unforum

[rose]

[Dinner and Maureen McHugh] Wed. January 25th

[EGo]

So, uh, yeah. It's tonight. I'm going. Anyone else?

[joebrent]

Sorry -- I'll be rehearsing in Brooklyn until 9.

[aliendial]

All went well?

[rose]

Yes, it went very well. Funny story, during an intermission, I told bagsbee and EGo I would go try to find Maureen as we hadn't been able to meet up with her earlier. I walked down to the front and she was standing right there talking to someone (non- ARGer) who I interrupted without hesitation. I introduced myself and she happily came up with me to where bagsbee and EGo were sitting. Her many fans and well-wishers kept stopping her every few feet. We were all so glad to see her. She was so generous with her time with us, even in a room filled with literary agents and publishers.

At The Story Prize festivities, we represented her "on-line" writing fans (most of the people there read her "books" and "stories"- they seemed a bit skeptical of these "on-line" stories and us.) She was quite popular with everyone at the reception for The Story Prize, but she clearly liked us the best. She recalled playing poker with EGo-- as she was PMing the character Victor. I could tell she was touched that EGo would travel 3 hours just to meet her. She very kindly agreed to autograph some books for us.

Bagsbee and I got to have lunch with her the next day. I learned a lot, but I think I had too much coffee. We talked for two hours about games, i love bees and Last Call Poker. One thing she said is that Sean and Elan make art, which is why she is happy to work with them.

She explained how challenging writing for a game can be due to the "patented just in time delivery system" and that not everyone can work well under the unique pressures of making an ARG.
Example: for i love bees she wrote a draft of the Herzog death scene in about an hour at 10:00 at night after teaching a class, she had to, because it was being recorded the next morning. They used the time zone differences to their advantage.

She learned that she could write under a variety of conditions and for different characters. I decided that ARGs teach PMs they have super powers they didn't know they had.

I reminded her that bagsbee sang "Golden Slumbers" to Melissa from a payphone next to the exit from Staten Island Ferry during morning rush hour. She lived in Staten Island so she could picture the whole scene of the hundreds of commuters walking by the phone as he was singing. (She distinctly remembered when Krystyn sang to Melissa to prove she was human-- a moment I remember fondly-- and how that took off.) She said that Kristen Rutherford's performance made that game and that Kristen was constantly amazing them with the live calls.


She said that we weren't supposed to save as many refugees in LCP as we did during the Svetlana poker game - Jim kept getting terrible cards! And, um, I think we cheated but she didn't mind because cheating to save lives worked with the story.

She wondered if us talking to characters in LCP after they died "cheapened" their deaths in some way. But I said it was nice to have a chance to say good bye to them, we don't always get that chance.

She said that doing an epilogue of the characters was considered in LCP, but that Jim would have had to miss the party, which we agreed would not have been fair to him. (One idea - kerry would be seen with Corazon in a town in Utah known for doing sex change operations... being a Kerry disbeliever I said I could picture him guarding the door.... and she reminded me with a bit of a wink that when he was a serial killer he was under the curse, which has now been lifted... I don't remember if she said where Lucy might be in an epilogue.. and, Clay, my favorite character, is still dead, having played his role in the redemption by sacrifice story line. )

And, she was impressed that Steve Peters had learned flash so he could PM Metacortechs which enabled him to program the (very creepy) flash poker table animations they used the last week of the game.

I could have talked to her all afternoon.

It was a real treat for us who hadn't been able to attend any events out there on the Left Coast. She promised to get out to visit New York more often so we hope to see her again soon!

Thanks Maureen!!!