Haunted craters, mobile development, ginger + lime
I’m at Pocket Gamer Connect Vancouver, and out of long Failbetter habit I was dutifully going to write up a blog post about it; and about the experience of being an indie at a mobile games conference; how much it’s like being a pine marten or some other small twitchy hyper animal in an old growth forest, where the big companies aren’t even the larger predators, they’re the trees.
I’m speaking tomorrow, which is why I’m here: but also NOON will probably have a mobile component, and I thought it would be useful to catch up on whatever the hell the latest trends are in the pandaemoniac lightning-litten blood-spattered Running Man Ginnungagap of mobile development.
But five minutes into a talk on ad monetisation I realised I just wanted to go and write something, so I went and found a cafe with a sunshine-proof umbrella and got back into the Zelaznyesque thing I’m putting together for Choice Of.
It made me think about how difficult it is to remember to actually do things that add value, rather than tick the boxes that persuade other people that you’re adding value, whether those are colleagues or managers or subordinates or people reading your blog or your mum. Actually, my mum reads my blog, I’ve learnt. Hi, PK. It also made me think about how easy it is to lose track of why we get into the biz.
I’ll go back in tomorrow, for the indie track, which is more likely to be relevant, although it will inevitably also be fluffier. In the meantime, I’ve put a haunted crater full of mutagens in my thing, and a poisoner-physician-chef. A couple of hours writing is rarely wasted, even if you do it on the other side of an ocean when you’d intended to be doing something businessier.
WORKING ON: Iron Road
READING: James Lee Burke, Burning Angel
DRINKING: a variant on the Gin Basil Smash, with ginger, lime and soda. It’s on the spicy side, but there’s only Gordon’s in there, and the juniper still comes through.
