29th September 2016|
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CULTIST SIMULATOR: Next Steps and Release Date

BEHIND THE WORLD IS THE MANSUS. ITS CORRIDORS ARE THE ANGLES OF TIME.

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27th September 2016|
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SCIENCE TUESDAYS: FIREWATCH vs PRINCE OF DARKNESS

There’s always something under the earth. In Camp Santo’s Firewatch, it’s a body in a cave. In John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, it’s the devil in a church. WHICH IS BETTER?

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25th September 2016|
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SCIENCE TUESDAYS

Six years ago, Roger Ebert wrote: “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.”

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24th September 2016|
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Steam: I was wrong, although right

Last week, I talked about Steam’s recent changes – (not including reviews in the review % if the copies were bought outside Steam) in my GamesIndustry.biz column. In the rest of this post, I’m going to call these changes ‘the Purge Update’ to make it clear what I’m talking about elsewhere. and speculated about some changes Valve might make in the future.

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23rd September 2016|
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Appreciating Open Sorcery

[I don’t write reviews, but I do like to point out things that worked well in games I’ve enjoyed.]

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22nd September 2016|
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A Good Thing: The Fall

You play the onboard intelligence of a power armour suit with an unconscious passenger, exploring a derelict installation populated by deranged machine intelligences.

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16th September 2016|
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Stellaris, BioWare and the Culture: what I’ve been up to in the first half of September

I’ve finished off my guest writing gig for Paradox on Stellaris.

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12th September 2016|
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BioPost

I said I wanted to learn about and experiment with different ways of approaching interactive narrative.

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9th September 2016|
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What I’ve just done to Stellaris: seven more things

I’m winding up a wagon-load of work on Paradox’s Stellaris. This is about what I wrote, and what I learnt while I was writing it.

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7th September 2016|
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BY ZOMBIES

Anyone who has ever considered writing for a living will have heard Opinions about the Passive Voice.

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3rd September 2016|
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Why you should back the AdventureX Kickstarter

Oh, man, I love starting blog posts with a bit of arrant poncery. Buckle up. This is the opening to an Isaiah Berlin essay. (I originally wrote ‘an Irving Berling essay’, but fortunately corrected it before I exposed myself to lasting Internet ridicule.)

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31st August 2016|
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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.]

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27th August 2016|
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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.

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21st August 2016|
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The other post about No Man’s Sky

I don’t want to get into any kind of Twitter argument. I do want to say some things that might calm you down, or suggest another perspective, if you’re not already too angry to read. That’s what this post is about.

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15th August 2016|
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Cultist Simulator: Zero Dot One Dot Two

I’ve patched Cultist Simulator! These are the headlines:

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12th August 2016|
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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

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3rd August 2016|
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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.

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29th July 2016|
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Putting the Open in Open Production: what I’ve been doing, 29th July

Someone asked me on Twitter if I could share the task list for Cultist Simulator.

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