Posted by Mike Sugarbaker at 1:53 pm on 10/25/2005
For lovers of convenience (that is, users of Firefox, Greasemonkey, and del.icio.us), Delicious Keys lets you hit ‘Alt + <N>’ to load the <N>th bookmark on a standard del.icio.us list of bookmarks. (The zero key gets you the tenth. After the tenth, you’ll just have to touch the mouse - sorry.)
For lovers of other convenience who found Fictionsuit a little daunting when we first launched, you might not have noticed that we’ve introduced assignments: log in, and the front page greets you with a few sentence-long opportunities to make stuff up real quick.
Neither the “real quick” part nor the “assignment” part are really obligations, mind you. Assignments are seeds for your imagination if you’re not sure how to get going. So get going! We’ve got two exciting projects and more on the way.
link here
comments
Posted by Mike Sugarbaker at 2:28 pm on 10/13/2005
If all goes well, I will be giving a short talk on game design at the monthly regional Mensa gathering in November. I’m thinking the other speakers will talk about the nuts-and-bolts process of tabletop game design, as well as the opportunity for small video games in a field dominated by big ones. That leaves me with a lot of possible subjects, but I’m leaning towards the changes now happening in the unplugged-gaming industry that are making it more diverse, free, and interesting - and which may soon make it no longer an industry.
My friend who got me this speaking gig sent out an announcement email which bills me as a “game designer.” My first reaction to that was I should send him a correction, because I’m not, really. I’m a fake journalist and definite enthusiast, but I can’t lay claim to “game designer” as a professional descriptor. Then I thought, well, is that all the term “game designer” is - a professional descriptor? Do I have some right to the term even if my engagement in the activity is occasional and not very deep? Are you still a painter if you only paint once a week for your own pleasure?
I think you are. Still, I have to admit that for almost as long as I’ve been thinking about game design, I’ve been thinking about (eventually, possibly, someday) doing a product for real. Back when they were first achieving success with Magic: the Gathering, Wizards of the Coast’s then-CEO Peter Adkison made a big point of saying he wanted to make games as big as the movies. That inspired me. Of course, video games are as big as the movies, by some metrics. But games that engage brains a bit, that offer variety in gameplay and subject matter, those aren’t so big yet. The part of me that wants to make a living in games doesn’t just want to chunk out products for cash. I want everyone to be playing good games, games that bring us closer to one another and happier as individuals. If you want everybody to be playing good games, you can either address the problem of how few people are playing good ones, or try and address how bad the popular ones are.
A lot of people make tabletop games because they’re easier than electronic games to build up to the point where you can play them. But they are actually harder, and more expensive, to get out into the world than PC games are. I know people who’d laugh at that latter statement; those people haven’t read this, this, or this. (Summary: putting boxes on shelves at EB Games is a mug’s game, and there is plenty of money - likely more - in doing small, innovative games and distributing them online.) It’s also very, very difficult to purposefully make a tabletop game that will get in front of anyone who doesn’t play them already. Making them free online might do it, slowly, and making a quality tabletop experience that way is more possible than it’s ever been, which is fantastic. But, well, my crack above about a part of the industry going away? Yeah. The RPG publishing business is gradually dying even as the RPG art form is thriving. What that all means for the RPG hobby remains to be seen.
As you all know, when it comes to my making-things life, I am obsessed with power - where power is defined as the balance between my abilities, desires, diligence, and the environmental factors for success, all cut (in a positive way!) with my fundamental laziness. Power is the ability to do something meaningful easily enough. Going back to the everyone-playing-good-games problem, I used to think the best deal for me, in terms of power, was to make tabletop games more popular… somehow. It is starting to look like a better deal to make the popular games - electronic games - better. Keep an eye out for an announcement from me.
link here
comments
Posted by Mike Sugarbaker at 7:57 pm on 10/4/2005
Many of us have now given at least some of what we can spare to the Red Cross, and that is terrific. Their needs are ongoing. Giving blood would be good too. But if you have some more money kicking around, it might be time to consider putting some of it towards prevention.
I’m not talking about preventing hurricanes, although people are working on that. I mean preventing future disasters of leadership on the scale of the federal government’s response to the flooding of New Orleans.
You might be thinking that the Democrats now have plenty of political ammunition now to demand accountability from the party in power and wreck some shop in 2006; you’d be both right and wrong. After all, political ammunition only does you good if you know how to load, aim, and fire. (Don’t smirk, Deanies and Greenies, until you read the rest of the post. Because you aren’t as far ahead of the Dems as you imagine, and in some cases you’re behind.) We cannot just assume that media outrage about Katrina’s aftermath will win Congress back for us.
We can’t assume this because the Bush administration, and other entities, take advantage of a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure of research - “a scaffold of lies strong enough to hold under pressure,” to paraphrase Warren Ellis - that has been built up over forty years. This research has been done by organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute - names you have probably seen underneath the names of conservative talking heads on the news. These organizations and others like them take large grants, mostly from large corporations, and do research - not just on language, as George Lakoff has made famous, but on policy and on morality and values themselves (as George Lakoff tried to make famous). With forty years of that kind of money, neoconservatives have invented a movement, learned precisely how to game television (and built themselves nice interview facilities for interviews via satellite), and generally developed a tendency to win arguments both in person and in the media.
It is no exaggeration, and no insult, to say that conservatives are winning in America because they have had so much thinking done for them. “By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.” - Alfred North Whitehead.
There are precious few organizations that are even trying to develop any such notation for the left. The Rockridge Institute is one. If you have any budget left for cleaning up after the massive dual tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and our government’s plan for it, please consider investing in an ounce of prevention by giving them a donation. If you’re not so much with the cash, but know a little something about the Internet, get in touch with me - I might be cooking up a cunning plan for Buy Nothing Day.
link here
comments