Month: August 2016

Get a Cat, or, Why More Content Won’t Save Your Game

[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 […]

Written by on August 31, 2016

Seven Things About Writing For Stellaris

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, […]

Written by on August 27, 2016

The other post about No Man’s Sky

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 […]

Written by on August 21, 2016

Cultist Simulator: Zero Dot One Dot Two

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 […]

Written by on August 15, 2016

What I’ve been up to, Friday 12th August: STARSHIPS

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 […]

Written by on August 12, 2016

Cultist Simulator: recipes and bumping brains

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 […]

Written by on August 3, 2016