Monthly Archives: March 2018

Preservation panel recap and Awesome Con 2018 Blog category

A few panel-related updates! Our game preservation panel from Super MAGFest 2018 is up on YouTube now:

Two things I wish I’d done differently. One is letting all questions wait until the end of the panel. This was my first time moderating a group discussion; lesson learned!

The other thing is, when talking about community-focused archiving and the importance of preserving smaller games, I forgot to mention how important sensitivity is. A lot of smaller games are very personal, or their creator might not be proud of them (think of dumb things you made as a teenager). Having them preserved outside the creator’s control, with their name attached, could be insensitive, disrespectful, or harmful. That’s one of the reasons why to collaborate with communities.

The panel went really well. The organizers let the Q&A run 10 minutes over the original panel time, and then we spilled over into another room to continue talking with attendees. It was an amazing experience, and we were glad to get so many people thinking about game preservation (plus the surprise appearance from the Internet Archive’s Jason Scott). Once again, I’m very grateful to the other panelists for participating! Thanks to all who attended.

Additionally, I’ll be running another panel very soon! Next week on Saturday, March 31st at 3pm, I’ll be at Awesome Con 2018 in Washington, DC hosting Gaming in the Grey Zone: Fangames, Hacks, and Mods. I’ll be speaking about the dubious DIY world of fangames and fan-made game modifications and how they interact with gaming culture. If you’ve ever wanted to hear about a Biblical Sonic the Hedgehog fangame at a comic convention, this is your chance!

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Secret Writer’s Society and the worst bug ever Educational category

Title screen from Secret Writer's Society

Panasonic Interactive Media’s game Secret Writer’s Society was supposed to teach kids how to write well. Instead, it became infamous. The game had a text-to-speech feature that would read back what you wrote, and under the right circumstances in the Macintosh version of the game, it would read a list of obscenities instead.

“Computers are revolutionizing education, sometimes in surprising ways. Now there’s software that can teach kids how to cuss like a drunken stevedore,” raved Robert Cwiklik for the Wall Street Journal.1

According to PIM marketing manager Kari Gibbs, the company had begun replacing copies of Secret Writer’s Society by June 17, 1998,1 four months after it originally shipped on February 10.2 Panasonic blamed the issue on “an undetected bug” that would accidentally read words from the program’s language filter if the computer was slow or having memory issues.1,3 But there was another story. Andrew Maisel, who was the first to discover the supposed glitch and reported it on his educational software review website SuperKids, says he reproduced it on “healthy Power Macs with lots of memory.”3 Could something else be at play here?

In a shocking, hilarious twist, anti-corporate activist group RTMark claimed in October 1998 that it was a work of internal sabotage. According to their statement, an anonymous programmer contracted by Panasonic said they were trying to call attention to the dangers of parents handing their responsibilities to a computer game. “Letting a third-rate piece of software take over for you is wrong because it violates that contract,” they said. “What I did isn’t a crime. The crime is letting profits get in the way of education.” RTMark said they awarded the programmer $1000 for their action.

Panasonic insisted that the rogue program was just the result of a bug, nothing as salacious as industrial sabotage. Elizabeth Olson, Panasonic’s communications manager, told The Independent in November 1998 that, “To our knowledge there is no truth to this claim. [RTMark] seem to be claiming responsibility for something they didn’t have anything to do with.” (“It could be that they really do think it’s a bug,” RTMark’s Ray Thomas responded.) Either way, the damage was done, and when Panasonic Interactive Media was shut down months later in March 1999, Consumer Electronics blamed Secret Writer’s Society for harming the group’s reputation.4

Secret Writer’s Society was quickly forgotten after that – probably to Panasonic’s relief – and has been missing ever since… until I managed to get a copy this week. And yes, it’s the version with the swears. » Read more about Secret Writer’s Society and the worst bug ever

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Muriel Tramis speaks about her career and the memory of Martinique Essay category

Screenshot from Méwilo

Muriel Tramis has a quiet but powerful legacy in gaming. As a designer and producer at French studio Coktel Vision starting in the late 80s, Tramis worked on about a dozen titles, like the puzzle series Gobliiins. But she may be known best for her socially charged games inspired by her family’s history on the Caribbean island Martinique, such as the colonial mystery game Méwilo and the incendiary slave rebellion game Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness.

Tramis left Coktel Vision in 2003 after the company merged with Vivendi Universal Games, and she’s kept a low profile since then. Now, Tramis is stepping back into games with a remake of Méwilo, her first game, for its 30th anniversary. Tramis launched a crowdfunding campaign for the game last week.

To promote her return to gaming, Tramis unexpectedly contacted me a few weeks ago and, in one of her first interviews in English, shared more about her time with Coktel Vision, the importance of historical memory to her work, and what she’s been up to for the last 15 years. » Read more about Muriel Tramis speaks about her career and the memory of Martinique

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