Hello.
Since it’s bloody awkward repeating this every time I write about certain games, I thought I’d put it off in a little corner by itself where people who want to know the details here. I’ll add other conflicts of interest as they appear, I’m sure, just so you can know when I may be corrupt or not.
CYANIDE
Cyanide developed a game roughly inspired by Blood Bowl called RTS-Fantasy American-Football game called Chaos League. They came to me asking if I’d be willing to translate the dialogue into English and do a promotional comic thing. Looking for a credit, I said sure. While I enjoyed the gig enormously, the actual job ended up much more than a straight translation than a rewrite-from-babelfish-scratch and took in a load of stuff, like the in-game text, which I wasn’t aware I’d be doing when I said in. Since the money was below the odds for games writing anyway, I chalked it up to useful experience and the credit.
(Which I never got in the manual, annoyingly. Sigh!)
A few years later, Cyanide have picked up the proper Blood Bowl licence. They drop me a mail, asking if I’d be interested in doing the same for Blood Bowl. I said sure, but I’d want more money. I’d have asked for more anyway, but my status as a writer has inched up a few notches since then. They never got back to me.
So in other words, anything I say about Blood Bowl could either be influenced positively (as in, I did work for them, so am in their pocket) or negatively (as in, I’m bitter they didn’t give me the job this time and were terribly rude in not responding to a mail). The question is why I’m not actually writing anything like a formal review of Blood Bowl. Of course, it being the game I’ve played most this year, it’s also something I’m going to examine and talk about in public anyway.
They’re the facts. Keep them in mind.
LITTLELOUD/CHANNEL 4
I’m currently writing a web-game adventure for Littleloud, who have been commissioned by Channel 4 on the theme of Civil Liberties. To get an idea of what they get up to, you should go and play Bow Street Runner.
BLIZZARD
Wrote a story for a Starcraft Manga anthology once, which was a lot of fun, and probably enough that I better avoid revewing their stuff for a while. Lucky they only release one game every eight years, really.
GAMES WORKSHOP
I’ve worked for Games Workshop licensed comics a few times. I try to avoid formally reviewing games in the genre, but regularly talk about it. I’m a fanboy, after all.
MARVEL
I’m doing a lot of comics for Marvel right now. As such, don’t expect much on their games. I’ll probably shy away from DC’s ones for that same reason.
