I’m in St. Petersburg, Russia, this week for Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals. We’re flying hundreds of college students here from all over the world to bring their software projects and compete for a million bucks in prizes. We’ll be doing daily videos and blogs on our website covering the event and on July 11th at 1:30pm GMT we’ll have a livestream of our awards ceremony, hosted by Matt Smith of the BBC’s Doctor Who!

Imagine Cup – Welcome to world class competitions and challenges for students

The Microsoft Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition. We invite all eligible students to use their imagination and passion to create a technology solution in one of our competitions and challenges.

These guys create live-action roleplaying games for schools. They’re awesome, talented, and doing great work. They deserve your support.

This great bundle of ebooks by game designers has almost expired. Check it out!

Bundle of Holding

Adventurer! This Bundle of Holding packs a huge number of spellbinding stories in one magical package. A fellowship of fabled roleplaying game designers has journeyed into fiction. Now you gain the bounty — ebook novels and stories that offers the imaginative excitement of a fine RPG.

The Bundle of Holding collection of DRM-free ebooks by RPG designers gets bigger! It already had novels by myself, Matt Forbeck, Robin D. Laws, Greg Stolze, and more — plus now Gareth Michael-Skarka joins the merry band! This is a great collection with funds going to the authors, the PEN Foundation, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And it’s pay-what-you-want! This deal expires in just a few days so act now — and please spread the word.

Bundle of Holding

Adventurer! This Bundle of Holding packs a huge number of spellbinding stories in one magical package. A fellowship of fabled roleplaying game designers has journeyed into fiction. Now you gain the bounty — ebook novels and stories that offers the imaginative excitement of a fine RPG.

Want some great reading? This new pay-what-you-want bundle of DRM-free ebooks by roleplaying game writers is available for just a couple weeks. It’s got great books from Greg Stolze, Matt Forbeck, and some guy named John Scott Tynes, among others.

Part of the money from this sale goes to PEN International, supporting the freedom of expression by writers worldwide; and to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, working to protect the rights of people online.

It’s a great cause, a great bargain, and a lot of great books from people whose specialty is creating incredible new worlds.

Please take a look and help me spread the word. Read on!

Bundle of Holding

The Bundle of Holding +3 is live! Pay what you want for ebook novels and stories by RPG designers Matt Forbeck, John Scott Tynes, Greg Stolze, Mur Lafferty, Colin McComb, and Scott Fitzgerald Gray. Your purchase helps support two fine charities: PEN International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Your quest awaits!

http://bundleofholding.com/index/current

Today Microsoft announced Project Spark, a game-building game. This was the last project I worked on before leaving Xbox to join Imagine Cup across campus. I wish the Spark team all the best and I look forward to seeing how it turns out!

World-creation game Project Spark is Microsoft's answer to LittleBigPlanet

Microsoft Studios debuted its new game, Project Spark, which hands players the controls for world creation and interaction.

Five of the best years of my career were at Flying Lab Software making the Pirates of the Burning Sea MMO. Flying Lab has reincarnated as Cryptic Studios North, joining the fold of a company whose work I’ve really enjoyed and who were valuable partners to us during our work on Pirates.

Q&A: With Neverwinter inbound, Cryptic founds Seattle studio

Cryptic Studios, creator of MMOs including City of Heroes and the upcoming Neverwinter , is expanding into Washington State.

Shipped! Café Nordo’s Music for Dining Volume One is available now. You can stream the album for free from our Bandcamp site or download it for twelve bucks.

This compilation of fourteen songs from Nordo’s first six shows is terrific: 1930s speakeasy torch songs, Twin Peaks homages, soaring duets, and even a little Cole Porter. Composer Annastasia Workman has scored and performed for every Nordo show and these songs show her impressive versatility. I’ve been listening to this album for weeks and can’t get enough of it.

Click and listen. It’s beautiful.

Do you like comic books? Do you like to read them on a digital device? Do you have ten dollars? Then shut up and give Phil and Kaja your money right now because their momentous Girl Genius Kickstarter offers all twelve volumes of their epic steampunk political action slapstick sexpot smorgasbord thriller in PDF format for just ten dollars. Plus a host of wallpapers and other photon-based digital goodies.

And if you like your comics on paper, well, they can help you out there, too.

For me, Girl Genius is heading for Cerebus Church & State territory in terms of achievement. It’s a brilliantly imagined pseudo-historical world with a deep and intricate setting, great characters, and it never takes its eyes off the funny. I am amazed at what they have accomplished.

With this Kickstarter, the Foglios have raised enough money to bring all twelve books back into print and so much more. For a couple of independent artists, this is fantastic news. And if they reach their $300,000 stretch goal they’ll be able to hire a — GASP — business manager to help make more good things happen for them and for all who love their work.

Many, many years ago a young artist from Paraguay named Samuel Araya sent out his portfolio to a long list of art directors for the first time, and the very first one to respond and start working with him was, as it turned out, me. I didn’t actually know I was his first art director until Sam told me this week, and I really can’t feel too special about it because I think anyone who saw Sam’s work back then would have hired him on the spot. He was that good and of course now is simply brilliant.

Sam did the cover of my Unknown Armies roleplaying game (2nd ed.) as well as concept art for the long-ago Delta Green videogame project and a lot more besides. He’s a gifted artist and it has been a pleasure to follow his career all these years.

I’ve never met Sam in person and this may be as close as I ever get: Krab Jab Studio here in Seattle is run by old comrades and they are hosting a solo show of Sam’s recent work starting May 11. Sam can’t make the trip up here to the Other Americas but his work, as always, speaks for itself.

If you love the visionary, the strange, the horrifying, the eyes that see beyond sight, then I hope you’ll pay a visit to Sam’s show down in Georgetown. It should be epic.