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Be Careful What You Wish For
As a game designer I spend a lot of time thinking of ways I can encourage players to act in particular ways. Some are obvious – drop a few expensive & cool items into stores at a particular place I want the player to return to because I know the items will encourage most players to travel back there once they’ve earned the gold for it. Some are less obvious like making the cost of using a visually impressive fighting ability slightly lower than it should be (balance wise) because it increases player engagement and the likelihood of them continuing to play the game early on. So I wonder sometimes…
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Quick Empire Avenue Comments
It has been interesting watching the growth of Empire Avenue over the last few months. I started in the first beta when it first opened up and now as people are able to invite others to join, its growing at a nice pace. Everyday I find new and interesting ‘content’ whether that be people’s blogs or twitter chains. Also I enjoy their achievement system. For example, a week or so they had their 1000th user join and had a contest to ‘discover’ the newcomer and everyone who did so was rewarded with an achievement. More recently they had a contest in which the CEO of the company had to wear…
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Writing Life – Wordage
Well, five months into 2010 I’ve just passed my word count from 2009. I’m at almost 175 000 words written this year. Of course in 2009 I had been working at a dayjob up until September, so it is not a fair comparison but I’m pretty happy (overall) with the amount of writing I’m doing each day. The last couple months have not been as productive as the first few but the pace is still going strong and I haven’t missed my goal of 5000 words a week. And since my year goal is 240 000 words I’m in pretty good shape to reach that too. So all in all…
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Through Blood and Iron
The Through Blood and Iron Anthology from Ricasso Press looks like its nearing completion. My story “The Daughter’s Oath” will be appearing in it. I was sent the table of contents the other day (which I won’t post because I haven’t seen it posted by the editor yet) and asked to complete a bio for it. So, getting exciting! “The Daughter’s Oath” is one of my favorite stories and I’m looking forward to seeing it alongside what looks to be some fantastic, action-packed, sword and sorcery tales.
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A Ragman’s Vow in A Thousand Faces
Just received my print contributor copies of A Thousand Faces #11. “A Ragman’s Vow”, originally published in On Spec Magazine, has been reprinted in this magazine of superhero stories. Copies of the print version of the magazine can be ordered through the A Thousand Faces website or the story can be read online there. (But you really should buy the print version as the authors earn a part of the proceeds… just saying.)
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Feedback on new look
The theme I’m using here (the erudite) is quite different from the one I use over on the yourothermind.com site. Please let me know if you like it or would like for me to try something different. This site should also work nicely on the iPhone and other devices thanks to the wordpress plugin wptouch. I will be importing all my gaming and writing posts from the other site after I’ve had the chance to finish setting things up.
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The Details on the Great Blog Split
This is the first post of my new blog. A few years ago I started up the blog at yourothermind.com. The intention then was a blog dedicated to my writing platform, YourOtherMind. But over the years it has turned more and more into a personal blog, discussing game design and writing. Things that make more sense to be off on their own blog. Like here. So gradually as I figure out how to import past entries, I’ll be moving The blog at yourothermind.com will continue to be updated, but now only with information directly related to YourOtherMind software. My Bio Brent Knowles is a writer, programmer, and game designer. He…
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Distraction Devices
Earlier I posted about how electronic devices can really disrupt meetings. Now Richard Curtis over at [e-reads] has a post discussing Christine Pearson’s book which goes into detail on why overuse of these distraction devices causes poor work performance. Worth reading, especially for those of you who still believe mobile devices allow you to ‘get more work done’.
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Videogame Demos, or, Why I don't buy games anymore
Demo. That one word had the power to make us poor game developers tremble as it always brought with it crazy work hours and vague plans. And when we were finished we always wondered — ‘was it worth it?’ Well, now on the consumer side of the fence, I can heartily answer… no. But please, please, keep on making them! See I’ve realized that I’m perfectly happy playing a demo and only a demo for many kinds of games. I have a half dozen racing demos on my PlayStation 3, for example, and by cycling through them, I get enough ‘race car’ to keep me happy. I have a couple…
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Read this week – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I read this novel by Phillip K. Dick many years ago but having forgotten much of it, I cracked it open (in the digital sense). A fantastic, fun, read, as it was the first time. The novel, the basis for the film Blade Runner, on the surface is about a bounty hunter hunting androids but like a lot of Phillip K. Dick’s work, it really delves into issues of reality, humanity, and the manipulation of people. I think being older now I appreciated the story more and some stuff I had completely forgotten about, including the whole bizarre religion aspect which I thought well done though it resembled the world’s…
