The Adventure of the London Waterworks

The formal title of this puzzle book is The Sherlock Holmes Escape Book: The Adventure of the London Waterworks by Ormond Sacker. Yes, genre labels are always terrible; "escape book" is what people are calling them these days. And yes, "Ormond Sacker" is a pseudonym. The puzzle and text were created by David Whiteland, who created the Planetarium web puzzle that I reviewed... oh, jeez, I wrote that review exactly twenty years ago.

At any rate! You are Holmes, investigating dastardly goings-on at the Kew Bridge Waterworks. (A historical location, now the London Museum of Water and Steam.) Watson follows you around with his revolver and his reliably dunderheaded commentary. Okay, that's not fair. He points out clues as often as he misses them, and he tends to roll his eyes at your snottiness when you're not looking.

John M. Ford is coming back into print

I woke up to the news that John M. Ford's books are coming back into print, starting next year. His unfinished opus Aspects will appear, as far as it exists, in 2021.

Mike Ford (so-called by all his friends) died in 2006, leaving SF fan communities shocked and in grief -- for the man and for the words we'd abruptly lost. I was not a personal friend. I'd met him at a couple of conventions; I'd donated to help cover his health care costs. I'd assumed he would write forever, which is an absurd thing to believe of a man whose kidney I helped replace, but that's how you think of such wellsprings.

Then Something Happened with his will and his literary estate. Everyone said: "His family got the rights. They didn't approve of his writing. They didn't approve of his partner. So they won't reprint his work." Some of the books remained in print for a while, or a long while, due to existing publishing contracts. Then it was mostly gone, except for his two Star Trek novels (rights owned by Paramount) and a fountain of archived blog comments and unpublished whimsy.

And that was it for John M. Ford. Except, it turns out, no story about him is that facile or that easily summarized. We should have known.

Journalist Isaac Butler went digging for the details. He found... some. Not everybody is talking and not everything they said has come out. The article is worth a read. Butler wound up talking to both Ford's family and his friends -- by which I mean Ford's other family. (His editors and publishers were family.) In finding the story, the journalist was able to connect everybody up.

[...] after a year of delicate back-and-forth spearheaded by Beth Meacham, Tor and the family have reached an agreement that will gradually bring all of his books back into print, plus a new volume of stories, poems, Christmas cards, and other uncollected material. First up, in fall 2020, is the book that introduced me to Ford, The Dragon Waiting. Then, in 2021, Tor will publish—at long last—the unfinished Aspects, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

-- The Disappearance of John M. Ford, Isaac Butler

I'm trying to express how much Ford's writing meant to me. I'm doing it slant and in the corner of your vision -- that's how it is. In 2007, I began a project to analyze The Dragon Waiting; I selfishly wanted to understand every word in that one novel, at least. I don't think I succeeded, but it helped.

I meant that project as a tribute, obviously. Everything else I've written has been a tribute also -- not just to Ford -- to many writers; Ford is always there. I still feel uncomfortable referring to him as just plain "Mike". As Butler says, his endings were always messy.

Current crowdfunds

Speaking of crowdfunding, Aaron Reed's Subcutanean is at about 70% of its (modest) goal. This is not an interactive work, but it is a dynamically-generated text: every printed copy will be different within an authored space. Aaron has written a series of blog posts describing his writing (and implementation) process. He's also progressively posting one edition online -- see the project page for links.

I have not read any version of this; I'm waiting for my own unique edition before I jump in. However, it hits any number of my story kinks. Surreal spaces, unbounded architures, labyrinths... I'm excited about this and I encourage you to help the project succeed.

---

The other crowdfunding project of the month is, of course IFComp's Colossal Fund. This is our third year raising money for IFComp prizes. This year we've raised the goal to $10000, which is ambitious -- but we're almost 85% of the way there.

The prize fund is set up to reward a wide spectrum of games, not just a couple of top vote-getters. This year, if we hit our goal, we expect to give out over 50 cash prizes ranging from $10 up to $415. So please help us support diverse forms of interactive fiction!

(And if you can't contribute money, you can still donate other prizes. And vote on games! That's important too!)

IFComp voting ends on the 15th, so that's the deadline for the fundraiser as well. (We'll take your money after the 15th, but it will go into the IFComp 2020 prize pool.)

Fair note: the Colossal Fund is also an IFTF fundraiser. 80% of the money goes to IFComp prizes. The rest goes to IFTF operational costs, including web hosting, legal support, and the snazzy illustration above.

Kickstarter and organizing

As I'm sure you know, the past few weeks have seen a wave of acrimony around Kickstarter and its nascent union, Kickstarter United. The company fired two employees who were involved in union organizing efforts. Kickstarter claimed it was for unrelated performance reasons; the workers filed an NLRB complaint. KS's CEO said that "The union framework is inherently adversarial"; the union asked the company for voluntary recognition; the company refused and is insisting on an NLRB-run election first.

I've been pretty unsure how to react to these events. I support the idea of tech-worker unionization, inside and outside the game industry. I don't like Kickstarter's apparently obstructionist and wishy-washy position. (Geez, calling your opponents "adversarial" and then refusing voluntary cooperation? I guess it's adversarial now.) But I am not at all familiar with the particulars of union organizing or how NLRB procedure works out for the various sides.

The union has pointedly not called for a boycott of KS or KS projects, but -- like many people -- I have been much less inclined to interact with the company since this situation flared up. Some prominent projects have jumped ship to other platforms such as Indiegogo.

Last week the union posted a call to action. This is straightforward: no boycott yet; express your support.

So that makes me feel better about starting to browse and back KS projects, as I used to do regularly. I do support Kickstarter United and the right of KS employees to unionize. Kickstarter is ready to organize. There. I have said so.

To be clear, I'm not a heavy KS backer. I keep an eye on the narrative game projects and occasionally back one if it looks cool and I think it needs the boost. (Plus whatever Cyan puts on the stove, but those are much higher-profile affairs.) The last time I put money down was August. Now I've caught up and kicked some money at a game or two.

This is not to say that I consider Kickstarter to be union-washed and clean. I am, to half-coin a phrase, keeping an eye out for the union label on new projects. I hope more projects declare their explicit support. And I'm definitely watching Kickstarter's policies and (more importantly) their actions. They've built up a lot of good will helping to launch niche and indie projects -- including mine. That goodwill is now theirs to lose.

Apple Arcade and the future(s)

Apple Arcade's launch is splattered all over the pundosphere, with every possible hot take from "This is pretty good" to "This could be a problem."

I haven't tried Arcade yet. I'm waiting for iOS 13.1 to drop on Tuesday. Also, I'm wallowing in new unplayed PC games already (Little Misfortune, Asshole Goose Game, etc). A free trial month of 75 more games feels like more of a threat than a promise. But hey, I can still blog about it.

Everybody(*) loves Apple Arcade for obvious reasons. "This is a really good deal for players"; "Apple pushes back against manipulative free-to-play crap." These are both true statements. They both amount to the same thing: Apple is investing a lot of money in iOS games and releasing them for way below cost.

This is great for the devs involved. I recognize a lot of names on that launch list and I am happy for them. But it also leaves us wondering how long the party will last, and who will be invited. Community nerves are already sensitized, or just rubbed raw, by the arguments around the Epic Game Store. Epic is also in its money-hose platform-building stage -- but for how long?

Thus the asterisk on the statement above. Investment dollars and free games buy a lot of love and a lingering whiff of fear. It's hard not to see Arcade as yet another stride in the race to the bottom. Is the "premium" pay-up-front game about to suffocate?

The Zarfian Cruelty Scale, revisited

The Zarfian Cruelty Scale is 23 years old as of last month. That's not a numerically interesting anniversary, but it's respectable age for a offhand scrap of critical theory that still gets mentioned regularly.

I am pleased and amused by the Cruelty Scale's continuing currency. But I also worry that people might apply it more broadly or rigidly than it deserves. The Cruelty Scale has had caveats almost from the beginning; it embodies many 1996-ish assumptions about IF and game design. I think it's time to, at minimum, dig into those assumptions. We should make sure we know what we're thinking when we use it.

Read more: The Zarfian Cruelty Scale, Revisited

Abusers, another shoe in the wall

When I said "I know stories that are still not public," I didn't expect them to get blown open within 24 hours.

Yesterday, Meg Jayanth posted this thread:

An anon account has been naming abusers in the games industry. Alexis Kennedy is one of them. I can't speak to the motives of the anon, but Alexis is a well-known predator in the games industry. I have been warning people about him for years.

(--@betterthemask)

Olivia Wood followed up with a description of her experience, in which Alexis Kennedy took advantage of his position of authority over her. Emily Short added her observations. Many other women have spoken up about his manipulative and boundary-pushing behavior.

Kennedy is not the only name to hit the spotlight since my first post, but he's the case that strikes closest to home. I played Echo Bazaar and Sunless Sea. They were great games. His company, Failbetter Games, was and is a highlight of innovative design in the narrative game world. After Kennedy left Failbetter, I was excited to see what he would do next. (Until I started hearing rumors about his behavior, it did not occur to me to wonder why he had left Failbetter Games.)

Failbetter also was and is publicly devoted to foregrounding the voices of underrepresented groups, including women. Many of my friends wrote for Echo Bazaar and Sunless Sea. As Emily said, it was a shock to learn that Kennedy was taking public credit for this good citizenship while privately treating it as his personal grabbing ground.

(Kennedy's new company has a "mentorship program" for indies. Unsurprisingly, the indie devs in that program are now cutting ties.)

So. This sucks. It has sucked for a lot of women, privately, for years. I wasn't happy to find out about it, and if you're just finding out now, you're not happy either. Nevertheless it is incumbent on us to know, acknowledge, and make sure these stories are heard.

Those who are speaking up now have my gratitude and admiration. I know it didn't just happen. It was a long process of people taking care of each other -- making sure that they could come forward, if not safely, at least from a position of support. These posts are my attempt to aid and support that effort.

I'll leave off with this thread:

We believe and stand with everyone who has come forward to speak out about Alexis Kennedy tonight.

Alexis left Failbetter three years ago. We no longer have any ties with him personally, creatively or financially.

We know that for some of you, Fallen London and Sunless Sea are irredeemably linked with him. It can be heartbreaking to love something as much as people love these games and feel they're tainted by association.

We fully understand and respect that. This sort of behaviour has no place in our industry, or in any other. We can only say that we strive to be a studio we can be proud of, and that you can be proud to support.

(--@failbettergames)