All posts by Wil

Author, actor, producer. On a good day, I am charming as fuck.

This is a post about PAX Prime, which is suddenly upon us.

It's raining in Vancouver. Little rivulets of water are running down the window, as low clouds slowly move across downtown, swallowing up the tops of buildings as they roll by.

I have a late call today. I'm in one scene, and then I'm off until next Monday. Tomorrow morning, I'm going home to get ready for PAX.

I can't believe that PAX is already here. In years past, I've counted down for the entire month of August and most of July, but this year I've been so busy, not only have I not had time to count down to PAX, I haven't even had time to play games. In fact, if it wasn't for Pirates and Carcassonne on my iPad, and the occasional attempt to pull three stars on the last few non-three-starred levels in Mario Kart DS*, I wouldn't have played any video games at all**.

I have this bag of travel dice that I keep in my backpack, you know, just in case… I occasionally take it out and empty them into my hand. I look at them for a moment, the way normal people look through a photo album, and then I roll them a few times, just so I can hear the sound they make as they clatter onto the table. It makes me smile for a moment, before then I sadly put them away again. I haven't played actual boardgames more than once or twice since last PAX, and I haven't played an RPG at all. It's good to be busy, and I'm incredibly grateful for it… but I'm so excited to go to PAX and play games for four days, I can hardly sit still right now.

If you're coming to PAX, this information may be relevant to your interests:

My Schedule: 

Friday 2:30pm -3:30pm in the Pegasus Theatre – THE AWESOME HOUR WITH ME WIL WHEATON

Wil Wheaton first came to PAX in 2007, when he gave the keynote address that your parents won't stop making you listen to in the car. In 2008, he returned for a panel that asked and answered the burning question, "Can Wil Wheaton really be a panel all by himself?" This year, Commodore Wil Wheaton welcomes you aboard the USS AWESOME for 60 minutes of story-telling, lingerie-dodging, mirth-making, myth-making, iconoclasting, and the obligatory burning-questioning … ing.

Saturday 3:30pm-5:30pm in the Main Theatre - Acquisitions, Inc: The Last Will and Testament of James Darkmagic I

Jim Darkmagic receives a magical missive, informing him that his grandfather has died. There's to be a reading of the Last Will and Testament at the family estate. Not long after the family convenes, wackiness ensues.Join Gabe, Tycho, Scott Kurtz and Wil Wheaton as they guide Jim Darkmagic, Binwin Bronzebottom, Omin Dran and Aeofel "Al" Elhromane through an unscripted Dungeons & Dragons adventure before a live audience.

 

I'm going to have a booth, and I'll be signing stuff and trading shiny gold rocks for nifty things, like the special edition of The Happiest Days of Our Lives, my short collection of gaming essays Games Matter (expanded to include the complete text of my PAX Prime and PAX East keynotes), and an assortment of delightful 8×10 photographs, perfect for framing or folding into origami dicks. I won't have any of the new 3 Wheaton Moon T-shirts, but I will have a few 3 Wheaton Moon posters. I'm not bringing too many, because I don't know if anyone else in the world thinks it's as funny as I do and I don't want to have to haul them back home.

Anne thinks I should bring some of my cheesy 80s pinup posters, so that's going to happen. I'll also make a few of the Compleat Workes Of Mee Wil Wheatone DVDs. I imagine those will go quickly, though, so get there early if you want one.

I'm not going to spend too much time in my booth, though, because I desperately need to make up for the appalling lack of gaming in my life for the last 365ish days. I'll post a schedule when I get there, and probably blather about it on the Twitterbox, too.

Oh!! I hope that you'll bring me dice, so I can continue testing my theory that it's not possible to have too many dice … but that will be in its own post a little later today.

Wow. PAX is in four days. I can't believe it's actually here.

*Seriously, fuck you, Rainbow Road. Fuck you right in the face with a blue shell.

**Until last night, when I finally finished the single player of Portal 2. IN SPAAAAAAAACE.

Eureka: Of Mites and Men

In every rehearsal, when Parrish stands up to triumphantly announce that he's completed his 100 cranes, I did it in my best* Homer Simpson voice, like when he tries to fake out Apu with the lottery scratcher: "WOOO HOOO! ONE HUNDRED CRANES, BABY!"

This episode was more fun to film than I thought was humanly possible. Even though we were all crammed into a tiny set (it actually looks bigger than it was, because it was photographed with wide angle lenses) for several days**, I loved every minute of it. I remember thinking that I was so grateful that we are all friends and all get along, and that nobody in the cast is a diva, because it would have really sucked in that case.

Erica, Felicia, Neil, Niall and I all went to an origami class with a master origami folder so we could learn how to do cranes. I had a really hard time wrapping my head around it***, but once I figured it out, I enjoyed it quite a lot. I also may have specifically inquired about the creating of origami dicks, because I'm twelve. When we were in that little chamber, we'd just sit there between takes, folding cranes and cracking jokes with each other. I can't say for certain, because I don't have a control to test it against, but I think filming this episode brought us all closer together than we already were.

From a character development standpoint, I think this is where we see that Parrish has a lot to prove, and getting to Titan is how he's going to do it. We had to cut so much stuff for time, we lost a couple of scenes where we got to see that Parrish is so completely focused on getting to Titan at all costs, he can't adapt to changing circumstances, and he can't put the team ahead of himself. I don't know about the rest of you, but that's not the kind of guy I want to have to rely upon when I'm {VAR==$miles.to.Titan} away from home. I hope Parrish can learn from the isolation experience in future episodes, because I'm still totally #TeamParrish.

Weren't the mites cool? And how much do you love Sheriff Andy?****

Fun fact: Three weeks before we filmed this episode, I nearly broke my ankle. I knew that we'd be doing this "take off your shirt, Coco" thing with me, so I had been exercising like crazy as part of Project Don't Be A Flabby Piece Of Shit On Television, but it turns out that not being able to stand without a cane for three weeks sort of gets in the way of that. Luckily for me, the producers were sensitive to my vain need to not inflict my Body By Guinness on the world, and let me wear a tank top underneath my jumpsuit. You're welcome, people who didn't have to see a flabby, pasty, nerdbody that you can't unsee.

A lot of viewers enjoyed the Number One line, and we've gotten a lot of credit for making a clever TNG reference … but I don't think that was intentional. All of our characters were given numbers when we were in the chamber, and I think Parrish was just dehumanizing everyone to be a dick and work what he thought was some sort of psychological warfare. 

Or maybe it was intentional all along, and nobody told me … it's all part of the test.

 

* Not very good

**  The show ran almost 25 minutes long, so a lot of very funny stuff had to be cut, but will show up on an extended cut for DVD someday.

*** The line where Zane says Parrish's last few cranes looked like ducks was improvised by Niall, based on me complaining that I was really bad at making cranes, but extremely good at making ducks.

 ****The answers are: YES and A LOT. Congratulations to those of you who passed.

Get Excited And Make Things Revisited

Three-Wheaton-Moon-ShirtMy friend Joel and I got excited and made a thing. We announced it last night, and in about 12 hours, it's become more popular than either of us expected, so this seemed like a good time to revisit Getting Excited And Making Things.

I don't know how many of you have been reading my lame blog long enough to remember my Get Excited and Make Things post. The tl;dr is: print on demand + internet distribution = zero risk for creative people who get excited and make something.

Why not take a creative risk and see if it works out? Unlike the old days, when we had to purchase a lot of stock ahead of time and hope we could sell it, we can just Get Excited and Make Things, knowing that the very worst that can happen is that nobody likes that thing we made as much as we thought they would.

In the old days, creators had to hope that:

1. A store would carry their Thing.

2. Once in the store, their Thing would be in a place where people could see it.

3. People would buy their Thing.

4. People would buy enough of their Thing to get the cycle to start over at step 1.

Oh, and to have any hope of being successful, they have to do this in different stores all over the place, competing for space and attention with huge companies that have massive advertising budgets. It was, to say the very least, daunting.

But look at how much things have changed! Creative people can get excited, make something, and get it to their customers without ever having to go through any of those steps. The financial risk has been almost entirely taken away, so now we can take chances on our really crazy ideas, just because we're excited about them.

I've met a lot of people since I wrote that post who have told me it inspired them to Get Excited and Make Things of their own. Some of them have actually made money from it, others haven't, but they've all enjoyed the experience of creating something and putting it out there, which is awesome.

DND-Ramones-Parody

Fighting-Time-Lords-Shirt I bring this up today because I have a personal example that I think illustrates my point perfectly. I've been making T-shirts with Joel for a few months now, and we've been selling them at Sharksplode. Some of them are wildly popular, while others have only sold two, because he and I bought them for ourselves … and that's totally okay.

See, I have really weird tastes. I like obscure stuff, and jokes that only 5% of the audience gets.This is great for me and 5% of people, but it's not exactly a ten lane highway that goes straight to the Fuck You money, you know? In the old days, when I'd have to order a ton of stock in advance, and keep it in my garage, it wouldn't be possible to make something like I'm a Loner Data, A Rebel, that I think is clever and silly, because it's just too much of a financial risk. Using print on demand and telling the Internet about it, though, means there is no risk at all (except to Joel, who has to make the actual design, but he tells me he enjoys that and I believe him.)

Anyway, this is your reminder to Get Excited And Make Things, because when you do, you just might end up making The Three Wheaton Moon that Paul Sabourin has been telling you for two years you should make, and when you finally do, the Internet goes "HOLY CRAP I MUST HAVE THAT RIGHT NOW."

I am easily amused

So io9 did this thing called the 10 Suckiest Fake Video Games That People Play In Science Fiction. Spoiler Alert: The Game from, uh, The Game is number one.

1) Suckdisk from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Actually, we don’t remember this game having an actual name on the show, but “suckdisk” feels like a good name for it. The object of the game is to suck a disk into a tentacle with a mouth. That’s it. And it’s not even a game of skill – you win by “letting it happen.” D00d. At least the UI is simple, but basically this episode is a cautionary tale about improved technology – once we have the ability to stimulate the pleasure centers of your brain, you may be ridiculously satisfied with some pretty weak gameplay. Actually, I like this episode, despite the game looking seriously ridiculous.

So when I saw that they decided to call it "Suckdisk", my mind immediately crafted the following scene:

INT WESLEY'S QUARTERS.

Wesley looks down at the game, then up at Robin. 

WESLEY

Um, this isn’t the game I wanted to play.

LEFLER

But you asked me to come to your quarters and play Suckdisk!

WESLEY

Right. I think you misheard me.

Tip your waitress, folks.

You want to accept Anorak’s Invitation. Trust me.

I love narrating audiobooks, because it gives me a rare opportunity to combine my love of reading with my love of performing into something that hopefully entertains people, and gets the Bursar at Ryan's college off my back for another month.

I did a few when I was much younger (Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and and Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers), then nothing for about ten years, when I did an audio version of Just A Geek, and then The Happiest Days of Our Lives. I guess someone liked the stuff I'd done recently, because I was invited to perform a story in METAtropolis: Cascadia, and that led to doing a bunch of books for Scalzi, which eventually led to the point of this post: Ernie Cline's upcoming book, Ready Player One.

I first discovered Ernie's work about ten years ago, when I heard him performing his sensational spoken word piece When I Was A Kid. I loved it so much, I submitted it to Fark, where it was greenlit, resulting in fives of album sales for Ernie (You're welcome, Ernie).

Years went by. Ernie wrote Fanboys. I wrote some books, too. Then, on a magical, unicorn-filled day earlier this year, my manager called and said I'd been asked to perform a new book called Ready Player One, by an author named Ernest Cline. I didn't even need to know what it was about; I knew it would be rad because Ernie wrote it, so I said yes right away. I had an incredibly good time reading it, marvelling every day that I was getting paid to read and perform a book that I loved. I counted down the days until August 16th, because that's when it would finally be released.

Knock Knock, Motherfucker: tomorrow's August 16th, and Ready Player One comes out in both print and audio editions. You can hear a sample of me doing my thing right now, though, because that's how we do things around here.

Ready Player One was in the New York Times this weekend, and I urge anyone who is on the fence about the book to go read it. Here, I'll make it easy and all linky.

Seriously? You're still here? Fine. Here's a taste:

With its Pac-Man-style cover graphics and vintage Atari mind-set “Ready Player One” certainly looks like a genre item. But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative. He sets it in 2044, when there aren’t many original Duran Duran fans still afoot, and most students of 1980s trivia are zealous kids. They are interested in that time period because a billionaire inventor, James Halliday, died and left behind a mischievous legacy. Whoever first cracks Halliday’s series of ’80s-related riddles, clues and puzzles that are included in a film called “Anorak’s Invitation” will inherit his fortune.

The world Ernie created for Ready Player One will blow your mind, and alternately make you wish you could live there, while being really glad that you don't. You'll want to meet the characters, and challenge them to a game of Galaxian (though they'll probably kick your ass. Damn kids in the future, I swear to god.)

It's already been bought by Warner Brothers, and will eventually be a film. I'm doing my best to call dibs on playing Halliday, but even if that doesn't work out, at least I got to play Wade in the audio version. Which you should totally go buy, because it is awesome.

 

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