With their academic focus it's a moreappropriate forum for theoretical and philosophical discussions, and theformat will let me write those pieces when I feel the urge, while being ableto let someone else carry the ball when I really don't have anything worthsaying. So when Terra Nova invited me to become one of their contributors, I decidedto take them up on their offer. However,there are a lot of issues of craft that need to be discussed, and I reallywanted to start working through my list of them. Various theoretical and meta-design issues kept coming tomy attention, and I would feel I just had to write about them. My original intention when I started this column was to focus on the craftof designing online games, an intention I didn't do the best job offollowing up on.