Author Archives: geoffreylong

Geoffrey Long is a media analyst, scholar, and storyteller exploring transmedia experiences, emerging entertainment platforms and the future of entertainment as the Lead Narrative Producer for the Narrative Design Team at Microsoft Studios. He is an alum of the MIT Comparative Media Studies program, a FoE Fellow with the Futures of Entertainment community, and a co-editor of the Playful Thinking book series from the MIT Press. His personal site can be found at geoffreylong.com.

Hello goodbye.

I haven’t written much about this here, but lately I’ve been mourning the loss of several of my favorite little lights: the largely introspective comic strips m@b by Matthew Blackett, and Bruno by Christopher Baldwin. Also, the largely irreverent Mac Hall has changed into Three Panel Soul, which seems to be struggling to regain its […]

Links list: 05-08-07.

LOST gets an endpoint. Narratively speaking, this is huge. The Witch’s Yarn. Fun-looking indie game for Mac and PC. Average US home has more TVs than people. Old news, still disturbing. Philip K. Dick, legit at last. 1,000 amphetamines a week? Podcasts as promos. I gotta get in on this. Console makers promote connected gaming. […]

The end times.

All right, I’ll admit it. I’m in a little bit of trouble here. My THESIS is due on Friday. I’m meant to be doing final revisions to the paper – and I have been doing revisions, but I’m concerned that I might not be doing enough revisions, or the right revisions. The defense went well, […]

Sorry for the silence.

A quick note here to apologize to anyone who’s still waiting to hear back from me on something email-related. I’ve just spent an hour and a half hacking and slashing at my inbox and I’ve still only managed to get it down to 92 actionable emails (admittedly from over 200, but still). The final draft […]

What value transmedia?

I’m knee-deep in reworking Section III of my thesis this weekend, wherein I’m trying to demonstrate the actual value of canon when it comes to transmedia storytelling. My case study of choice? The new ‘season 8’ of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, told in comics form by Whedon himself. Why? Simple. When Whedon’s Fray, a comic […]

Links list: 05-03-07.

NYT Select: Why Not the Worst? Joe Queenan on the virtues of bad lit. George Foreman’s iGrill. Why?! The Simple Way to Avoid Finishing Your Thesis. It’s true. Will Self’s writing room. Now that’s some wallpaper. Bag contents: four chips and a spud. Awesome. Building a Better Conference Badge. Davidson’s a genius. The Coudal Swap […]

Defended.

Apologies for not posting this yesterday, but I have now (more or less) successfully defended my Master’s THESIS at MIT. I still need to do some last-minute revisions, but it looks like I’m going to graduate! The defense was both a lot of fun and kind of awkward, since I wasn’t wholly certain what the […]

The 44,558 and the 9,900.

My THESIS defense is this afternoon from 1-3. That means that as I write this, I have approximately two hours and forty-five minutes in which to shower up, format a title page for people to sign, get something for lunch and hustle my butt in to campus. That translates into right around 9,900 seconds. The […]

Links list: 05-01-07.

Microsodes?! Sony compresses eps into 30-second miniversions. Studio 60 returns May 24. Matt and Danny, we hardly knew ye. Boston video game company history graph. Impressive lineage. LG announces Cirque du Soleil-themed LCD TV. Way more tempting than it oughtta be.

Expensive weekend.

After MIT5 wrapped on Sunday, I headed over to the CambridgeSide Galleria for a little THESIS work, and wound up spending a huge chunk of my Federal refund check. First I caved and bought the upgrade to Adobe CS3, which seems pretty dang cool from what limited amount of time I’ve spent with it so […]