Category: Writing
The Company Is Not Your Friend
I’ve heard a lot of studios describe themselves as ‘families’, and some studios do treat their people well (see ‘pragmatic reasons why you’d want to do that as a business’, above). But families fundamentally care about the people they are. Imagine your mum throwing her hands up in front of a spreadsheet and saying, ‘I’m afraid we have to let you go, dear. It’s just the...
Game-Making’s Sense of Loss
At this chilly time of the year, when one calendar makes way for another, take solace in this.
Writing Pithy Game Microtext: Dactylic Megaliths
[I did this as a tweetstorm, but here it is as promised for people who prefer long form.]
“Around 1890, in the Third History, the Crowned Growth could be perceived through the White Door.”
Oriflamme’s, Lot 5, Auction 5th May ’57. Fragments of the notebooks of ‘Parsival’, recovered from the wreck of Mr Strathcoyne’s private library. Extensive fire-damage, reconstructed in part.
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?
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.
“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.
‘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.