Miscellany Feed

The Narrative Design Survival Guide

Develop-logo-2019-dates-16-9-660x330International Hobo's Chris Bateman returns this July to the UK's finest game developers conference, Develop: Brighton. He will be presenting The Narrative Design Survival Guide, a bracing journey through the secret relationships between conventional story planning (characters, plot, and theme) and game narrative (players, worlds, and actions). Whether you're a writer, a designer, or just part of a development team, you'll get entirely new perspective on how to get the most out of your projects by joining Chris on a tour of the unseen connections between stories and games.

The Narrative Design Survival Guide is in Room 2 on Tuesday 9th July 2019 at 12 noon.


Gamescom 2018

Gamescom stepsAt Gamescom again this year, but unusually I have client projects to offer to publishers – and really interesting ones too! Looking forward to finding out what the dev community makes of these games. Still interested in meeting with anyone who needs game design, narrative design, or script services, and also with game writers with experience in narrative design, so let me know if you want to meet up in Cologne.


Which Cover for The Virtuous Cyborg?

The publisher has kindly sent me four variants of the new cover for The Virtuous Cyborg and asked me to pick one to run with. I have a favourite… but I do so like to procrastinating a decision by asking for advice that I agonise over before disregarding. Here are the options:

Four Covers.ihobo

So what do you think? You can either vote using the embedded Twitter poll, or leave me a comment.

The choice is mine – but you can influence it!


Going to Gamescom

gamescomInternational Hobo Ltd will be at Europe’s biggest games industry event, Gamescom. We’re available for meetings on Wednesday 23rd and the morning of Thursday 24th of August.

We’re particular interested in meeting with:

  • Publishers looking for pre-dev game design support or audit
  • Publishers or Developers needing narrative or dialogue services
  • Anyone we already know, or who would like to meet us!

Get in touch through the usual channels (contact link in the sidebar here, if all else fails).

Look forward to seeing you in Cologne!


Four Versions of Wikipedia Knows Nothing

WKN-4sqThere are now four ways you can get my new book, Wikipedia Knows Nothing

1) You can purchase paperback for $10.95…
2) …or eBook for $2.99 from Lulu
3) There’s a new Kindle version from Amazon.com for $2.99 or.co.uk for £1.91
4) or (the cheapest option!) you can download the PDF for free from the ETC Press website.

Cross-posted from Only  a Game.


June Games News

Some stories from my blog cluster that caught my attention:

  • Valve is being sued for not shutting down the gambling at sites such as CSGO lounge, and thus being implicitly involved in illegal gambling. Note that no-one has yet sued them for the internal economy of the drops-with-microtransactions in the game, which could equally be considered infringing on gambling laws from a certain light. (Story via Slashdot).
  • At the other end of the economic scale, Gamesbrief has a piece on Hadean Lands a low-rent contemporary text adventure selling on Steam for £8.99, to which you can add DLC to make it £26.99. What’s the DLC? A Certificate you sign to promise you won’t use hints to complete it. Clever marketing for a game that adheres to the puzzle-driven practices of a classic genre.
  • Meanwhile, ETC Press, the new publisher of my new philosophy book, Wikipedia Knows Nothing, has released Volume 1 of Analog Game Studies. While ‘analogue games’ is a foul piece of retroactive slander against boardgames, this is a magnificent collection of scholarly work on the form – and you can get it for free.
  • In sadder boardgame news, Goro Hasegawa has died at the age of 83. Hasegawa-san is famous for creating the boardgame Othello, which famously marketed with the phrase “A minute to learn… a lifetime to master”. (Story via Purple Pawn).
  • And finally, one of Purple Pawn’s writers, Yehuda, is also my favourite capsule film reviewer. Along with other reviews, check out his dismantlement of X-Men: Apocalypse, which faithfully recreates the tedium of Apocalypse in the comics.

Some major ihobo news coming soon – watch this space!


The Aesthetic Flaws of Games - in Polish

The wonderful Ewa Stasiak has begun work translating some of my work on games into Polish over at a new website Hobo Nest. The first post is based on last year’s The Aesthetics Flaws of Games, which she translates as Wady Estetyczne Gier. Here’s an extract:

Sednem jest, by zrozumieć, że reguły gry, jej mechanika i systemy są reprezentacjami bardzo szczególnego rodzaju – mianowicie reprezentacjami matematycznymi. Ważne jest, by to sobie uświadomić, gdyż nieczęsto zauważamy, że liczby i formuły są u podstaw przedstawieniowe, mimo iż jest to powszechnie przyjęte w ogólnym zarysie. Liczba trzy jest reprezentacją mocy zbioru: każdy zbiór trzech elementów, na przykład trzy reguły światów gier, jest więc reprezentowany przez liczbę trzy. Podobnie kształt krzywej dzwonowej, który przedstawiamy na wykresie funkcji Gaussa dla (powiedzmy) dwóch sześciościennych kostek, reprezentuje dystrybucję rezultatów rzutu nimi. Właśnie dlatego, że matematyka może i musi przedstawiać – przedmioty ścisłe, które wdrażają równania (jak fizyka) są w stanie otrzymywać formuły, które oddają zjawiska takie jak grawitacja i przepływ elektryczny.

So if Polish is the language for you, and you’ve longed to read my work in a Western-Slavonic tongue, head on over to Hobo Nest and check out Wady Estetyczne Gier!


Sharing is Overbearing

I’ve removed the sharing buttons in the footer of each post: Typepad was contacting each social network every time a page was served, which makes the site run far slower than is necessary. I don’t think anyone was using these buttons, but let me know if you did find them useful.