50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon

May Update
12 months ago – Mon, May 01, 2023 at 12:08:42 PM

Lots of news this month! A quick summary and then we'll dive into details.

• Books are making their way from the printer overseas to fulfillment centers.
• Shipping addresses will lock on June 1st. Books will likely be delivered to backers between late June and early July.
• Want a review copy or know someone who does? Ping me.
• I posted a bonus chapter on the fascinating text game The Gostak.

Book News

The books have finally left the printer in Asia and are making their way via container ship to North America and Europe. Yay! A small number were delivered straight to me, and they look gorgeous:

Overseas shipping will likely take 5-7 weeks with some extra time possible for port delays, so here is my latest guess at a schedule:

• Shipping addresses locked for backers: June 1st
• Books arrive at fulfillment centers: early June to late June
• Books delivered to backers and ebooks/downloads go live: mid June to mid July

The large uncertainty gap there is because I just don't know how long the books will have to sit at customs or waiting for a berth... I have heard some of these delays have cleared up, but things aren't 100% back to normal, so we'll just have to wait and see.

My plan for digital versions is to release them as soon as the fulfillment centers begin sending out physical orders.

Shipping Address Lock Date

As you may have noticed above, I've now finalized on a lock date for shipping addresses. That date is June 1, 2023. If you need to change or confirm your shipping address, do it before then! You can do this by logging into your BackerKit page for the project. (The link will let you retrieve your survey details again if you need to re-log in.) Once you've logged in, click 'Settings' at the top of the page, and then click 'Update Address' - this will update your shipping details for all of your unlocked BackerKit surveys.

Note that if you have moved between shipping zones, i.e. US to Europe, the survey might not let you make the update; in this case, contact me with your new address so I can manually update it.

If you're planning to move during June or July or have other uncertainty about shipping, please contact me. I may be able to hold your order until a later date or make some other special arrangement. We'll figure it out!

Review Copies

I have a limited number of advance copies and I would love to send some of them to reviewers who'd like to help spread the word about this project!

• If you're a backer and write for a platform that might want to cover 50 Years of Text Games (or have your own blog/podcast/following whose audience might dig this project) let me know! I may be able to ship your order early out of my stock of advance copies.
• If you know someone else who might like to review the book, let me know how I can get in touch with them to send them a review copy.

The number of early copies I have available to send out is pretty limited, so I may not be able to honor all requests, but please let me know asap if you're interested!

Bonus Chapter

The Gostak is one of my favorite interactive fictions, a game that challenges its players to learn enough of a fictional language to figure out how to play it. I couldn't fit writing about it in the main book, but it's part of the bonus Further Explorations volume in the Collector's Edition. I posted the chapter on the 50 Years Substack last month, and it's a great read about a truly unique and utterly fascinating literary game. Check it out!

That's it for May. Getting so close! Can't wait to hear your reactions.

--Aaron

April Update
about 1 year ago – Thu, Apr 06, 2023 at 10:41:30 AM

Just a quick one this month: book printing is underway!

• I believe all of the Collector's Edition bonus books and hardcovers have now been printed, with the softcovers and Collector's slipcases still in the queue.
• My printer should be ready to ship books to my North American and European fulfillment centers by the end of the month. Since last year, my impression is that some of the port delays and logistical back-ups lingering from Covid have gotten a bit less bad, so I'm hoping the books will arrive to the fulfillment centers a bit more quickly than I'd originally estimated.
• This means we're hopefully still on track for a June delivery to backers!
• Progress on the ebook conversion continues; we are working to make this version just as enjoyable to read as the print version while also being as accessible for blind and low-vision readers as possible, not an easy task for a book so full of sidebars, footnotes, code and text excerpts, tables, cross-references, and many other challenges! Also planning for the digital editions to be ready in June as well.

At this point I am expecting and planning to lock shipping addresses in mid to late May. I'll keep you apprised of an exact date once I have an estimate on when books will arrive at the fulfillment centers.

In the meantime, if you've moved or will move and need to update your shipping address, you can do this by logging into your BackerKit page for the project. (The link will let you retrieve your survey details again if you need to re-log in.) Once you've logged in, click 'Settings' at the top of the page, and then click 'Update Address' - this will update your shipping details for all of your unlocked BackerKit surveys. I will send out advance warning to everyone before addresses get locked down, currently estimated for sometime in May.

Thanks all for now! Take care,

--Aaron

March update
about 1 year ago – Thu, Mar 02, 2023 at 04:02:26 PM

The big news this month is that the book has officially entered production!

I approved the second set of proofs after receiving them earlier this week. The tweaks we made to the printing and paper stock were both improvements, and I'm glad we took the time to get these last little details right.

Printing will take a few weeks due to the size and complexity of the order, and it might be a week or two before my job makes it to the front of the queue, but very soon there will be thousands of books printed, assembled, and getting ready for the first stage of their multi-part journey to you. I couldn't be more excited!!

In other news: this week the Great Assembly happened of non-book backer rewards.  With the help of some truly dear and dedicated friends, we loaded up the majority of the 700 Ultimate Collector's Edition boxes with hint books, reproduction cassette tapes, floppy disks, and other feelies from gaming history. Between inventory management, barcoding, tallying, keeping an eye out for damaged boxes or items, and other tasks, this felt like a near-herculean accomplishment: a thousand thank-yous to the friends who helped out with this.

These and the other bonus items (posters etc) will be shipped off soon to my fulfillment centers, who will await the delivery of the books themselves before prepping and sending everyone's final orders. Things are still looking good for the schedule I posted in my previous update:

• Final proof approved: late Feb
• Printing finished: late March
• Books arrive at fulfillment centers: late May to early June
• Shipping addresses locked: late May to early June (with notification of final date in advance)
• Books delivered to backers and ebooks/downloads go live: mid June

If you've moved or will move and need to update your shipping address, you can do this by logging into your BackerKit page for the project. (The link will let you retrieve your survey details again if you need to re-log in.) Once you've logged in, click 'Settings' at the top of the page, and then click 'Update Address' - this will update your shipping details for all of your unlocked BackerKit surveys. I will send out advance warning to everyone before addresses get locked down, currently estimated for sometime in May.

One last note: in the months ahead as we gear up for release, keep an eye on these updates and the 50 Years of Text Games blog (which has been largely inactive since the Kickstarter as I've focused on getting the book delivered). I'll be debuting some new text game histories there throughout the spring and summer, including material from the bonus book and some of the articles being created for the Commission tier of the crowdfunding campaign. It will be great to share some writing other than project updates again!

Take care, and will continue to keep you posted,

--Aaron

February Update
about 1 year ago – Tue, Feb 07, 2023 at 09:35:32 AM

Hello backers! Aaron here with a few quick updates on the "50 Years" project.

I received in the mail a box of 700 floppy disks (not a thing you can say every day!), the final item for the 50 Years Ultimate Collector's Edition. Each of these contains the book's text in ASCII plus a secret bonus text adventure written for the project. (Ultimate Collector backers will also be able to access a disk image as a digital download, and the text-only version of the book will be available to all backers as a digital download option, along with more traditional PDF and EPUB formats.) The next phase will be a giant assembly party where I get the Collector's Edition contents assembled and then sent off to my fulfillment centers. This should generate some fun pictures and possibly one or two paper cuts (or whatever kind of injury you can get from mass quantities of floppy disks).

The book itself is unfortunately still in the proofing process this week. There were a couple issues with the physical proofs I got back in January, both for the interior pages and the paperback cover, which has led to a lot of slow back-and-forth with the production and print managers as we try to work out the best solutions. Changes at this point are a tricky balance because any alterations (such as adjusting the paper weight) affects half a dozen other things (spine width and thus cover art, first-mile shipping costs, etc) and different combinations of paper, coating, process, and shipping all interact in complex ways with other moving parts of the project. There have also been some Covid-related delays at the printer and other logistics slowdowns this past month. I would have loved for the book to have hit the presses by now, but I would also hate if it doesn't look the best it can possibly can, so thanks for your patience as I work to get the last of the nitty-gritty ironed out.  

Due to these delays, here are my most recent estimates for upcoming milestones and when you'll have the book in your hands.

• Final proof approved: Feb 22
• Printing finished: Mar 21
• Books arrive at fulfillment centers: late May to early June
• Shipping addresses locked: late May to early June (with notification of final date in advance)
• Books delivered to backers and ebooks/downloads go live: mid June

If you've moved or will move and need to update your shipping address, you can do this by logging into your BackerKit page for the project. (The link will let you retrieve your survey details again if you need to re-log in.) Once you've logged in, click 'Settings' at the top of the page, and then click 'Update Address' - this will update your shipping details for all of your unlocked BackerKit surveys. I will send out advance warning to everyone before addresses get locked down when orders are preparing to ship.

That's all the update for February. I wanted to leave you with another cool crowdfunding project you might be interested in that just launched today: historian Marcin Wichary's book Shift Happens is a gorgeous two-volume pictorial history of the keyboard, filled with incredible photos and the surprisingly convoluted history of a device we all use every day. I've been in touch with Marcin on and off for the past couple years as we've each been working on our own deeply researched detailed and niche computer history projects, so I can attest how much effort and thought has gone into this book, and can't wait to get my own copy.

Take care and more soon,

--Aaron

January Update
over 1 year ago – Thu, Jan 05, 2023 at 02:35:15 AM

Happy New Year, backers!

While the 50 Years of Text Games book moves its way into the production cycle, I've been focused on finishing up the last of the backer rewards, in particular for the Ultimate Collector's Edition. Last week I received a shipment of 700 exacting replicas of a vintage game release on cassette tape:

For comparison, below is a reference image I'd made from vintage photographs of the real release. I'm pretty pleased with how close I was able to come to recreating it with materials available 45 years later! (There are some subtle intentional differences designed to thwart these being resold as actual collector's items, which I'll be documenting in a later blog post...) 

A few weeks earlier, I received a shipment of 700 custom-made boxes to hold this and the other Ultimate Collector goodies: 

...and I've also got a stack of Hint Books (and 700 red-lens decoder wands) ready to go. I'm very pleased with how all these items turned out: I'm still waiting on one or two more pieces, but before long there should be a big assembly party where I'll put together the Ultimate Collector editions in advance of getting them shipped to fulfillment centers and, eventually, to the backers who pledged for them and made these awesome feelies possible.

Other project updates:

• The book proofing process has been going slowly due to back-to-back American and Chinese holiday months. I'm still waiting on proofs of interior pages and the cover, but I'm expecting to have those in hand later this week. Once they're approved, production of the books can finally begin.
• A lot of folks have asked me how to update your shipping address. You can do this by logging into your BackerKit page for the project. (The link will let you retrieve your survey details again if you need to re-log in.) Once you've logged in, click 'Settings' at the top of the page, and then click 'Update Address' - this will update your shipping details for all of your unlocked BackerKit surveys. I will send out advance warning to everyone before addresses get locked down when orders are preparing to ship-- it'll be a few months yet, so it's definitely not too late to update your address if you've moved since the campaign ended.
• I'm finally getting ready to charge credit cards for add-ons and shipping next week. I'd originally planned to do this in November, but for various reasons this was delayed into the new year. You'll get an email next week from BackerKit with a two-day warning that the charge is about to happen, and another notification once the charge goes through. If you need to update your credit card info, now would be a good time to do so!

That's all for this month-- I'll keep you posted as the book moves into and through production! I'm awaiting the result as eagerly as all of you, I can assure you.

Happy New Year and take care,

--Aaron