• Can a Game Save the World?

    ·

    2–4 minutes

    ·

    31 comments on Can a Game Save the World?

    On December 9th 2007, a curious event took place at the University of South Carolina football stadium. As 29,000 people filed inside, each was given a piece of paper bearing four names and phone numbers. During the event, each person called those names and asked them to vote for Obama in the coming primary election.…

  • Back to the Future: The BBC is still dead

    Biff Tannen: And uh, where’s my reports? George McFly: Uh, well, I haven’t finished those up yet, but you know I… I figured since they weren’t due till… Biff Tannen: Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think! I gotta have time to get ’em retyped. Do you realize what would happen if I hand…

  • Another publisher gets it wrong

    ·

    2–4 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Another publisher gets it wrong

    In Publishing: The Revolutionary Future, an article in the New York Review of Books, Jason Epstein talks about the massive changes that are in store for publishing and books with the advent of digital content and devices. The article begins well, summarising the revolutionary changes wrought by Gutenberg’s press, and quickly reaches the present day…

  • The Death of the BBC

    ·

    3–5 minutes

    ·

    18 comments on The Death of the BBC

    …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…

  • How to Win the DARPA Network Challenge

    ·

    3–4 minutes

    ·

    20 comments on How to Win the DARPA Network Challenge

    Update 2 Nov: Just set up a wiki to document resources about the Network Challenge at http://redballoon.wikispaces.com – feel free to join in! You may have heard of DARPA before – they’re the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In 1969, they created ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet, and more recently, they run the…

  • Notes on Iain Banks’ Transition

    ·

    2–4 minutes

    ·

    46 comments on Notes on Iain Banks’ Transition

    Iain Banks’ latest novel, Transition, is perhaps his strongest work in recent years, straddling his science fiction persona (Iain M Banks) and his non-genre, non-M persona (Iain Banks). For me, it combined his fantastic world-building imagination that we see in his Culture novels with the more rooted nature of his traditional novels – with a…

  • Spooks: Code 9 – They Got it Backwards

    ·

    3–5 minutes

    ·

    3 comments on Spooks: Code 9 – They Got it Backwards

    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.…

  • Books of 2009

    ·

    3–5 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Books of 2009

    I haven’t talked much about the books I’ve read recently, and having finished a slew of them recently, I thought I’d take a look back at all the books I’ve read this year. On the whole, there aren’t as many as usual; work, magazines and periodicals, and notably Infinite Jest, really took their toll. January…

  • Why Smokescreen is the Best Game Ever*

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Why Smokescreen is the Best Game Ever*

    I just published a post, Why Smokescreen in the Best Game Ever*, on the Six to Start blog with some game design thoughts behind Smokescreen, our latest game. It goes into a fair level of detail about some of the interesting features in Smokescreen and provides the reason why we added them; if you’re into…

  • Delicious.com Bookmarks for August 18th from 12:55 to 12:55

    These are my links for August 18th from 12:55 to 12:55: Shots Magazine – Evolving Alternate Reality – Shots chats to Six To Start co-founder Adrian Hon about their latest projects for Channel 4 and Muse "Every time I go to talk to the guys at Channel 4 we have the same argument. What is…