David L. Craddock

Greetings, all,

Please accept my apologies for the lack of updates this spring. There's been a lot going on, so I'll provide a quick recap for those who aren't following me on Twitter @davidlcraddock.

New video game book: Monsters in the Dark

In March, I launched a Kickstarter for my latest book about video games, Monsters in the Dark: The Making of X-COM: UFO Defense. I interviewed chief creator Julian Gollop and other developers almost seven years ago and got as far as composing half an outline for the first draft before I had to table the project to tackle freelance writing, my primary source of income at the time.

I returned to Monsters last summer—referred to by the punny title The X-COM Files at the time, and, woo, am I glad I changed it—and wrote the first draft in seven weeks. I had such a blast writing Monsters; between it and Bet on Black, my Shacknews long read about Microsoft's history in video games leading up to the launch of the original Xbox in 2001, I had plenty of writing to keep me busy during quarantine. 

The Kickstarter funded in 24 hours and finished in April with 206% of its funding goal. Hooray! I meant to blog about it, but I was busy running the campaign and posting Kickstarter updates (basically a blog by another name) and just never got around to it. I ran a followup campaign on Indiegogo from April to mid-May, and will ship books to backers this summer.

If you missed out on Monsters, you'll be able to buy it in stores and online later this year. In the meantime, you can read free excerpts from the book on Kotaku, Polygon, Shacknews, Vice, Ars Technica, and Kotaku again!

FPS Documentary

One of the many projects I'm juggling is FPS: First-Person Shooter, the definitive documentary on the shooter genre. It's being made by CREATORVC, and the CEO/executive producer discovered me through Rocket Jump and a recommendation from Richard Moss, an excellent video game historian whom I've wanted to work with for years. Richard and I are producers and writers on the documentary, which you'll be able to support on Kickstarter later this month.

Here's a trailer for FPS to whet your appetite. We've got a stellar cast of developers and other contributors lined up, so I hope you'll check out the campaign when it goes live.

E3 and E5

E3 is a digital-only event this year, and begins tomorrow, Saturday the 12th. I'll be co-hosting reaction streams on Shacknews.com all week along with co-editor-in-chief Blake Morse, CEO Asif Khan, and our special guest host Ali Baker, a hilarious comedienne and influencer. The festivities kicked off last night when we reacted to Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest kickoff stream. How about that Elden Ring trailer, yeah?

E3 runs from tomorrow through Tuesday, but for the Shacknews crew, it's only the beginning. For the second year in a row, we're hosting our conference. Last year, we hosted E4, a week-long slate of streaming interviews with developers and playing our favorite games of 2020 at that point. This year, we're adding one more "E" and hosting E5. Shack's E5 begins on Tuesday immediately following the conclusion of E3's events.

You can watch my co-hosts and me react to all the E3 conferences and the hours and hours of E5 content Shack has planned by visiting Shacknews.com or twitch.tv/Shacknews.

Have a great weekend,

David