That Iain Banks quote – ‘the unlimited special effects budget [that] written SF hands a writer’. Man, I’ve never felt that so keenly. I keep being, like, is it okay if I blow that up? and the Paradox guys are all, sure, put a black hole in while you’re at it. But there are constraints, Read more
I wrote this fairly sympathetic piece about No Man’s Sky. It got a lot of comments, many of them from angry people who wanted me to agree that SEAN MURRAY LIED, and now #gamergate has found me on Twitter. I don’t want to get into any kind of Twitter argument. I do want to say some Read more
I’ve patched Cultist Simulator! These are the headlines: * Once you’ve started recruiting followers, they can lose interest if you’re too sane. Conversely, if you’re too obviously deranged, your group will attract the attention of an Inspector. * Inspectors occasionally arrest people until dealt with. Right now you can just send followers to Sort Them Out; I’d Read more
Earlier this week, I launched a Javascript prototype of Cultist Simulator. I hesitate to describe it as a ‘game’ – it’s really only a proof-of-concept of one, temporarily living on the web. But people are enjoying it! You can play it through to the point where you engage in your own inevitable destruction, here: I Read more
This is a post about the Cultist Simulator systems, and also why you shouldn’t stay too deep in a bunker when you’re working enthusiastically on an idea. That’s something I’ve forced myself to learn: open production in a nutshell. But it can be difficult to remember. My strong inclination is to bunker up. I’m an introvert who ran a company Read more
Someone asked me on Twitter if I could share the task list for Cultist Simulator. This made me a bit nervous, but things that make you nervous are good. So sod it, here’s the whole thing. If someone finds it useful, great! Cultist Simulator Live Task List A note, and two warnings. The note: Read more
I said last week that I wanted to get a Javascript prototype of Cultist Simulator -my weird-fiction-influenced narrative crafting semi-idlegame experiment -up on the web as soon as poss. I’ve got a hundred and fourteen tasks on my pre-alpha list, and I’ve finished seventy-eight of them. I’d like to reach alpha by Friday, but realistically I Read more
This is devlog zero for Cultist Simulator. It’s not an announcement or anything: it won’t get any press cos everyone’s off at Develop, and, man, I don’t want press on the screenie below anyway. But I should talk out my ideas in public, and this is something to link to next time I need to explain Read more
Just before I left Failbetter, our editor, who’d been a long-time freelancer before she joined Failbetter, cautioned me about the freelancer’s disease. “You will,” she said, “end up with more work than you can comfortably handle, because you’ll worry about the future. It’ll happen. Don’t try to stop it, just prepare for it.” I’m trying hard Read more
I feel like I’ve spent most of this week – like the rest of my Twitter bubble – gawping incredulously at the collapse of the British political landscape into a sort of sinkhole of xenophobic narcissism. If you need a roundup, Michael Gove has one for you below. APART from that: I’ve been in Vancouver, Read more
