Week 774

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.

Another busy week, last week. First of all, I wrote an article about the trend of more ‘literary’ games: Device 6, Blackbar, Gone Home and The Stanley Parable. The piece appeared in nrc.next today.

I also wrote my last retro column for Official PlayStation Magazine, as well as an anthology-like article including quotes from the various indie interviews I did for the magazine over the last two years.

On Tuesday I met with Ianus Keller, one of the organisers of This Happened Utrecht. We talked about how I’ll do a talk about De verdwijners, my writing process, and novels as designed objects, next Monday. Two days later, I will be doing pretty much the same at Ignite Amsterdam 32.

That afternoon, I met with Martine Bogaart of Dutch Game Garden, and we talked about the Indigo Classes at the Control Conference this week, where I will be a moderator. The Indigo Classes are targeted specifically at students. And it’s kind of a miracle that I haven’t yet met some of the talented and successful game developers that I’ll be announcing.

After that, I got acquainted with the researcher I’ll be working with at a new client that I’m not sure I can disclose at this point. (So I won’t.) This is a big project, in which I get to involve the expertise and service of David Nieborg, as well as Alper and Kars as Hubbub, which is always a good thing.

On Thursday, I continued my work for Taskforce Innovatie, interviewing Stephan Aarts at DesignerCafe, and Aniek Bax and Gertie Cuijpers at the Universiteitsmuseum Utrecht. I also edited a few articles written by other contributors that will be included in the publication about the SEA programme we’re creating.

That night, I continued my iOS tutorial during the weekly game development hobby night with Hessel Bonenkamp.

On Friday, more work for Taskforce Innovatie, heading to Almere to speak with Danny Hoffman at Elements Interactive, and then back to Utrecht to interview Mo Assem at Mr. Beam and Karel Millenaar at Fourcelabs. Karel and I decided to combine the necessary and the pleasant: we had steak and talked about our life and work.

On Saturday, I spent the afternoon with Collin van Ginkel, helping out on a Gamefonds grant application for a new game.

On Sunday, I did a walkthrough of the upcoming Toiletten app, which now has all its crazy beautiful Sjors Houkes audio implemented by programming wizard Ricardo Blommers at Codeglue. I found only a handful of remaining issues, which means that the app is nearly finished.