Aug. 2nd, 2014

jazzfish: artist painting a bird, looking at an egg for reference (Clairvoyance)
More and more I've been noticing a disconnect between 'authors whose blogs I like' and 'authors whose books I like.' It's very odd: I'd expected that if I enjoyed an author's blog posts I'd buy her books and get a big kick out of them as well. But many of my favorite authors blog rarely if at all, and some of the most prolific author-bloggers I read are people whose books just don't really connect with me.

No great insight; it's just weird.

I don't play a lot of video games these days either. At some point a few years ago I stumbled on Arcen Games and their flagship title AI War, which is a hyper-complex single-player space RTS. If this had come out ten or fifteen years ago I would have probably lost hundreds if not thousands of hours to it. As it is... I've tried it and I can't get into it. I can't see myself sinking the necessary time and brainpower into learning all the things I'd need to learn to be able to play well, and it is decidedly not a game that rewards casual play.

I've dabbled in a couple of Arcen's other titles as well, and they've all left me cold to varying degrees: the controls are just a little off for the action-platformer Valley Without Wind, the interface is too busy for Bionic Dues, etc. I keep hoping they'll make a game that really knocks my socks off. Shattered Haven (Zelda-style post-zombieesque-apocalypse) comes closest and even that isn't quite it.

And yet I really respect their design philosophy, and I enjoy the hell out of reading their blog posts, and I get all excited when I see they're working on something new and wild.

Curious.

Profile

jazzfish: Jazz Fish: beret, sunglasses, saxophone (Default)
Tucker McKinnon

Most Popular Tags

Adventures in Mamboland

"Jazz Fish, a saxophone playing wanderer, finds himself in Mamboland at a critical phase in his life." --Howie Green, on his book Jazz Fish Zen

Yeah. That sounds about right.

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags