Category: Writing

8th May 2020
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Too Cheap, Perchance, To Stream?

This is an ode to organic indie streaming strategies.

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13th March 2020
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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...

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17th January 2020
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Game-Making’s Sense of Loss

At this chilly time of the year, when one calendar makes way for another, take solace in this.

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6th December 2019
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Put On Your Game Face: It’s AAA Time

*Allegedly at time of writing. This post goes live in the week Riot had to pay $10mil for gender discrimination to all female employees from the last five years. LOL indeed.

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22nd November 2019
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Standing on the Shoulders of Genres

Whom that god is, I don’t yet know. But I hope they like card games.

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19th July 2018
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Centuries Ago The Dark Lord: when and how to dump

‘Lore dumps.’ It’s not an attractive phrase.

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4th April 2018
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Writing Pithy Game Microtext: Dactylic Megaliths

[I did this as a tweetstorm, but here it is as promised for people who prefer long form.]

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5th September 2017
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“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.

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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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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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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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22nd June 2016
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“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.

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18th June 2016
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‘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.

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