{"id":367,"date":"2010-03-25T09:35:58","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T14:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=367"},"modified":"2010-03-25T09:35:58","modified_gmt":"2010-03-25T14:35:58","slug":"an-interactive-fiction-gathering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=367","title":{"rendered":"An Interactive Fiction Gathering"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m flying to Boston today for a dual work\/fun trip. I’ll be hanging out at the local Google Cambridge office. I’ll meet with some teams. But the fun part of the trip is visiting the PAX East<\/a> gaming conference that goes through the weekend. It’s a bit like Gencon, but smaller and more focused on videogames than roleplaying games.<\/p>\n

Why PAX East? Because for the first time in the ~15 year history of the indie interactive fiction (IF) community, a large number of us are finally congregating in meatspace. Most of us only know each other from mailing lists, competition entries, game reviews, and chatting on a MUD. The fantastic Andrew Plotkin<\/a> (a major technical and creative leader in the IF community) is setting up a hotel suite<\/a> for people to gather in and geek out over interactive fiction. It’s not just for longstanding community members though — we’re hoping to evangelize newbies from the conference and get them excited about the genre. We’ll be demoing games, passing out CDs, coins, cards, and even doing some mini-talks.<\/p>\n

My own schedule and agenda is deeply entwined with this event:<\/p>\n