Weekly Links #91
Welcome, everyone, to another short week. I'd complain again about the
usual stuff but you're probably tired of hearing it. The big thing is
of course the Interactive Fiction Competition, but I won't
cover it -- plenty of mainstream outlets are taking care of that.
Suffice to say, Emily Short thinks it's the strongest edition ever,
and that's a huge compliment.
(Also it's worth noting that Twine is powering the most entries this
year, and nobody's bitter about it for a change. Let's hope the peace
lasts.)
But frankly I'm more excited about the next big event this autumn. Set
to start in less than a month, the Procedural Generation Jam
is once again calling for participants, and organizer Michael Cook
writes about his expectations. What can I say? I understand
the sentiment, but the truth is I got into procedural generation for
two reasons: one, because it allows me to express game content as code,
which comes naturally to me as a programmer, and two, because that way
I can actually play my own games, rather than knowing all the maps by
heart.
(And yes, programming can be natural. Programming is a species of
mathematics, and mathematics is a language for describing the natural
world. So there's no real contradiction.)
But don't worry, hand-crafted worlds and stories aren't going anywhere.
Over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun we have a top of the best RPG worlds,
while Hardcore Gaming 101 posts a retrospective of the Gabriel Knight
games -- both of them good reminders that quality writing
makes a real difference. Which is especially meaningful to point out
when literary games are all the rage these days.
But I've run out of content again. See you next week.