Page 47 of Looking for Group
If you’d like it translated into standard English: “The general practice for area-of-effect damage if you’re playing an elementalist who specialises in the fire damage tree is to cast fireball until the casting of that fireball causes the Reign of Fire ability to activate at which point you then cast Conflagration as often as you can while the Reign of Fire effect is active.
Then you return to casting fireball until your Reign of Fire activates again. ”
You can see why this stuff gets abbreviated.
19. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Orcarella]
Alexis: From a certain perspective, I like to think there’s a kind of highly MMO-specific grumpy/sunshine dynamic between Drew and Solace here.
In the sense that Drew is cynical and slightly burned out from his time with Annihilation, and Solace is all about finding joy in the game.
Obviously, in person their dynamics are slightly different, but I enjoyed translating romance tropes that are usually taken for granted as existing in physical spaces into virtual ones.
So you’ve got grumpy/sunshine here, a meetcute (in Steamworks Furnace), a big misunderstanding, and even There’s Only One Rock (In Alarion).
20. Paragraph begins with: But things were a bit more tense with only three.
Alexis: I’m beginning to remember how long I spent inventing fake boss mechanics for this book. Fake boss mechanics that reflect the character of the fake boss and are true to the fake lore of the fake game they appear in.
21. Paragraph begins with: Next thing Drew knew…
Alexis: Ironically, given the recent release of Baldur’s Gate 3 (fabulous game, by the way, an absolutely incredible achievement), this reference might be less obscure now than it was when I wrote the book.
22. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Ialdir]
Alexis: So there’s all that fake lore I was talking about. I think it’s loosely inspired by the Ulduar storyline in A Certain Popular MMO.
Chapter Two
1. Paragraph begins with: Drew’s mates were a bunch of fairly typical randoms who had come together and stuck together over the course of their first year.
Alexis: For those who aren’t massive nerds, while the MMO Drew and Kit play is fictional, all the other video games referenced are real.
And it’s going to be a bit weird working out which ones have aged in which ways.
But Dark Souls , at least, remains evergreen.
And I suspect always will. Although what’s kind of interesting about this reference is that I put it in at the time because it seemed like the kind of bullshit hardcore game both Sanee and Drew would be into for their different reasons, despite the fact I had never myself played Dark Souls .
Thanks to the pandemic, I have subsequently played not only Dark Souls but every Dark Souls game that exists, up to and including Elden Ring .
It turns out that a lot of the “omg so hardcore, not for casuals” discourse surrounding them is profoundly misleading and now they’re some of my favourite games of all time.
If you’re on the fence, my favourite video game critic, Noah Caldwell Gervais, has two six-hour videos about the series, which I cannot recommend highly enough.
2. Paragraph begins with: “What, you mean like…”
Alexis: Weirdly, I think this one has also aged fine. Like, I can’t think of a better example to slot into this conversation than Dishonored .
3. Paragraph begins with: Sanee had that outraged look, meaning a serious lecture was on the way.
Alexis: I think this might be still be true. RIP the immersive sim.
4. Paragraph begins with: “Yeah, I know. Isn’t it?”
Alexis: While Twine still exists, and still does what Tinuviel describes here, I think its moment may have passed.
On the other hand, some of my favourite games (or pieces of interactive fiction as Sanee would insist) are still accessible via Twine, and all you need is a web browser to check them out.
Here’s a very non-exhaustive list of some Twine games I’ve loved (which you can find easily enough via a search engine.) Please do be aware of trigger warnings with some of these if you fancy giving them a look.
Queers in Love at the End of the World by Anna Anthropy
With Those We Love Alive by Porpentine and Brenda Neotenomie
their angelical understanding by Porpentine
Creatures Such As We by Lynnea Glasser
my father’s long, long legs by Michael Lutz
You Were Made for Loneliness by Tsukareta
Even Cowgirls Bleed by Christine Love
and finally, appropriate for a book about video games:
The Writer Will Do Something by Matthew Seiji Burns
5. Paragraph begins with: Drew couldn’t resist.
Alexis: The Dark Souls and Dishonored references have very much stood the test of time.
The Twine and Mass Effect references maybe not so much.
On the other hand, I do think the kind of things they’re talking about, as nerds and video game design students, remains the kind of things people talk about if they have those particular interests.
As does, for that matter, the way they talk about them.
6. Paragraph begins with: With no burger in sight, his mind drifted back to his new guild.
Alexis: Hark! A theme!
7. Paragraph begins with: “So,” said Drew…
Alexis: I think it says something about video game development cycles that this reference is only one installment out of date.
8. Paragraph begins with: “ Fable 9 was dead…”
Alexis: This used to be a Harry Potter reference.
I’ve gone back and forth on taking JKR references out of my re-released works because I feel that I (and my community) lose to her either way and I honestly fucking resent that.
If you change a reference, then it feeds into her entirely false but media-supported narrative of persecution.
But if you don’t, then it’s just another drip in the never-ending stream of reminders that one of the most culturally influential human beings in Britain and perhaps the world is on an active crusade against the rights of trans people.
So I’m afraid I can’t promise you consistency on whether I’ve kept a reference or not.
It depends a lot on who the reference is coming from and what the reference is doing in the text and what kind of win I thought it was least bad to give JKR today.
Which is, honestly, a depressing position to be in. But here we fucking are.
9. Paragraph begins with: One game of Space Alert led to another, and then another, and eventually—when they’d all got bored about being blown up by space amoeba—into pizza.
Alexis: What’s extra weird about the dated reference to HMV is that HMV closed down and then re-opened. So it’s sort of gone through dated and out the other side into… wrong?
10. Paragraph begins with: Which inspired a long and heated discussion…
Alexis: I think, in its way, LFG is a very nostalgic book—like probably the most indulgently nostalgic book I’ve ever written.
It taps into two highly specific times of life and ways of being (studenthood and being immersed in an MMO with friends you made there), neither of which you can really get back once you’ve lived them and moved on from them.
One of the weirdest things about A Certain Popular MMO as referenced in this book is that they semi-recently released A Certain Popular MMO Classic, which eventually became (and then surpassed again) the version of the game I actually played.
I did go and check it out for a bit, but it didn’t feel the same because…
well, it wasn’t. The people weren’t there and I was different.
And, no matter how much we’d sometimes wish otherwise, time only moves in one direction.
11. Paragraph begins with: [Guild][Caius]
Alexis: I know I said earlier that I felt A Certain Popular MMO punished casters by making them drink weird unpleasant liquids to replenish their mana, but there’s also no escaping the fact that most off-hand doohickeys look like sex toys.
It was part of the reason I pointedly used a staff when I was playing a caster.
12. Paragraph begins with: [Guild][Heurodis]
Alexis: Because Bjorn has been playing since vanilla. Which you might not know, because he never mentions it.
Every guild has a Bjorn.
I love Bjorn.
13. Paragraph begins with: Drew stared at the screen for a moment, wondering what to do.
Alexis: This is actually a somewhat oblique reference to a site that provided competitive information for A Certain Popular MMO. I have no idea if they still exist.
14. Paragraph begins with: Still, in the end…
Alexis: Since I couldn’t have Kael’thas’s damn phoenix, I gave a thinly fictionalised version of it to Drew.
Also, “what mount am I going to use” is totally the MMO equivalent of “what am I going to wear to this date.”
15. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Solace]
Alexis: Me too, Solace. Me too.
16. Paragraph begins with: Drew brought his camera back into alignment, and turned east.
Alexis: This is very strongly based on Azshara in A Certain Popular MMO as it used to be about a decade ago. It was my favourite place in the whole game, even though (or perhaps because) it had also been somewhat abandoned by the ever-advancing plot.
Honestly, though, I do think computer games can be remarkable in capturing a sense of place.
The graphics of A Certain Popular MMO were never much to write home about (the game had to be accessible to people with a wide range of computer setups, after all) but the world was so vast and constructed with such care, I remember it so vividly and with such deep affection.
It doesn’t matter to me that it’s a virtual space, not a physical one.
And I’d say the same about Red Dead Redemption II’s old west or The Witcher III’s Novigrad, the Citadel (and its damn elevators) in Mass Effect, or Downtown LA as depicted in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.