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Before I became a full-time writer, I worked in tech support in those giant cubicle farms you see. I was surrounded by people who played video games all the time - sometimes actually in the call centers, playing online multiplayer games. I saw friends of mine who began to feel that going online was more compelling to them than real life.

Atari collapsed in '84, and I went freelance, and that was when I started spreading out and doing my own thing. I really cut loose and did a game called 'Trust and Betrayal', which was the first game solely about interpersonal relationships.

My first business was a retro-gaming site where you'd go and play all these cool old-school games. It was a good idea but ahead of its time.

The kinds of games I'm most interested in are narrative games.

Games have grown and developed from this limited in-the-box experience to something that's everywhere now. Interactive content is all around us, networked, ready. This is something I've been hoping for throughout my career.

I've invented several games for use as teaching tools in my classroom: one of them, a game called 'Iron Age: Council of the Clans,' got so popular among my students that they encouraged me to publish it, which I did.

The great thing about games is that it's tremendously collaborative, and it opens you up to this other world of thinking and storytelling and how you construct those stories.

I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader.

Games I do find interesting for what they say about us, about what we wish for, about the programming. But let it stop there: don't listen to this rubbish about them actually being good for you, helping with hand-eye co-ordination or whatever. They're games. They prepare you for nothing.