Week 702

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.

Last week was the week in which the games and technology spread in nrc.next finally saw the light of day. In the end, they called it ‘Tech’, which may not be a great moniker for a cultural medium like games, but at least it’s short and easy to remember. Most importantly, it will appear every Friday, so if you don’t have a subscription, now you know when to get single copies. This first edition had my column about the Wii U and more games stuff will appear soon.

The latest issue of the Dutch Official PlayStation Magazine also came out, containing my interviews with Ricky Haggett of Honeyslug (of indie games Hohokum and Frobisher Says) and with David Kushner (of the GTA book Jacked), as well as a retro column about Final Fantasy VII. In the same week, I finished writing my column for the next issue, about Tony Hawk’s Skateboarding.

Otherwise, I wrote an update for design magazine Items about the Gamefonds evaluation I attended a while back.

On Tuesday I visited Two Tribes to work on Toki Tori 2, the puzzle platform game on which I am the story director. We discussed storyboards and the ‘sliced’ Lego island we’ve been working on. If you’re interested, read Collin van Ginkel’s blog update about this. Finally, with Collin and Hessel Bonenkamp, I talked through our story, trying to pinpoint its weak spots and streamlining it where possible.

On Wednesday I had a meeting with Rudolf Wolterbeek Muller and Martijn Boomsma of Innotouch, to discuss a possibly forthcoming tablet magazine.

On Friday I went to London by train, with my friend Filip. In the afternoon we checked out the Shard, Europe’s highest building, nearly finished now, and the Tate Modern, the first of a bunch of museums we visited during the weekend. They’re free in London, which has turned them into public spaces of sorts, humming with activity. So great.

That evening, we happily stumbled upon a reading by science fiction writer, Boing Boing blogger and copyright activist Cory Doctorow. The talk was held in a wonderful ‘park night’ setting, outside, without a slide presentation. It was just Doctorow speaking in an engaging and eloquent manner about the things he knows, focusing on the trend against ‘general computation’, which has everything to do with copying in Doctorow’s world. Impressively thought-provoking.

On Saturday, my friend Martijn threw a party to celebrate his recent marriage, which I visited with Filip and two other Dutch friends. It was a good party. I had a cocktail with cotton candy as its base ingredient. We also climbed the roof, setting off the silent alarm, which shows how far we’re willing to go to hold on to our illusion of youth.

Something special happened that night: a half-naked woman walked into our hotel room. Not quite as ethereal as Naoko at Toru’s bedside halfway through Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, she was more of a physical presence, and probably drunk.

I should explain that in a cost-saving effort, we chose a hotel room with a shared bathroom. Also, we didn’t lock our door in case of nightly bathroom visits.

It was around 4 AM that Filip and I were awakened by the sound of someone opening our door, then closing it. We listened how someone used the bathroom. Really awake now, the door opened again, after which this black-haired woman – wearing jeans, right arm covering her naked breasts – barged in, produced a moaning sound, and finally, disappeared.

On Sunday, I bought a yellow shirt, two books (50% off on the second one) and a magazine. Then we went home.