JUNK RUNTAH

Attention All Plagiarists I KNOW WHAT YOURE DOING

You know what really bugs me?

You know what really, really bugs me?

You know what makes me so freaking furiously and utterly irrationally angry that I am tempted to cast everything aside, find a lance, and ride around the countryside tilting at particularly offensive-looking windmills?

You do. Yes, you. Yes, I am talking to you, Evil Person Who Has Been Attempting to Plagiarise an Essay and Has Somehow Stumbled Across This Blog. I know exactly what youre up to, and I am not bloody amused.

I have a statcounter. It counts stats. It also tells me where all my readers are coming from, as well as--get this--listing the search terms they have used on Google to find the blog. Some of these search terms are quite enlightening. Lets take a look at them, shall we?

explain frodo and his friends relationship

Gosh. Hello, little student. You wouldnt possibly be plugging an essay topic into Google, would you? Im sure that your interest in this topic is completely innocent and that when you have glanced studiously over my blog and noted the information about friendship in The Fellowship of the Rings, you will cite me in your bibliography!

thesis statement and example in body paragraph about bilbo hobbit

Even better. You, my friend, are clearly so determined to write an exemplary essay that you are combing the Internet for documents that involve not only your topic but its very structure. You are an inspiration to us all, sir.

essay on fear

...cause Im sure youre just looking for stuff to cite.

write a three to four-page essay that explains what writing and/or reading can mean in a persons life

What an enterprising little grasshopper you are. Look at that: another entire topic inserted into Google! I am terribly, terribly sorry that I cannot provide you with the essay for which you are searching, and I do hope you eventually find something to steal. Er, cite.

essay in support of colloquialism

Dude, ur sooo awesome! I hope ur like able to like find some info to like hand in and stuff!

descriptive essay about dinner

I feel your pain. How difficult it would be to write a descriptive essay about dinner all by yourself! Who can describe dinner? Dinner is rare and mysterious and cannot, in fact, be described by a mere undergraduate or high-school student. No wonder you are looking for inspiration online.

descriptive writing ants*

Ants! Those elusive, elusive creatures! The people who expect you to describe them are cruel and unreasonable. Steal away, little student; steal away.

There have been other such entries, but alas, they have fallen off the bottom of my stats list. I do remember a lot of Lord of the Rings material and at least one query regarding Edmund Spenser, but I did not think to record any of this information for posterity. In the future, however, Im going to write all these babies down.

STOP. FREAKING. PLAGIARISING.

What the hell is wrong with you? Cant you spend an hour brainstorming instead of wasting the same time stealing from the Internet? Do you have any idea what an idiot youre being? Oh, sure, youve managed to "complete" your assignment in a fraction of the time it would have taken you otherwise. Well done. Have you learned anything? Well, youre probably pretty damned good with Google now...but have you learned anything else? You think youre pulling the wool over your markers eyes. If you get away with it,** you are...but youre also doing an excellent job of pulling the same wool over your own. Wont it be wonderful when you stroll out into the real world after cheating your way through high school and university and suddenly discover that you have no skills at all? Stop. Cheating. You arent helping yourself in any way.

Whats that? You were just borrowing ideas from a website? Web content is free to all, and you should be able to borrow as much of it as you want?

WRONG ANSWER.

If you "borrow" an idea from your best friend, you are plagiarising. Plagiarism constitutes the unacknowledged use of words or ideas that are not your own. "Common knowledge" is rarely an excuse unless youre working at a sky-is-blue kind of level. It doesnt matter where you have found "your" ideas; you always have to cite them. Your teachers are going to back me up on this one, so dont go whining about how noooobooooody eeeeveeeerrrrr toooooooolllld yooooouuuuuu. IIIIIII DOOOOOONT CAAAAAAARE.

Teachers, professors, and markers:

Certain of your students have been coming to this blog in search of information on The Lord of the Rings, The Faerie Queene, and other sundry subjects. Some of them may try for The Woman in White soon. Other of your students have been very good and have simply been searching for information on how to write essays well, but a few aspiring cheaters have made it here.

I am a terribly vindictive person whose great loathing for plagiarists is legendary amongst the undergrads of my home institution. I am thus going to blow off steam by setting a trap for the pestilential little maggots who wander the Internet, searching for material to rip off. If you are not a plagiarist, feel free to watch. If you are, be aware that the Wrath of Kem is currently heading rapidly in your direction.***

Google away, plagiarists. I hope that your searches pull up the following sentences:

In Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth stands as an example of steadiness and good sense, whereas Jane is flighty and embodies both the "pride" and the "prejudice" of the title.

Hello, Demonic Plagiarising Student. Go ahead and steal this sentence. I dare you. I double-dog-dare you. No...I triple-dog-dare you. Laugh at me and base your essay on this statement.

Few know that the title character of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein is actually the protagonists dog, which accompanies the monster on his journey of self-discovery.

Hello again, you swine. Go on...take it. There it sits, inviting theft.

Statistics Canada confirms that 86% of high-income Canadians are likely to raise morbidly obese children.

Miscreant, greetings. Accept this nugget as my gift to you.

The badger typically builds nests in trees and feeds almost exclusively on fungi.

Its yours, my hideous little canker-blossom. Use it in an essay. Put it in the introduction.

Im onto you, plagiarists. Im following you with my insanely glaring electronic eyes. I do not like you, Sam-I-am. I do not like your essay scam. I do not like it here or there. It should not happen anywhere.

*You may be gathering by this point that a lot of people are writing descriptive essays right now.

**Plus if youre stupid enough to hand in an essay youve found through Google, youre probably not going to get away with it. Ill let you in on a little secret: markers know how to use Google too.

***The Wrath of Kem is a physical entity with knives for eyes and extremely large, painful Fists of Inescapable Doom.

Available link for download

Avadon Developer Diary 2 What Sort Of Game Will This Be

Here is another long overdue developer diary for our next game, Avadon: The Black Fortress. These articles are about the ongoing process of developing our new series of games. The first installment was about the source of the idea and the basic framework of the plot, which came together fairly quickly.

We recently gave a long interview about Avadon, with a lot of information about the storyline and game system. If you havent seen it already and want some hard information about what the new game will be like, its a good place to start.

So I Had the Basic Idea

Now I needed to decide what sort of game I was going to write. So the next step was to decide on the theme, the mood, and the choices. This process took weeks of thought and is worth attention. It might be a little bit technical and vague though, so if you arent interested in the artsy parts of game design, you should probably wait until the next part, when I get into the game system and the cool number-based hacky-choppy stuff.

Once I had the skeleton of a plot and setting, I think about how the game will "feel". What will the player be doing? How will I get the player emotionally involved? What gripping choices will the player make? You see, I make small budget games. Fancy graphics and sounds arent going to happen. My main weapon is the ability to tell a good story, so I focus on that. For Avadon to succeed, I have to make it interesting. How do I do that?

The Theme - You Have Power. How Do You Use It?

So first, I need a Theme. This is a set of vague questions and ideas that determine the choices and quests the player will face. When I am designing a new area or town or set of characters, these are the questions I go back to for ideas and inspiration.

So you are a citizen of the Pact, five nations that have banded together to keep the barbarians and monsters at bay. And you work for Avadon, a secretive and powerful force that hunts down and destroys those who would disrupt the safety and stability of the Pact. Avadons word is law.

Role-playing games work best when they are, at some level, power fantasies. You are a hero (or villain). You have power, and you get to choose how to use it. This has appeal to a lot of gamers, myself included. So the first step is to place the player in a position of power and responsibility. You need to protect your people, and you are given a lot of leeway for how to do it.

But there are also hints that your power is too great. Your word is law, and that isnt necessarily a good thing. Well, its great for you, but not so hot for everyone else.

Maybe you want to play a thug or a bully. Or maybe you want to resist the temptation to misuse your power, which is satisfying in a different way. And the story of Avadon is about all of the same sorts of choices. Avadon can do what it wants. Will you guide it to do the right thing? And, for that matter, should a group with so much power exist?

That is the theme. Power. The option to misuse it. What will you do?

This is a theme I go back to a lot. I think it leads to interesting games, and a good theme makes coming up with ideas and writing dialogue a lot easier.

The Mood - How Does the Game Feel? Light or Dark?

The next thing to decide is how the game will "feel"? Will it be dark and grim? Bright and cheery? Will there be humor? Will there be detailed descriptions of horror and chaos? How many nice people die?

Based on the theme, Avadon could go very dark. Mass Effect 2 dark, easily. But I decided early on that I dont want that. I like writing humor, and I think games that are too unrelentingly grim arent very fun.

I decided that Avadon will have a lot of humor and some areas that are fairly cheery. Some of the characters will actually be happy. Sometimes, you will be able to squish evil and make choices you actually feel good about. There will be more confused, cynical moments, of course, but a little of that goes a long way.

A lot of this will show up in Redbeard, the all-powerful master of Avadon. He has much responsibility and power, but I am making him a cheery character, with a lust for life, a macabre sense of humor, and someone who takes true delight in his reach and authority. This character will be the spine of the series, so I want him to be fun to write. And he is.

Of course, these are big games. That makes it easy to have some areas that are light and some areas that are grim. And I will. But, when you are laying down the whole plot, knowing what mood you want at the start helps you get the balance of Neat! and Yuck! right.

The Choices - How Does the Player Change the World?

Finally, choices. I think the most important quality of my games, the thing that adds interest and keeps me interested in writing them, is the ability to make choices that affect the ending. Of course, Im not the only developer that does this. Bioware is better at it than I am. But it is still something very important to me.

Happily, now that I have the setting and theme, the choice comes naturally. Avadon has almost limitless power, and it can use that power however it wants. Sometimes it uses it for the good of the land, but sometimes corruption sinks in. Avadon has many enemies. The players choice will be whether to serve Avadon or reject it. Whether to work for Redbeard, master of Avadon, or fight him. Or even plot to replace him.

Choices like this make writing a game much easier. Whenever I design an area and the conversations in it, it provides me a North Star to sail toward. I always skew the choices and conversations toward that final choice, the final destination.

And Then I Have To Write a Game

All of this is a little vague and metaphysical, I know. It is supposed to be. This is all stuff that has to get settled before I write a single line of code. It takes months of thought. But when Im lost in the wilds, when I have a thousand bug reports and fifty dungeons to design and Im going crazy, that is too late to figure out what I want the game to be like. I need to put firm clear principles in place so that, when I am exhausted and distracted and just trying to wrap the game up, I have as many questions already answered as I can.

The next diary will be about the next step, the game system, the actual nuts and bolts mechanics of what the game will be like.

Available link for download

ask not what your editors can do for you

I recently read an edited volume, in which one person serves the role of 1) editor; 2) author of a chapter; 3) co-author an"afterword" to the book, which is highly critical of many of the chapters published in the volume which she has edited. Anticipating that this might seem strange, the afterword includes a footnote which explains that a deliberate decision was made by the editor to "present an accurate picture of the field as it stands today," replete with all the inconsistencies, oversights, and theoretical lacunae for which she has just lambasted her contributors.
So, now Im curious - what are your expectations of the folks who serve as editors of the books, journals, etc. to which you contribute? I am inclined to think that what this editor did is inexcusable, but perhaps I am needlessly depriving myself of rationales which could increase significantly my available beach time.

Available link for download