Well.  Another Christmas down, and I hope Santa came to visit you with lots of nice presents, as he sprinted in his own private, global race to visit everyone in 24 hours.

Speaking of red running things, or rather, things running red, I've been able to catch up with a favourite game of my past - albeit in digital - Blood Bowl.

The game itself is a fairly faithful reproduction of the board game, although some teams didn't make the cut - like my beloved Undead, and the Dark Elves (which have sinc...

The good folks over at The Narrative Designers Network posted a link to a great article, where they were trying to observe the quantifiable benefits of story.  In their research they came across the Significant Objects project, where a little piece of story, a 'narrative context', is given to normal objects.

The stories created are purely fictitious, but the value 80 or so objects sold rose by over an incredible 2000%!

How did this happen?  Well, Hugh Macleod over at Gaping Void often talks...

I recently gave a short speech at Sydney AFTRS GameJam 09, which was great fun, not to mention a good opportunity to meet like-minded people.  I was given the opportunity to talk about one of my favourite topics, story, which I'd like to present here for anyone interested:

"There were some early talks by some of my erstwhile IGDA peers, touching on story and narrative.  Dan Graf looked at the anatomy of game story, Chris Lee delved into non-linearity, and Daniel Dresser talked about story vs g...

An amazing dust storm devoured Sydney last week, turning the harbour city into an orange, post-apocalyptic, nuclear wasteland.  Except that it was full of people, and business as usual.

When I woke, at first there was a deep, blood-red colour, from horizon to horizon.  Very ominous and cool.  My heart quickened, wondering what such a dawn might herald.  I'd been through dust storms in my home town, although I had never awoken to one so pervading and red.

I couldn't help but wonder what our ...