Week 799

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 May vacation for my oldest daughter, and we took the liberty to reside at my parents-in-law’s spacious home. However, I did do a bunch of work there, and I was away for two days, too.

Most importantly, I finished a new grant application for the Creative Industries Fund NL. For now, I’ve shifted my focus away from iPad novel Ninja Girl, zooming in on the software tools necessary to make it instead. As name for the project, I settled on ‘Hybrid Writer’s Toolkit’, which I like the ring of.

On Wednesday I took a train to Berlin, to attend a panel discussion presented by Michael Praetorius at re:publica 2014. I was invited by MIZ-Babelsberg to weigh in on (the theory and practice of) failure. I probably talked too much about other people’s mistakes, having just finished the book Creativity, Inc by Pixar president Ed Catmull, which talks a lot about failing early and hard.

I didn’t feel very well that day, but still managed to visit the Game Creators Hangout that night at Meltdown, an e-sports cafe. A group of local game makers gets together monthly, this time to play Sportsfriends, the pack of modern sports games including Johann Sebastian Joust that just came out. I wrote about the whole thing on my way back home on Thursday; the finished piece should be in NRC Handelsblad tomorrow and perhaps also in nrc.next.

On Thursday, nrc.next published a nice spread featuring Jurjen Tiersma’s Child of Light interview, and short game reviews of Bezircle (by Stefan Keerssemeeckers) and Etrian Odyssey Untold (by Harry Hol). Which I edited.