I’m tempted to write about one of a half-dozen issues and problems right now, but that would probably be unwise. Instead, I’ll limit myself to saying that Project Incredibleness has been unveiled – Bit-gamer.net.
One of the biggest problems facing bit-gamer at the moment is that nobody has yet defined what it is exactly. Is it a channel, a wholly new site or just a refresh? Really, it’s all of the above. As the person who’s going to be responsible for it in every sense of the word, I think I can safely say that it’s a channel that will, over the next six months, grow into something more. It’s also a rapid branding prototype, which is what corporate types call it when someone has to put a new brand and portfolio together without going through the proper channels. It feels like Bit-Gamer came into life as a result of me running desperately from the photography studio, to the sales team and then to Jamie’s desk, begging for favours. Thankfully, everyone I asked is a lot more competent than I am, especially Jamie, Jenny and Danny.
Part of the way I’m going to grow Bit-Gamer straight away is through competitions; lots of them. I’ve got shed loads of gear to giveaway from some of the publishers who’ve supported Bit-Tech the most in the past, such as EA, Paradox and CD Projekt, and the competitions will be running weekly. You can keep up best by following @Bit_gamer on Twitter, where I’ll also be handing out stuff through quick-fire competitions.
My links are below and it’s an odd assortment this week.
In other news, I finally collated together some of my ideas about Canticle for Leibowitz, which I finished reading not long ago. It’s a good book, but I think it’s wounded by the epic scope it tries to rush into towards the end and the predictability of how the plot unfolds. Dan Gril told me not long ago that he loved the book because it wasn’t afraid to murder off main characters, but it struck me that that tactic is only really effective if you’re telling a story that drives itself forward on the characters. Miller doesn’t do that. Instead, he focuses on the era of each sub-book, bringing in little mysteries and bits of backstory to make each interesting. It’s not the characters that are important, at all – so, when they die, it doesn’t feel like a big loss. I never invested in Character A, so when he was very abruptly murdered, I was quick to recover.
Here are things by other people, some old, some ours.
The only other links worth sharing at the moment are my favourite bit-gamer articles of the year, which I singled out in another post somewhere else earlier this week. My favourite of my own was the Fabled Lands: The MMO That Never Was feature. My favourite by someone else was Craig Lager’s The Price of Neptune’s Pride.
Out.
