Category: Business

11th October 2016
3 comments
Posted by:
AN INTERMISSION: SEVEN REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY ZUBMARINER

I’d normally do a Cultist Simulator devlog post today, but Zubmariner, the first expansion for Sunless Sea from my old comrades at Failbetter, is out this week – in an hour, in fact! So I’m going to save my CS ammo for next week, and tell you why you should pick up a copy.

Read
29th September 2016
18 comments
Posted by:
CULTIST SIMULATOR: Next Steps and Release Date

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

Read
24th September 2016
no comments
Posted by:
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.

Read
23rd September 2016
no comments
Posted by:
Appreciating Open Sorcery

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

Read
22nd September 2016
no comments
Posted by:
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.

Read
16th September 2016
1 comment
Posted by:
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.

Read
12th September 2016
6 comments
Posted by:
BioPost

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

Read
9th September 2016
16 comments
Posted by:
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.

Read
7th September 2016
5 comments
Posted by:
BY ZOMBIES

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

Read
3rd September 2016
no comments
Posted by:
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.)

Read
27th August 2016
14 comments
Posted by:
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.

Read
21st August 2016
11 comments
Posted by:
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.

Read
15th August 2016
no comments
Posted by:
Cultist Simulator: Zero Dot One Dot Two

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

Read
12th August 2016
3 comments
Posted by:
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

Read
26th July 2016
4 comments
Posted by:
Cultist Simulator: “There is not only one history”

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.

Read
13th July 2016
2 comments
Posted by:
Cultist Simulator: Making Things Out of Other Things

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

Read
8th July 2016
1 comment
Posted by:
What I’ve been up to: 8th July

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.

Read
1st July 2016
no comments
Posted by:
What I’ve been up to: 1st July

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.

Read