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Audits and Courses, RPG Review, Ingress
Feb. 9th, 2014 09:36 pmIt's been a very busy over the past two weeks workwise. Conducting an ISO 9001:2008 internal audit for a company which is undergoing mergers and a subsidiary entity is certainly a challenge, especially when one is also conducting courses in between this. I am fairly pleased with how the courses went, and in my considered opinion, the internal audit is quite a professional review even if much of Saturday was spent getting the internal audit complete "just in time" for the external review. This is, of course, along with the usual work requirements. Frankly, I am absolutely exhausted, which is not a good way to begin the working week. It'll be an early night tonight.
During what constituted leisure time in the past several days, completed RPG Review issue 22 (very late) which concentrates on the "great survivors" of the roleplaying game hobby i.e., those which have been around since the mid-70s. My own contributions include three articles. Firstly, a business review of why some games have survived and others haven't ("Dinosaurs, Extinction, and Speciation"), which emphasises first-mover advantage as a cultural position and continious production. Secondly, a retrospective 1977 review of Chivalry & Sorcery 1st edition, which contains some truly innovative ideas and setting emphasis, but is hampered by extremely poor production qualities and overly-cumbersome resolution methods. The third article is a short look at "The Dungeon as Narrative and Simulation", which gives a brief look at the real history of underground complexes, makes a surprising claim of AD&D having a narrativist encounter system, and expressing the possibility of combining narrativist and simulationist orientations for such complexes.
I also reached the maximum level in Ingress, after six weeks of play. With sufficient experience with the game, I can see both the positive inducements (backstory, exploration, socialisation) which generate interest but also some disadvantages which put people off after a while. Whilst some of these are technical (GPS drift is ever-annoying, but that's not their fault really), and the continuing story has taken a slightly daft tangent, the main problem lies in the design of game-play. In a nutshell the change in the factional landscape occurs to fast and as a result it won't appeal to incremental strategic planners. Various methods to slow this pace down (e.g., making portals tougher, reducing the quantity of goods from a hack) would retain the existing benefits of game-play but also provide benefits for other gaming styles as well.
During what constituted leisure time in the past several days, completed RPG Review issue 22 (very late) which concentrates on the "great survivors" of the roleplaying game hobby i.e., those which have been around since the mid-70s. My own contributions include three articles. Firstly, a business review of why some games have survived and others haven't ("Dinosaurs, Extinction, and Speciation"), which emphasises first-mover advantage as a cultural position and continious production. Secondly, a retrospective 1977 review of Chivalry & Sorcery 1st edition, which contains some truly innovative ideas and setting emphasis, but is hampered by extremely poor production qualities and overly-cumbersome resolution methods. The third article is a short look at "The Dungeon as Narrative and Simulation", which gives a brief look at the real history of underground complexes, makes a surprising claim of AD&D having a narrativist encounter system, and expressing the possibility of combining narrativist and simulationist orientations for such complexes.
I also reached the maximum level in Ingress, after six weeks of play. With sufficient experience with the game, I can see both the positive inducements (backstory, exploration, socialisation) which generate interest but also some disadvantages which put people off after a while. Whilst some of these are technical (GPS drift is ever-annoying, but that's not their fault really), and the continuing story has taken a slightly daft tangent, the main problem lies in the design of game-play. In a nutshell the change in the factional landscape occurs to fast and as a result it won't appeal to incremental strategic planners. Various methods to slow this pace down (e.g., making portals tougher, reducing the quantity of goods from a hack) would retain the existing benefits of game-play but also provide benefits for other gaming styles as well.
