Games Forum Germany - some thoughts

The trip to Germany was pretty uneventful, although Hannover was really cold when I got there - about -7 degrees centigrade. Thankfully I was met by someone who drove me to the hotel. He was also taking Darius Kazemi to the hotel and it was nice to meet a fellow speaker so soon, especially when I later found he was a fellow Game Maker enthusiast.

We had a great meal in the evening where all the speakers were in attendance. It was such a pleasure and an honour to be in the company of varied speakers of high quality and reputation. I can't thank the organisers enough for inviting me and giving me a truly fabulous opportunity.

The food was excellent that evening but the company and the chat was even better and talking with others who are passionate about the work they do in games is incredibly inspiring. Needless to say, because we were enjoying ourselves so much it was pretty late when we headed back to the hotel, by which time it had been snowing and was still doing so. Just as well we weren't too far away.

The next day was the first day of the conference and I spent the morning listening to the talks of RJ Mical and Raphael Lacoste, both of which were highly informative. I spent the first part of the afternoon taking part in a discussion panel in front of a large group of students. It was a pleasure to contribute and I'm sure it was something the students got a lot from because I certainly did from the other members of the panel.

The next couple of hours were spent hanging around and chatting to people as I waited to give my talk. The programme was running a little late by this point and I didn't get on stage until after 6pm. However, there was a good crowd and the talk (on aspects of character) seemed to go pretty well - they even laughed at a couple of my jokes. But strangely enough, no one asked any questions afterwards.

My first thought was that perhaps the talk hadn't gone as well as I'd thought, but as people were leaving a few came up to me and told me they'd enjoyed it. So perhaps they didn't ask questions because the party was about to start in another venue.

When I got to the party I was chatting to a young Australian guy called Oscar who was incredibly enthusiastic and kind about my talk. He said he was more into film than games, but that my talk had made him think again about a short film script he was working on and he was planning to look more closely at the characters in the script. If I've only helped this one guy with my talk it will have been worth it.

The time flew by at the party and I remember talking to a lot of people through the night, some of whom were again very kind in what they said. I met some of the people I knew from DTP and it was good to catch up with them as they've always been good to me. In fact, every time I visit Germany I'm made to feel very welcome and I've enjoyed myself on each trip I've made there.

Because I flew out on the Friday morning I didn't attend the second day of the conference and so didn't get the opportunity to say goodbye to all the other speakers, so I hope I get the chance to meet up with them all again soon.

It turned out that my incredible bout of nerves before the trip was totally unjustified. Well, maybe not totally - it's still pretty nerve-wracking standing on stage and baring my creative soul, so to speak.

Perhaps I'll get invited back again one day...

New Conference Appearance

The trip to Germany was great and I'll blog about it properly over the weekend.

When I got back I'd discovered that I've been confirmed for the Writing Industries Conference. This will be very different to the one I've just attended and will be pretty exciting to see such a broad range of writing disciplines brought together at one event.

If any of you are attending, be sure to come over and say hello at the very least.

Great review of Rhianna Ford

I just happened to come across this great review at Jayisgames.com.

"The first thing that makes it so unique is the engrossing and thrilling storyline, which starts slowly and builds momentum to a frantic pace"

"Rhianna Ford & The Da Vinci Letter is a fun wild ride through a captivating story that grabs hold and doesn't let go until you reach the resolution."

Pretty good, eh? :)

The right tone

Last night I stayed up late (for me) and spent a little time on bits of a novel that I've been fiddling with for some time and yet has not progressed very well at all.

Much of the problem has been getting the right tone and voice for it and last night I think I managed to do just that. I was tempted to plough on with the novel regardless of this problem, but the task of re-working and editing would have been too great if I couldn't get most of the way there on the first draft. Prose is fiddly like that.

When I write dialogue for games, the important thing is to get into the heads of the characters before doing so and understand their roles in the game and how they relate to one another. Once done, writing the dialogue becomes so much easier and almost writes itself. Prose, for me, is more complex and harder to get right.

I can understand why an increasing number of novels are written in the first person - the prose becomes the main characters account and not some faceless/nameless narrator. Unfortunately, because I have more than one main character POV to handle I didn't want to go down the first person route. I don't think switching between characters works in first person - it implies that these two characters have colaborated to tell the tale in the book. Also, if the writer can't make the two characters different enough it can make the novel confusing.

My solution to the problem was to push the narrator POV hard up against the character's POV which actually gave the prose the tone and voice of the character slightly removed. I'm hoping that this will work particularly well when switching between the characters.

Perhaps I can make some headway, now.

Rhianna Ford and the Da Vinci Letter

With no hype or fanfare whatsoever, a new game has just been released - Rhianna Ford and the Da Vinci Letter. I mention this because it's the first of the casual games I wrote and designed in the last year. :)

Although it's primarily a hidden object game, it contains a number of adventure elements. I've also been allowed to take the characters and dialogue a lot further than is normally expected in such a game, so I hope the balance is right.

Feedback on the game will be much appreciated.

Games Forum Germany

Next week I'm talking at the Games Forum Germany. I was rather surprised when I was invited and, of course, very honoured. I hope I give a talk they'll be pleased with.

I decided to talk about aspects of character, but I didn't want to go down the route of it being an instructional talk, so I'm hoping that I can just give the audience plenty to think about.

As I was preparing my talk there was one point where I thought I wouldn't have enough to say. Now I'm worried that I have too much, so today will be spent on a little polishing and trying to make sure the timing is right.

I know there's been a mention of the talk being recorded, but I don't know, yet, if that will be made available to the public in general. I shall endeavour to find out.

New Netbook

Today I took delivery of a new Samsung netbook, which I'm still getting used to at the moment. I'm sitting here at 10:50 pm on the couch with the thing on my knee as I think of something to say.

It's actually very good to type on, although I'm still getting used to the position of some of the peripheral keys and things like the cursor keys and the right shift key is a bit small and I keep hitting the backslash key when typing because it's been moved to the other end of the keyboard from nomal. The keyboard itself is very resposive and is great to use.

The worst thing about it is the way that the shiny surface on the outside smears up with fingerprints almost the instant you touch it.

I was torn between getting the model that came with Windows 7 or the one that came with XP and in the end I went for XP because that seemed to have more favourable reviews. It's funny how, now that I'm used to Vista, it's taking some getting used to XP again.

I bought it because I wanted something smaller and lighter than my laptop, which is jus way too big and on which I never seem to get any decent battery life. This is supposed to have 9 hours or so, but as I've only just started using it it's hard to get an idea of whether that's true. The battery meter currently says over 10 hours, but these estimates are rarely anything to go by.

I'm hoping, too, by getting away from the office with this small computer I'll be able to vary my writing from the game related stuff that fills my normal working day. Perhaps I'll even get to make more regular blog posts.

Mitchell update

I've just posted a new Mitchell cartoon.

I'd previously been posting twice a week on Mondays and Fridays, but I've decided to increase this to three times a week and will be possting on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. The natural thing might bave been to post on Mon-Wed-Fri, but this would have clashed with Mr. Smoozles on Wednesdays.

I've also updated Story to Nowhere with a new episode. I'm sorry that there has been no update over the holiday period, but it seemed to clash with my general mood.

As always, any feedback greatfully received.

Happy New Year!

I'd like to wish everyone all the very best for the coming year. Let's hope it's a good one for all of us.

I hope that you didn't over-indulge, unlike some.

After the snow finally vanished, we had a light covering overnight. I hope it's not a sign of more to come.

Take care.