Story Warp

26 July 2011

I’m going to be talking at Story Warp on Thursday evening (the 28th) – an event about storytelling hosted by Made by Many. It’s a great panel, and I think – given my own perspectives and beliefs on the S-word – there’s going to be some healthy and vigorous debate.

Slightly late notice – and the event’s full now, I believe. But: if you’re there, do say hello. It should be a good evening.

games , , ,
  • "I was serious. I presented the pirates with a choice. A one-time, limited offer that was only good right there and then. They could either click the “No thanks, I’d rather just keep pirating this software button” or they could be taken directly to my store’s checkout page along with a hefty discount." A thoughtful post on dealing with piracy – and some lovely examples of copywriting to boot.
    (tags: development software piracy copywriting )
  • "On Valentine’s Day, 1980, a couple of weeks shy of my 15th birthday, I saw my first “X” film. The visceral Philip Kaufman remake of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, I didn’t have to sneak in through a held-open fire door, wear a false moustache or lower my voice an octave, as per underage tradition. I paid £1 to see it, legally, projected onto a modest screen before an auditorium of arranged plastic chairs at Northampton College of Further Education’s Arts Centre, courtesy of their members-only Film Society." And so begins a lovely, charming article by Andrew Collins, about the battle for his soul (between film and punk-rock), and how, as an earnest sixteen-year-old, you get to see movies. I did this fifteen years later, with a bit less punk rock, and replacing the NCFE Film Club with a VHS recorder and Moviedrome – but it all rings very familiar. Spot-on.
    (tags: andrewcollins writing film adolescence taste )
  • "…what I see in Matt and Alexis’s writing is a growing mastery of this balance. I think it’s an important emergent skill, maybe even a new liberal art. When you articulate it, it sounds almost like a koan, or part of some samurai code: Work in public. Reveal nothing."
    (tags: writing opacity directness )
  • "A Scope & Engine based, clean, powerful, customizable and sophisticated paginator for Rails 3." Looks interesting; neatly designed, it seems, and will_paginate's refusal to get to a final 3.0 release has always been frustrating. Might try this out.
    (tags: ruby pagination gem programming )

Being With Each Other

17 July 2011

From this week’s Cardboard Children, over at Rock Paper Shotgun:

I don’t know if Subbuteo is a great game. I’m sure it is. It just wasn’t really a game to me. It was just one of many things I shared with my da. Like Star Trek and in-depth conversations about the nature of the universe. Now, as a father myself, I realise what was actually happening when we were playing that game we didn’t know the rules of. We were just being with each other. Flicking plastic. Shooting the shit. Playing.

What’s the point of all this?

Being with each other – for me, that’s the key element of board gaming. When you get that occasional person who openly tells you they see board games as “sad”, I feel a bit sad that they don’t get it. If I want to play a board game with you, it really just means I want to sit with you a while. That’s not a bad thing, is it?

No, Rab, that’s not a bad thing at all. And this is why some of my favourite boardgame memories are from afternoons and evenings sat in pubs around the country, rattling through game after game of Lost Cities, or Blue Moon, sat by a welcoming fire or bright window, pints in hand. It’s just a way to spend some time with a friend.

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