Writings: December

It's been a busy month. Here's a round-up of my games writing in the last month, in something resembling chronological order.

My preview of Star Wars: The Old Republic from PCG 234 is now up on the web.

I had a really warm response to this piece on the final hours of Star Wars Galaxies. I played Galaxies for around three years from launch, and it's one of my all-time favourite games, broken as it was. Its eventual end has had the side-effect of bringing me back in touch with a number of old friends from those years, and spending the last seconds of the game with them is exactly how I'd have wanted it to go. One of those friends is now Massively's Jef Reahard, whose own piece went up shortly afterwards.

Writings: Where I Was In November

So, yeah. I've not posted for over a month because I've been in Bath writing for PC Gamer. I'm working on the mag almost exclusively, which means fewer links to post, and an increasingly passive-aggressive Craig Lager to placate (I kid, he's over it now. We had a drink and ate chocolate buttons and played Battlefield over Skype on Friday night and everything's fine. It's totally not weird if we both come to your party.)

What this means for my career I have no idea, so all I'm taking from it at the moment is that I was not totally fucking stupid to leave my job and that I have a lot to learn. That sounds a like false modesty, so I'll clarify: I've received more practical advice about my writing in the last four weeks than I did in three years at Oxford. I'm working on my 10,000 hours. I'm back into StarCraft. I'm living on a sofa. Feels like progress.

Writing, then. Beyond this story which made the entire internet angry, none of my work for PCG is online yet. I do however have a number of things in this month's mag, issue 234: a round-up of the best of the Steam Workshop; a four-page preview of Star Wars: The Old Republic; reviews of Serious Sam: The Random Encounter and Airline Tycoon 2. This issue was wrapping up in the first week I was in the office: I've got a lot more in issue 235, out before Christmas.

I've also got a feature in this month's Edge, but I don't know that I'm allowed to say what it is.

That's all I've got. How are you?