Contemporary Authors

• Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2005
• Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2017

Library of Congress Online Catalog 1. Smartbomb : the quest for art, entertainment, and big bucks in the videogame revolution LCCN 2005047845 Type of material Book Personal name Chaplin, Heather, 1971- Main title Smartbomb : the quest for art, entertainment, and big bucks in the videogame revolution / Heather Chaplin & Aaron Ruby. Edition 1st ed. Published/Created Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005. Description x, 287 p. ; 23 cm. ISBN 1565123468 9781565123465 Links Table of contents http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0607/2005047845.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0701/2005047845-d.html CALL NUMBER HD9993.E452 C43 2005 Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms Shelf Location FLM2016 075812 CALL NUMBER HD9993.E452 C43 2005 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) 2. Reckless years : a diary of love and madness LCCN 2016039309 Type of material Book Personal name Chaplin, Heather, 1971- author. Main title Reckless years : a diary of love and madness / Heather Chaplin. Edition First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. Published/Produced New York : Simon & Schuster, 2017. Description vi, 292 pages ; 22 cm ISBN 9781501134999 (hardback) 9781501135002 (paperback) CALL NUMBER CT275.C4725 A3 2017 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• New School - https://www.newschool.edu/lang/faculty/Heather-Chaplin/

  Heather Chaplin

  Assistant Professor of Journalism and Design
  Email:

  chaplinh@newschool.edu
  Office Location:

  Eugene Lang Building
  Download vCard
  Profile:
  Heather Chaplin is a Brooklyn-based author and journalist. Her most recent book, Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness (Simon & Schuster July 2017) is her first foray into memior. She is also the founding director of Journalism + Design at The New School and the recipient of more than $2 million in journalism innovation grants. In her spare time she can be found taking ballet classes she has no business attending but does anyway.
  Chaplin started her career at Salon where she wrote The Reluctant Capitalist column. Over the years, she’s worked for many publications, such as The New York Times and All Things Considered. She is the co-author of Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution, a New York Times Notable Book of 2006.
  In 2016 Chaplin was a fellow at The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. The previous year, she wrote a paper for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on complexity and the news. She is on the advisory board of The Guardian’s Mobile Innovation Lab.
  Chaplin has been recognized for her work on digital culture and the future of journalism in places including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Believer, CBS Sunday Morning, Talk of the Nation and The Nieman Report, among other places. Chaplin is also a frequent speaker on these topics.
  Recent Publications:

  Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness (Simon & Schuster July 2017)

• Simon & Schuster - http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Heather-Chaplin/564271940

  Heather Chaplin is a writer living in Brooklyn. She’s written about all kinds of things in her journalism career and is the founding director of the Journalism + Design program at The New School. In the evenings, she can be found taking ballet classes she has no business attending but does anyway. Reckless Years is her second book.

• Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-chaplin-4b332548

  Heather Chaplin

  Director, Journalism + Design at The New School. Author, Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness. Journalist.

  Brooklyn, New York
  Writing and Editing

  Current

  Simon and Schuster, The New School

  Education

  Sarah Lawrence College

  Summary

  Heather Chaplin is a Brooklyn-based author and journalist. Her most recent book, Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness, will be published by Simon & Schuster in July 2017. She is also the founding director of Journalism + Design at The New School and the recipient of more than $2 million in journalism innovation grants. In her spare time she can be found taking ballet classes she has no business attending but does anyway.

  Chaplin started her career at Salon where she wrote The Reluctant Capitalist column. Over the years, she’s worked for many publications, such as The New York Times and All Things Considered. She is the co-author of Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution, a New York Times Notable Book of 2006.

  In 2016 Chaplin was a fellow at The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. The previous year, she wrote a paper for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on complexity and the news. She is on the advisory board of The Guardian’s Mobile Innovation Lab.

  Chaplin has been recognized for her work on digital culture and the future of journalism in places including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Believer, CBS Sunday Morning, Talk of the Nation and The Nieman Report, among other places. Chaplin is also a frequent speaker on these topics.

  Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness (Simon & Schuster July 2017) is her first foray into memoir.
  Experience

  Simon and Schuster
  Author of Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness
  Simon and Schuster
  July 2016 – Present (1 year 10 months)

  [Out from Simon and Schuster July 11, 2017.]

  Trapped in a dissatisfying marriage for almost a decade, New York journalist Heather Chaplin finally summons the courage to leave. On her own, she finds herself intoxicatingly free, pursuing adventure, and juggling romance on two continents in multiple cities. She contemplates the meaning of life, she falls for a handsome Irishman.

  But as the adventure progresses, Chaplin's reckless choices send her spiraling downward—and toward a dark reckoning she's avoided all her life. Pulled from Chaplin's own diaries, Reckless Years is a raw, propulsive debut: unfailingly profound and impossible to put down.
  The New School
  Founding Director, Journalism + Design
  The New School
  2011 – Present (7 years)

  Journalism + Design is an interdisciplinary bachelor of arts degree combining the rigorous critical thinking of Eugene Lang College with the creative design thinking of Parsons The New School for Design. It teaches the skills needed to address the complex media ecosystem of the 21st century and develop the creative capacity to thrive in any field that values imagination, agility, and smarts.

  The program focuses on serious reporting, community engagement, excellence in writing, visual literacy, design, and developing the imagination and creative confidence needed to be a leader in the field. This program was developed based on the belief that a free press is an essential part of a functioning democracy, and it allows you to focus on your own area of interest, whether that be food, fashion, or the environment.

  The Journalism + Design program was created in consultation with some of the most prominent minds in news innovation as well as traditional journalism. Advisors and friends of the program come from the New York Times, The Guardian, ProPublica, The Center for Investigative Reporting, WNYC, and The Knight Foundation. This groundbreaking program is distinguished by its focus on journalistic practice supported by the design process. The flexibility of the program allows for student feedback to help shape its future direction.

  For more information, visit journalismdesign.com

  Education

  Sarah Lawrence College
  Sarah Lawrence College

• TOW Center - https://towcenter.org/academics/heather-chaplin/

  Heather Chaplin
  Research Fellow

  Heather Chaplin is director of the Journalism + Design program at the New School and the recipient of two Knight Foundation media innovation grants. Chaplin covered videogames for ten years for All Things Considered, The New York Times, and The LA Times, among other places. She is the co-author of Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution, a New York Times Notable Book of 2006. Her next book will be published by Simon & Schuster in fall 2016.

  Guide to Journalism + Design

  There is a growing movement among journalists arguing for a closer relationship between design and journalism. At The New School, Chaplin started the Journalism + Design program last year, and she sees other examples of people exploring these connections through research, discussion, and experimentation. What do the two disciplines have to do with one another? What do people even mean when they say “design?” Where are examples of design methodologies being used successfully to produce better journalism? What promise does the notion hold – and what might just be hype? This guide will examine the different ways different newsrooms are using design and lay out suggestions for next steps and next questions.

Chaplin, Heather. Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness
Amy Lewontin
Xpress Reviews. (Apr. 14, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
Chaplin, Heather. Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness. S. & S. Jul. 2017. 304p. ISBN 9781501134999. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781501135019. MEMOIR

Writer and journalist Chaplin's book is a diary account of the end of her decade-long marriage and an entry into what she thinks will be freedom and adventures to come, once she summons the courage to make her move and get her husband out. Chaplin channels her thoughts and feelings into her diary, and, for the reader, it may be an opening into the writer's innermost thoughts, but many of her thoughts seem to lack feeling about anyone beyond herself. After a short while, the book seems dull and uninspired. The writer may have had a huge variety of exploits during her year of freedom, and friends and relatives seem to be going through their own rough patches. These are all covered in the diary style; she writes about romances and adventures in Europe, all while constantly explaining her neuroses, not in a particularly amusing or original way.

Verdict Reckless Years may be seen as a kind of reckoning with the personal problems that one can't escape and with which one needs to deal. Readers may not always enjoy the ride. The title might work better as a film and screenplay, which could have been the writer's original intention.--Amy Lewontin, Northeastern Univ. Lib., Boston

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lewontin, Amy. "Chaplin, Heather. Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness." Xpress Reviews, 14 Apr. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A492536811/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ab1be92b. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A492536811

The Playboys Of Tech
Heather Chaplin
Details. 27.2 (Nov. 2008): p120.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2008 Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
http://men.style.com/details/
Full Text:
Byline: BY HEATHER CHAPLIN PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK HEITHOFF

Technology's emerging stars aren't code-crunching wallflowers. They're serial daters and socialites as hungry for fame--and women--as they are for fortune.

In the lobby of the Tumblr offices in New York, a young blonde receptionist in flip-flops is at work behind an enormous Mac monitor. When David Karp walks in, he has to sidestep the Rock Band instruments that are set up right in the middle of the office.

He looks alarmingly young, even for a 21-year-old. He extends an octopus arm and oversize hand and, sounding like a very polite teenager at a school play, says, "Hi, I'm David. Thank you so much for coming."

Karp is the founder and CEO of Tumblr, a software platform for tumblelogging. If a blog post is like an essay and a tweet is like a haiku, then a tumblelog is like stream-of-consciousness poetry. Users--upwards of 350,000 since the site launched--post bite-size thoughts, short videos, and candid pictures in a free-flowing style that, according to Karp, lets followers "see through the author's eyes rather than parse their editorial." Karp didn't invent tumblelogging, but his clever design has made Tumblr the preferred brand name among the online-networking elite.

When he was 17, Karp moved by himself to Japan, where he worked remotely for an American Internet company that knew neither the age of its IT guy nor the fact that he was telecommuting from the other side of the world. In February 2007, back home in New York, Karp designed and built the software for Tumblr in two weeks.

In Karp's office, on a white couch behind the desk, is his friend Charles Forman, 28, the founder of the gaming website iminlikewithyou. Like Karp, Forman left home at an early age. When he was 18 he headed from suburban Chicago to Korea and then to Japan, where he worked various programming jobs until he figured out how to combine his love of video games with his desire to be a Web magnate. On iminlikewithyou, social networking takes place via three-minute video games played in real time with online friends. Asked how he and Karp met, Forman deadpans, "Internet dating."

When the internet boom flatlined in 2000, nobody anticipated that it would spring back to life a few years later, defibrillated by a demand for ways to socialize and self-promote instead of places to work and shop. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, CollegeHumor, Digg, Drop.io--these sites were built by and for people who want to construct online identities for themselves by sharing first-person accounts of their social lives and forming huge pools of acquaintances. And unlike the first time around, the power players weren't just geeks gone rich, they were geeks gone famous. Guys like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook became bona fide celebrities. By mid 2006, Jakob Lodwick of CollegeHumor and Kevin Rose of Digg were kings of the new online social scene, their blogs and Twitterings followed by thousands and their every move covered by online tabloids like Gawker and Valleywag. Karp and Forman, and their West Coast counterparts, like Pete Cashmore, founder of the social-networking site Mashable, represent the newest iteration of the tech star--and possibly the saturation point of Internet fame. For them, aggressive online self-promotion is as natural as text-messaging--and as much a part of the business as software development.

Karp, in a lightweight hoodie, and Forman, in a tight button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, leave the Tumblr offices around six. The two actually met not through JDate but through John Borthwick, who runs a Web-investment company called Betaworks, out of which both Tumblr and iminlikewithyou grew. They're on their way to something called the New York Tech Meetup, the brainchild of Scott Heiferman, founder and CEO of Meetup.com, a website that helps people form clubs and groups off-line.

Sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Forman produces a steady stream of non sequiturs. "I like people in cute T-shirts who look really angry," he says. Just as he's launching into a description of founder fetishism--that is, when a woman goes only for men who have started high-tech companies--his phone rings. His girlfriend, Julia Allison, is on the line. "She has it," he mouths. Then he says into the phone, "Of course I miss you. I always miss you."

A blogger and sex columnist for Time Out New York, Allison, who gives her age as 26 in her MySpace profile, is a regular subject on Gawker and a Wired cover girl. Her relationship with Lodwick was the stuff of Internet legend. They blogged so much about themselves and were tracked so closely by the online media that followers learned about every fight, every make-up, in real time. She's also an original fameballer, a term coined in the summer of 2006 by Lodwick at the height of the couple's notoriety. The word refers to the way in which Internet celebrity snowballs with each Gawker item or salacious blog post. Karp and Forman are expert fameballers. They're known for taking mock-homoerotic pictures of themselves holding hands or cuddling in bed, and leaking those pictures to Gawker.

Outside the Meetup, a couple of guys are handing out promotional stickers for their companies. "Charles? Are you Charles?" one of them asks as Forman brushes past. Forman hands the kid one of his oversize, multicolored business cards, which says on the back that if you've been handed one it's probably because he doesn't feel like talking to you. (Followed, of course, by an LOL.)

For the next two hours, tech-world strivers give presentations and the audience bombards them with questions like "How do you plan to monetize that?" Karp's girlfriend, the wide-eyed CNET blogger Caroline McCarthy, has joined them in the back of the auditorium, and the three whisper, take pictures of their feet and each other, and make comments about the "retards" in the audience until the presentations end and it's time for the invite-only dinner at an Italian restaurant a couple of blocks away.

At the meal, Karp, Forman, and McCarthy mostly keep to themselves. There's more photo-taking--Tumblr lets you "push" a picture from your phone right to your account, where it's posted instantly, allowing for real-time communication with your followers--and a lot of gossip. They talk about friends like Adam Rich of the Internet newsletter Thrillist and Mick Hudack of Blip.tv, both young company founders. Jakob Lodwick, who is not only a friend but an investor in Tumblr, comes over, as does Kevin Rose of Digg, the four-year-old site that lets readers give the news stories of the day a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Rose, a 31-year-old former TV host, is something of a role model; his company is valued at upwards of $300 million. Karp's and Forman's companies are comparatively embryonic, but in these halcyon days of Web 2.0, investors are happy to give promising ventures like theirs time to grow.

"I DON'T INTENTIONALLY SELF-PROMOTE," PETE CASHMORE SAYS. "I JUST LET IT WASH OVER ME."

At around 11, Julia Allison arrives, dark hair swept up in a tightly sprayed coif, body squeezed into a tiny white dress.

"Hul-lo," she says, after greeting Forman, "hul-lo." She shakes the hand of each dinner guest until she's made her way around the table; the men look a little dazed. Then she sits down, legs crossed, cleavage heaving. Forman looks vacant. Karp and McCarthy are whispering to each other. Heiferman, his Meetup co-organizer Dawn Barber, and most of the middle-aged tech guys decide to call it a night. The fameballers close the joint.

The next evening Charles Forman shows up for dinner at a French bistro in Williamsburg wearing what appears to be the same tight-fitting blue shirt he wore the night before. He says he never made it home last night, explaining that the problem with dating Julia Allison is that she's "addicted" to fighting. That, combined with her standard 5 A.M. bedtime, means that Forman often doesn't get much sleep. And despite what Gawker readers might think, Forman is not a professional party boy. He actually has a company to run; he had to get up at 8 A.M. for a meeting. Forman got tinnitus when he was going through his last round of funding--he raised $1.5 million--and thought the money might fall through. He took to wearing headphones in public to drown out the noise.

Exhausted and slower than the night before, Forman is at the crux of the Web 2.0 star's dilemma. Sustaining fame by making sure accounts of your exploits with industry players and Internet starlets circulate in the right places is a full-time job. But so is getting a company off the ground. Karp and Forman consider the two pursuits inextricable. As fameballers, they stay busy fine-tuning and maintaining their personae. But a persona is not a person. A persona doesn't get work done. And a persona can't engage in a meaningful relationship. About a week later, Forman announces that he and Allison have split. He also says the tinnitus is gone. "I mean, it could just be a coincidence," he says.

On a Tuesday evening in San Francisco about a week later, Pete Cashmore is working the room at a stop on a promotional tour for Mashable. Cashmore, 22, is aggressively handsome. He's tall and slim as a reed, with a neatly shaved head and a superhero's square jaw. He started Mashable out of his bedroom in his parents' house in Aberdeen, Scotland, when he was 19. The site is a clearinghouse for social-networking news as well as a social-networking site itself. Cashmore says he used to stay awake for days on end, afraid he'd miss a breaking story. But now that Mashable gets 2 million visitors a month and has 13 employees, he's farmed out the blogging to other writers, heading up company "strategy" instead. Just this weekend he was hosting a party in Seattle; yesterday he was at Cisco overseeing some video that was being shot in conjunction with his site. "I haven't seen people in a while," he says, as his peers start to stream into the party. "But with the Internet, it's like you're never really gone. Communication today is so fluid that there's no real way of switching it off."

Cashmore high-fives his fans, throws himself into two-armed hugs, and drapes his arms around swooning women. There's a line of people waiting to be photographed with him against a backdrop that says MASHABLE U.S. SUMMER WORLD TOUR.

The party tonight was oversold--600 tickets purchased for a venue that holds 500--and by 9 P.M. it's packed. It's like a high-school mixer but populated by grown-ups, standing in little clusters, shaking hands, taking pictures of one another, networking as if their lives depended on it. There's a guy with a hand puppet, another in a YouTube sweatshirt. Cashmore's photographer, Mike, gets yelled at by a couple of girls because he didn't take their picture with Cashmore.

"I don't intentionally self-promote," Cashmore says in his soft Scottish accent. "I kind of just let it wash over me." He pauses. "I do worry that people will start thinking of me as some kind of 2-D character. I'm always written about in this sort of context," he says, gesturing at the party. "I mean, no one ever writes 'Pete spent the day working at home today.'" Another pause. "But there are competitive advantages to this kind of visibility, you know."

A block or two from Cashmore's party in the Portrero Hill neighborhood are the Digg offices, where the guy Karp and Forman call the "rock star of the industry" reigns supreme. Kevin Rose--"an old, old man," to quote Cashmore--never planned on going to the Mashable party. "I'm all partied out," he says. People magazine readers probably wouldn't know who Rose is, but among the Internet-savvy he's Brad Pitt. Rose, who dated Julia Allison a few years ago, is remarkably low-key compared with his younger counterparts. Drinking tea out of a mug covered with skulls and crossbones, he perks up when the talk turns to rock climbing (he's in a group called Geeks Love Climbing). He says he doesn't know what the term fameballer means. He also says he doesn't do things like wedge himself into nightclubs to have his picture taken with founder fetishists. "The scene is so small that there's no real need to schmooze," Rose says. "If you want to get something done, you just send out an e-mail and then, like, go for breakfast." Rose might even argue that the flashbulb-lit path that guys like Karp and Forman and Cashmore aim to take to stratospheric tech success doesn't necessarily lead there. But then, as Cashmore pointed out, Rose is very, very old.

CAPTION(S):

CHAT ROOM: (From left) Charles Forman of iminlikewithyou; Mike Hudack, CEO of the show-hosting site Blip.tv; Gawker's Richard Blakeley; Adam Rich (seated), cofounder of the online newsletter Thrillist; David Karp, founder of Tumblr; Thrillist cofounder Ben Lerer; Sam Lessin, of the file-sharing site Drop.io.

LADDER CLIMBERS: Pete Cashmore, 22, has been an Internet-tabloid idol since he started the social-networking site Mashable three years ago.

LADDER CLIMBERS: Kevin Rose's site Digg, where readers rate news stories, is valued at over $300 million.

BY HEATHER CHAPLIN PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK HEITHOFF

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Chaplin, Heather. "The Playboys Of Tech." Details, Nov. 2008, p. 120. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A189468125/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a9538b11. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A189468125

Chaplin, Heather: RECKLESS YEARS
Kirkus Reviews. (June 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Chaplin, Heather RECKLESS YEARS Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) $26.00 7, 11 ISBN: 978-1-5011-3499-9

Diary entries from a woman who left her marriage and husband for a freer existence.Chaplin's epistolary memoir, extracted from two years of recovered emails and journals she'd kept beginning in 2006, chronicles the dramatic, adventurous, and heartbreaking story of a restless married woman who'd fallen out of love with her husband of 13 years. The author opens with frustration and resentment at her "stoner" spouse, Josh, a formerly athletic Southern California surfer who remained glued to his video games while she wrote about her unhappiness in a secret daybook "to stave off going mad." The author found catharsis through the "calming logic of language." Desperate to abandon the rage-filled man she'd known since she was 20, the author eventually separated from him and moved to Dublin to meet her brother, Seth, who was touring with a rock band. In Dublin, Chaplin's single life bloomed. Excited about the new world her separation inspired, the author writes feverishly of make-out sessions in the streets and of her passionate relationship with sexy Irish lad Kieran. Yet she felt like a "husk" when Josh called, on Christmas Eve, to ask for advice on a new relationship he'd begun with another woman in Los Angeles. Though the gears of this memoir grind a bit too erratically and self-consciously at times, Chaplin voices her intimate thoughts and emotions consistently and urgently enough to capture readers' attention as well as their sympathy when the author's free-for-all single life begins to sour. Memories of former happiness with Josh haunted her, and a serious bout of depression followed a spontaneously messy return to Ireland in an attempt to make miracles happen with the philandering Kieran. This a breezy, compelling slice of reality, as Chaplin openly shares her trials with a "freedom and exaltation such as I'd never known, as well as darkness that threatened to bury me." A restless yet satisfying memoir that will appeal most to women who've found themselves fleeing hopeless relationships.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Chaplin, Heather: RECKLESS YEARS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A493329090/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9d6e1807. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A493329090

Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby: Smartbomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion
Kirkus Reviews. 73.15 (Aug. 1, 2005): p825.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby SMARTBOMB: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion Algonquin (288 pp.) $24.95 Nov. 4, 2005 ISBN: 1-56512-346-8

A survey of video games, with a look at what happened between Pong and Halo.

Journalists Chaplin and Ruby try to go beyond the wicked graphics and big numbers (annual sales of $10 billion in the U.S. alone) to get at the personalities who have created a new entertainment industry that is celebrated and reviled with almost equal amounts of passion. They have a good crop to choose from, since videogame development is fueled by uniquely brainy misfits just like those who spawned the personal computer revolution--only odder. The driving forces behind id Software, the company that created the ultimate first-person shooter game, Doom, John Romero and John Carmack serve as prototypes for the rest of the field's personality types. Romero is the swollen-headed egomaniac, Carmack the nearly inhuman programmer, referred to in hushed and worshipful tones by almost everyone as being "like a machine." Serving as a barometer of the industry's ups and downs while the authors hit one industry gathering after another is the designer of the smash hit Unreal, CliffyB (Clifford Bleszinski): celebratory, paranoid and uneasy in temperament. Standing out as singularly unique is Shigem Miyamoto, the Japanese master who created Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Zelda and the rest of the fairytale pantheon that drove the Nintendo revolution. More hopeful, innocent and human than most of the antisocial crew collected here (has any other successful business ever collected so many people who operated with so little connection to the rest of society?), Miyamoto seems to be one of the few who can look beyond the framework of move-shoot-kill. The authors' approach is haphazard--their text seems to have been written in installments at various conventions and then bandaged together--but the raw material is strong enough to compensate.

An informative thumbnail guide to this flickering phenomenon.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby: Smartbomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2005, p. 825. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A135215815/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=24520382. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A135215815

Chaplin, Heather and Ruby, Aaron. SmartBomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion
David Pitt
Booklist. 102.2 (Sept. 15, 2005): p19.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Chaplin, Heather and Ruby, Aaron. SmartBomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion. Nov. 2005. 296p. Algonquin, $24.95 (1-56512-346-8). 338.4.

Video games, the authors tell us in this informative and entertaining history, were an entirely unexpected--and, at first, seemingly pointless--offshoot of the early days of computer science. A nuclear physicist, William Higinbotham, created the first video game, a rudimentary version of table tennis, in 1958. Now, in the industry, he's known as the grandfather of the video game. Then, he was just a guy playing around with an analog computer and a five-inch oscilloscope screen. The authors trace the video game's evolution from its exceedingly humble beginnings to its present position as a dominant force in the entertainment industry. They tell the tale with flair and an air of mystery, introducing a new character (say, Nolan Bushnell), telling us about him (he was an entrepreneur who saw profit in other people's games), and, only after we're hooked, revealing why he's in the story (he called his tiny company Atari). The best history of the video-game phenomenon since Steven L. Kent's The Ultimate History of Video Games (2001).--David Pitt

YA: Accessible enough for teen pleasure reading and good for reports, too. BO.

YA, for books of general YA interest

Pitt, David

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pitt, David. "Chaplin, Heather and Ruby, Aaron. SmartBomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion." Booklist, 15 Sept. 2005, p. 19. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A137406619/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=108e2ad6. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A137406619

Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution
California Bookwatch. (Jan. 2007):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Smartbomb

Heather Chaplin & Aaron Ruby

Algonquin Books

127 Kingston Dr. #105, Chapel Hill, NC 27514

1565123468 $24.95 www.algonquin.com

The video game industry is big money these days, powered by a blend of computer geeks and business mavericks who have turned it into a big business--and SMARTBOMB: THE QUEST FOR ART, ENTERTAINMENT, AND BIG BUCKS IN THE VIDEOGAME REVOLUTION traces the history of how this country become involved in video games. Authors Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby went on a five-year investigation into the history and technology of the video game explosion, gaining access to design labs and business meetings alike: SMARTBOMB examines both individuals and trends in a survey of models, legends, and achievement.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution." California Bookwatch, Jan. 2007. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A157653846/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=160af185. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A157653846

Smartbomb
The Bookwatch. (Feb. 2006):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
Full Text:
Smartbomb

Heather Chaplin & Aaron Ruby

Algonquin Books

127 Kingston Drive, #105, Chapel Hill, NC 27514

1565123468 $24.95 www.algonquin.com

The video game industry is big money these days, powered by a blend of computer geeks and business mavericks who have turned it into a big business--and Smartbomb: The Quest For Art, Entertainment, And Big Bucks In The Videogame Revolution traces the history of how this country become involved in video games. Authors Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby went on a five-year investigation into the history and technology of the video game explosion, gaining access to design labs and business meetings alike: Smartbomb examines both individuals and trends in a survey of models, legends, and achievement.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Smartbomb." The Bookwatch, Feb. 2006. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A141750694/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ad69036e. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A141750694

SmartBomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion
Publishers Weekly. 252.30 (Aug. 1, 2005): p51+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
SmartBomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion HEATHER CHAPLIN AND AARON RUBY. Algonquin, $24.95 (296p) ISBN 1-56512-346-8

Freelance journalists (and married couple) Chaplin and Ruby team up for a wide-ranging look at the video-game industry. They dwell extensively on the corporations behind the games, from Nintendo's humble origins as a playing card manufacturer, to the extravagances of today's most popular game designers, who have earned millions by applying their world-class computer programming skills to increasingly complex imaginary worlds for players to explore, both peaceful (The Sims) and violent (Grand Theft Auto). The game players are the other major part of the story, and Ruby's experiences in the gaming community prove especially helpful as his role-playing character becomes intertwined with that of one of his interview subjects in online multiplayer games like Star Wars Galaxies (Ruby writes this portion in the third person and mentions his wife's frustrations with the time he spends online without naming her, underscoring the duo's efforts to make themselves invisible in the story). Much of the reporting takes place at gaming tournaments and industry expos, reinforcing the circuslike atmosphere. A chapter on the U.S. military's interest in using video games as both recruiting and training tools adds some gravity, but overall it's easiest to appreciate this work as a whirlwind subcultural tour. Agent, Daniel Greenberg. (Nov. 4)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"SmartBomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion." Publishers Weekly, 1 Aug. 2005, p. 51+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A134832593/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b38ecc67. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A134832593

Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby. Smart-bomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution
Jamie Watson
School Library Journal. 52.4 (Apr. 2006): p169.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
CHAPLIN, Heather & Aaron Ruby. Smart-bomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution. 271p. notes. Algonquin. 2005. Tr $24.95. ISBN 1-56512-346-8. LC 2005047845.

Adult/High School--This thorough history in eight essay-style chapters begins at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2001 with CliffyB, a 26-year-old who already had nine years of experience in the industry. The story goes back in time to MIT in the late '50s and the development of the first video game. Moving onward to the present, readers meet developers at Nintendo, the creators of Doom, the developers of the Sims series, and players of Massively Multiplayer Online games. By the book's finish, the arrival of video games as the dominant form of contemporary entertainment could not be made clearer than by the embrace of gaming by two behemoths of industry--the U.S. Military and Microsoft. The essays consist of both first-person interviews and well-noted research and give a holistic picture of how the industry developed the way it did. Lots of numbers and facts back up the popularity of video games--for example, it only took a year for PlayStation2 to appear in 10 million homes, a feat that took the telephone 35 years to accomplish. This immensely readable book will have great appeal with gaming teens, but should also be required reading for librarians interested in learning more about gaming and its role in our culture and our teen-focused libraries.--Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, Belcamp, MD

Watson, Jamie

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Watson, Jamie. "Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby. Smart-bomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution." School Library Journal, Apr. 2006, p. 169. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A144715184/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=35cfa1bb. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A144715184

Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby. Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution
School Library Journal. 52.10 (Oct. 2006): pS67.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
CHAPLIN, Heather & Aaron Ruby. Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution. 271p. notes. Algonquin. 2005. Tr $24.95. ISBN 1-56512-346-8. LC 2005047845.

Adult/High School--In eight essay-style chapters, the history of video games unfolds from their first appearance at MIT in the late 1950s to their enormous popularity today. Statistics point out the phenomenal growth; for example, PlayStation 2 appeared in 10 million homes in one year, a feat that took the telephone 35 years to accomplish. B

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby. Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution." School Library Journal, Oct. 2006, p. S67. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A153361332/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3ca1b8d3. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A153361332

How video games have become far more than play
Russ Juskalian
USA Today. (Jan. 16, 2006): Business News: p07B.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Russ Juskalian

Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution By Heather Chaplin, Aaron Ruby Algonquin Books, 287 pages, $24.95 --- If you think video games are just for kids, think again.

Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby's Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution, looks at how the video game industry grew to be so massive. And with a critical examination of the military's use of video games, Smartbomb is a surprisingly poignant book.

Smartbomb is far more than just a retelling of how video games came to dominate the intersection of television, the Internet and traditional storytelling. It is a story of the future: "This is a report from the game front -- a place where bleeding-edge computer science and wild creativity have fused to produce a new medium that is poised to dramatically alter not only how we play, but also how we communicate and learn."

Chaplin and Ruby are writing about an industry that has enabled virtual reality to start melting into real life. These technologies have begun a transformation in the military that was once only the lore of science fiction.

It started as a joke played by a nuclear physicist who wanted to have a little fun.

In 1958, William Higinbotham hooked together "an analog computer, an oscilloscope, and an assortment of electromechanical relays," to produce the first video game. A small dot bounced back and forth across the screen of the oscilloscope, controlled by players. It was named Tennis for Two.

While Higinbotham was the "leader of the electronics division of the Manhattan Project," and spent much of his life working toward nuclear non-proliferation, he'll most likely be remembered as the creator of the first video game.

Flash forward a few decades, and you'll meet David Reber, "a merchandiser for Best Buy in Petaluma, California." Reber, 30, spends about as much time living in a virtual world, Rubi-ka, as he does awake in this one.

The authors describe Rubi-ka as "a beautiful planet, with forests of hulking trees, sunsets that put L.A. to shame, fashionable cities, and intriguing citizens. On any given day, creatures, rare and odd, scuttle through the long grasses of the planet's marshes; birds with wingspans the width of a grown man cruise the treetops; and flowers of brilliant orange and muted taupe with buds like starbursts bloom beneath mountain ranges."

Doesn't sound too bad.

Reber, who worked on a submarine during the first Gulf War, still has nightmares of bombs falling. He considers himself a negative person with little love for the real world, but Rubi-Ka represents a chance for something better.

The U.S. military is using the same technology for other purposes.

Near the end of Smartbomb, readers are introduced to Michael Macedonia, a computer science Ph.D. and chief technology officer for the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command. He recalls one of his favorite novels, Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card.

Ender is a 6-year-old boy in a not-so-distant future. He and his intelligent peers are recruited by the military. The children practice for war by playing a real game -- except, as it turns out, many of the practices are real battles. The children have been made into efficient killers.

In 2002, the military released America's Army, a game designed to inspire young men and women gamers to join the army.

Within one year, it was registered by 2.4 million people and nominated for an award by a top gaming organization. It was a blockbuster.

America's Army, along with a game used to train recruits and a sci-fi, holodeck knock-off (a room that allows the participant to see, feel and smell a virtual environment), will be used to "train soldiers for the emotional experience" of war, making up a part of the U.S. military's new DNA, according to Chaplin and Ruby.

"'I can have my soldiers always be part of the game,' Macedonia says. 'I can merge the real world with the virtual world. ... I can have real people in real places interacting with real people in virtual places that are copies of the real world.' He laughs his robust laugh. He loves to talk about these things.

"He pauses, 'It does really get weird, and really kind of becomes science-fiction at a certain point,' he says. 'It really is Ender's Game.'"

In marking the gravity of such a topic, Smartbomb shares its title with the name of a chapter about the military and video games.

Here is a book that might have been only an enthralling read about a burgeoning industry, but Chaplin and Ruby have gone one step further and produced something of importance.

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO, B/W

Russ Juskalian

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Juskalian, Russ. "How video games have become far more than play." USA Today, 16 Jan. 2006, p. 07B. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A140935642/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8b92e94a. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A140935642

Smartbomb; The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution
Washingtonpost.com. (Dec. 9, 2005):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 The Washington Post
Full Text:
Byline: Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby

After immersing themselves in the video game culture by attending gaming conventions, interviewing its inventors and entrepreneurs, along with researching the history of the industry and its influence on pop culture, authors Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby have published their first book "Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution" (Algonquin Books).

They were online Friday, Dec. 9 at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the book and the video game industry.

A transcript follows .

About the Authors: Heather Chaplin is a career journalist, having written for many major publications including the New York Times, Fortune, Details, and Salon. Aaron Ruby began his career as a biophysics research assistant and has done graduate work in both philosophy and science. He has also written extensively about the video game industry and has reviewed video games for Entertainment Weekly.

For more information, visit their blog .

____________________

Raleigh, N.C.: Read a story about video games in Discovery a few months back. It seemed to suggest that they help exercise the human brain in ways that it has never been worked before. That they're making humans smarter in different ways. What are your thoughts on this? More importantly, could this be a way to convince my wife that buying a PlayStation2 on Ebay is a good idea?

Aaron Ruby: That's a a really great question. After spending these years immersed in the game biz and with gamers, I would def. say that games excercise the brain in new and important ways. What we noticed was that they facilliate analyitical thinking, patience, an understanding of cause and effect, and an ability to conceptualize 3D space.

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Suffolk, Va.: In your chapter 3 excerpt as seen in the last issue of Game Informer, you included details about S. Miyamoto that were so detailed that it seemed as if you grew up with him. Just how open were the Japanese industry icons with you? Did that openness seem contrary with Japanese culture.

Also, what do you thiink are the prospects for the 360?

Thanks!

J.J. in VA

Heather Chaplin: The Miyamoto chapter was really hard, because Nintendo is so tight with his time. We were really lucky to get some good one-on-one access with him (which realy means you and him and about five Nintendo people), but we also read and studied and watched him. We wanted to paint as intimate a portrait as we could. As if Miyamoto himself was sitting there telling you the story.

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San Antonio, Texas: South Korea has seen a vast influx of gaming addiciton (at 70%) and the same can be seen here in the states as we become more 'tech dependent'. I can't help but wonder if the gaming companies should put some efforts to raise awareness about such dangers as does the tobacco or the alcohol industry does. Maybe awareness needs to be put out more in general about the subject. Your thoughts?

Heather Chaplin: I'm never sure how to respond to the question of addiction. What makes you say Korean players addicted? Because they play a lot? I have seen players who seem to have a 'compulsion' to play. But personally, I'm wary of throwing the term "addicted" around. It's easy to diagnose everyone.

As for Korea, though, it's true that they have extraordinarily high rates of game players. and they have the highest broadband penetration in the country.

I think there does need to be more awareness for the public about what videogames ARE and what skills they foster. I'm not sure a danger warning is the answer. But i'm pretty sure ignorance is the enemy!

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Fairfax, Va.: What do you think are the prospects for PC gaming or more diversity in console gaming. One of the things that I enjoy about single-player RPGs on the computer is that they are engaging and, most importantly, relaxing. I can play the game while sitting at my desk with the stereo on behind me.

Console games usually mean sitting akwardly in the family room and being 100 percent absorbed in the on-screen action. Fun, but not exactly the same experience. I get the feeling though that the target market for console games are people who want exactly that type of experience. Do you forsee a wider choice of games for the new systems coming out? Are the companies serious about reaching outside of their base?

Aaron Ruby: It's funny the way you describe your 'ideal' gaming experience. I'm almost the opposite, in that I prefer to play games at a console. The problem, for me though, is that consoles are horrible for communicating by chat.

To answer your question, I do think a wider choice is going to be available for the next generation consoles, but some of that diversity is going to come about at the expense of development for the PC.

In the short-term, the Xbox 360 actually has a lot more diversity than the usual new console launch, thanks to the myriad games available on Xbox Live. However, it's gonna take awhile for MS's library of new games to fill out. Right now it's not that distinctivve of a line up, though I love PGR3 and Kameo.

_______________________

Seattle, WA: Hello Heather and Aaron,It was once the nature of the game industry here in the US that most of the people involved with development seemed to be hardcore gamers/programmers. Money has been flooding the American industry for some time now. Do you think this has caused things to change?

In your experience what would you say are some of the more common characteristics that typify the current crop of game developers and their companies? How do they compare to previous generations of developers and the companies that they started?

Thank you,

Lance

Heather Chaplin: it's true - the gaming biz was once the habitat of only the die hard. People who couldn't imagine doing anything but this one weird thing they did! Making videogames. Or people who fell into it from having studied computer science, but actually wanted to do something FUN! Now, schools across the country are opening degree programs in game development and you see teenagers and young adults 'considering' it as a career option.

I noticed at the Game Developers Conference this year a lot of conern over "qaultiy of life issues." Not everyone in the biz is young anymore, and not everyone wants pizza as a reward for working 20 hours days at crunch time.

I'm not sure it's the money in the industry, per se, that's drawing new interest (in fact, compared to other entertainment fields, the money is not what it could be). Rather, I think it's a generation of people who grew up playing games, and now they want to make games. Think of someone like S. Spielberg, who everyone has read was obsessed with filming model train crashes in his parent's living room when he was a kid, and just never thought about anything except movies and making movies. i think it's like that with videogames and young people today.

One issue you'll see is that still, no one is quite sure what to teach to create Game Designers. Programs include architecture as well as programming and animation. As Will Wright says, there still isn't a very good game design vocabulary even!

But then again the videogame is only 30 years old, as compared with film, which is more than 100 years old.

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New York City: What are the prospects for convincing AI in games? Not just in terms of movement of enemies in, say, war games, but in creating dynamic behavior in more narrative-based games? Have developers made any progress here?

Aaron Ruby: I'd agree that convincing AI is really lacking in the ways that really matter to carrying the medium to the next level--believable NPCs (non-player characters) with simulated emotions for example.

I think that a lot of developers are aware of this need, but AI is an expensive proposition to build and research and (though I'm no coder) the kind of AI we're talking about is usually not resource cheap from a computing standpoint.

It's probably not going to happen in this generation, but the next "quantum leaps" in gaming will no longer be graphics but AI and controllers. The graphics era is reaching a point of diminishing returns, and developers will have to build their design vocabulary around new technologies.

_______________________

Alabama: Posting early: I look forward to reading your book.

One of the problems with appreciating great games of the past -- and I agree that video games are an art form -- is the technology. You can create a real masterpiece for a computer, but after five years, the hardware needed to run it becomes obsolete, people upgrade their computers, and soon no one can experience the joy of that game anymore. Sid Meier's Pirates! on the Commodore 64 was brilliant; Accolade's Star Control 2 remains one of the best science fiction stories ever put on screen, but those 10-15 year old games can't be experienced as immediately as putting a DVD of the 64-year-old Citizen Kane in the drive. No one with a computer built in the last five years can play Star Control 2; the machines are too fast.

I know Atari games are being rebundled; I know emulators are out there, but they need to be downloaded and adjusted to particular systems. A DVD player can give one immediate access to the history of cinema, but there's nothing similar with computers, at least as far as I can see. And a lot of brilliant work is cut off as a result.

Do you think the history of video games will always be difficult to study, or is there anything that will change that?

Heather Chaplin: The issue of chasing technology is something Aaron and I heard from almost day one of reporting Smartbomb. As you probably know, when a new console comes out, it takes developers several years to really understand all that they can do with it - at which point, the life cycle of the machine is probably on the way out.

On the other hand, making games for the PC has it's own set of challenges - essentially, because of all the variation out there on people's own computers, designers have to work towards the lowest common denominator.

I think this issue is part of what makes teh field so interesting - it's a place where technology and creativity meet in a kind of new way. Imagine if every time a film director went to make a movie, he had to reinvent the camera!

Also - I think you're hitting on another issue, which is that a lot of people really miss the simiplicity, if that's the right word, of the classic games. And certainly a lot of critics of contemporary games say designers spend all their time chasing that new technology and miss altogether the all important "fun factor." So I don't think it's surprising that a lot of people are returning to the classics.

Also - I think with the Xbox 360, you can go online and download a whole bundle of classic games. Check out your local retailer too - the companies are catching on to the interest in classic games and rebundling them for modern console and computer use.

As for the history - have you read steven kent's The Ultimate History of Videogames or Leonard Herman's Phoenix. They're both really good histories. And yes, as more universities start to integrate videogame studies into their course books, we'll see a better knowledge of the medium being passed down.

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Brooklyn, N.Y.: Hello. I really enjoyed your book, especially the chapter on games developed by the military. Following the release of America's Army to the general public, do you know of any other American or other armed forces who plan to put out similar game? For example, maybe an Air Force designed and sanctioned flight simulator?

Aaron Ruby: The Air Force is working on a recruitment tool called, "USAF: Air Dominance." As far as I know, it's not yet available.

I think there's no doubt that all branches of the military (and the pentagon) will be using more (not less) videogame technology for recruitment.

_______________________

Arlington, VA: I apologize that I have not yet read your book. So you may have addressed this question already, but would you agree that some of the larger gaming companies tend to just churn out games and once on the market they do not put forth enough effort to support these games? For example, coming out with new patches and maintaining updated information on their websites.

As a follow up, are there any small talented companies that you expect to start the next big revolution in gaming? Also, What do you think the next big revolution in gaming will be?

Heather Chaplin: Hey there - no need to apologize - good question!

Yes, there is a lot of concern in the industry today that with so much consolidation at the publisher level and with the cost of games rising north of $10 million for a AAA title, there's less willingness to take a risk on more innovative or 'out-there' fare.

And even big developers complain about how little time their games get on the shelves. It's very much a blockbuster model - if you don't hit fast, like in the first few weeks, you may not get a second chance.

So what i'm saying is that I think a lot of the development houses would point the finger at the publishers. The actual development companies - except for a handful of really powerful ones - don't have much control to what happens to their games after they're finished. That's between publishers and retailers. In fact, if a game doesn't become a hit, a small, independent developer can go bankrupt. There's less and less of them, and they live contract to contract.

This is why so many people are so excited about when the day will come that they can bypass brick and mortor retailers altogether in favor of digital distribution. Maybe ten years?

As for the next big revolution. i think that question is very much up in the air. Remember, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which led to Doom and Quake, came from a group of guys working out of an apartment and cost a piddling amount of money. As Jay Wilbur, one of the founders of id and now head of Epic Games says - no one know what the next big thing will be, because it's being worked on, as we speak, by a bunch of kids in a basement or garage somewhere who no one has heard of!

That said, I think there is concern in the industry about this exact thing. It's great games that move the medium forward, and if great games can't flourish in the current business/cultural environment, than there is a real problem.

_______________________

San Francisco, Calif.: Did you find that video game companies cooperate in any fashion, or is it an industry of closely-held trade secrets ?

For example, have there ever been any sort of partnering in any online games ? I could see a huge value in being able to link two different online worlds.

Aaron Ruby: The industry is definitely much more one of closely-held secrets than a field of cooperation. I've never seen so many NDAs buzzing about in my life, lol.

I think you will see, however, virtual worlds that have a link among them so that identities can be easily maintained across several worlds. But this will be done wthin a circle of proprietary worlds at first. I think that, particularly in the virtual world field, it is very difficult to manage a single world let alone create tools so that you can connect yours with someone else's.

But your question does remind me of Will Wright's Spore. That game will give players the ability to share their evolved universes with others. In that sense, bits of my virtual creation will influence or even become a part of yours. It's pretty exciting actually. =D

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Brooklyn, N.Y.: There's a story in today's New York Times about how affluent massively multi-player gamers are outsourcing the early rounds of games to young Chinese men and paying them paltry (although not too shabby for what they could make otherwise) amounts to do so. As a non-gamer this seems wack -- I mean, isn't to play the thing -- is there something I'm missing?

Heather Chaplin: This is something Aaron and thought about a lot and talked to tons of people about. I think the reason virtual world games (MMOs) are so attractive is that they offer up the illusion of a meritocracy - a place where one is judged on one's accomplishments rather than who one's father is or how one looks. When you start to see people looking for ways to advance their characters that cuts out the 'work" of playing it, understandably, pisses a lot of people off.

What's the point of playing in a virutal world if the playing field is as uneven at the real world's?!

Really, I think part of the problem lies with how hard it is to play these games without putting in thirty plus hours a week. Richard Garriott recently pointed out that perhaps they're not meritocricies as much as "time-ocracies" - he who puts in the most time wins. Gamers who are older or who have families want to have the experiences that you uber players are having, but they may not have the time to, say, amass the gold or get the right quipment.

I do think, however, that that is essentially a game design challenge, and I too hate to see it tunring into another arena where people can "but their way to the top." It does seem to miss the whole point of the open frontier these games offer.

Also, if you've been following games for a while, you know this is something that's been steadily going on for a while (even if the NYT is just catching on!) To me, it just makes the whole thing so surreal - real workers, mining virtual gold for real citizens to use for their virtual personas. We're moving into a science fiction future.

_______________________

Frisco, Texas: First off, I just want to say that I love the book. I was at the book signing in Frisco, and you guys did a great job.

Now that you are done with the book, what's next? Are you going to continue to follow the Video Game Industry, or are you going to move on to the next story? And if you "move on," what will you carry with you from writing the book?

Aaron Ruby: We definitely plan on following the videogame industry. I think there is so much to be written about, not only in the industry but also the medium itself. There is really no source of mainstream/non-academic writing about videogames, how they work, what they are, what makes them art (yes, Mr. Ebert, whatever art is, if it includes theatre, architecture and sculpture then it also includes videogames), and how our society will change as videogames (or model-based communication, generally) become the most engaging mass-medium of the century.

We're also working on some gaming projects beyond print, which is really exciting, since i don't think anyone has found a way to truly communicate gaming and gaming culture without aping other media formulae and without resorting to simply 'geeking out' (which is fun to do but not so much fun to watch).

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Chicago, Ill.: Re: Raliegh

I agree that video games exercise the brain, as well as analytical thinking and coordination skills. But they seem to limit the thoughts of children (and adults) into the strict confines of the game. Kids are probably smarter, but more like computers. Is there a video game that makes you use your imagination?

Heather Chaplin: I love this question. Because this is the question we asked over and over and over. You are right: analytical thinking is not everything. There are more ways of being smart than just being able to put shapes together or navigate through 3-D space.

I was just thinking last night that what I personally love about reading is how you have to fill in the blanks with your own imagination. That your vision of Anna Karenina, say, is YOUR vision. Tolstoy led you there, but you created her in your mind. When you watch a movie or a TV show, it's so detailed, the experience is more like being swept away by someone else's vision.

Nolan Bushnell, who founded Aatari, came to our reading in LA, and he said, yeah, kids are smarter, but they don't KNOW anything!

I worry about this too. If games can show us a glimps of the kinds of citizens we're fostering for the future, are we going to have a population of computer-level-smart kids without the intelligence of empathy and creativity.

BUT --- talk to someone like Will Wright (the Sims, SimCity) and he'll argue you to the ground that games very much foster intuition and creativity. in fact, he made The Sims intentionally vague - cartoonish, you might say - so that people would fill in the blanks with their own imagination. That was a conscious design decision. Will says his goal is to make the player be more creative than he/she even knew he/she was.

I also find my imagination feels very engaged with games that tend to called Kids games - Katamari Damacy and Nintendogs come to mind. Also - the role playing games very much demand using one's imagination - people create whole characters and back stories and play as if... I think that inherently takes imagination.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: With all the scientific data out there asserting that for many, games (and screens in general) have become a "new" addiction...and with reams of studies showing that those who spend more than 4 hours a day in front of a screen (many game players) less likely to vote, less likely to be involved in their community and less likely to have a healthy family life...is it time for games to have warnings other than the codes reflecting age appropriateness?

Aaron Ruby: Actually, I do think that the ESRB rating system could use some work. For example, there are 30 content descriptors but no 'skillset' descriptors that let parents understand what skills their children may be encouraged to develop by a given game. Not all violence is created equal in games. There's a big disparity between the skills a child learns to play GTA and those a child learns from Full Spectrum Warrior, yet the ratings system is incapable of distinguishing the two.

I don't think that we want to elevate games to the level of regulation of cigarettes and alcohol, however. Until MUCh more evidence not only of WHAT effects videogames have but also HOW that effect is maniest, I don't see such warnings as serving the public.

_______________________

Fairfax, Va.: What are your thoughts on what seems like politicians' basic misunderstanding of the medium of video games? They seem to believe that games are just as dangerous as cigarretts or alcohol, and I'm seen a growing trend to introduce legislation that mirrors the restrictions places on chemically harmful substances.

Aaron Ruby: I couldn't agree with you more that politicians' basic understanding of videogames is nonexistent.

The primary trouble is that our society (US) is addressing videogames as though they're just a media sibling of traditional media. So all the focus is on content, which ignores what is truly novel and powerful about videogames--namely that they are a medium based on using models instead of descriptions to represent things. This difference has a big influence on what kinds of cognitive skills are encouraged and fostered by the respective media.

Also, the research on videogames is still nascent and is only now starting to attract researchers who have any idea what games are about and how to design experiments that are relevant.

The trend toward legislation is distrubing in light of the above.

_______________________

Detroit, Michigan: Some of us would like to play challenging games, but do not want to buy a new computer every one or two years so as to play the latest games. It seems the people who make games strive to take advantage of the latest technology rather than coming up with innovative games that can work well on computers of three or more years in age.

Heather Chaplin: I think this is a real problem. It's a hard question to answer simply, though, because you're dealing with rapidly developing technology, a medium being created before our eyes, and, frankly, the very nature of living in a capitalist culture!

One of the things I found myself thinking a lot during Smartbomb was this question no one seemed to ask- But it costs so much money to be a gamer! the xbox 360 is selling for $400. And that's before you got any games. And a kind of cult springs up around each new console, and each new title from a beloved developer.

So there is part of me that feel uncomfortable seeing the new passtime of the future being one that simultaneously demands you be a hardcore consumer.

Not a great answer. But a great question.

_______________________

NY: Hello - what, and whom, do you think the future of games will be driven by?

Curious, young female gamer/Comp. Scientist

Aaron Ruby: I think that using dynamic computer models that respond to user input in interesting ways is going to be a huge part of the future. Videogames are just the first part of this shift. It's sort of analogous to the rise of using algorithms to do scientific work (think artificial life, etc.) as the age of 'calculus' wanes.

In more practical terms, I think that the Internet will eventually offer a virtual world interface, not unlike the one described in Tad Williams' amazing Otherland series.

Videogames themselves will splinter off into further 'media'. What I mean is that when we look back at this period, we may be amazed that we lumped GTA, World of Warcraft, Pong, and Indigo Prophecy into a single category. The rift between narrative-based game experiences and more 'gamey' experiences will grow wider until it cracks.

It's going to be an interesting time.

_______________________

Takoma Park, Md.: Using paid labor to get to the upper experience levels is just like being in management because you're the son of the boss.

You only stay there if you have the skills to maintain your position.

Heather Chaplin: Ha. And interesting point. But you can understand why the people who, say, don't have a dad with a friend to get them that job interview in the first place are annoyed that the boss got to be the boss - even if he's doing a good job to stay there. They're thinking to themselves, 'well if i had a chance, I'd do good job too.' Right? And, if the playing field is so uneven as to mean that certain people never get the changes and other people do - than there's legitimacy to the complainT, right?

These virtual worlds are interesting models of our own worlds. And I think players HATE feeling that same feeling they - as you point out - probably feel at work already!

_______________________

Bethesda, Md.: Why did you name your book Smartbomb?

Heather Chaplin: Smartbomb came from Aaron. He grew up in Orange County playing Defender, first of all. Then, he was interested in how the term came into the culture initially through a videogame, and THEN with the first Iraq war.

It seemed like a title that resonated with the very subject matter of the book - that this is essentially a smartbomb being dropped on our society. The medium fosters "smarts" and is being created by super smart people, they're being carefully guided to exlode over our heads by companies like Microsoft and Sony, and the connections between the industry and military run deep. So...thus you have Smartbomb as our title!

_______________________

New York City: Does it concern you that something's being lost, with the growing penetration of this relentlessly addictive form of entertainment, in the cognitive development of children?

Perhaps TV is not much better, but at least that conformed to more traditional models of story-telling, narrative, character-development, etc. Video game stories seem very primitive, and the fact that players decide what happens in them almost seems to limit, rather than expand, the "craftedness" of the story. So eye-hand coordination and 3-D problem solving, etc. might be getting better, but are children being enriched in the same way that they might have been reading a good (or even bad) book?

-Cadillac Man

Aaron Ruby: A good question. It's basically the same concerns Roger Ebert has expressed recently.

There's only something being lost if we assume that one medium or another has to be THE medium. I think what videogames do is provide an entirely new medium at the disposal of educators, artists and CEOs. They're

not a replacement. I wouldn't have bothered to write a book if I thought otherwise. =]

Videogames are indeed primitive right now. But that's a design and technology problem, not an inherent feature of the medium itself.

And it's not just 3d visualization, analytic skills, and hand-eye coordination (tho many games require very little of the latter) that games encourage. Those are simply a few of the ones that can be generalized across games.

Individually, games can teach almost anything. They can provide your child with empathetic experiences that film and books cannot achieve. They can help your child understand subtle cause-and-effect relationships and how a seemingly small decision in one part of a system can have a great influence on the larger system as a whole, and they (along with large networks) are able to allow children of many cultures and locations to engage and challenge one another.

So yeah, children may not get enriched in exactly the same ways as books, but they can certain achieve precisely the kinds of 'civilizing' effects that so many feel are threatened by the rise of gaming.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: As an xbox 360 owner, and avid call of duty online player, i have begun to get worried by xbox live and teh xbox 360's dependence on the internet. A couple problems arise for me. First of all, how high is the risk of viruses etc. that consoles have been protected from all these years. Second, and more importantly, do you think that, because the xbox has such a large HD (20 GBs), and updates can easily be downloaded, that game developers will begin putting out unfinished products, planning on just being able to have patches for them as the users discover glitches/problems. Basically, i'm worried that developers will spend less time testing their games, as it is such an expensive part of the game development process.

Aaron Ruby: I think that while the risk of viruses is low atm, we will definitely see more mischief on consoles as they become more and more connected to the Internet.

Since only one version of the Xbox360 has a hard drive, and since all developers are required to have their games run on both versions of the console, I don't think half-finished products will be much of a problem. What I do imagine will happen, though, is that developers and MS will figure out just how much content they have to put on a disk to get people to buy it, and they will stretch some content out as optional for-pay downloads. But this also means that games could come down from their currently ridiculous prices.

These factors and others are one reason we hear so much talk about episodic content.

_______________________

Heather Chaplin: Hey Everyone - our time is up! Thanks for coming out! Great questions. Feel free to go post anything we didn't get to on our blog - smartbomb.us - and we'll try to answer from there. OK?

Heather and Aaron

_______________________

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Smartbomb; The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution." Washingtonpost.com, 9 Dec. 2005. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A139613132/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ff71e246. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A139613132

Lewontin, Amy. "Chaplin, Heather. Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness." Xpress Reviews, 14 Apr. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A492536811/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ab1be92b. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. Chaplin, Heather. "The Playboys Of Tech." Details, Nov. 2008, p. 120. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A189468125/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a9538b11. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. "Chaplin, Heather: RECKLESS YEARS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A493329090/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9d6e1807. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. "Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby: Smartbomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2005, p. 825. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A135215815/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=24520382. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. Pitt, David. "Chaplin, Heather and Ruby, Aaron. SmartBomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion." Booklist, 15 Sept. 2005, p. 19. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A137406619/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=108e2ad6. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. "Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution." California Bookwatch, Jan. 2007. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A157653846/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=160af185. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. "Smartbomb." The Bookwatch, Feb. 2006. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A141750694/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ad69036e. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. "SmartBomb: Inside the $25 Billion Videogame Explosion." Publishers Weekly, 1 Aug. 2005, p. 51+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A134832593/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b38ecc67. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. Watson, Jamie. "Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby. Smart-bomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution." School Library Journal, Apr. 2006, p. 169. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A144715184/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=35cfa1bb. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. "Chaplin, Heather & Aaron Ruby. Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution." School Library Journal, Oct. 2006, p. S67. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A153361332/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3ca1b8d3. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. Juskalian, Russ. "How video games have become far more than play." USA Today, 16 Jan. 2006, p. 07B. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A140935642/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8b92e94a. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. "Smartbomb; The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution." Washingtonpost.com, 9 Dec. 2005. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A139613132/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ff71e246. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018.

• New York Times
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/books/review/reckless-years-diary-heather-chaplin-memior.html
  Word count: 799

  ‘I Always Prefer a Flawed Narrator to a Perfect One’

  By JAMI ATTENBERGAUG. 8, 2017

  RECKLESS YEARS
  A Diary of Love and Madness
  By Heather Chaplin
  292 pp. Simon & Schuster. $26.

  Heather Chaplin’s “Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness” reminds me of a blog I would have hate-read in the mid-aughts, back when blog-to-book deals were a regular event, and when this memoir begins. Here is an attractive, newly single New York writer in her 30s breathlessly documenting her dating, dieting and dilemmas, sometimes in all caps (guess how much she loves “BEING SINGLE” after nearly a decade of being unhappily married), often referring to potential conquests in blind-item terms like “the minor movie director” or “the aspiring novelist.” My friends and I would have messaged one another with wicked glee the day Chaplin crows about starving herself down to a size-25 pair of jeans, which she buys at a Topshop during a whirlwind trip to Dublin. “I think, there is nothing left for me to accomplish. I am a size 25,” Chaplin writes. “Congratulations, Heather!” I might have typed to a friend. “You did it!”

  But here’s the thing about hate-reading: You’re still reading it, aren’t you? I zoomed through “Reckless Years” as much for its train-wreck quality as for the way the story is told. The short-entry diary format keeps things moving along, and Chaplin, a longtime journalist, has structured the book smartly, in six parts, with distinct emotional cliffhangers at the end of each. And although Chaplin’s choice to change names and alter identifying details weakens the drama, the material was mostly juicy enough to keep me occupied. (I especially enjoyed the moment when Chaplin tells some new friends about an article she is writing: “‘It’s with The New Yorker,’ I say. I don’t say I’m doing it for The New Yorker, because that would be a lie. But I am aware that saying it’s with The New Yorker creates the impression that it’s for The New Yorker.” Her new friends end up toasting her as an inspiration. I cracked up.)
  Photo

  In general, though, the word “reckless” in the title is a bit of a misnomer. According to my calculations, here are Chaplin’s most “reckless” acts: She dates a few people at the same time (she refers to her multiple suitors as being “on my bench”), drops ecstasy once, drinks a lot, runs up credit card bills, and has an ill-fated relationship with an Irishman, describing the sensation of looking into his eyes as comparable to “glimpsing infinity.” During her most prolific dating period, Chaplin writes, “Summer says I’m on a roll. And I laugh, but inside I’m thinking, this ain’t no roll. This is me. Turns out I am smarter and cooler than all those other single women after all. Oh yes.” Girl, please, I thought. Your high jinks are like the first two weeks for any college junior in a summer abroad program.

  Chaplin’s real recklessness has to do with how she handles her mental health issues. Halfway through the book she decides to visit Dublin to see if she can rekindle her affair with Kieran, her erstwhile Irish lover. (After their first lovemaking session she declares, “I am an African violet showered with rainwater.”) Eat-Pray-Loving her way through Dublin, she decides to cut her meds in half because “I have not had an orgasm with anyone else in the room since my early 20s, and I know it’s the Paxil.” This turns out to be a bad idea. Within a couple of months she feels as if she’s “at the gates of hell.”

  Regardless of what I think about Chaplin’s choices, I always prefer a flawed narrator to a perfect one. But “Reckless Years” ends in a way that casts a shadow on everything that has come before, with revelations of past sexual trauma and a long history of serious mental health issues. She writes of her father: “Should I tell you that I loved him? That he broke my heart into so many pieces, no man in the world will ever be able to put it back together again?” The announcement acts as a kind of explanation for her supposedly reckless behavior. But it’s also a story we should have known from the beginning of the book.

  Jami Attenberg is the author of six books of fiction, including “The Middlesteins” and “All Grown Up.”

  A version of this review appears in print on August 13, 2017, on Page BR21 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Turn On, Burn Out. Today's Paper

• New York Post
  https://nypost.com/2017/07/08/a-diary-saved-this-womans-life-after-post-divorce-meltdown/
  Word count: 878

  LIVING
  A diary saved this woman’s life after post-divorce meltdown
  By Royal Young July 8, 2017 | 11:50am | Updated
  Modal Trigger
  A diary saved this woman’s life after post-divorce meltdown
  Heather Chaplin hit rock bottom but took notes. Angel Chevrestt
  After being married for nearly 13 years, journalist Heather Chaplin was battling depression and the fact that the love of her life was smoking pot, no longer working and becoming distant and full of rage. “The day I decided to leave my husband, I started taking notes,” said Chaplin.

  Modal Trigger
  Chaplin partied hard to cope with her divorce, a period she calls her reckless years.
  At 35, Chaplin began living alone in the Brooklyn loft she once shared with her spouse and began a journey of passionate affairs, heavy drinking and running from her pain across two continents and countless cities. All while obsessively chronicling it in her diaries.

  Those notes eventually became her memoir “Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness.”

  “I’ve always written everything down since I was a kid. My life fell apart at that time, I was out of control but my one rule was I had to write every day. There isn’t anything else to do with the pain but turn it into something,” said Chaplin.

  Leaving the United States, Chaplin started her adventures in Dublin, where her older brother was playing bass for a rock band. Chaplin fell for a devastatingly handsome Irish documentary filmmaker named Kieran, and they made out in the cobblestone streets of Dublin, smoking joints, drinking pints and going to Flaming Lips concerts.

  “The Irish accent is designed to slay your soul,” said Chaplin. “What acts as a drug for me is intensity, experience and excitement. Eventually I crashed, but I told myself that wouldn’t happen.”

  After a whirlwind five days, Chaplin returned to New York to find out her brother-in-law had been in a car accident in upstate New York. His wife was in a coma, and their 3 year-old son had been killed. Shocked and devastated, Chaplin traveled back to Dublin and London, where her affair with Kieran turned dark and messy.

  He had a severely autistic young daughter and shared care with his ex-wife. When he and Chaplin took ecstasy, the sex got rough and unpredictable.

  Chaplin lost herself in foreign cities, paying her way by interviewing international celebrities and Irish stars.

  ‘I didn’t drink until I got divorced. During that time in my life, I was desperate to blunt the rough edges.’
  She was invited to spend Christmas at the countryside estate of Marina Guinness, famous heiress and grand dame of Ireland’s art world. The dining-room ceilings were 20 feet high, and there was a grand piano with a stuffed alligator on top of it. Over dinner, the highbrow guests gossiped about their friends Mick Jagger, Van Morrison and Stewart Copeland of the Police.

  “You start to forget you’re not actually the important, cool one. Like in the movie ‘Almost Famous’ when Philip Seymour Hoffman says these people aren’t your friends. I got much more interested in hanging out than doing the story. It’s seductive.”

  Chaplin was also seduced by alcohol, which she mixed with antidepressants. “I didn’t drink until I got divorced. During that time in my life, I was desperate to blunt the rough edges. Life as it was felt unbearable. Alcohol kept away the things I was trying so hard not to face.”

  MORE ON:
  DIVORCES
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  After over a month abroad, Chaplin returned to New York. She had negative-$437.16 in her bank account, and her mortgage was due in two weeks. She weighed only 100 pounds, had no health insurance and thought of suicide.

  “I wonder why a loss, a divorce, realizing the person you loved you don’t love anymore and they don’t love you, why does it hurt so much? It’s just one person, it’s just a relationship, but it makes you insane. You either die or you get up.”

  As Chaplin unraveled, her journals also revealed the deeper reasons behind her reckless behavior and most importantly her estrangement from her father, whom she hadn’t spoken to in over 15 years. Ultimately, her journals saved her. While editing them into a book, Chaplin regularly went to the south of Spain, Costa Rica, Greece, Sardinia and all over west Ireland. But her journeys became less about escape and more about acceptance.

  Eventually, Chaplin, now 46, fell in love again with a man in New York City and founded the Journalism + Design program at the New School, teaching students how to pursue journalistic integrity. “I believe facing the truth is a key thing in life. If you don’t, you will never be peaceful or happy.”

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