Category: Design

1st February 2018
7 comments
Posted by:
“It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.”

“It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name.

Read
9th January 2018
no comments
Posted by:
“I was wondering if you have a specific method of capturing the essence of things that you find emotionally moving through gameplay?”

I give occasional talks to the Game Design/Creative Writing dept at Brunel Uni

Read
14th June 2017
5 comments
Posted by:
I’ve stopped talking about quality-based narrative, I’ve started talking about resource narrative

‘QBN’ [quality-based narrative] – I coined this term, but I now wish I hadn’t.

Read
8th March 2017
no comments
Posted by:
‘On the Progress of Progress’: probably my last Eurogamer column

Actually my title was ‘How Things End’, but I prefer their subhead

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
31st August 2016
6 comments
Posted by:
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.]

Read
3rd August 2016
3 comments
Posted by:
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.

Read
22nd June 2016
no comments
Posted by:
“The Healing Question”

Earlier this week, [a carefully unspecified number of] players completed the Seeking Mr Eaten’s Name quest line, an epic and long-awaited storyline in Fallen London which ends with the player character’s deliberate self-destruction.

Read
18th June 2016
no comments
Posted by:
‘Embed the ending in the middle, or crush it up and stir it into the rest of the game.’

My Eurogamer column specifically, but not exclusively, the problems on endings in Fallen London.

Read