Mssv

…and the Case for Public Service Games
The BBC is a world-class broadcaster that produces some of the very best TV, radio and news. It’s also an organisation that is desperately holding on to its past glories, while ignoring the potential and importance of the internet.
What is the BBC for? According to its Royal Charter, the [...]

Note: I am not about to reveal any secrets about Spooks: Code 9 or its production. A dedicated fan of Spooks could have written this, and while I’m not one, I did spend a lot of time thinking about, and watching, the show. These are my own opinions, and not that of Six to Start.

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I always found it a little odd how Bill Murray seemed to be so dismissive of Ghostbusters, and more recently, Groundhog Day. When I watched them properly a few years ago (i.e. when I was an adult and could understand all the jokes), I wondered what his problem was. As I saw some of his [...]

I took the afternoon off today to attend a symposium on Science Fiction as a Literary Genre at Gresham College. However, the main reason I went was because Neal Stephenson (author of Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, Quicksilver, etc) was the keynote speaker. Aside from being one of my favourite science fiction authors, Neal is also an [...]

I finished watching Life on Mars a few weeks ago, and have become mildly obsessed with it. This tends to happen with any good book, TV show or movie that I see – I end up wanting to use elements in games or other projects, until the next shiny thing comes along.
After a few beers [...]

Sharpe remains a fond favourite of mine, and I’ll often reminiscence about the scenes (essentially identical in every movie) in which French soldiers slowly march towards the British in a line while being blasted by Sharpe’s green-jacked rifles, firing three shots to the minute.
This Christmas, the oddly-named UK TV History channel are running a Sharpe [...]

I can’t remember why I looked up The A-Team on Wikipedia a few months ago. Perhaps it was research for some long-forgotten game idea, or perhaps I was just really bored. Chances are it was a combination of the two. What I found, however, wasn’t just a typical Wikipedia ‘article-by-consensus’ – thorough, but long-winded and [...]

One of the most memorable children’s TV shows of my generation was Knightmare. Ah, Knightmare – a show that was about role-playing games, but oddly cool to be a fan of. In Knightmare, a team of four kids would try to get through a dungeon populated by all sorts of traps, baddies and dangers.
Of course, [...]

This is almost exactly a year late, but Vernor Vinge, one of my favourite SF authors and perhaps the most insightful prognosticator I know of, gave the keynote lecture at the Austin Games Conference in 2006. He covers so much ground in the lecture that I suspect he lost a few people not familiar with [...]

It’s a shame to see what’s happening at the BBC now. With the TV license fee not increasing anywhere near as much as the BBC had hoped, something’s got to give, and people are all trying to point the finger at anyone but themselves. Jon Humphrys from the Radio 4 Today Programme suggested killing off [...]