A novelist turned gaming innovator | CNET News.com

Libraries have done murder mystery events -- how about an online game like this for you next library event?
A novelist turned gaming innovator | CNET News.com: "DAVIS, Calif.--Sean Stewart leans over his laptop in the little garage he's converted to a home office and joins an online poker match, posing as legendary gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok.

He's in the game to win virtual chips, of course. But the other gamblers want more. This 'Last Call Poker' Web site he has just entered hides a complicated story that players have to figure out in stages, and they've guessed the Hickok character that Stewart is playing might help. But the 40-year-old novelist turned virtual game maker can't resist teasing them a little first.

'We can't ever know a man's heart,' he answers one player's probing question, a sly grin on his face as he types, 'until we put a bullet through it.'

Stewart, on a sunny November afternoon here, is improvising inside a sophisticated online game that has put him and his co-creators squarely at the leading edge of the digital entertainment world. The fact that he has almost no experience with traditional video games makes his pioneering role here all the more striking.
For three years, Stewart has been the chief writer at a game development house called 42 Entertainment, the leaders in a nascent gaming genre that fans have dubbed alternate reality games, or ARGs. "