In Bloom. #blog
In Bloom. #blog
Adventures, Games, Harold
Sometimes it’s challenging to work in games and have a partner who also works in games. Sometimes the very idea of having two stable game jobs at two different studios in the same city seems completely insane, impossible and ridiculous.
Today, though, Harold came into my study and asked me I was working on. I looked up from my flowcharts and scene breakdowns, and told him.
“Having written entire hidden object games in a weekend,” he said, “I’ll leave you to it.”
Posted in Chapel Hill
Tagged Chapel Hill, games, Harold, hidden object, Hidden object games, HO adventures, romantic
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The Perils of The Lady Gamer: A Graphial Diversion Regarding Women and Games
I wrote about this hilarious and sad comic on female gamers by Shaenon K Garrity for The Absolute. You may have seen it by now — this is actually the 4th time* I’ve covered a story right before a Gawker imprint does, which makes me feel like a fantastic journalist, with my finger on the pulse of breaking awesome. Of course, immediately after that, people will comment and email to call me a terrible hack for ripping off Gawker, so there’s that to keep me from getting conceited.
Perils of The Lady Gamer: A Graphial Diversion by Shaenon K Garrity, is a wonderful comic about being a female gamer… at a gaming convention set in a sort of alternative World’s Faire.
Game writers will notice a reference to Penny Arcade’s Dickwolves and a parody of IndieStatik’s recent embarrassment. Women who play games will find the whole thing terribly familiar, although with an amusing twist. A booth babe raises her hemline to reveal her ankles (scandalous!), fanboys whistle and ask lady gamers to show their shoulders, while other games insist that Mumblety-Peg isn’t hardcore enough to be a ‘real’ game.
via The Perils of The Lady Gamer: A Graphial Diversion Regarding Women and Games | (The) Absolute.
*’Comic Book Heroines in Pants’ hit Jezebel right after I wrote about it on Geek Insider, Jezebel covered Carly’s Choice: Texas after I wrote about it for IGM, and Robert Yang’s talk at G4C was covered on IGM and Kotaku, just in case you’re reviewing my blog while considering whether to hire me.
Indie Games Blog Carnival
Back in ancient times, cavepeople would make gather around the campfire and share blog carnivals (it was around the end of the Geocities age, just before cave painting really took off as an art form). That makes it retro cool, right?
I think this blog carnival format would work well for finding and sharing indie games and game reviewers, so I’m starting an indie games blog carnival. This is going to be a collection of links and little blurbs, I plan to include most (or all) of the submissions I get, but curated lightly to avoid repetition.
I would just love it if you’d submit indie game pieces and encourage friends to submit! This includes reviews written for magazines, communities or personal blogs, as well as essays on indie games, thoughtful dev blog pieces, and related creative writing. You can also submit indie games, too. This begs the question of what makes an indie, of course, but any game made for a game jam, developed with friends, or created as a solo project counts as an indie. You’re welcome to submit either your own projects or projects you enjoy.
Here is a form to make it easy for you to send cool things my way:
If for some reason the BC form isn’t working for you, then you can email submissions to me at my first name at my blog domain.
Posted in Chapel Hill, Gaming Culture
Tagged Chapel Hill, games, indie games, indie games blog carnival
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‘The Boleyn Bride’ by Brandy Purdy
The book didn’t need any plothooks for me, because Tudor, but the story is narrated by a regretful Elizabeth in an extended flashback after Anne and George’s deaths. We see a young, spoiled aristocrat married off to the son of wealthy shopkeepers. Elizabeth’s in-laws may be styling themselves Boleyns now, but they’ll always be the new-money Bullens to her.
Elizabeth is a bizarrely likeable character, throughout all her hardships. We see her loyalty to Queen Catherine, even as her Boleyn family enjoy the benefits of Henry’s affairs with her daughters. She carries on plenty of affairs herself, one long-running romance and loads of other encounters, and basically shrugs and says that there’s no question of the paternity of her children and that she’s not publicly embarrassing her husband, bring on the young men! She’s also vain, but in an oddly sensible way, showing awareness that her value is her face and figure.
I’m already familiar with George, Mary, and Anne from all the other Tudor fiction I’ve read, but I enjoyed Purdy’s versions of these characters. Mary Boleyn is usually characterized as a dull-witted pawn for the power hungry Boleyns, or an immoral hedonist. But here, Mary is shown as a golden little girl who mimics her parents’ affairs, but finally finds love in a lowborn match and a removal from court.
The Anne / George incest theme always gives me the creeps in Tudor novels, and I felt like Elizabeth shared my squick, jumping to insist that nothing happened! Not any of those times they spent the night together alone, nope, totally not, because that would be gross.
The story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is a familiar one to me, but Purdy’s unique and oddly sympathetic Elizabeth Boleyn is a new character and a new twist.
The Boleyn Bride
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Posted in Books, Chapel Hill
Tagged Book review, Books, Brandy Purdy, Chapel Hill, eARC, Netgalley, The Boleyn Bride
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Adding Awesome with ‘If This Then That’
New post on Yahoo about using IFTTT to save time and add awesome:
If This Then That is a repository of recipes to take advantage of services and sites you’re already using, by integrating actions on one service with a result on another. At it’s most simple, it’s the one add on to rule them all, replacing all the WordPress plugins that send posts to Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.
…
I found plenty of recipes to automate and facilitate things I was doing anyway, and then I discovered recipes to do things that hadn’t ever occurred to me, like connect my location and the local sunrise time with the Phillips Hue app, to wake up to a simulated sunrise , even in the smallest, windowless urban apartment. (IFTTT user Benright, you are a genius!)
via Automate Everything with ‘If This Then That’ – Yahoo Voices – voices.yahoo.com.
Imposter Syndrome, Part 273
Meg: I’m working on your bio for our hipster startup profile, how many years have you been teaching?
Colleague-who-will-not-be-named: Oh, man, I have no experience and no training. It’s a wonder anyone lets me teach their kids anything.
Meg: What are you talking about? You have loads of experience, your classes are awesome and all the kids love you! Why would you say — WAIT A MINUTE. You’re trying to make some kind of a point here, aren’t you?
The Future of Games Journalism
…is turning out 1000 ~ 2000 not-quite-original words, in 6 hours, for $1.
Looking someone to rewrite 100 to 200 word game news. Each 100 to 200 word game news is priced at $0.10
Please include these words in your application: I understand that “Each 100 to 200 word game news is priced at $0.10”
Please do not apply if you cannot rewrite 10 game news in 6 hours, or you’re not serious. This is a long-termed job.
From an actual job posting for a Game News Writer on oDesk.
Surfer, Muppet, Gun, What?
My App Design 3 students are doing a math-heavy assignment, and as I explained what they were doing, I threw out a couple of Chinese number handsigns, meant to emphasize that there were 6 sides on a die so 7 would roll an error. Ok, fine, so this math-heavy lesson was helping the kids make a cheat in a dice-rolling app. One of my students asked me what I doing with my hands.
Oh yeah, I said, it’s just a handsign I used for bargaining in Beijing, sorry kids, let’s get back to the app. The kids had a million questions, so I told them about my years in China, and taught them 6 through 10. (That’s Surfer, Muppet, Gun, Fingerpuppet, Fist, if you’re wondering.) Sometimes I don’t feel like I’ve done very much in in my life, but I just sidetracked my games programming class with expat adventure stories, so, there’s that.
Later that night, I told Harold how funny it was, that I have so internalized the Chinese number handsigns that I used then in class for emphasis and clarity, forgetting that not everyone knows them.
He looked at me weird, and then asked me what number handsigns I was talking about.
Apparently I have been just throwing random hand signs around for years and no one has ever questioned it.
Posted in Chapel Hill
Tagged Beijing, Chapel Hill, China::North Carolina, games, Harold, teaching
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