging. I can’t believe how clunky the SMS interface has been on all of my previous phones – and I can’t believe we accepted it for so long. Handling text messages like instant messages, grouped in conversations, is both obvious and brilliant. Easy to read, easy to browse – again, it just works.

Of course, there’s a lot more to the iPhone. The games, the apps, it’s a damn fine iPod and it has the best mobile internet browser on the market. And, oh, it’s not a half bad phone: fast and super smooth in operation, it handles contacts well, switches quickly between networks when roaming, has pretty decent speakerphone capabilities, and presents all the necessary information and features cleanly and smoothly and attractively.

The ringtones are pretty good, too.

Of course there are also a few niggles, like the battery life, which is rather abysmal but no more so than with any other fancy smartphone, and a tendency to drop off the network from time to time. But compared with my last three phones – Sony Ericsson, all of them – it’s damn near niggle free.

My only regret at this point is not buying the 32Gb version. Then again, I am contemplating getting the new 64Gb iPod touch.

(Yes, I have issues.)

“Actually, we have put the development of the Dreamfall Chapters on indefinite hold. We might pick them up again, but there are no plans for that as of now.”

Which, admittedly, doesn’t sound good.

Since Funcom’s PR and marketing department is focused on the immediate to near future, however – and on our big deep-into-production titles like Age of Conan’s expansion pack and The Secret World – their wording will obviously reflect that. Dreamfall is, admittedly, small fry compared with our MMORPG behemoths. At least in terms of scope, cost and potential revenue.

The truth is, while Dreamfall Chapters is on hold right now, it’s temporary, not indefinite, and there are most certainly plans to continue as soon as it’s viable to do so. I’m just one person, but when I have the spare time, I tinker with the design, story and characters for the episodic continuation to Dreamfall. And the moment it makes sense to do so, we’ll put together a team and start production.

So do not abandon hope! We have every intention of returning to the universe and to reward our fans with a fitting continuation – and eventual conclusion – to the saga.

I think the team did an absolutely wonderful job with the secret societies, creating very distinct and unique visual identities – square, triangle, circle; red, blue, green – for, respectively, the Templars, the Illuminati and the Dragon; some wonderfully sexy uniforms; headquarters to match; and (not least) intriguing and original game mechanics playing up the conflict between the factions.

Oh, and let’s not forget the test, which has been quite the viral success, spreading far and wide through forums and Facebook.

It’s just a shame that most of you only get to see a tiny sliver of what the team has delivered this past month. It’s not all concept art and posters, y’know. There’s a whole game to go with it, and though journalists did get a sneak peek at some of our lovely combat gameplay, we’d also love to share it with the rest of you.

(Just not quite yet. “When? When?” I hear you shout. Well, that’s something we’re going to discuss. The longer we wait, the better it looks and plays.)

All in all, quite a week for The Secret World – and it’s not even over yet. On Thursday the embargo lifts on all the information revealed at the PAX presentations, and I’m sure there’s going to be quite a bit of coverage. I’m looking forward to reading people’s impressions. We lead an often insular existence, and it’s both rewarding and important to get feedback on our work from people who play games for a living.

But it’s also been a tiring and stressful few weeks – and an exhausting weekend – and I’m heading back to what I hope will be quieter days at work.

It’s a bit disconcerting how travelling home from the U.S. can eat up almost two whole days. I leave Seattle Monday morning, I arrive in Oslo Tuesday afternoon. Suddenly forty percent of my precious work week has vanished. Poof. Black magic. Every day counts when you’re in production on such a massive project, which means that there probably won’t be much downtime at all. At least not for a good while yet.

Our next big milestone, Halloween, is already looming.

No rest for the, etc.

UPDATE: Just because my personal tweets aren’t part of any mythical ARG doesn’t mean there isn’t something strange going on. There is. Just don’t expect me to propagate any kind of mystical nonsense that isn’t completely related to what we’re revealing about TSW. This project seems to bring out the crazies, and they’ve done a good job interfering with our PR plans and community. Just don’t trust everything you read.

Ancient forests and mountains covered in a thick, swirling mist; brooding clouds; a light drizzle; pines and moss and bogs and lakes and streams and rocks – combining into the peculiarly Norwegian terrain most famously illustrated by the renowned artist Theodor Kittelsen. A landscape in any season where strange, mystical and mythical shapes emerge from nature, giving rise to the old stories of troll and nøkken and huldra.

This is trolsk. And there is something almost Lovecraftian about the darker side of it. Something spiritual, primal and eldritch, something shadowy and somber and often terrifying. Something immensely powerful. There are few things that fire up my creative engines the way this landscape does. In fact, more than anything, the Norwegian mountains and forests fuelled my early love for myths and fairy tales, for the fantastical and spiritual and dark, and it’s been a red thread through everything I’ve done.

Sadly, outside of the collected works of Asbjørnsen and Moe and Kittelsen’s art, the Norwegian folk tale has never been done justice in any medium. There’s a lot of Norwegian horror films these days – good horror, even – but most of it could have been made anywhere there’s snow and woods. Zombies and serial killers aren’t unique to Norway (even when they are frozen Nazi zombies). The vast reservoir of folk tales and legends has been left untapped by modern media.

So for a couple of years now, I’ve been working on a story that I hope will turn into something that captures the spirit and mood of trolsk, modernising the Norwegian folk tale and translating it into something that could work as a film, short story or graphic novel – perhaps even an RPG/adventure. It’s been on the back-burner for a while, but after a too-brief trip to the mountains this summer, I felt a call to continue, and I know now where it’s heading. I understand the core of the story, the themes, and how it’s going to play out. And it’s exciting to see these vast and misty shapes take form.

Traditionally, trolls were a far cry from the bushy haired gnomes of pop culture. They were pure forces of nature; ancient giants of immense power that resided in the deepest, darkest forests and highest mountains; creatures of stone and earth and wood and grass. Unfortunately the idea of the troll has been subverted and commercialised into innocuous and silly creatures with button eyes and huge red noses, a far cry from Kittelsen’s wonderfully dangerous creations.

The idea of the troll in my story is of something almost godlike, an ancient force of nature inherent in the hills and valleys, lakes and deep forests of Norway. Not as a character itself but more a framework and thematic foundation, something the characters in the story have to relate to, and perhaps even interact with.

But I won’t spoil it. Hopefully you’ll be able to see or read or play it for yourself some day.

Amazon’s second generation Kindle – while not perfect in any way, shape or form – has made it a lot easier for me to start reading books that would otherwise have piled up on my bedroom floor. And it has made the prospect of upcoming transcontinental flights much more bearable. I’m not a huge fan of the travelling part of travelling, and I always need to bring tons of books to make sure I never ever run out, but now that will be a concern of the past. As long as the Kindle is charged – the battery lasts for weeks and can be recharged via USB – I have reading material, and plenty of it. In fact, in the past few weeks, I’ve spent almost $200 on books, some of which I already own in print form.

But there are plenty of issues.

First off: contrast. The Kindle’s screen, which isn’t backlit, is slate grey with black text. Which is easy on the eye under the right conditions, but it’s nowhere as pleasant or easy to read as black ink on white or beige paper. In lower light conditions, it can be a bit annoying. E-paper will improve, of course, and I’m sure the next generation of Kindle will be a whole lot better. You pay for being an early adopter, and it’s not a huge problem.

Second: layout and colours. There are books that simply don’t and won’t work on the Kindle. Books that rely on set page sizes, books that utilise lots of footnotes, coloured maps, illustrations and photos, books that play with fonts and white space and layout. Until there’s an ebook reader that can replicate the printed page exactly as intended – and there isn’t, unless you use a laptop and either PDF or scanned pages – there will be compromises. Certain books I will still buy in print, and not for the Kindle.

Third: For lack of a better word, flippability. User interface isn’t the right word, because the Kindle is held back by more than interface – it’s the technology itself that’s lacking. While you can search and bookmark and use the index, when you want to jump back a few pages or look at a map of the world (a mainstay of fantasy novels) or references, it’s annoyingly time consuming. If Apple made an ebook reader (and I’m sure they will) you can bet they’d make the experience a lot smoother and faster and easier. A touch interface would help greatly; in fact, the UI on the iPhone/touch version of Kindle is a lot better, simply because you can flip the pages with your fingers. Turning pages on the Kindle is also slow, and requires some degree of patience while the image refreshes. It’s fine for straight reading from beginning to end, as long as the book doesn’t require you to jump around too much.

Fourth: The Kindle is horrible at organising your files in an intelligent, user friendly and presentable manner. The home page contains a list – in plain text – of all your books, sorted by author, title, genre and, most usefully, ‘recent’ – except the last one doesn’t work all that well for me. For some strange reason all the books that I access and read are scattered around on the second and third pages, and not the front page. The limited sorting choices makes it annoying to navigate. You can’t even create your own folders, which is just silly, and there’s no visual representation of the books. Something akin to Apple’s Cover Flow would be fantastic, but, of course, given the Kindle’s hardware, that wouldn’t be possible – or at the very least it’d be extremely slow. But I’m sure they could have done a better job than that…and Jeff? It’s only a software update away. Give it a think.

Fifth: Without the Whispernet functionality, which doesn’t work outside the U.S. (why no Wi-fi, Amazon? Why? I mean, how hard would that have been?) getting books onto the Kindle is a bit awkward. It isn’t difficult or time consuming by any means: you download your book from the very user friendly Kindle Store onto your computer, you connect the Kindle with an USB cable, and you drag and drop the file into the documents folder. Not difficult, but why not make it even easier? Creating a simple applet that could automatically sync Amazon and the Kindle should be quite easy to do, and I’m surprised that no enterprising third-party developer hasn’t already done it. I don’t mind doing it the old fashioned way, and it’s not like I need to put new reading material on the thing every day or every week, but it’s an unnecessary hurdle for less technically inclined users, and it makes the device feel somewhat primitive. Of course, with Whispersync – in the U.S. – you do get your books automatically, which changes everything. Ironically, though, the iPhone version also automatically syncs…via Wi-fi. Anywhere in the world. So, Amazon, again: why the hell no Wi-fi?

Last but not least: Ownership. You can argue (and some do) that all Amazon allows you to do is rent books for viewing on your Kindle and iPhone. You can’t read them on your PC or print them out, and you can’t transfer the books to any other kind of ebook reader. Obviously, since that would allow competing devices to eat into their profit margins, and since publishers are notoriously restrictive on these things – at least for now. Unless the format is opened up, you’re stuck reading these books on supported devices, and when they’re no longer supported you’ll have to repurchase every book in another format. If you’re the kind of person who reads a book once and then gives it away or stows it in a box somewhere, that’s probably fine. If you want the assurance that your growing collection of novels will be forever accessible, you might be disappointed – although I choose to believe that, at some point in the future, the format will be opened up and the DRM will be removed or at least transferable to other devices. I can live with it, you might not be able to.

But I’m nitpicking. Or at least complaining about things that are symptomatic of early generation hardware. The Kindle signifies a true revolution, and that shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s a device that lets you read thousands of books wherever you are, in an easy, user friendly and attractive manner. It has given me great joy already, and my next way-too-long plane rides (first to Seattle, then to Beijing) will be greatly improved by the fact that I only need to pack one novel rather than three, four, five. And I don’t have to waste time deciding which books to pack, oh-no-that-one’s-too-heavy, desperately searching for the one I’ve misplaced – trust me, it makes my life a whole lot easier. Also, the dictionary functionality – being able to highlight any word in the book and get a definition – is quite lovely indeed. I don’t use it a lot but it’s great to have.

I haven’t addressed things like the text-to-speech functionality – which I’ll never, ever use – or the ability to make annotations or take notes, or the web browser – which I can’t use – or the MP3 functionality – I’ll stick with my iPod, thanks – or any of the other features which aren’t about just reading. Which is what it’s for, frankly, and which it does bloody well. The rest I don’t really care about.

If you travel a lot and love to read and you’re sick of having to bring tons of books everywhere you go, and you’re running out of space on your bookshelves at home, I’d definitely recommend getting one. If you’re an avid reader but you do all your reading at home and you have plenty of bookshelf space, I’d wait a generation or two. But ebooks are here to stay, and while the printed page won’t disappear any time soon, the market will shift eventually as more and more people get used to reading on a screen.

And hey, think of all the trees you’ll be saving.

EDIT: After publishing this review yesterday, I realised I hadn’t addressed another issue I’ve had with the Kindle: availability of books. While Amazon boasts over 500,000 books in their Kindle Store, I’m surprised by how many well-known authors and novels that haven’t (yet) been digitised; from Glen David Gold’s Carter Beats the Devil and Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, to anything by Tad Williams and – perhaps less surprisingly – J.K. Rowling. There’s still enough books for a lifetime but I find it annoying that there are plenty of favourites – both authors and specific novels – that I can’t read on the Kindle, and some new novels that I still have to buy in physical form when I get on that plane.

From Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar, to ancient legends about Agartha and modern conspiracy theories about a master race of humanoid reptilians, the concept of a hidden world – a secret world – beneath our feet has both fascinated and horrified us surface dwellers.

It’s been revealed (ostensibly by mentally unstable people who seem to believe that our game in some way closely mirrors real events) that the subterranean realm known as Agartha will feature – quite prominently – in The Secret World. We’ve dug deep (but not too deep, I hope) into all available literary and historical texts to find what we believe to be The Truth about the Hollow Earth. Or at least a truth. (There’s never just one, is there?) Exactly how Agartha will feature in TSW, I’m not about to reveal here, at least not now, but this is a golden opportunity for all of you to read up on the myths, legends and – possibly – facts about the forbidden lands below our feet. To prepare yourselves, so to speak, for the future.

Who knows, you might just stumble upon The Truth yourself. After all, there are many mysteries in this world that have yet to be revealed, and only the curious and tenacious may unlock those ancient secrets. Post your findings and recommended reading (or viewing, or listening) material in the comments for others to see. If there is a deeper truth here, it’s probably good to share.

I’ll certainly return to this intriguing topic at some point in the near future, so stay tuned.

I’m sorry but I have to get this out. What the hell are you doing with The Longest Journey and Dreamfall?! Is it really going to take another 6-7 years for you guys to finish another chapter? I know you’ve used the excuse of being involved with other games, several times but C’MON! We, the fans made you famous, we bought and loved your game. And to repay us, you (possibly) kill April, leave the story unfinished and say there might be TLJ2? Awsome. When? 2045? Cool, I’ll be dead by then. Oh well, would’ve been nice to see the story end in my life-time but clearly you’ve got more passion for money than art.

Well, to the extent that I have to eat and pay my mortgage and buy clothes for my daughter – then yes, I have more passion for money than art.

Right now, most of the core Dreamfall team is working on The Secret World, a game that we’re very passionate about. Art or not, we really believe in the universe we’re creating and we feel it’s going to be a truly original and engaging online game. We wouldn’t be making it otherwise.

When I have a moment, I play around with the designs and stories for other games. Including one that features a bird named Crow, an assassin named Kian and a very exciting new heroine…

We’re constantly discussing the future of Dreamfall and The Longest Journey, and once we have the time, the people and the funding in place, we’ll get cracking.

And I don’t think you’ll have to wait until 2045.

I apologize to email you directly. I\’ve googled and searched everything I could manage to think of. Several years ago I read your Anarchy Online book “Prophet without Honour”. I think of it fondly and thought I would re-read it. When I open it again I notice that it says, \”Book One\”. zomg – is there a book 2?!

That was the plan – but unfortunately there isn’t and there won’t be. I do have the first couple of chapters lying around somewhere, I think, but they’re not particularly relevant any more.

As I’ve said before on several occasions, Anarchy Online ended up going in a different direction than first intended, and that’s fine – that’s how these things work. The players dictate, not the storytellers, and I never had time to sit down and try to revise the original storyline to accommodate the changes.

If, at some point in the distant future, we decide to reboot the universe – something I’d love to do – I might dig up the original ideas and revisit them. But that’s not going to happen any time soon. Would be fun, though. Would be tons of fun.

I am a 21 year old Film Student, who has recently become mesmerized in the world of “The Longest Journey.” I’m sure you’ve received more than enough praise for your well developed characters and complex narrative, but it was a little off-hand remark by Crow that really struck a chord with me.

The simple phrase, “It’s a Myrshnik-eat-Myrshnik world out there… and only the strongest Myrshnik survives” was so charming and quaint. I’ve never seen a Myrshnik. I know nothing of a Myrshnik. But for some reason, out of this grand adventure, that is what stuck with me the most.

So I was wondering what the rights are to the word “Myrshnik” and the accompanying phrase? I know this must be a rather odd request, but I first want to say thank you for at least reading this and I hope to hear from you soon!

I’m not sure how this works, but the exact quote from Dreamfall is protected by copyright, and if used in any commercial context probably has to be attributed as such. As for the word ‘Myrshnik’ – it’s a creature in the TLJ universe, but it’s also, Google informs me, a surname used by one person only (at least he’s the only one on the internet). I’m not particularly bothered if someone else chooses the use the word, but our legal department may disagree.

Without getting into any quagmire here, companies are required to protect their copyrights or they might lose their rights to such properties or assets – and now I’m starting to sound like a lawyer, so I’ll stop. I’m not the right person to ask, really.

Which leads directly into the next one:

We are a small indie team from Romania.

A while ago, we started working on a small CRPG set in the TLJ world.

Initially it was supposed to be a small, free game, and we were not a legally registered company.

However, the project started to grow, and now we have a full design document based on the world and a nearly complete inhouse game engine.

The questions I want to ask you are: Would there be any legal problems if we were to decide to make the game commercial?

If there were to be any problems, would there be any way to overcome them? (the game would be a low budget production).

Again: not a lawyer and I can’t speak for our legal department – or indeed for Funcom – but yes, there would certainly be legal problems if you make the game commercial. It’s illegal to take someone else’s work and profit from it.

Personally, I would have nothing against fan-made games based on TLJ or Dreamfall as long as they were released for free – but again, I can only speak for myself. I don’t own the rights to those properties, and I wouldn’t be able to make (and profit from) a game set in that universe or using those characters. That’s the way of things, like it or not, and without those rights publishers and developers would have a hard time surviving.

As for overcoming those problems – you might want to try contacting Funcom’s business development or marketing departments and let them know what you’re doing.

How do you start writing/developing stuff? I try my very best (maybe not my very) to go and start something, to rip a piece of imaginative thought from my brain and translate it to ink on paper (or pixels on a screen), but I have yet to actually start something. I seem to ‘trip’, or get sidetracked by the act of writing it down, that whatever it was that I wanted to tell becomes static and eventually shimmers away into unexistence.

How do you do it? How do you think up your idea and successfully write/type down in its entirety?

Most of my ideas end up as just that – ideas. Locked away in notebooks and text files, unfulfilled dreams lost to the ages. But also, most of them aren’t very good and don’t deserve to live.

It’s a difficult question to answer. Having an idea is the easy part. Making something of that idea – a story, a drawing, a song, a game – that’s the difficult part. Creativity is, like most other things, 5% inspiration and 95% hard work. If you want to be a writer you have to write. You have to finish things. You have to see it through, even when it sucks.

I’m lucky in that I have very clear guidelines and a specific outlet for my creativity. We’re making a game and that game has to be finished, regardless of how inspired I feel, which forces me to be ‘creative’ and Get Stuff Done even when I’m not feeling particularly productive. Deadlines are good. Other people are good, too, which is why (almost) everyone needs collaborators and editors. Most of us need to be challenged in order to stop procrastinating.

But more on this in another blog post. Yes, there will be more blog posts.

I wonder if you’d be willing to talk very briefly about accessibility in TSW for gamers with handicaps like limited dexterity, vision or hearing problems. Not an interview, per se, just a blurb.

I have to admit that we haven’t given it much thought. When it comes to vision, I think it’ll be hard to make The Secret World playable for anyone who can’t see what’s going on. Hearing shouldn’t be a huge problem, seeing as the audio isn’t – in most cases (and Simon P. will kill me for saying this) – absolutely critical to the gameplay. Limited dexterity? That depends. The game will require some degree of dexterity, especially in combat, but I hope we can make it possible to play the game – in some form – using only one hand. It probably won’t be optimal, but perhaps serviceable. Perhaps.

I saw online (wikepedia) that you may have attended NYU in the early 90’s and I wanted to know if this was true!

The Longest Journey was an incredible game that was suprisingly deep, rich with atmosphere, and one of the last great adventure games in a genre that I fear is on the slow tread to extenction. While playing the game over the summer during school, I felt that you had a strong sense of what it was like living, and studying, art in a big city (particularly new york city/east village), and I wanted to know if you drew on your experiences in New York for the setting and characters in the game.

I did attend the NYU Film School in the early 90s, and yes, New York City in general and the East Village in particular was a huge influence on The Longest Journey. Venice is, for all intents and purposes, the Village; both from an architectural point of view and from a social and humanistic point of view. I lived in the neighbourhood for three years (plus one year on the Upper East Side, and I missed the atmosphere of downtown) and it’s probably my favourite place on Earth.

I wouldn’t say I’ve met the people portrayed in the game, but they do draw on my own experiences living in NYC.

EDIT: Headline, to reflect that ‘myrshnik’ is both singular AND plural. Thanks, TLJwiki. You’re my number one resource whenever I need to dig into my own convoluted lore. Keep it up!

Yesterday I bought myself a Nespresso machine. A Nespresso machine makes espresso using little capsules containing vacuum packed coffee. You don’t have to do much. You stick the capsule in, close the lid, make sure there’s water in the tank, and push a button. Voila – extremely tasty espresso in less than thirty seconds. It is, by far, the most amazing coffee you could possibly make at home without some serious barista skills, expensive equipment and tons of free time. It also comes with a brilliant milk frother which means you can make latte and cappuccino and, well, latte and cappuccino. And it takes less than two minutes in total. And doesn’t require you to be any good at anything whatsoever. It doesn’t even require any cleaning.

Did I mention that this is possibly the greatest invention of all time? Second only to penicillin and, possibly, the internet.

Today I’ve had three different espresso drinks and the only reason I stopped was because I was going into caffeine shock. It’s. That. Good.

I feel like I’ve joined some sort of cult because I keep telling people “oh, you must try it, it’ll change your life, honest, you’ll never look back”, and also because you need to join the sinister sounding ‘Nespresso Club’ to order capsules online, but then I’ve always wanted to be part of a cult, and at least this cult doesn’t require you to donate all your money to someone wearing sandals.

Recommended. Oh, and “hi, everyone!”.