My first year of falconry was swimming in a vast ocean of my own ignorance. In many ways, I am still doggie paddling there. Preparing for the state falconry exam, certainly, gave me a large swath of the book learning that I needed to talk about falconry, to gain some of the vocabulary, the code …
Around 3:30 pm on a Wednesday afternoon I get a call from my neighbor, Lizzy, who was walking her two Blue Heelers on our farm. My dogs were on a red-tail down near the swamp, they didn’t touch it, but it looks hurt. I wasn’t sure what to do, and I wanted you to know. …
Manning a newly trapped hawk is the great pleasure that I most anticipated upon my second year as a falconer. “Manning,” the process by which a wild hawk is acclimatized to humans and handling, is a process of slowly building trust and discipline. The hawk must trust you, at each step, or she will simply …
One place that writing happens in modern computer RPGs is in character dialogue. There are as many ways to do this as there are CRPGs, but your goals are the same; reveal character, without resorting to exposition, and still provide an interactive experience. Doing Dialogue Two prime modes exist for dialogue in CRPGs; cinematic, and …
Specialty retail appeals to people into whatever it is you sell. If it’s horseback riding, it sounds cool to run a barn. If it’s fly fishing, it sounds cool to sell specialty lures. If it’s gaming, it sounds cool to own a game store. However, specialty retail is, by definition, so specialized that there is …
Like it or not, the game industry suffers from an image problem. It doesn’t take much to fix your email. Here’s why you should. Credibility You have a home repair project, so you search locally and find 2 plumbing companies. One has an email address called “Bob@BobsPlumbing.com” and the other is “JoePlumber14565@yahoo.com.” Given no other …
Read more “Why your store should have a custom email address”
As part of building a class on writing for game design in Fall of 2017, I’m creating a series of assignments here. Some will end up in the course, no doubt, and some won’t, but I think my teaching is better when I echo chamber my work far in advance and then go back and …
Today a customer who was in town for work, who had previously patronized the Game Universe chain of stores I managed in Milwaukee, stopped by my new store in Rochester NY. Unfortunately I was not there, but the staffer commented that he had mentioned how he often got things cheaper online, then proceeded to drop …
In fall of 2017 I am teaching a class at St John Fisher college titled “Writing for Games.” The course description I have cooked up goes something like this. “In this course students focus on the practical and artistic writing elements of game design. This includes writing dialogue scripts for video games, understanding the part …
Marketing, real marketing, is the single most important part of your budget in a game store. I’m not talking “oops I ran that event below cost let’s write it off as marketing” screw ups, I’m talking about genuine “get people in your door and excited” marketing. If you read around the game industry, and retail …