Matt Forbeck's Blog, page 75

Conduit 2 Coming This Fall

This week, Sega spilled the news that my friends at High Voltage Software plan to release Conduit 2 — a sequel to last year's The Conduit, an FPS for the Wii — this fall. I helped develop the story for this game about a year back, before the original game debuted, and I'm thrilled that it's finally been announced. Just wait until you see what the team has in store for you. The original game only scratched the surface.

Sega's running a free contest for the game right now, and entrants have a...

The 100 Best Games Breakdowns

Family Games: The 100 Best should be on shelves Real Soon Now, I'm told. To hold you over for this smorgasbord of essays, check out Alan De Smet's stunning and thorough breakdowns of both this book and its predecessor, Hobby Games: The 100 Best. Alan goes over the books in terms of writers, designers, and publishers to see who's inspired the most love.

The graph that shows the most popular publishers is pretty cool. It's not surprising to see Milton Bradley in the lead, tied with Rio Grande...

Blurbs: Jim Lee

If you've read a comic in the last 20+ years, you should already know Jim Lee. As an artist, he defined the look of the X-Men in the early '90s. His X-Men #1 (written by Chris Claremont) is still the best-selling comic book of all time, having racked up 8 million copies in print. He parlayed that into becoming one of the founders of Image Comics, his portion of which was known as WildStorm and which published titles like Astro City, Planetary, Gen13, The Authority, WildC.A.T.s, and The...

Geek.Kon Guest

The fine folks at Geek.Kon have announced that I'll be a guest again at their show this year. I had a great time with them last year and agreed to join them again. The line-up of my fellow guests so far includes Bill Bodden and Aaron Pavao, both of whom were there last year, so it'll be like getting the band back together. If you're around Madison next Labor Day Weekend, come on out and join us!

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Blurbs: John Rogers

John Rogers is my kind of writer. He got a degree in physics but gave up working in that field to become a stand-up comedian. From there, he moved into TV, where he became a producer of Cosby. (I grew up listening to Bill Cosby albums. He's the funniest man ever.) John also created the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon and wrote the first draft of the Transformers movie. Today, he's the showrunner for Leverage, a fantastic Robin-Hood-crooks-heist-a-week show on TNT.

But John's an alpha geek at...

Thriller Awards Nominees Announced

Because Amortals is a sci-fi thriller, I recently joined the International Thriller Writers. (Best benefit? Membership is free to qualified writers.) Yesterday, they announced the nominees for their Thriller Awards. I don't know any of the nominees personally, but I've read some of their excellent work. Congratulations to them all!

The awards will be given out this July at Thrillerfest.

2010 Thriller Awards Nominees

Best Hard Cover Novel:
VANISHED by Joseph Finder
LONG LOST by Harlan Coben
FEAR...

Blurbs: Jordan Weisman

I've known Jordan Weisman for well over 20 years, and watching him work has been a real ride. He's a serial entrepreneur, ricocheting his way from one great idea to another. He started out as one of the founders of FASA, creators of Battletech and Shadowrun, after which he founded FASA Interactive, which he later sold to Microsoft. After working with Microsoft for a few years, he founded WizKids, creators of HeroClix and Mage Knight, the first collectible, pre-painted miniatures game. I...

Blurbs: Richard Knaak

The first time I met Richard Knaak was many years ago at one Gen Con or another. They tend to blur together over the years into one long convention that spans months in your sleep-deprived mind. He was a Dragonlance author back then, one of the best, although he's added several feathers to his cap since. He's written several novels for Warcraft and Diablo — burnishing his reputation as one of the finest tie-in fantasy novelists around — plus a long list of others. His latest World of...

Blurbs: Jack Emmert

If you've played many MMOs over the past few years, you've probably played a game that Jack Emmert helped create. As the chief creative officer of Cryptic Studios, he led the design for City of Heroes/City of Villains, Champions Online, and Star Trek Online. Every one of them offers sharp combination of engaging gameplay and clever storylines designed to keep you coming back for more.

I first met Jack back in the '90s when I was the president of Pinnacle Entertainment Group. He was a huge...

Blurbs: Richard Dansky

Ken Hite was once talking with someone who had started to slag Rich Dansky. Ken put a hand up to stop the man and said, "Before you continue, do you remember the bit in Grosse Pointe Blank, when John Cusack asks the friend he's not seen for ten years to help him get rid of a body? And the guy just does it without asking a thing? That's how Rich Dansky is for me."

I can only agree. Rich is a mensch's mensch and a fantastic friend. The fact that he's also a hell of a writer helps explain how we ...