Acknowledgements

This has been a long project, and so many people have been kind enough to help make it come into being, I know I am going to miss some. I will be expanding this list over time, but I mention people here who really did more than their share:

Nyra and Emma, the loves of my life, who always encouraged me, and put up with years of me staring into space and jotting little notes when I should have been, say, mowing the lawn, doing the dishes, or putting out that fire in the backyard.

My mother, Susanne Fahringer, who, when I was twelve, understood somehow that Dungeons and Dragons was very, very important.

My brother, Ben, who taught me how to play Thunder, a card game he invented in a dream when he was four years old.

Jeff McGinley, for putting that whole ice cream cone in his mouth. and for putting up with me for three decades.

Reagan Heller, who worked with me for countless hours in countless restaurants, airplanes, and meeting rooms coming up with visualization ideas for the lens images on the card deck, designed the card layouts, and did graphic design for several aspects of the book.

Emma Backer, who performed all the Cinderella tasks – typesetting the cards, wrangling the card artists, cleaning up and organizing book images, tracking down copyright holders, and cleaning the ashes from the fireplace.

The team at Elsevier / Morgan Kaufmann, who kindly let a two year project take five years: Tim Cox, Georgia Kennedy, Beth Millett, Paul Gottehrer, Chris Simpson, Laura Lewin, and Kathryn Spencer.

Everyone at the Disney VR Studio who put up with my rambling theoretical nonsense conversations for all those years, especially Mike Goslin, Joe Shochet, Mark Mine, David Rose, Bruce Woodside, Felipe Lara, Gary Daines, Mk Haley, Daniel Aasheim and Jan Wallace.

The staff, faculty, and students of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center, who graciously let me teach Game Design and Building Virtual Worlds, which forced me to figure all this out. Most especially Don Marinelli, Randy Pausch, Brenda Harger, Ralph Vituccio, Chris Klug, Charles Palmer, Ruth Comley, Josh Yelon, and Drew Davidson.

Randy Pausch deserves a double thank you, for his magical lens that let him see that I could do this when I didn’t believe that I could. Thanks, Randy.