-
My favourite games of the year (so far) (for no particular reason)
1. XCOM
2. Hotline Miami
3. FTL
4. Dishonored
5. Legend Of Grimrock
So there.
I was also very fond of: Stacking*, Analogue: A Hate Story, Dear Esther, Iron Brigade*, Call of Cthulu the Wasted Land, Spec Ops: The Line, The Walking Dead & Thirty Flights Of Loving, but I don’t know what kind of a number I’d put in front of them.
*Only made it to PC, and thus me, this year
Posted on October 25, 2012 with 2 notes
-
What would the Alec Meer solo project look like?
"I’m working on that novel."
“I’m making that videogame.”
“I’m writing that screenplay.”
At least one of the above *has* to happen before I’m 35, or I’ll never forgive myself.Posted on May 4, 2010 with 7 notes
-
What was your favourite thing about The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind?
The last dwarf is a phenomenal vignette, but the city built inside the skeleton of an enormous crab is my touchstone when I’m trying to sell the game to someone.
God, I miss that Bethesda. What happened to ‘em?Posted on May 4, 2010 with 5 notes
-
Is there anything you’d like to specifically change about your writing?
I need to learn brevity.
Posted on May 4, 2010
-
If you had to introduce someone who’d never played a game before, what would you give them as an introduction?
Peggle has worked beautifully on two nongaming girlfriends so far. Never doubt Peggle’s power.
Posted on May 4, 2010
-
Why, when you appear to be very handsome on video, do you look like a startled gnome in those magazine mug shots?
I am often startled and usually gnomic. And always unphotogenic.
Posted on May 4, 2010
-
What was the best press trip you’ve been on?
Far Cry, Coburg, Germany, circa 2002. Being very politely asked by a nice German developer to please stop repeatedly shooting an NPC in the crotch and giggling at the physics. Podium dancing to vanilla ice. Incredible beer. My first encounter with a Republican. A man in a catsuit sadly showing a room full of people his genital piercing. Being dared to ask the Yerli brothers if they could possibly include monkey knife-fights in the game. Feeling excited about videogames.
Posted on May 4, 2010 with 4 notes
-
Is it still worth shooting for games journalism nowadays? Is it too oversubscribed?
Good writers find a way: opportunity remains. Just don’t fall prey to thinking that magazines are the way in: they’re beautiful ghosts, sure, but they’re nonetheless ghosts.
Posted on May 4, 2010
-
Do you like London? And why!
'Like' doesn't come into it. It's everything a capital should be, for better or worse. Britain without it would be impossible. I suspect I won't be in it for much longer, however.
Posted on May 4, 2010 with 4 notes
-
What’s the worst urge you’ve felt as a direct result of playing a computer game?
To paint my car yellow, after playing GTA 3 and thinking the yellow cars looked nicest.
Posted on May 4, 2010
-
The Fat Boy
His sweaty red face contorted into an animal snarl, he jabbed a Doc Marten-booted foot into my shin at speed. I staggered a little, but didn’t fall or cry out. Every muscle I had was clenched, and my fourteen-year-old mind a storm of fear and rage. But I didn’t cry out. I knew this bully couldn’t best me.
He wasn’t strong enough and he wasn’t fast enough to seriously damage my frail eight-stone frame. I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. I’d have already run to the next floor, secure in its erratic patrol of rumpled arts teachers, were that not the case. Most of all, he couldn’t best me because he too was bullied. He was the laughing stock of his year group, a failure at sports and academia both. A fellow victim, even if he’d never admit it. So he lacked the conviction, the will and even the experience to be truly vicious.
Bullies create bullies, we’re led to believe: the sins of the father revisited upon the weaker peers of the hardened son. In That Fat Kid From The Upper Sixth’s case (I cannot recall his real name, purely the demeaning descriptor he was referred to as by all the boys of my year), that didn’t ring true. This was the moment he proved it, not to me, but to himself. My young, paranoid mind frankly managed little in the way of insight at that age, but I swear I could see something in his eyes. A hurt, a sadness, a disbelief that /he/ was kicking a runty dork from the year below him in the shins.
We both knew this wasn’t him. We’d even spoken pleasantly a few times in the past, having discovered some common interest – a band, a videogame or some other teenage obsession. I can’t remember his name, but I’ll never forget that look in his eyes, so distant even as he attempted precision violence. So I didn’t cry out.
“Next time I see you I’ll, y’know, yeah,” he attempted, focusing those sad eyes into a piggy scowl meant to instil infinite fear into me. “Whatever. /Fatty.”/ I stepped down from the red and black Head sports bag I’d climbed onto in order to reach my own bag, which lurked somewhere on the far slope of this crumpled mountain of mindlessly discarded boys’ satchels, rucksacks and briefcases. Every boy in sixth form hurled their bag onto this pile: the earliest arrivals crushed inside its core, and the swaggering late boys achieving yet more status by having their own bags and whatever favoured logo they bore clear for all to see on the surface.
For once, The Fat Boy had made it to the top of the pile. That black and red Head bag, a large, misshapen tube of cheap leather, was near the summit. It was a rare and precious moment, so when a dwarfish geek from the year below clambered on top of it, it had to be defended. All would be lost if it was knocked into the messy middle, and branded with a muddy size 6 bootprint. He’d called me down before I’d reached my own bag, and threatened a beating when I asked for a moment more. So he kicked me. But I didn’t cry out. “Whatever. /Fatty./”
My own bag now in hand – was it a green, pseudo-military satchel? Its image hasn’t been burned into my memory as has that of the black and red Head bag – I stepped down from the pile, being careful to walk pointedly onto his bag in the process. I turned and, limping a little, with a small section of my right trouser leg glued to my shin by a thin goo of clotting blood, made to leave building, in search of my bus home.
If he was indeed a bully, if he truly wanted to be like his own tormentors, he’d have followed me, punched the side of my head, kicked my feet out from under me. He stayed where he was, now holding his own bag, with his always-red face now a startling crimson, as if a fountain of blood was about to burst through his cheeks. Just as the front door of the school closed beside me, I could hear the jeers start up and, in either my peripheral vision or my mind’s eye, I saw large, rough hands push him onto the pile of bags.
We saw each other every day for the next 18 months or so, but we never spoke again.
Posted on December 28, 2009 with 18 notes
-
Notes On A Tiny Scandal

'Deus Ex 3 is PC exclusive', say Bit-tech. 'Oh no it's not', say Eidos. 'Let us never speak of this again', say Bit-tech, who duly remove all reference to the story, as though it never happened. The internet catches on fire regardless. This post isn’t about any particular post that resulted from that, just a general sadness about the spread of misinformation in such instances.
There’s a real problem behind this. Games journalism, more than any other form of journalism outside of celebrity gossip, absolutely thrives on scandal. There’s a hunger for scurrilous headlines, because they bring in huge armies of traffic - the lifeblood of any games site. Discontent and rage are evergreen providers of this, and any semblance of format favouritism on a game’s part tends to create that with alarming speed and intensity. It means games journalism is losing sight of how to get a story - instead, an offhand comment, an out of context claim or a Chinese whisper is a story in itself - either by the originator of the post, or by some other site picking up on it and sticking an Ohmigod hat on it. Sometimes there are attempts at corroboration with an official source, sometimes there aren’t. Usually when there are, the official source doesn’t respond in time or provides an empty marketing line.
Sometimes, they may actively lie, or at least appear to. The worst journalism mistake I’ve made of late is when a trusted source gave me a recording of a presentation in which the Force Unleashed was apparently confirmed as happening on PC. A barrage of panicked official emails swiftly (far more swiftly than the response I’d got if I’d asked for comment before publishing) informed me it was definitely not happening on PC, so I had to edit the story. I was annoyed, but not ashamed. Clarification and updating is a far more gentlemanly course of action than pulling an erroneous report; it’s also a sensible one. Removing words from the internet doesn’t mean people forget - instead, it makes you look less trustworthy, in the eyes of both readers and peers. A few months later, guess bloody what: the Force Unleashed is announced for PC. There’s every chance it wasn’t a lie, that the decision to port came later, but nonetheless it does carry the appearance of a lie. It’s difficult to establish who benefited from it, or why.
So, to publish or not to publish? If you delay and wait for a proper response, someone else might get there first, and you won’t get that precious traffic. If you get a no comment or a “not happening at this time” reply, do you take it as read and neuter your report? It’s uncomfortably no-win situation, worsened by the tendency for web journalists to take shortcuts for expediency’s sake and by the paranoid, absolute control of information by games publishers, fearful that the right piece of information at the wrong time will disastrously upset their carefully plotted marketing schedule.
It’s getting worse on both sides. I’ve met journalists from other sites recently whose sole interest on a press briefing for a game is to get whichever developer present to say something contentious, something that can make an out-of-context headline to bring in the hits. “It’s about survival,” they say, as though it really is their duty to create scandal. It’s disgusting behaviour, and it has very little to do with providing people with information about and opinion upon videogames.
But such attitudes, parasitical as they may be, are at least fighting against nonsense like the Force Unleashed situation, or more recently Infinity Ward/Activision refusing to drop Modern Warfare 2 review embargoes, even though most shops had cheated and started selling the game by that point. Everyone’s behaving terribly. The only way to be a proper big-boy journalist amidst this sandwich of truth-twisting is to already have firm, trusted contacts/moles deep within developers or publishers. There are few chances to break through the impervious crust otherwise, which is why there’s such a tremendous rise in journalists creating news by cherry-picking quotes and implications.
But we need to hold fast against this growing rot, a sad by-product of the recent rapid growth in gaming’s popularity and the need for the web to provide beyond-rapid response. We need to at least try to double-check a surprising or scandalous fact; just because so often it’s shot down or no-commented doesn’t mean that’s the case every time. Once a while, it can save face, or lead to a better story. And when we do get it wrong, there’s nothing wrong with saying so. An updated-as-it-happens story is a better story, a clearer picture. Mistakes happen. Pretending we’re faultless is the greatest mistake of all. It’s that sort of self-interest-above-all-else thinking that’s led to all this unhelpful scandal chasing and gate-locking in the first place.Posted on November 26, 2009 with 34 notes
-
DowntimeTown Episode 7: Space Hulk from Robert Florence on Vimeo.
Space Hulk. Geek-love. And my copy should be arriving soon, after an epic quest and a drunken moment that almost saw me spend £180 on ebay. I didn’t, rest assured.
Posted on September 24, 2009
-

So hideous it’s brilliant. But still hideously, hideously hideous. (source)
Posted on September 24, 2009 with 2 notes
-
Three Frames
Posted on August 25, 2009
Games writing
Twitter
Email
Flickr