Weekly Links #85

Hello, everyone. I could divide this week's links along several lines, so it's hard to decide. Let's start with the latest link I acquired: via @twinethreads comes the news that the word hypertext is 50 years old, and Ted Nelson's interview answers are fascinating, especially about interactivity — my favorite topic as of late. And since I mentioned Twine, here's an inteview with Chris Klimas, who talks briefly about the platform and the community around it.

Still in the famous names department, over at Boing Boing the one and only Anna Anthropy talks about game-making tools. See my own comments on the other blog. And because interactivity and books seem to be the key words this week, a shout-out to Chris Meadows of Teleread writing about electronic literature. Elsewhere, one of my favorite webcomic authors reminds people that imagination is the best graphics engine. If only modern games would leave anything to imagination...

Now for the business side of gaming. At The Escapist, Shamus Young explains how Spore could have been better, and his indictment of modern business stings. Along the same lines, The Daily Dot presents a survey according to which adult women are now the largest demographic in gaming. Guess who doesn't seem to have caught on yet. And on a slightly different note, PC Gamer has a story on how GOG rescued 13 Forgotten Realms games from licensing hell. Good thing they're persistent, eh?

Last but not least, I spent most of this week working on Bast, an experimental implementation of the programming language proposed here and here. Not that I have a need for it right now, but maybe you'll find it inspirational. Thanks for reading, and see you next week.