STARFest – Drew Karpyshyn
If you are in Alberta near the end of October, there’s an event you might be interested in attending. I’ve been invited to interview Drew Karpyshyn on Sunday, October the 21st at the St. Albert Public Library as part of their STARFest event.
If you are a fan of Drew’s work, either his videogames (i.e., Mass Effect) or his novels (such as his best selling Star Wars – Darth Bane series), you should come out and meet him. We’re still working out the details of the interview but there’ll likely be time to ask him a few questions.
If you are unfamiliar with Drew’s work, I encourage you to peruse his website. I’ve been preparing for the interview by reading and rereading his novels and am enjoying them.
And if anybody who can’t make it there has some questions for him, jot them down here and I’ll see if I can get some answers or better yet, you can head over to Drew’s twitter feed and ask him directly.
Brent Knowles
Former lead designer at BioWare (Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights). Creator of Raiders of the Serpent Sea.
4 Comments
Jim
I’d like to know specifically what contribution he gave to the old republic MMO: like did he write one of the class (if so, which one), or wrote one of the quests/flashpoints, etc… ?
Also, Mr. Knowles, have you work with Mr. Karpyshyn at Bioware ?
Brent Knowles
I’ll see if he’ll go into a bit about his area of work on MMO (you might also try to ask him via twitter).
I worked with Drew for several years, from Baldur’s Gate 2 to Neverwinter and the expansion packs.
Mary
Muzyka and Zeschuk, left Bioware.
ME3 was what it was, but Drew stays mysterious about the events of ME3, not sure why but the last few years they are approving of dialogues and stories that wouldn’t
challenge a 5 years old child.
I guess that’s user-oriented writing. I hope that You are still having fun with all that You are doing.
A friend of mine who knows a few things about the general market, said once that
it’s sometimes good for a writer to have a alias , even if it’s known who is behind it, not for the purpose of sensationalism, but to to awaken speculation about the layers of the writer.
Something like :John Smith writes SF and believes that the technological progress,
is a good thing, but somehow always has a hidden warning about the potential ecological dangers of the resource requirements.
Then:Alan Milles writes SF that underlines the benefits of technological progress
but reflects also on benefits like medical progress, while completely ignoring the dangers of overpopulation with perfect humans.
The above are probably the dumbest two things that You ever had to read, but they are meant as not so creative examples of: “But he claimed in his other novel…”
Many writers did this before actually, probably because it plays with human curiosity, like writing a film critique and than a reflection on it 5 years later.
It works also even if adding the alias as a co-writer, apparently according to him, the
ideal case are confused reviewers and critics, that initially don’t know with which famous writer to squeeze You in and accuse You of being cliche, even if You are not.
Sorry for the rambling, and good luck.
Brent Knowles
Thanks, things are well here.
Your discussion of using aliases is interesting; I’ve considered it in the past.
Take care,
Brent