Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Terry Pratchett answers questions in SecondLife

Thursday saw millions (well 50 since that's the maximum the sim could hold) flock to see Terry Pratchett the Carnegie medal winning author of the 'Disc world' series. He appeared inworld for the first time to promote his newest novel 'Nation':
'Finding himself alone on a desert island when everything and everyone he knows and loved has been washed away in a huge storm, Mau is the last surviving member of his nation. He's also completely alone - or so he thinks until he finds the ghost girl. She has no toes, wears strange lacy trousers like the grandfather bird and gives him a stick which can make fire. Daphne, sole survivor of the wreck of the Sweet Judy, almost immediately regrets trying to shoot the native boy. Thank goodness the powder was wet and the gun only produced a spark.'

On secondlife Mr Pratchett seemed duly unimpressed:
TerryPratchett Morpork: I think you’re going to have to improve the graphics considerably before I come back to Second Life. The graphics in Oblivion allow you to see the graphics in the bottom of a pond and I think that came out in 2002.

Mr Pratchett also let the crowd know he is not a gaming person:
TerryPratchett Morpork: What is an MMO? What is OpenSim? Can we accept for a moment that I'm not that engrossed by online activities?
When explained he went on to say:
TerryPratchett Morpork: Then no. Early in 2003 we had approaches from about 5 or 6 games developers. I told them all to go away and knock up something that would show me that they had a grip on what Discworld would be about, and none of them came back. I’m not unhappy about that. Certainly I would require a new Discworld game to be as immersive as Thief II and with the sound and graphics suitable for the times.

There are several full transcripts of the Q&A session the best one is by Ciaran Laval at Y2P if you are interested in reading the full session.
Dana

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