Week 717

What’s this? I’m blogging about my work on a weekly basis – a simple way to track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

After thinking about it and making up my mind the previous week, last week I actually closed down Bashers.nl. Somehow, I had not anticipated the off-hand remark in my weeknotes to catch fire and make the rounds on Twitter, so that everyone with any interest in Bashers whatsoever knew before I got around to posting a big thank-you over there and my thoughts over here. I have to admit that my decision made me somewhat lethargic all week, which I had also not anticipated.

Otherwise, it was a rather quiet week.

On Monday I visited my friend Maarten Geers, who handed over a big stack of paper: a print-out of the first De verdwijners draft, including tons of great feedback in his tiny, tidy handwriting. Maarten has been my go-to guy for first drafts for ages: if I ever were to include a thank-you page in a book, it would be to thank him. This week, I’m due to receive my editor’s feedback, which means I’ll start my second draft soon.

On Tuesday I finished my article for Boekman. It’s an overview of the Dutch games scene and was written on commission from the Dutch Games Association.

That evening I had an exploratory chat with game maker Geert Nellen, about a game we might collaborate on. He spent all night trying to explain his concept, and I spent all night firing off associative thoughts that may or may not have had anything to do with what Geert is cooking up. In other words: promising!

On Wednesday I visited Two Tribes: during the last two months of development on Toki Tori 2, I’m ramping up my presence there. I’m even thinking of doing a ‘behind the scenes’ of sorts, inspired by Geoff Keighley’s The Final Hours, of course.

On Thursday, my youngest sister Karlien visited. She’s doing an internship at Tinqwise, and we chatted about e-learning, serious games, gamification, and whatnot.

Finally, I played Dishonored as far as I reasonably could, and finished Mark of the Ninja, of which I wrote a medium-sized combo review for nrc.next. I also edited short reviews of Rocksmith by Rogier Kahlmann and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria by Harry Hol, but only my piece appeared on Friday’s Tech spread in the paper.

With Bashers gone, I’ll publish (most of) my games publications on this site, so here’s the link to my Dishonored / Mark of the Ninja review (in Dutch).