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The A-Team Formula
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2–3 minutes·
3 comments on The A-Team FormulaI 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…
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Municipal Darwinism
Unsentimental. That’s what the Mortal Engines Quartet is. Children’s fiction – in particular, children’s fantasy – is so strong nowadays that it’s hardly necessary to say that a book is adventurous, imaginative or exhilarating. They’re all adventurous, they’re all imaginative, they’re all exhilarating. And they’re all plenty good enough for adults to read as well.…
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Masque of the Red Death – almost an Adventure Game
Over the course of history, scientists and philosophers (who, until recently, were essentially the same thing) tended to interpret the universe – and, interestingly, the human brain – through the lens of their era’s technology. During the Renaissance, the universe was thought to operate like a clock, mechanistically and predictably. Later, during the Victorian and…
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Ted Hughes on West Kirby
From an article in the London Review of Books on Letters of Ted Hughes by Christopher Reid: Edna, I’ve seen rain and I tell you this isn’t rain, – a steady river, well laced with ice, tempest and thunder, covers all this land, and what isn’t concrete has reverted to original chaos of mud water…
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Let’s Change the Game – First Round
The first round of Let’s Change the Game closed last Friday, and we received nine entries that I thought were worth sending to the judges. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but we’re all very happy with the number. The competition deliberately set a high bar for entrants, requiring not merely a game description, but…
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STT
The acronym TTS is well known among those who develop call centre software, GPS car navigation devices and software for the blind. It means ‘Text To Speech’, and is more commonly known as voice synthesis, such as the conversion of written text (e.g. ‘Take the first turn on the left into Coronation Street’) into a…
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Thoughts on the Amazon Kindle
I feel ambivalent about the Kindle. The Kindle is a new eBook reader from Amazon that can download books anywhere (without a computer) and surf the web. It costs $400 and the cost of books for it from Amazon are significantly cheaper than the new physical versions – which doesn’t mean that they’re cheap, though.…
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Motherf…
If you’re making a movie that’s ‘family-friendly’ with a PG rating, then you can forget about having any real swearing in the dialogue. This is generally not hard to do, but certain dramatic or funny moments (e.g. imminent death, huge tidal wave, just finished beating up bad guys) can call for dialogue that, if it…
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Berlin Calling
Three people – a doctor, the CTO of an up-and-coming web company, and the CEO of an up-and-coming 3D game engine company – have independently told me the same thing in the last month. It’s time to move to Berlin. In any discussion of where I work and what I do, the subject of London’s…
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Sidestep Right Two Paces!
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…
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