Week 818

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 another NOS op 3 week. I spent three mornings at the news organization, mostly researching but also pitching some ideas.

On Monday, David Nieborg and I met with Stijn Bronzwaer at NRC Handelsblad. We’ve worked with Stijn for a while, and he’s now been promoted to editor of the paper’s Media section. What it comes down to is that once again, the frequency and nature of our games coverage is going to change. David, Arjan Terpstra and I will still contribute, and the amount of stories might even increase, but we’ll really have to wait and see how it all pans out.

I didn’t edit or write any new game reviews last week, but the short Xbox One pieces we’d created before were published in nrc.next on Wednesday: Dead Rising 3 and Kinect Sports Rivals by Rogier Kahlmann, Forza Motorsport 5 by Harry Hol, and Peggle 2 by myself. On Friday I published my earlier Xbox One hardware review here: Zonder de Xbox One was de gamewereld beter af geweest.

I also helped with the paper’s Minecraft coverage, as the game and the company behind it were acquired by Microsoft. And I worked with David on the Finnish games industry article that we visited Helsinki for early this year, that obviously took a while to take shape.

On Tuesday, I started my Hybrid Writer’s Podcast series (announced in the first Hybrid Writer’s Report) by buying some kit (a Zoom H4n and a Shure SM58) and traveling to Amsterdam for an interview with Walter van den Berg, a longtime friend and author of the fine novel Van dode mannen win je niet.

I afforded myself the luxury of starting out with someone I know well, and on Thursday I interviewed Peter Zantingh, author of De eerste maandag van de maand and a fellow NRC journalist; later interviews won’t be as easy. I hope to post a new episode every Tuesday, for a ‘season’ of 10-12 episodes.

On Thursday, I visited The Hague for the kick-off of The Bridge, the Dropstuff art project that connects Dutch and Swedish audiences through massive screens and specially developed games. There were a few hitches though: the connection was slow, and the games had trouble running. Let’s hope they’ll fix this quickly.

On Saturday, I saw the four-hour stage adaptation of The Fountainhead, which was great. It didn’t quite match my expectations (I shouldn’t have read those glowing reviews), but it was certainly an inspirational experience. A grand finale for a pretty good week.