history and canon of literary hypertext in the 90s
improv technique
theories of narratology
all works of Infocom, Scott Adams, Melbourne House, Magnetic Scrolls, etc
canon and design trends in CYOA and gamebooks
who’s who in Oulipo
history of text adventures in languages other than English
state of digital humanities as a field
Prolog, Answer Set Programming, and other logic programming approaches
general history of table-top roleplaying game development and some rough concept of what goes on in LARP design both North American and Nordic
Agile dev practices and a bunch of specific associated software and systems
every game ever submitted to the IF Comp in its 24 years of history
transmedia: what are/were the major projects, what are/were the tools, why haven’t we heard so much about it lately
running safe and inclusive spaces, codes of conduct and the arguments concerning these
nonprofit fundraising and institutional development
JavaScript
who is working on narrative games, game AI, or procedural generation at the academic, indie, and AAA levels in the US and Europe and ideally elsewhere also
freelance scheduling, billing, networking, insurance, accounting, marketing and time-management strategies
recent developments in interactive video and audio
conversational pragmatics
stage magic techniques
C#
norms of participation in academic conference program committees and journal reviewing
marginalized authors in games and IF, and standout works that capture unusual experiences
the landscape of London games/writing/journalism/TV/radio personalities specifically
escape room design and canon
interactive documentaries, canon and tooling
roguelites
the complete oeuvre of Telltale
locational games, canon and tooling
Lua
every game that’s nominated for an IGF narrative award or other industry writing award, whether or not I was on the judging panel at the time
uses of interactive storytelling in museums and cultural heritage sites
who’s who in speculative fiction and what they’re doing these days
standard wisdom about running startups, MVPs, and attracting investment
ontology and knowledge representation
writing for voice actors
accessible app design for narrative-heavy apps
art direction
educational game design and requirements for school-facing projects
design practices for VR and AR
how to deal with being interrupted repeatedly, and other apparently gendered behavior that is hard to call out in the moment
TADS, StoryNexus, StorySpace, Varytale, Twine, ink, Tracery, Texture, Unity, Unreal, GameMaker Studio, Hugo, Alan, Quest, Ren’Py, AIML, ChatScript, and assorted specific modding tools; how to plug these together, in some cases
physical object storytelling, both in terms of common practice and in terms of production methods
theme park design
assorted visualization tools, now mostly JavaScript-based, though at one point there was a trend for Processing
IF and narrative game publishing venues
government grant application processes
typography and layout
Tableau
public speaking skills
board games with a narrative or storytelling element
every “blockbuster” AAA game
natural language processing methods; NLTK, assorted online APIs
attend GDC, SXSW, PAX, PAX East, E3, IndieCade, Practice, GamesCom, Amaze, Develop, EGX, AdventureX, Feral Vector, ELO, ICCC, ICIDS, FDG, AIIDE, DiGRA, INT, et al. (yearly)
narrative content design for MMOs
history and current status of academic research programs in procedural narrative
trends and marketing concerns in children’s interactive ebooks
machine learning methods and tools
how to write a literary novel that would garner respect, e.g. by winning the Man Booker Prize
everything that would be taught in an undergraduate computer science course
immersive theatre, what the major shows are and how they work
assorted specific culture references, especially Westworld, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones
advergaming and viral marketing game tie-in methods
how to write a popular novel that would make buckets of money and appear on the NYT bestseller list
assembly language
narrative design for free to play systems
alt controller design
how to wear clothes as a woman at an industry event
current market size and revenues from interactive fiction games and narrative-heavy games
Alexa skill creation
Personal Brand development
computational creativity theories and practices
dozens of books of writing and design advice for game writers, screenwriters, novelists, etc, etc
computational paralinguistics
which parties to go to at GDC and how to get in
detailed CV of the person I just met, who is no doubt famous, but unknown to me
C++
Zizek