Month: September 2022

A few years ago I read about a useful framework for discussing video games called the eight kinds of fun. It is a lens for considering games through the desires they are the most likely to satisfy. I try to utilize the eight kinds of fun when discussing what is appealing about a game; even when I don’t deploy that exact language, the philosophy behind it drives how I recommend those games to other people. Understanding my own preferences when it comes to fun helps me to select games that will ultimately appeal to me. I am primarily drawn to games where the fun comes from mastering the game’s systems (challenge) and experiencing a compelling story (narrative). This isn’t to say that I can’t appreciate other types of fun – fantasy and submission regularly feature in a lot of what I play as well – but I’m ultimately less…

Jeff Jones invited me to appear on his most recent RPG Rambling podcast a few weeks back. He noticed I was posting on social media about a local writing conference and he had questions.

Here is the link to the podcast episode.

Jeff was wondering what lessons I had learned from creative writing classes and conferences that applied to tabletop role-playing games. We went off on some interesting tangents and I don’t know that I ever truly answered the question. I revisit the main question in this post.

Recently, I have participated in writing workshops, seminars, and conferences. I focus on the specific technical elements of telling stories. Some of those techniques transfer to role-playing games, others do not.

Understanding story convinced me that stories and games are not the same thing.

Once I started looking into how skilled storytellers think about and work on stories ; I saw clearly…

I thought I’d never do this, but ten years gives you a bit of a stretch to think.

It takes time, careful consideration and countless drafts to finalise an annual videogame countdown; some would say such an abundance of effort is a waste. But as far as I’m concerned it’s all fine and dandy, because the result is a ranking that might as well be cast in iron. Once published, it’s not just that I back my choices confidently; the order I’ve chosen becomes unquestionable canon within my head, ready to reference at a moment’s notice as if it was as tangible and unchanging as a musty library book on a shelf.

But I’m also human, and looking back on a decade worth of Game of the Year countdowns earlier this year pushed up an eyebrow or two. Not only that, but the absences of a few great games I…

A topic that I found interesting was sparked by Belghast’s recent entries on trying the New World PTR testing for a massive, game-changing update that addresses a lot of the core concerns from last year’s launch, things that make the game in many ways sound and feel like a brand new product.

New World was an interesting game to me, in that I had no interest, then some, and then I got it on a whim and I played it a lot. Over a couple of weeks, around 100 hours went into the game just past the initial launch woes and before the deathknell woes the game was sounding in the early winter as folks began jumping ship from it. There were a ton of issues that became apparent as you got deeper into the experience – the fast travel costs, the clumsy inventory management, the slow rate of progression…