OK, start off by telling us a little about yourself. Where did you go to college, what you majored in, your hobbies and interests, and what exactly it is you do at Volition.

I have a B.A. in English from Bates College and an M.A. in Modern Drama from University College Dublin. I studied theatre historiography at the University of Minnesota for three years before I moved to Illinois in 1997.

At Volition my primary responsibility is story design and development. For FreeSpace 2 this involved generating ideas, doing research, creating a mission outline, and scripting the cutscenes. I then worked closely with the mission designers, writing the briefings and dialogue for the single-player campaign. More recently, I have been coordinating the voice recording process, which involves four sites, over twenty actors, and almost 1,700 lines of dialogue (not including briefings). I also play the role of Lieutenant Commander Snipes, leader of the 99th Skulls, Special Operations Command.

I have some grandiose plans for my leisure time after FreeSpace 2 ships. I want to learn how to draw and paint. I recently drew a picture of a dog. (ed: Our resident writer, Plasma, also wants to learn to draw. He recently drew a picture of a rock.)

What kind of pre-Volition experience did you have? How did you come to be employed by Volition?

I moved to the prairie after my wife entered the English graduate program at the University of Illinois. I had completed my own coursework at Minnesota, so my plan was to finish the exams and write a dissertation on nineteenth-century American sideshows. Things never go according to plan.

I taught part-time at the University for two semesters and made little progress on the Ph.D. After eight years of higher education, I needed a break from academia, so I took a leave of absence. I started a job search and after a series of supernatural coincidences, I stumbled across the Volition website. The company needed a writer.

My stories up to that point seemed too bizarre for the job I was applying for. My work featured talking bears, giant fetuses, and jellyfish. And nothing ever really happened. So I wrote a science fiction story and submitted it with my application. The interview process was excruciating, but a week later I was hired.

I wanted the job very badly. I had no industry experience, but I always dreamt of finding a job like this. I joined Volition in August 1998, just as the company was preparing to ship Silent Threat.

What would you say is your favorite game?

Old-school favorites include Civilization, Starflight, and Pirates. I played Civilization so much they had me on methadone.

What would be your least favorite game?

I hated gym class. I would just hang there from the pull-up bar like a horse thief.

What are your favorite ships in FS1 and FS2?

I'm a big fan of the TC2. Cargo containers are the unsung heroes of the space fighter genre. The TC2 is both functional and decorative, making it an attractive addition to any depot. Because you don't know what's inside until you scan it, every mission is like Christmas.

We have to continue the famous Pizza Debate. Is the pizza in Champaign really the best in the world?

For the best pizza in the world, you have to go to Green Mill on Hennepin Avenue in uptown Minneapolis. Order a Pescara crust with artichoke hearts, goat cheese, garlic, spinach, and sundried tomatoes. I like sundried tomatoes because they are red.

We think its becoming pretty unanimous that Jim Boone can spank anyone in FS2, so we'll switch it around a bit this time. Who gets mad tooled in FS2 the most around the office? Who is the best pool player?

The artists get mad tooled the most, especially Kresge. They design gorgeous ships, but they can't pilot them worth a damn. They give themselves callsigns like "Lanfear," "Bebop," and "Sucka Pimp." Whatever.

Since I make it my strategy to let everyone win at pool, I honestly can't tell you who is the best.

Everyone around the office seems to have a weird obsession, Pirates, Mr. T., etc. So do you have any?

My college roommate and I invented a full-contact sport called the "Pirate Fight." Our beds were ships and the objective was to knock the other player onto the shark-infested floor. We knocked the posters off our neighbors' wall, busted a few ceiling tiles, and broke the frame of one of the beds. We played "Night on Bald Mountain" for the soundtrack. The first rule was that if someone put on the soundtrack, you had to pirate fight. This was not as dangerous as "Ninja Frisbee," which resulted in severed limbs, decapitations, and serious back injuries.

What do you think is the hardest part of your job and why is this so?

Deadlines are the hardest part. As the pressure increases, you have to put in longer hours and do hard time. Programmers have it worst, though. Baranec hasn't slept in over 700 hours. (ed: Dave Baranec = Lead Programmer) And there comes a time in the process when making a major change would be too costly or risky, so you live with the decisions you made. When you work on your own, you never have to finish if you don't want to. You can keep revising and rewriting forever. Of course, that's not as satisfying as seeing your work on the shelf.

Characters in the FS1 storyline didn't play an exceptional role in the movement of the plot. How is this changed in FS2 with the introduction of Admiral Bosch?

Admiral Bosch's actions and decisions drive the plot. He shows up in a couple of missions, but his influence on the story is more behind-the-scenes. The structure of FreeSpace doesn't offer much room to develop character, so we created a series of cinematics much like the "Ancients" scenes from FS1. Through his personal log, Bosch reveals his desires and fears as the story unfolds. Compared to the Ancients cinematics, the Bosch scenes are more character-driven and more integrated within the storyline.

Freespace 1 left the player really feeling like a "nameless cog in the great machine", does this change at all with Freespace 2?

You are still a cog in a machine, but you don't have to be nameless. You can personalize your very own copy of FreeSpace 2 by changing your name to "Pilot." Here's a link, but I think it's good only for residents of South Australia: http://www.ocba.sa.gov.au/regnamechange.htm (ed: At $126 it seems like a rip-off.)

I do think the introduction of squadrons will provide a stronger identification for the player. Throughout the game, you will be assigned to different units, like the 53rd Hammerheads (space superiority) or the 107th Ravens (heavy assault). Each unit has its own squadron leader, logo, and combat role.

At the same time, you are still just one more bug splattered on the Shivan windshield. The conflicts are waged across multiple systems, and as you complete your mission objectives, the Alliance is contending with situations in other regions. The player's perspective is limited to the experience of the mission and whatever intelligence Allied Command chooses to volunteer. Your superiors take perverse pleasure in this campaign of innuendo and misinformation. You will have to win battles in which millions of lives hang in the balance, but the Admiral still won't remember your name in the debriefing.

Can you give us a rough idea of what condition the Terrans and Vasudans are in when the Freespace 2 storyline opens up? Is there a lot of economic problems? Political power issues, etc.?

The conflict between Terrans and Vasudans figured prominently in FreeSpace 1, first with the 14-year T-V war and then with the Hammer of Light. With FreeSpace 2, we decided to go in a different direction with Admiral Bosch and his rebellion.

After 30 years of reconstruction, the alliance between the Terrans and Vasudans has more or less stabilized. Though they are unable to return to Earth or Vasuda Prime, these societies have recovered from the devastation of the Great War, at least economically and politically.

Of course, not all systems recovered so successfully. Taking a page out of the demagogue handbook, Admiral Bosch seized power in Polaris by exploiting the social unrest and political turmoil in that system. Following Bosch's coup, the governments of Regulus and Sirius collapsed, and the GTVA found itself with a full-scale insurgency on its hands.

(All of this happens 18 months before FreeSpace 2, so I'm not spoiling anything.)

What do you think of the FreeSpace fan fiction in general? Is there any that you keep up with?

I've only read a couple of stories. I'm curious to read more, but I made a conscious decision early in the process not to. The question of influence and intellectual property can be tricky. Time is another factor. With all three Volition projects on my plate, there are not many hours left for reading.

Because FS2 takes place three decades after FS1, players will have lots of room to explore, create, and elaborate. I love the fact that it's impossible to speak of the FreeSpace universe monolithically. The mythos expands with every story and mission that players create. Heterodoxy is a good thing.

How would you compare working in the game industry to your previous work?

I worked a season on a potato harvester 13 years ago. In northern Maine, you'd get a three-week vacation from school to harvest potatoes. You would stand on the harvester and work over two conveyor belts. You had to sort the rocks from the potatoes. The rocks were dumped in piles on the ground, and the potatoes went in a truck that drove alongside the harvester. You worked from dawn to dusk (or later if it was going to rain the next day). When I closed my eyes at night to sleep, I felt myself moving along the conveyor belt like a potato. The fields near the river were waterlogged. We spent hours clawing through piles of mud, looking for potatoes. I used to make up songs to the tune of "Hawaii 5-0." In this sense, it was creative work. (ed: That sounds a lot like working at Chuck E. Cheese (tm), except you're dealing with animatronics and pizza instead of potatos and a conveyor belt.)

As far as graduate school goes, we were living in a time bomb. Grad students drink and gamble every night. I learned how to use words like "pathogenic space," "rhizomatic," "representational practice," and "hydroponic." I loved teaching, but grading papers made me surly. No matter how many happy faces you slap on top, no one is ever happy with a C.

Mad props to Jason Scott for doing the interview. I still have a couple more on the way, so look forward to those. Whee!