http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=37324
Rando wrote:As some of you may know, 1 and a half lives ago I used to write a column for an online game magazine, the gamers' quarter... The column was entitled "Untold Tales from the arcade", and featured short articles about my arcade experiences. Most of my material has been "reprinted" on Insomnia as well (see here).
I know that a few people enjoyed the column and over the years asked for more (say, Ghegs :wink:). I was wondering if there are still some fans on this forum. If so, I'd like your feedback on your a few things.
1. If you liked the column, would you like its return on a 3 weeks/1 months basis?
My basic idea now is to write a more in-depth article (3/4 pages) covering 1 game, rather than 3-4 games, every installment. Any suggestions?
2. I am out of the loop re: blogs for a while. Can you suggest a blog format/system (whatever) in which I can easily add text and images and do a bit of layout without getting headaches? I would like that the final product looks good, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on it.
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3. As I played tons of arcade games, does anyone have special requests, regarding games that I should cover? Right now, I plan to write columns about Black Tiger, Wolf Fang/Rohga, and possibly return to the Darius Games. Any requests?
And here's what followed via email:
I wrote:I'd be more than willing to host your new efforts if you'd like. Don't mind the philosophy/theory on the frontpage, it's only there because of the pending publication of my books. We still care about games on my site, and once the books are out of the way, and the theoretical problems have been closed once and for all, we will devote ourselves to criticism entirely.
So if you want to write reviews, you could adopt our new layout which looks awesome:
http://insomnia.ac/reviews/megadrive/gynoug/
http://insomnia.ac/reviews/megadrive/dynamiteheaddy/
Or if you want to ressurect your old column I could reformat all the old articles (to get rid of those HTML errors), add all the remaining ones that I have yet to put up, and you could take it from there. Or I'd be open to any other suggestion regarding style/presentation/content combinations that you may have.
The forum is now off-limits for random people, and that might be a sticking point with you, since I expect you'd want as much feedback to your writings as possible, but I believe you will find that it is better that way. Gets rid of all the spam, and you still get mine, Josh's, zinger's and Recap's comments, and perhaps those of a few other experts, and those are all that matter.
If you nevertheless prefer to set up a new site, I'll be sure to link it in my forum anyway and be your number 1 reader. Just sayin' that if you want to join us, we'd love to have you there.
Rando wrote:Hi Alex,
Sorry for the late reply. How are you? I confess that when I googled to find my own articles, I did not realize that you published them again. At times, it feels like my Ph.D. took away most of my memories of a private life.
But I digress. Regarding your offer: I would like to publish "Untold tales" again, although in a different format, and mostly focus on this column. While I would be happy to have as many readers as possible, I do not think that I would need more feedback on pre-publication drafts than the one you and other Insomnia users can offer.
Originally, "untold" and my other articles were written as articles for a magazine (the gamer's quarter), so readers' feedback usually came in after publication (e.g. appreciation mails, death threats, etc.)
I would like to maintain that format, so I think that if we could maintain the current Insomnia format, it would be great. For "untold", my current plans involve a monthly installment which focuses on a single game, plus a seasonal bonus every three months, for a total of 16 articles per year. I am currently trying to form a list of all games I effectively played in arcades and whether I can remember any experiences about them; and trying to prepare a new article about Black Dragon/Black Tiger.
If you think that these plans are fine, and do not involve any excessive amount of work on your side, I'd be more than happy to resume the column on your site. How does it sound, to you?
Cheers
Francesco-Alessio
I wrote:The suggestion that you might be willing to write 16 articles a year made me think of something. How would you feel about publishing a book called "Untold Tales of the Arcade"? If you write it, I would be willing to publish it. It would have the same format as my "Videogame Art" books, the first of which you can find advertised on this page:
http://insomnia.ac/books
For some more info on this idea check out these two forum posts of mine [Note: threads are in staff forum and inaccessible to non-staff members]:
http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=14874#14874
http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=14936#14936
The problem is that, if you decide to write the book, you will not be able to publish all your upcoming articles online. You can publish some, but at least half (and ideally more than half) should remain exlusive to the book, so that people have a reason to buy it.
Of course you will still post the articles in the staff forum, so we can give you comments, but the book-exclusive ones will not go on the frontpage.
So think about this. You already have at least 1/4th, maybe even 1/3rd of the book written anyway.
As regards the rest of your comments... when is the ETA for the first new article? Let me know so that I have time to reformat the old articles and post the ones I still haven't posted yet, so we are all up to date for the new one. And when the new one is done, post it in the staff forum in a new thread so we can take a look at it.
Rando wrote:Hi Alex,
Sorry again for the delay...
After quite some thinking, the book proposal sounds quite good, for future plans. I would like to start with some articles first before working on book-exclusive material, since I would like to get a feeling of which direction I should go with the "tales", first. I have the will to bring the tales out of my skull, but I am in need of a good plan to do so. I confess that, outside academic stuff and work, I am feeling very disjointed when writing articles, so I would like to start again slowly.
At the moment I am thinking that, say, I can come with a draft of a new "untold" episode focused on Black Tiger by the 15th of August, and focus on Double Dragon and Darius after that. I played a lot these titles, these days, so memories are emerging back, I just need some time to put them together. Does it sound like a good first step?
Cheers
F-A
I wrote:Yeah, start off with some new episodes for the site, and we can start thinking about the book-exclusive ones towards the end. So I'll make sure all previous episodes are online before August 15, and you can post the new one in the staff forum whenever it's ready. I am looking forward to it, and so would the other guys I am sure, if they knew it was coming. In fact I think I might go and copy-paste our conversation for them...
So that's the story so far. Let's look forward to what Rando is planning to write then. How awesome would it be if we ended up with a couple of volumes of Untold Tales? Ideally, I would like to publish the following series of books in the "Art Criticism" section:
Videogame Art
Untold Tales of the Arcade
Megashock
(zinger's new site, whatever it will be called)
Postback EX (though good luck to me trying to convince and work with Recap!)
And also a Domination 101 book in the "art theory" section, if I can convince Seth to write all those future articles he'd said he'd write.
And that should be quite a shitload of books; the best stuff ever written on videogames, and all of it under a single publishing label devoted exclusively to the subject. So let's see how many of them end up materializing. The only one of the above I can so far guarantee is coming out is the first volume of my Videogame Art. I don't even know if I'll have enough games, or energy, for a second one -- and everything else is up in the air...
