And Then There Were None 
Today was the official release date for my latest game, Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, published by DreamCatcher Interactive/The Adventure Company. In what certainly must be a rarity for the video game industry, it actually shipped two weeks early. You can buy it from Amazon.com through this website. Use the link below on the left. Or buy directly from other online sellers, or from any game retailers, including Wal-Mart and EB Games.
And Then There Were None Official Website
Metacritic is tracking game reviews. Current Metacritic score:
And Then There Were None Online Reviews
Adventure Gamers
Four Fat Chicks
Game Boomers
Game Helper
Game Over
Game Vortex
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IGN
Just Adventure +
netjak
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Quandary
Print Reviews
Computer Gaming World 80
PC Gamer 73
And Then There Were None Previews
GameSpot
Adventure Gamers
Just Adventure +
And Then There Were None Interviews
Adventure Gamers
Just Adventure +
Quandary
Second Person
I have contributed a short article to a new book on interactive media called Second Person, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan to be published in spring 2006 by MIT Press. It's a follow-up to the book pictured to the left.
Austin Game Conference
It has been another busy season of conferences, culminating a couple of weeks ago with the Austin Game Conference where I was part of a panel called Building MMO World Through NPCs where we discussed NPCs in virtual worlds. Other panel members were Carly Staehlin, Mike Sellers, Patricia Pizer and Sheri Graner Ray.
Game Design Workshop
Earlier in the month I was in Los Angeles for the sixth Game Design Workshop where many issues pertaining to game design and usually storytelling in games are discussed in a relaxed roundtable atmosphere. This year's participants were:
Hal Barwood
Bob Bates
Adam Bormann
Mark Cerny
Corey Cole
Lori Cole
Noah Falstein
Bruce Harlick
Amy Hennig
Jurie Horneman
Eri Izawa
Raph Koster
Al Lowe
Steve Meretsky
Susan O'Conner
Dave Perry
Patricia Pizer
Ken Rolston
Jesse Schell
Paul Schuytema
Lee Sheldon
Paul Stephanouk
Mark Terrano
Brian Upton
Mike Verdu
Rich Vogel
Gordon Walton
Geoff Zatkin
Ludium I
The end of September found me at Indiana University in Bloomington where Ted Castronova hosted a unique conference called Ludium I. Participants, drawn from the MMO world as well as academia, were divided into competing teams charged with developing virtual worlds that could be used as real world research tools.
As usual there are several possibilities in the future, one or more of which will probably coalesce into an actual project. More details as things clarify.
Updated: 3/14/05
New Website Launched
Welcome to the updated Anti-Linear Logic website. This new version is more comprehensive and easier to navigate. Here's a last look at the old logo.
And Then There Were None
DreamCatcher Interactive/The Adventure Company has announced the title of the upcoming Agatha Christie game: And Then There Were None, based on the classic novel. The game is being developed by AWE Games in Sunrise FL. The game is scheduled for release in Fall 2005. The press release can be found here. 
Quandary
A recent And Then There Were None interview can be found here, plus a recent review of Character Development and Storytelling for Games here.
Getting in the Game
Beginning in October 2004 Written By, the Writers Guild of America magazine, began running a series of articles based on a roundtable discussion I participated in along with Suzanne Oshry, Bruce Feirstein, Christy Marx, Flint Dille and John Platten.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three (Glossary of Terms)
Part Four
USC Consultancy Completed
Funded by DARPA, the formal title is The Tactical Language Training System. It uses a video game built with the Unreal Tournament game engine. The first language is Arabic. More on this interesting project can be found here.
I'm back working on my next book as well: The Beast of Big Sur is the sequel to Impossible Bliss.
November 8, 2004
I've added the PowerPoint slides from my talk, Character and Story in Video Games (It's All about Respect), at the first Montreal Game Summit (November 3-5).
Here is the description from the program:
Ever since tales of great hunts and hunters were told to awestruck listeners huddled around the protecting fire Homo sapiens have been drawn to the power of storytelling. The appreciation of a good story is a gift not granted to any other species on this planet. It is the single thread that is woven through the entire fabric of what entertains us. Games and stories have much in common. Both can challenge us, move us to fear or laughter or tears. Each can exist separately from the other, and be consummately entertaining, yet there are also times when the two meet, feed off of one another, and grow into something greater than they were separately. That synergy is the focus of this talk.
The conference was an impressive effort, especially for a first-time event. One of the highlights of the trip for me was an impromptu tour by René Barsaco of the amazing work going on at SAT, the Société des Arts Technologiques, in Montreal. Their website is www.sat.qc.ca.
Here is the list of participants at the fifth Game Design Workshop, held at The Edgewater in Seattle the weekend of October 23-25. Each workshop seems to be better than the last.
Hal Barwood
Bob Bates
Ellen Beeman
Adam Bormann
Zeb Cook
Greg Costikyan
Noah Falstein
Ron Gilbert
Eric Goldberg
Bruce Harlick
Clayton Kauzlaric
Al Lowe
Steve Meretsky
Eri Ozawa
Patricia Pizer
Mike Pondsmith
Ken Rolston
Paul Schuytema
Mike Sellars
Lee Sheldon
Mark Terrano
Brian Upton
Gordon Walton
Geoff Zatkin
There was a nice range of topics from the practical to the theoretical, and a more even mix between solo games and MMOs than last year. My topic was "Using the Physical Dimension of Character" and I received a lot of useful input. My special thanks to Eri Ozawa, Ken Rolston and Brian Upton for helping me at lunch one day to work through a specific gameplay issue from my current design. It was much appreciated!
Some Impossible Bliss reviews have been added to the Fiction page.
Still to come: more news on the Agatha Christie project and the promised additions to the Trunk.
October 18, 2004
Just a short update to add the PowerPoint slides from my recent talk, Respecting NPCs, at the Extreme Games Conference. Description:
There's a double-meaning in the topic of this talk. The word respecting can mean "about." It can also mean "bestowing respect." It's not enough to populate a game with characters because you're supposed to. It's not enough to heedlessly scatter characters throughout the game like chicken feed in the barnyard mud because we need an adversary at this moment, exposition at another, a merchant here, or a quest-giver there. Characters in games should be more than clones of Vanna White, magically revealing those letters on Wheel of Fortune. They have a right to their own lives in the game. And giving them that right--granting them purpose beyond the designer's convenience--in fact makes it easier for us to tell our stories and design our games. There's no reason not to respect characters as much as we respect 3D lighting effects and collision detection.
Upcoming in a couple of weeks will be more news on the Agatha Christie project, and recaps of the upcoming Game Design Workshop and the Montreal Game Summit. Also look for long overdue new additions to the Trunk. Stay tuned!
September 12, 2004
My busiest year in quite awhile and it's time for an update.
The new game design and writing assignment I mentioned in the last update is an adventure game for The Adventure Company (Dreamcatcher) based on an Agatha Christie novel, but I can't mention the title until they officially announce it. It's my first adventure game in several years and I'm enjoying it immensely. This has been my main focus this summer.
I'm also consulting on a game for the University of Southern California. It is federally-funded and designed to teach Arabic.
My new book, Character Development and Storytelling for Games, was published in June by Premier Press. (Course Technology and Premier Press are the same people.) It is available at all major booksellers, here at Amazon.com and Borders, and here at Barnes and Noble and B. Dalton.
I've just returned from speaking at the Austin Game Conference. I will be speaking on NPCs at XGDX in Mountain View, CA in October; attending this year's Game Design Workshop that same month; then speaking on storytelling in games at the Montreal Game Summit in November. Below is the program description of the Austin talk. Click on the Talks link for the PowerPoint slides.
Beyond Episodic Structure: Time-Shifting Storytelling and Other Content Delivery for Greater Player Involvement and Retention
The dominant structural element of prime time television production is episodic programming. This model has been blindly adopted by many massively-multiplayer games as the preferred vehicle for delivering new content. Yet it is so fundamentally flawed an adoption, so unsuited to MMOs, that instead of drawing players into ongoing, evolving worlds it has damaged their immersion in and loyalty to those worlds. Because episodic content production is so misunderstood, and the stuttering storytelling it has produced has been botched as a result, it is yet something else for those who oppose authorial storytelling to point at and say, "See! It doesn't work!" At its core prime time television is the wrong model. Daytime television, soap operas, with their own ongoing, long-term (if linear) content delivery are a far more useful model. Come hear the only person you'll ever meet who has written and produced prime time television; been a soap head writer; and designed both single-player and massively-multiplayer games set the record straight.
In June I stopped playing the Horizons MMO. They were not able to sustain interest much beyond the excellent "freeing the Satyrs" scenario which I discuss briefly in the book.
I've been forced to put The Beast of Big Sur (sequel to Impossible Bliss) on the back burner for now. So many projects, so little time! Hopefully I can get back to it before the end of the year.
May 24, 2004
It has been a long time since an update, but I'm out of hibernation at last, and with plenty of news.
My new book, Character Development and Storytelling for Games, will be published by Course Technology in June. It is available for pre-order here at Amazon.com and Borders, and here at Barnes and Noble and B. Dalton. At last count it is 488 pages with around 200 photographs, screenshots, charts and drawings. It includes contributions from Steve Meretzky, Mark Terrano, Noah Falstein, Hal Barwood, Bob Bates, Mark Barrett, Ken Rolston, Nate Fox, John Szeder, Matt Mihaly and Chris L'Etoile. And my grateful thanks goes to all of them. A list of chapters and topics covered can be found here.
I hope to be able to announce an exciting new game design assignment in a week or two.
It is that assignment that Randy Sluganski hints at in the introduction to a recent interview with me you can find here at Just Adventure +.
I will be consulting on another game project, an adventure game with a real-world application. More news on this when I can.
As for books I'm bidding farewell to non-fiction for awhile and going back to my sequel to Impossible Bliss. That book is being re-issued this fall.
A shortened version of Allowing Players to Change Virtual Worlds, the article I promised in November, became a section of the book. Sorry about that.
Horizons, the massively-multiplayer game I've been playing since December, gets a few mentions in the book. I find their approach to storytelling interesting (particularly since it parallels some of my own ideas), but the execution leaves much to be desired. I may do a more complete examination of Horizons on this website later in the summer, if I find the time.
November 11, 2003
The final article on storytelling in Star Wars Galaxies is called When a Story Arc Doesn't. In addition to his usual useful comments on the text Mark Barrett even helped with my title this month, suggesting "Doesn't" instead of "Isn't." I may have to start paying him. Next month I plan to talk about Allowing Players to Change Virtual Worlds, expanded from one of my sessions at this year's Game Design Workshop. While storytelling will be mentioned, the article will focus on virtual world design.
Writing on The Heart of the Game proceeds. It's proving to be a sobering challenge as well as a tremendous opportunity for me to finally collect such a mass of information on a subject this near and dear to my own heart. I am trying to get as much written as I can before the end of the year when a new project is slated to begin.
Here is a link to a general critique of Star Wars Galaxies by a Swarthmore professor named Timothy Burke who played the game during the same period that I did, and a link to some discussion that followed at Game Girl Advance. This link takes you to a thread on IGN's brand new MMORPG Concepts and Design Discussion Forum where the topic was whether to reveal all explicit numbers (levels, hit points etc.) to the players or to keep them hidden. Here's a link to where the discussion picked up in a second thread complete with a poll. I use my nom de guerre Skyrain in these threads.
I've been rooting around for my next MMORPG to play. I came close to trying Final Fantasy XI, but have decided to wait for Horizons at the beginning of December. Lucky them. ;-)
October 1, 2003
I'm still waiting on the second "monthly" story arc installment from Star Wars Galaxies so I can complete my examination of storytelling in that virtual world. In the meantime I've written an article called Building a Virtual World Writing Team. My thanks again to Mark Barrett for his insightful notes on my first draft.
Contracts are signed for the upcoming book on character development and storytelling in computer games. It's tentative title is The Heart of the Game. The publisher is Premier Press (formerly Prima Tech), and the publication date is this spring.
The Barcode Cats assignment has been completed; a very different project than I usually tackle, but fun.
September 5, 2003
Work has begun on the Japanese animated project. It is called Barcode Cats.
September 3, 2003
My second article on writing and storytelling in virtual worlds, The Quest for Story: NPC Quests in Star Wars Galaxies, takes a look at the higher level quests in that game.
Here is a direct link to a great article by Mark Barrett called Universal Design Basics. In it Mark scrutinizes some troublesome aspects of the game Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.
On the work front my proposal for a book on character development and storytelling in games has been accepted by a major publisher. In order not to jinx the deal, I'll wait to announce details until after the ink on the contracts has dried.
I'm about to begin some writing for an animated Japanese property. Details to follow.
And last but not least by any means, there may be not one, not two, but three major game projects upcoming. Two are virtual worlds and one is a ground-breaking single-player game. Again, details will have to wait. Obviously I won't be able to do all three, but the next few months should be very busy!
August 18, 2003
Despite losing several people to the GDC's speaker proposal evaluations, and a couple of last minute drop outs for personal reasons, this year's Game Design Workshop was the best one yet in terms of valuable discussion and practical advice. While the mix was overly weighted toward MMORPGs, even the single player game designers claimed they were more than satisfied. Although I doubt we can beat Paul Schytema's announcement that last year's workshop saved his company! Participants this year were:
- Bob Bates
- Ellen Guon Beeman
- Adam Borman
- Corey Cole
- Lori Cole
- Noah Falstein
- David Fox
- Gano Haine
- Steve Meretzky
- Scott Miller
- Sheri Grainer Ray
- Susan O'Conner
- Patricia Pizer
- Mike Pondsmith
- Ken Rolston
- Paul Schytema
- Lee Sheldon
- Mark Terrano
- Gordon Walton
My discussion topics at the workshop were "Enabling Story in Virtual Worlds" and "Allowing Players to Change Virtual Worlds." I received great feedback, and both topics may show up as articles here.
I've edited the Less Is More article a bit thanks to some notes from Mark Barrett.
July 31, 2003
I'm initiating a series of articles on Virtual Worlds with an emphasis on writing and storytelling. Some articles will be critiques, others will be How-To's, and still others will be more theoretical. The first article is Less Is More: Chinese Menu Quest Systems & Storytelling. It is a critique of basic quests found in Dark Age of Camelot and Star Wars:Galaxies and how they affect immersion and storytelling. Feedback is encouraged! Send it to Anti-Linear Logic.
July 15, 2003
Updated the website with a slightly revised look, updated the Home Page, made additions to the Trunk and Books pages, and cleaned up some old links on the Reviews & Articles and Links pages. More additions to the site will be coming shortly.
This year's Game Design Workshop will be in San Rafael, California August 9-10. I'll be presenting some aspects of my design for londontown, a virtual world.
I'm currently consulting for a company new to game development.
My work on the X-Box prototype is complete, and the prototype is in production.
Here is another nice Impossible Bliss review. This one is from the Skokie, Illinois Library:
The title, Impossible Bliss, is a "play" on the name of the character, Herman de Portola Bliss, an eccentric artist (of no repute!) who ends up helping the new chief of police in
Reviewed by: Pamela Weinberg on
Impossible Bliss is now on sale at Amazon.com for 30% off.
April 4, 2003
I've added notes from two of my guest speakers at the GDC All Stories Great and Small Tutorial here.
have asked me to consult on an interesting new game. They are based in Belgium.
The X-Box project continues.
March 11, 2003
The Game Developer's Conference has come and gone. I'm very pleased with how the All Stories Great & Small tutorial turned out. My thanks to all my guests (see below), even poor Dan Arey who sat in a downpour and traffic jam for four hours trying to reach us before giving up and returning home. In addition to the tutorial I appeared on the Story Summit panel along with Hal Barwood (LucasArts), Bob Bates (Legend), Patricia Pizer (UbiSoft) and Mike Pondsmith (Microsoft). On Saturday I gave a brief presentation at the Mud-Dev list conference on True Multiplayer Quests.
My notes and PowerPoint slides for the tutorial have been added to the Talks page.
In the midst of the conference I made a quick, productive trip up to Redmond, WA to meet some of the other members of the team on the X-Box project.
The Links page has also been updated.
I came across this nice little review of Impossible Bliss on the internet. It's from the West Nyack Library:
Carole has advised us that any book with a rating of 3 or more teacups is worth reading (or almost worth reading).
Impossible Bliss by Lee Sheldon. Carmel, California police chief Dan Shepherd investigates a seemingly impossible crime after attorney Alex Wagner hits his golf ball into a low bunker and to the astonishment of his golfing buddies fails to re-emerge from the sand trap. His body is later discovered floating in the bay miles away. One of the witnesses is Herman de Portola Bliss, an eccentric resident of Carmel who takes it upon himself to help the new police chief solve the crime. A good read, nicely written and baffling up to the end.
Rating: 3 and a half teacups
I'm pleased to report Impossible Bliss continues to sell, having already surpassed my admittedly modest expectations.
February 20, 2003
My guests for my 2003 GDC tutorial (Tuesday March 4th) and the games we'll be discussing are:
Daniel Arey, Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (PS2)
Nate Fox, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (PS2)
Chris Klug, Earth & Beyond (PC, online)
Damion Schubert, Shadowbane (PC, online)
Join us!
January 16, 2003
I've been asked by the Mystery Writers of America to be a judge for the 2003 TV Episode Edgar Awards. This is the category I received my two nominations in. It should be fun!
The X-Box project continues.
December 10, 2002
I've begun work on an X-Box project for Microsoft. As with most of these things, I can say almost nothing. You can be sure storytelling is involved however!
The lectures at Full Sail continue.
November 5, 2002
published an interview with me today. The talk covered a range of topics from TV to games. Check it out here.
September 30, 2002
The third annual Game Design Workshop was this weekend. This year we were in Cambridge, Massachusetts to discuss storytelling and game design, and the sessions were outstanding. Restricting the invitees to a small group seems to work out well. Present this year were:
- Mark Barrett
- Adam Bormann
- Bob Bates
- Chris L'Etoile
- Noah Falstein
- Chris Foster
- Ron Gilbert
- Eric Goldberg
- Eri Izawa
- Jane Jensen
- Josh Mandel
- Steve Meretzky
- Rand Miller
- Ryan Miller
- Brian Moriarty
- Paul Neurath
- Patricia Pizer
- Mike Pondsmith
- Ken Rolston
- Paul Schytema
- Lee Sheldon
- Mark Terrano
- Eric Todd
- Geoff Zatkin
September 12, 2002
I'm giving another writing and game design tutorial at the Game Developers Conference next March. Here is the description:
All Stories Great and Small
August 16, 2002
Impossible Bliss got a great review from Publisher's Weekly:
"In his first mystery novel, Sheldon presents an 'impossible crime' worthy in its 'impossibility' of John Dickson Carr himself. On the seventh hole of the Carmel Bay Country Club, during his usual Wednesday morning foursome, lawyer Alex Wagner hits his ball into a low bunker. He appears to loft it nicely out onto the green where it ends up in the cup. To the surprise of his three golf buddies, Wagner doesn't climb out of the sand trap to gloat over his miraculous shot. When they finally look in the bunker, the man is gone. Later his body turns up in the bay miles away.
A potential witness to this vanishing act is artist Herman de Portola Bliss, a notorious public nuisance, who was painting near the seventh hole at the time. Taking charge of the investigation, Dan Shepard, the easygoing new chief of the
While some people want Wagner's murderer found, others don't. Since Shepard is new to the area, everyone keeps a dubious eye on the chief's performance, and Bliss doesn't make his job easier.
A witty and graceful style, an unusual cast of characters and a mystery that baffles up to the last page bode well for future puzzlers from Sheldon. If this isn't the start of a series, it should be.
FYI: The author is also a TV producer (Charlie's Angels; Star Trek: The Next Generation) and a computer-game designer (Wild, Wild West: The Steel Assassin; The Riddle of Master Lu). He has twice been nominated for Edgar Awards."
Impossible Bliss can be found here at Amazon.com and Borders, and here at Barnes and Noble and B. Dalton
July 10, 2002
Disney Interactive has fallen on hard times, and I'm told Virtual Kingdom is on hold.
I've begun giving monthly guest lectures on writing and game design at Full Sail Real World Education in Winter Park, Florida.
May 5, 2002
Have begun work on a major new project for the Buena Vista Game Entertainment Studio (a division of Disney separate but linked to Disney Interactive). I can't say much about it as yet other than that it's a Massively-Multiplayer World, and the working title is currently Disney's Virtual Kingdom.
March 26, 2002
The 2002 Game Developers Conference is now history. Once again a great opportunity to see old friends, meet new people, and learn a few things about game design. The notes and slides from my tutorial will be sent out to all attendees who requested them, and posted on this site. Last year I was so busy it took me until June to get them out. This year will probably be the same. Sorry in advance for the delay!
November 3, 2001
If you haven't ordered a copy of my mystery novel Impossible Bliss yet, it can be found here at Amazon.com and Borders, and here at Barnes and Noble and B. Dalton. Now is a great time to think about getting a few extra copies as Christmas presents. Send them to me. I'll be happy to sign them!
Quandary interviewed me recently. The talk focused mainly on adventure games, but covered some other topics as well. It can be found here.
The October storytelling in games conference in Austin was great fun with interesting people and stimulating conversation. We had double the attendance of last year with multiplayer games having a far greater representation. Many issues discussed were true of both solo and multiplayer, so I don't think anybody felt left out. Our hosts this year, Raph Koster and Rich Vogel, made us feel welcome, and also hosted a dinner for us to mingle with much of the Austin gaming community one evening. Official conference participants this year were:
- Mark Barrett
- Hal Barwood
- Bob Bates
- Ellen Beeman
- Corey Cole
- Glen Dahlgren
- Noah Falstein
- Jurie Horneman
- Eri Izawa
- Raph Koster
- Steve Meretzky
- Dave Perry
- Patricia Pizer
- Lee Sheldon
- Warren Spector
- Michael Stemmle
- Mark Terrano
- Mike Verdu
- Rich Vogel
- Gordon Walton
- Geoff Zatkin
September 23, 2001
Over the past few weeks I've been building a world approximating a fair chunk of the geography of The Gryphon Tapestry Beta (See Online) using a rough-edged program with a good deal of potential called The MMORPG Construction Kit. Comprised of over one hundred maps this incarnation of TGT is currently only a multiplayer hack and slash RPG without the story-telling and role-playing depth of the original, but I'm pleased with the results so far, and hope to have it running on a test server soon. Some screenshots can be found here.
While I made a preliminary report on The MMORPG Construction Kit to the MUD-Dev List in June, I'll be putting up a more complete review on this site in the near future.
August 29, 2001
My mystery novel, Impossible Bliss, is out.
It can be ordered here from Amazon.com and Borders.
Barnes and Noble and B. Dalton sell it here.
August 20, 2001
I've been invited to give another tutorial on writing and game design at the Game Developer's Conference next spring in San Jose. See Talks for notes and other materials from the last one.
I'm currently doing some additional work for The Truth, a multiplayer game being developed by Entertainment Science. See Online for more details on the project.
In October I'll be attending the second annual get-together of a group of writers and game designers interested in storytelling in games. This year we'll be in Austin, TX.
July 23, 2001
Impossible Bliss proofs have been edited and approved. The first two chapters can be found in the Trunk.
Shoved my first novel, Some Hidden Thunder, into the Trunk.
Added New button on navigation bar for quick access to these updates.
July 6, 2001
A fairly recent screenplay, It Waits, my first screenplay, The Wendigo, and my first professionally produced play, What Are You Doing to Mrs. O'Neil?, have been tossed into the Trunk.
One of the Best Adventure Game of the Year nominations for The Riddle of Master Lu has been added as a link on the Solo page.