My local barber has it pretty much covered.
… okay. I mean, I guess that would be fine.
I guess change is inevitable. It happens fast on the Internet. The blogs I first followed on Tumblr are by and large gone. Or less active. In some way, I feel like the old guy who hangs out with kids because all his friends…
Read all of this. I’m fairly site agnostic and I only have a blog on Tumblr because I fell into it, as a consequence of the first Shut Up & Sit Down site also being on Tumblr. That means that, to be honest, I don’t care a great deal what actually happens to this whole, strange assembly, just as long as it still exists as a place where I can collect work and link to things that I do. So often, all I want in life is simple functionality.
“Flashpoint arrived just as shooters were entering their first phase of faux-realism, with titles like Delta Force and Soldier of Fortune making the most cursory of nods to something beyond the arcade action of Quake and Unreal. But for gamers who thought these offered an authenticity that had previously been lacking, Flashpoint must have knocked them sideways. It must have given them concussion.”
I don’t know why I didn’t write about this sooner. Flashpoint is one of my favourite games. Ever. It’s also a defining gaming experience for me. It’s also old, so I get to continue to be the old man of PC gaming.
Most of all, though, it’s amazing and I’m very happy to be able to write about it again for the first time in… twelve years? Possibly. I’m really pleased with the response to this one, too.
The Terrible Tragedy of Planet Earth: a story in one part
I’m supposed to be using my blog more often, adding things to it both old and new, so this weekend I decided I’d fish through things I’d written in days past.
I wrote this story four years ago on a sunny summer’s day in Hammersmith. It came to me pretty much all at once and I wrote it down pretty much all at once. It’s only been slightly edited since. The start is probably the best bit and I guess the message, when it comes, is very much on the nose.
I’ve written the odd short story over the years and while I’ve sent a few away to be published, none have yet been accepted. TToPE wasn’t one I ever sent away, partly because I can’t imagine who would publish it. That’s largely irrelevant anyway, because the point of stories is not to get them published, but to get them read.
To that end, I’m posting it up here.
How to properly celebrate St. George’s Day
“Happy St. George’s Day” is not something you’re likely to hear me say. First, that’s because I’m no nationalist. As far as I’m concerned, I’m English (and British) simply by chance since my country of birth was something I had absolutely no control over, as is the case with any one of us. For me, being of any nationality is a pretty arbitrary thing.
Second, my left-wing leanings scare me away from nationalist celebrations or expressions of pride because I feel they’re exclusive. They’re about trying to assert not only individuality, but also betterness. The accident of my birth, these expressions say, means I am fundamentally special in a way that other people are not. That sounds like an angry idea to me, and I don’t just associate such pride with anger and with violence, I also find it a very confusing, even irrational thing.
As of today, I’m the writer for the video game Maia
That title is pretty self-explanatory, so it simply remains for me to say that this is a very exciting/terrifying opportunity for me and I’ll be giving it my very best.
As well as writing for a video game, I’ll still be writing about video games. I’ll still be pitching freelance for all of the sites and publications that I’ve worked for before (plus any other fine outlets that will have me) and although I won’t be able to work full time at PCGamesN any more, I hope you continue to see my name pop up on that site. Meanwhile, Shut Up & Sit Down will continue apace and I’m really looking forward to growing the site even more this year. We’re going to do a lot of exciting things.
However, my new job does present the possibility for a conflict of interest and so, quite naturally, I won’t be writing about Maia for anyone now. I’ve let my editors know about the work I’m doing and it might be the case that they occasionally deem it inappropriate for me to take certain commissions. That’s fair enough. I don’t think this will happen often, but it’s important to bear this in mind and I’ll try to avoid pitching any work that might lead me into any sort of conflict of interest.
It matters to me that I make this clarification as it’s very important for me to be open and direct about the sort of work I do. I want to do my job well and I want to do my job ethically.
Now, onward to space.
“It’s not that Jeremy Soule has a BAFTA. It’s not that many of the games he has composed for are million sellers. It’s that the internet loves him.”
This is something that I’m pretty much ecstatic to have been able to do. Actually, this was pretty much a dream come true. I interviewed and profiled the composer Jeremy Soule for Eurogamer.
I’ve been a fan of his music for about a decade and I might have first thought of interviewing him around nine or ten years ago. I remember jealously reading other interviews at least as far back as 2006 and maybe even earlier still. I used to idly think about doing it while walking around and listening to his music, either out with the dog or simply off on some directionless wander somewhere. Very often I found I didn’t really have the confidence to try it, nor a decent excuse.
“It’s not easy to predict which games will age well, though many wear their years with a certain dignity. Some classics find new life and new audiences as mobile or tablet games, while the past few years have seen an embracing of all that is retro, all the way back to the oldest of the old school, something that has been seized upon by a burgeoning indie scene. Sometimes we like what’s old. Or at least, what seems to be old.”
Don’t buy it. Certainly not at this price and for these changes.
“When I talk to Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke about his influences, it’s like I’m being thrown back to my childhood. He’s just shown me both Dragon Commander, the developer’s forthcoming strategy/RTS/RPG hybrid, and Divinity: Original Sin, an open-world RPG. As we talk about the inspiration behind these games, the titles they draw upon, the same phrase comes up over and over again: old school.”
As well as interviewing this gentleman about the paths not taken, I also had a look at Dragon Commander and Divinity: Original Sin. Both are very interesting.
“It’s not the kind of game plot we usually find ourselves talking about, but Daedalic’s largely independent status means they have the freedom to craft stories like these, without worrying whether a publisher will sanction, for example, a female lead.”
This began as a conversation about Daedelic’s forthcoming adventure game, but turned into a discussion on the role of plot in games and the freedom that independent developers have to tell the stories that they want to. It’s not often that I have the time or the freedom to touch on so many different topics and I’m glad that I could.
