Weekly Round-up for Week Ending 9/21
This past week was almost as busy as the week before. Not that I'm complaining. Click the link to check out this week's blog posts, including updates on STAY AWHILE AND LISTEN and a published on Touch Arcade.
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** Sunday Blogday: I decided to start another weekly tradition here at WW4B: blogging every Sunday morning (and Saturday night; I cheated last week and I plan to cheat again) about whatever's walking the crosswalk of my mind when I sit down to write. This week I blathered on about how much I like strategy guides, and the process of writing one for Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Excerpt:
To write my guide, I played through Amnesia twice. Once just to play through it and soak up the terror (and it is terrifying), and then a second time, going through slowly and writing down each step to progress through areas and solve puzzles. I did not, however, toss in mentions of when and where monsters appeared.
** "Perfect Storm," an editorial I wrote for Venture Beat discussing how Blizzard North's tempestuous development environment informed the team's creative process while developing Diablo. This piece features quotes from SAAL 1, so give it a looksee for a sneak peak of sorts.
Excerpt:
“Maybe five or six months toward the end, Erich Schaefer said, ‘Hey, we need quests. I’ll pay five dollars for every quest we put in the game,’” Eric Sexton reflected to me. Eric’s eagerness to help form the bedrock of Diablo’s dark world gave way to quests and monsters such as the Butcher and the Skeleton King, bosses who knocked around the game’s early levels and made mincemeat of adventurers still unproven in battle.
** Warcry.com announced SAAL 1 and gave me the opportunity to collaborate with John Keefer again, formerly of Shacknews.com
Excerpt:
"Bill [Petras] and I were playing EverQuest," Beardslee told Craddock. "I was showing it to Bill and he said, 'Why can't we do that?' I said, 'Are we allowed to do that? I would love to do that.' He said, 'Let's go find out.' He and I walked down to Jeff Strain's office -- I want to say it was on a Tuesday -- and basically I said, 'Hey, we think we can do this, and we think we can do it in the Warcraft or the StarCraft setting. Either one would totally work.'
** A review of Slender Rising for iOS, published on Touch Arcade.
Excerpt:
Games starring the Slender Man, are a dime a dozen on every platform, and most won't set you back even that much. Slender Rising sets its sights higher while following the premise of every other Slender game: find notes that flesh out the threadbare mythology before the long-legged stalker challenges you to a staring contest you cannot win.
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** Sunday Blogday: I decided to start another weekly tradition here at WW4B: blogging every Sunday morning (and Saturday night; I cheated last week and I plan to cheat again) about whatever's walking the crosswalk of my mind when I sit down to write. This week I blathered on about how much I like strategy guides, and the process of writing one for Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Excerpt:
To write my guide, I played through Amnesia twice. Once just to play through it and soak up the terror (and it is terrifying), and then a second time, going through slowly and writing down each step to progress through areas and solve puzzles. I did not, however, toss in mentions of when and where monsters appeared.
** "Perfect Storm," an editorial I wrote for Venture Beat discussing how Blizzard North's tempestuous development environment informed the team's creative process while developing Diablo. This piece features quotes from SAAL 1, so give it a looksee for a sneak peak of sorts.
Excerpt:
“Maybe five or six months toward the end, Erich Schaefer said, ‘Hey, we need quests. I’ll pay five dollars for every quest we put in the game,’” Eric Sexton reflected to me. Eric’s eagerness to help form the bedrock of Diablo’s dark world gave way to quests and monsters such as the Butcher and the Skeleton King, bosses who knocked around the game’s early levels and made mincemeat of adventurers still unproven in battle.
** Warcry.com announced SAAL 1 and gave me the opportunity to collaborate with John Keefer again, formerly of Shacknews.com
Excerpt:
"Bill [Petras] and I were playing EverQuest," Beardslee told Craddock. "I was showing it to Bill and he said, 'Why can't we do that?' I said, 'Are we allowed to do that? I would love to do that.' He said, 'Let's go find out.' He and I walked down to Jeff Strain's office -- I want to say it was on a Tuesday -- and basically I said, 'Hey, we think we can do this, and we think we can do it in the Warcraft or the StarCraft setting. Either one would totally work.'
** A review of Slender Rising for iOS, published on Touch Arcade.
Excerpt:
Games starring the Slender Man, are a dime a dozen on every platform, and most won't set you back even that much. Slender Rising sets its sights higher while following the premise of every other Slender game: find notes that flesh out the threadbare mythology before the long-legged stalker challenges you to a staring contest you cannot win.