Comments on: The Sunday Papers

By: Noc

Noc — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:34:42 +0000

@Hastur:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbodo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rican_p%C3%A1ramo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YMCA_of_Hong_Kong_Christian_College

By: Sagan

Sagan — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:57:07 +0000

Your collection of links points to another collection of links which points to another collection of links about computergames. This is madness! You are stealing all my free time!

By: JuJuCam

JuJuCam — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:51:39 +0000

In response to the Olson article, I’m totally on his side.

Amateur writers who wish they were professional: there are pathways towards that type of living available to you. Very few of them involve sending your script to an established writer. If you simply must send it to someone, send it to a publisher in the case of a novel or a producer in the case of a screenplay. Those people get paid to tell you you’re crap (or in extraordinarily rare cases to offer you a job).

And if you do get told you’re crap but you still think your idea is strong enough to be worth working on, there are classes to take to improve your understanding of how to develop your idea. In all likelihood the writer you want to send your words to took some such classes himself. When you get knocked back, take it as an indicator that there is room for improvement.

But keep your first drafts. It gives you something to laugh about later.

Full disclosure: I’m an aspiring writer with a long, long way to go before I would feel comfortable calling myself a fully-fledged Writer. But I’m the sort that’s embarrassed to let anyone read anything I write, let alone someone established.

By: Xercies

Xercies — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:42:30 +0000

@Dolphan

But they are saying that based on this research they can help the companies make better games to get the 80% score and thats why we have the problem with it.

@Phemox

You know this is why I hate commericalisation sometimes, I know all this stuff about you have every right to sell your art and you have every right to sell crap to get lots of money. But i feel in myself that there is something wrong with that and i want it to change. it never will its a pipedream and it seems I may be the only one that things that people should make stuff because they like making stuff and not ebcause the can get lots of money from it.

By: Dolphan

Dolphan — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:57:07 +0000

I think people are both reading too much into that review score prediction stuff and giving it too little credit. There’s very interesting research suggesting we can make far more accurate judgements and predictions on very little information than we think we can, and the guy their research is based on seems to credibly be able to predict the long-term future of marriages based on short conversations to a very high level of accuracy.

The other thing is that it doesn’t lead to set ‘recipes’ for successful games because it’s about predicting a review score based on what people talk about in a game after playing it very briefly (so the game has to be a decent way through development already), not on what features are included in the game. It’s not something that can guide you before you start putting a game together – it could only tell you how much of a potential hit you have on your hands when you’ve already gone quite far down the road.

By: Waste_Manager

Waste_Manager — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:08:26 +0000

@Mike. No, you’re right. English fail. :(

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:01:27 +0000

No-one’s brandishing anything at you, Waste_Manager.

By: TooNu

TooNu — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:44:41 +0000

- That Kurt bloke singing BonJovi songs was a bit wrong and probably, immoral.
- The article about Gordon Brown apologising is gaming related how? (because the guy was a coder…ooooh I gedit)
- The Science Fiction list was cool.
- I will not read your fucking blog. It was amusing and you can apply that situation to everything.
- Your choice in music is always bad bad bad.

By: Waste_Manager

Waste_Manager — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:11:12 +0000

@Robin – you disagree with an opinion piece and therefore brandish us idiots? Really? Ah well, life goes on.

By: Muzman

Muzman — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:27:47 +0000

The writing thing, while it’s amusing and I can see the bind the guy is in and it’s definitely true that everyone thinks they can write just because it requires little technical skill, this does remind me just how egotistical the whole enterprise is.
I swear once people get a job in “the biz” they forget almost instantly what it’s like to not be in it and it’s replaced by bloodyminded stuff like that or terribly bland magnanimity (some of which he expresses in there) about passion and art. “If you’re a writer, you’ll be a writer no matter what. No one will be able to stop you” or whatever he says. Self Help book balderdash. He needs to remember that the whole thing is a crap shoot and he knows perfectly well people who write utter garbage are gainfully employed and can say the exact same things he can (and, as pointed out, some people think he’s one of them). How long has ‘Heroes’ been running? (snark snark).
I don’t want to advocate a world where every would be writer is treated with kid gloves so that they aren’t put off. He does have some good advice in there: an idea is not writing; a story isn’t even writing; there are places that will tell you how to format this stuff for nothing; if you’re not sure you can do it (and it takes you a year of fiddly redrafting) you should perhaps take your idea to a writer instead of doing it yourself.
But this relatively mild discomfort of his seems a pretty small price to pay for having a creative job (and all the credits and connections that go with it) that so many people want.

By: Kommissar Nicko

Kommissar Nicko — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:55:14 +0000

The NY Times article about Rock Band made me apoplectic with rage. Maybe because I spent a lot of time with slavering, pandering neo-hippies while getting my BA (in political science, naturally). Maybe because the TRUE WARRIOR way to bait a baby-boomer is to say, “The revolutionary free-spirited-ness of your generation was just a facade that crumbled at the first sign of the Man waving cash at you.” Or maybe it’s because Rock Band is the furthest thing from innovative or interesting.

Maybe.

By: Vinraith

Vinraith — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:00:38 +0000

that should be “would pay $50 for a box full of literal feces.” Though I suppose the $20 box of crap would probably sell better. :)