Week 820

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 Monday, the morning after a delayed flight home from London, I was so tired that I had to cancel some stuff here and there. I got a couple hours extra sleep, and was able to sort through notes and e-mails. By the end of the day, I felt a little more organized, a little bit better. That was good, because the rest of the week turned out to be rather busy.

The next day, while waiting for my new phone to be delivered, I edited three short game reviews, which appeared in nrc.next on Wednesday: Murasaki Baby by Rogier Kahlmann, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call by Harry Hol and Super Smash Bros. for 3DS by Jurjen Tiersma.

(The iPhone 6 is bigger, which I’m not sure about yet. I like the TouchID that I didn’t have before, though, and I’m surprised how few third party apps have been updated to support the bigger screen so far. In all, it’s just a new iPhone. I don’t get why people line up for it anymore.)

After that, I met with Kim Kamphuis to discuss a guest lecture I’m going to give today at the Hogeschool Utrecht. I spent some time over the week, including the weekend, to get my slides ready.

During the day, I published my first Hybrid Writer’s Podcast, in which I interview Walter van den Berg about his novel Van dode mannen win je niet. Getting the podcast online included wrestling with podcast plugins for WordPress, and creating a podcast image I’m happy with, without spending an absurd amount of time on it. Later in the week, Walter linked to it, happily.

Finally, I traveled to Amsterdam to record another episode: I interviewed Nelleke Noordervliet, which was great fun. It should be online next week.

On Thursday, I traveled to Two Tribes to discuss the story of RIVE, the robot hacking shooter game we’re working on together. It felt like a very solid meeting: the demo is done, and people like it, so now we’re moving into building the full game. And we think we have a pretty clear picture of what needs to happen. I also took one of Two Tribes’ PC’s home, so that I can work on the game’s dialog remotely, as soon as the dialog system is done.

That afternoon I had coffee with Maarten Brands of Cook & Becker, who was about to head to the New York Comic Con. And at night, I had dinner with Jurjen Tiersma, freelance game journalist. Good times.

After that, I drafted a new NRC games article, a status update on Nintendo. I managed to include a lot of recent news, including the iOS release of the Pokémon card game, the company’s 125th birthday and the upcoming New 3DS. Using feedback from my fellow games writers Arjan Terpstra and David Nieborg, I was able to finish it on Friday; it’s in NRC Handelsblad today.

Finally, I wrote a couple of articles for the Dutch Official PlayStation Magazine: a profile on RPG developer BioWare and a ‘wishful thinking’ column on an imaginary pamphlet handout game…