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Stories, Games, and The 21 Steps
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3–4 minutes·
8 comments on Stories, Games, and The 21 StepsToday we launched the first short story at We Tell Stories, called The 21 Steps. It’s a thriller written by the acclaimed spy writer Charles Cumming, and it’s set within Google Maps. I’m genuinely pleased by the way in which the design of the experience meshed with Charlie’s excellent story, and so I’d really recommend…
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Brain Enhancement
One of the many sad results of Perplex City being put ‘on hold’ is that I can’t explore the effect of cognitive enhancement on society. As a former neuroscientist who studied experimental psychology at university, I always enjoyed writing about my pet fictional company, Cognivia, and its range of cognitive enhancements including Ceretin (wide-spectrum enhancement),…
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Future of Books article in Sunday Times
Naomi Alderman, Perplex City lead writer, author of Disobedience, etc, wrote an article in the Sunday Times about the future of books. I’ve talked to Naomi often about eBooks and was quoted in the article: Imagine, for example, a novel designed to take advantage of the features of the new must-have geek hipster accessory: the…
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Future Selves, Other Selves
There’s a fascinating series of articles at the New York Times Magazine this week about charitable giving. While many of the articles tend to cover the same ground (e.g. the move towards measuring the effectiveness of donations) there are some real gems there: Consider Mr. Improvident, who is just like us except that he is…
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False Endpoints
In the highly interesting New York Times Magazine article about play (of which I’m sure I’ll write more on later), there was a fascinating section about ‘false endpoints’: Through play, an individual avoids what he called the lure of ‘‘false endpoints,’’ a problem-solving style more typical of harried adults than of playful youngsters. False endpoints…
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What has a grin and six tales?
Six to Start’s first ARG, that’s what. We’ve been working on this for a while, and it’s looking good. I’m really pleased to have a new project announced after all this time, and without promising too much, it’s going to be fun. If you like stories, you’ll like this.
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Can the Science Museum be up-to-date?
I visit the Science Museum in London at least twice a year, so I was interested to read an interview with their new Director, talking about how he’s going to change the place: A month into his job, Professor Rapley is sitting in his South Kensington office, telling me that broadly the museum’s collection celebrates…
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Great Success = Some Talent + A Lot of Luck
Spotted this wonderful, and very accurate, ‘equation’ by Daniel Kahneman: The Secret of Regression to Mediocrity Success = Some Talent + Luck Great Success = Some Talent + A Lot of Luck The term ‘regression to mediocrity’ (also known as ‘regression to the mean’) was first coined by Francis Galton in 1886. Galton showed that,…
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Chabudai Gaeshi
In a lecture that Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of Mario, Zelda, Nintendogs, etc) gave to Toyko University in 2003, he talked about how he gets a game completed: First you have to decide what to complete the game around. “This is what the game’s about!” You have to fish out the core, the fun part of…
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Let’s make an Oscar-winning movie…
…or not. There’s an interesting article on the New York Times about the recent blossoming of internet comedy, partly thanks to the Writer’s Guild of America strike (will it continue after it ends, I wonder?). In it, there’s an interesting quote: “I love it when people say, ‘I want to make a viral video,’ because…
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