Weather Factory 
[Note: I was creative director and lead writer on Sunless Sea, but I’ve left Failbetter and I can’t speak to my old muckers’ future plans.] C.M. comments, on a post where I said ‘content spreads thin‘: “On content quantity: it depends on the game design, I think. The reason Sunless Sea still needs more content is […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]