A Tale In The Desert
Egyptian Wholesale Construction For Fun And Profit!
I must admit to mixed feelings about A Tale in the Desert at this point. It's clearly a work of genius, on many levels, but I'm increasingly wondering if I'm good enough for it, which is an odd place to find myself.
One of the other Hemlock Beach residents came up with a quite astute theory, as we were chatting over the brick racks. ATitD attracts two sorts of people, the Gamers, and the Simers. I suppose we might identify those as Achievers and Socialisers, in Bartlespeak.
When the Telling starts, both come to have a go at it all....
After a brief, but entirely unrelated sojourn in Belgium (Chocolates, Wine, Acres and Acres of First World War Cemeteries, Reasonable Weather), it's back to it. Life on what I've loosely termed 'Hemlock Beach' seems to be getting a bit busy. There's four of us beavering away on the Brick Racks now, with two of you folks having been sufficiently curious to work through a variety of clues scattered throughout this here blog, and the podcast, and stalked us sufficiently well to have set up Compounds in a spot which is almost impossible for a random new player to settle...
The big Technology Push took a new turn with the arrival on the beach spot nextdoor of a New Rival, who promptly put up a monstrosity of a Compound, all asymmetrical angles and mismatched walls, which given my appreciation of order (With a small 'o'), is tantamount to a declaration of war! (Also with a little 'w'). I have a few days head start on him, and have so far unlocked the secrets of Leather and Oil. On the other hand, he's managed to invent the Shovel, which I didn't see coming. A hard fought race lies ahead...
Much of...
Having got through a somewhat involved tutorial, which I suspect gives a fair impression of the complexity of the game as a whole, its time to find myself a place to call home in Ancient Egypt. The game gives you a number of locations you can teleport to to start a new life, which by the look of it seem to be banners errected by the existing citizens for this very purpose. Also, for the first 24 hours of life, the new player can 'reroll' on this chart, offering a way to see quite a lot of the world without...
Another launch, another blogosphere debate about such nebulous terms as 'Innovation', 'Evolution', 'Revolution' and all sorts of related 'tions', most of which seem to be synonyms for 'Bored of WoW! Moar Differenty!' Certainly been here before myself, and Tobold seems to have hit the nail on the head (damnit!), with a response to it all, on long the basic lines of 'Different is already here, just none of you really want that.' I'm paraphrasing somewhat, but he casually throws out three or four titles which are indeed different, in a very meaningful sense, rather than in the minutiae. They...