Metamedia - Latest Comments

Re: Detritus: lessons learned from making my first Twine game

Mary Hamilton — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 19:34:40 -0000

Aw, thank you.

Re: Detritus: lessons learned from making my first Twine game

Blunderbussme — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 12:27:54 -0000

I just want to say that I know nothing whatsoever about gaming, coding or being technically very clever. But you have a way with words that makes everything sound very lovely and meaningful even when I understand so very little (in fact it possibly helps).

Re: Where is the Roger Ebert’s commissioning editor of games?

Mary Hamilton — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 09:11:12 -0000

Thanks for the responses! Oskar, I agree with you that there's not a huge amount we can do to speed up the process, other than make it clear that there is demand for games writing from umbrella publications, and keep sharing and doing the good stuff. I'm not sure that anyone has really solved the issue of how to make good writing pay online; a lot of new niche projects have fairly traditional business models, and I guess I wonder where the commercial heads are in all of this? Five out of Ten and Re/Action are the two that seem best thought out to me in commercial terms, but you're right - it'd be great to see more experiments here.

On pushing forward - very much think you're right about conversation. It's easy to think of blogging as uni-directional, and of articles as something that you can publish and then ignore, regardless of the comments or responses. There's a culture on competitive sites - mainstream media in Australia is a great example here - of not acknowledging your influences, not linking out, to other journalists or other sites. I think blogging's a place to get away from that, to put words out and see what words you get back in reply. The power in large part is in the conversation.

Re: Where is the Roger Ebert’s commissioning editor of games?

Foopdayitis — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 08:42:49 -0000

I think compilations/ collaborations are much more effective and serve to attract a larger audience while at the same time making for less work for any given individual. I have seen plenty of fantastically potential Eberts which I reall just came across on a whim, theres no organising except for CritDis and a few others and even then no one specialising in reviews except for MetaCritic what a horrible thought. Its interesting that when you talk about mainstream you talk about people with money and yet Totalbiscuit is our (gamers) mainstream he is independent. Its also important to remember that gamer mainstream has to start at not-mainstream.

Great article.

Re: Where is the Roger Ebert’s commissioning editor of games?

Oscar Strik (@qwallath) — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 08:27:21 -0000

Thanks for weighing in! I knew there was some sort of serendipity going on when Spector's column came out in the exact month when BoRT is turning all reflective.

I agree that time is a big factor; of course we (as 'game people') are hungry for a situation where games are acknowledged as the cultural artefacts they are, but such things take a lot of time, and I'm not sure there is anything we can do to speed up the process, other than keep making games and keep writing meaningful criticism.

As the smart editors in game writing know: "good writing wants to be paid", and thankfully we are seeing more and more initiatives that ensure pay for good writers (Five Out of Ten, Re/Action), particularly for longer, more sophisticated criticism of the kind that other art forms have been blessed with. To be fair, next to mainstream exposure, we *also* want the kind of niche exposure you find in film, art, literature magazines that cater to a more select crowd, and for that kind of work which has a smaller audience, a decent pay model is even more crucial. It would be great to see more experiments and initiatives in this area.

Finally, in my own BoRT piece (Sub Specie: The Future of Videogame Logging), I offer some suggestions how blogging itself could make a push forward: more diversity (linguistic, religious, national/ethnic), more communication and interaction. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?

Re: Detritus: a Twine game

Mary Hamilton — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 21:43:24 -0000

Oh no! I thought I'd gotten all the bugs out, but apparently there were still a couple. Really sorry about that - there's a new version uploaded now.

Re: Detritus: a Twine game

Soidanae — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 15:27:41 -0000

Hello! Was playing through and got to the book section of act 5, clicked "What's next?" and it linked me to a 404 error on this website. I've been loving Detritus so far, thank you for it.

Re: Welcome to Australia, there are rainbow birds

Mary Hamilton — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 06:26:08 -0000

Thanks Mick. Loving it here so far, though very busy. And even though it's winter, it's still warmer in Sydney than in London most days!

Re: Welcome to Australia, there are rainbow birds

cartoonmick — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 05:03:48 -0000

Hope you're enjoying the land down under, Mary.
It'll be much nicer with the return of spring & summer (as modified by climate change).
Nice little sketch at the top of page here.

Cheers

Mick

Re: Using old-style retweets makes you look like a bit of a dick

billbennettnz — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:17:59 -0000

It depends on how the site in question packages up its retweets. Most do a nice enough job, every so often some idiot decides to put something spam-like in the retweets that just screams for editing before hitting the button.

Also when I know the journalist, I prefer to credit the retweet to the story writer, not the publication. If that makes me a dick, well so be it.

Re: Using old-style retweets makes you look like a bit of a dick

Alison Gow — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:26:12 -0000

I find the people who do it with others pix most annoying because that's really taking away from someone else's work. But I also think I'm probably a bit more irritated by things on Twitter than I used to be, and I find it easier to adopt an 'if you can't say anything nice...' approach.
So retweets are just one of a number of my narks. Maybe some advice for the #teamfollowback crowd in the next post, please Mary?

Re: Using old-style retweets makes you look like a bit of a dick

Mary Hamilton — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:27:11 -0000

Oh, I totally think adding a witty and excellent comment is a valid old-RT use. And I'm certainly guilty of doing this myself, too...

Re: Using old-style retweets makes you look like a bit of a dick

Mary Hamilton — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:25:35 -0000

On most apps - or Tweetbot, at least - reply all should let you do that.

Re: Using old-style retweets makes you look like a bit of a dick

Huw Sayer - Business Writer — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:20:08 -0000

Fearful of agreeing just in case someone points out that I sometimes do the copy and paste with the RT thing when I want to comment...but in my defence, I do do the normal ('native'?) RT first - so people can see the source - and then I try to make my comment really clever and witty and all round brilliant (because that is so in keeping with my twitter persona).

Re: Using old-style retweets makes you look like a bit of a dick

Aaron — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:13:12 -0000

Agreed, although I wish the new-style retweets copied in the retweeter as well as the original source when replying though.

Re: Upping sticks: moving to Sydney with Guardian Australia

Mary Hamilton — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:38:30 -0000

Thanks Huw!

Re: Upping sticks: moving to Sydney with Guardian Australia

Mary Hamilton — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:38:19 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Upping sticks: moving to Sydney with Guardian Australia

Adam Javůrek (@javurek) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 21:19:14 -0000

Sounds great, congrats!

Re: Upping sticks: moving to Sydney with Guardian Australia

Huw Sayer - Business Writer — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:45:49 -0000

Wow - what an amazing opportunity - am sure you and Grant will have a wonderful time - best wishes - H

PS: Sorry, not sign of birth certificate here.

Re: The most important thing I've ever written

Mary Hamilton — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:14:32 -0000

Thanks Huw - and that'd be amazing. I hope so.

Re: The most important thing I've ever written

Huw Sayer - Business Writer — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:50:58 -0000

That's so beautiful - makes me want to cry - hope you and Grant are very happy together. I suspect many people will be using your wonderful words in future for their own ceremonies - so much better than "honour and obey."

Re: 10 things I learned from a web traffic spike

Ben Evans — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:32:50 -0000

Good post - mirrors a lot of what we've seen recently with our own traffic. +1 on needing a caching layer. We use Fastly - and it has proved to be cheap & very good at doing WP content. Highly recommended.

Re: 10 things I learned from a web traffic spike

Mary Hamilton — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:02:48 -0000

Aye. I'd gotten used to not getting much traffic at all, so I'd gotten rather lazy about caching. I've learned my lesson now, I hope.

Re: 10 things I learned from a web traffic spike

Adam Tinworth — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:32:53 -0000

Yeah, WordPress is great, but if you're expecting any volume of traffic at all, you need a cacheing layer. Whenever I set up a new WP blog, I routinely add local and CDN-based cacheing, just to be safe.

And people have been under-estimating forums for years. For the web-centric press's rampant neophilia, new online things very rarely kill off old online things - just drive them into niches.

Re: Games journalism and games PR

Chris Carverr — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:05:02 -0000

Indeed. It can be a very blurred line.