Mars Horizon Blast Off is Live!
Super happy news, the card game that we’ve spun out of the main development of Mars Horizon is now live for backing! Please join us on Kickstarter!
If you’re interested in the roots of the project, see here…
Lots more to come!
Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics is on Switch
So I’m late to posting this, but it is out there on the Switch now and huge congats to the team at Auroch Digital, Ripstone and Modiphius for all the hard work getting us there!
There was an interesting interview with the original creator of the great Warhammer 40,000 in (I think) Tabletop Gaming magazine. I wrote out a quote from the print edition that grabbed me about the inspirations that swirled around its creation…
“We were inspired by things like Philip Jose Farmer’s World of Tiers about a sort of artificial world idea. There’s a lot of that kind of thing in the Cthulhu Mythos as well, the Great Old Ones and galaxy spanning races, or going back to Doc EE Smith, you’ve got these two civilisations that go out and seed the entire galaxy. The Warhammer world was essentially conceived of as a science-fiction world which has gone fantasy.”
In the 1st edition of 40K they also talk about other inspirations which can be seen clearly within the game itself – Dune, Foundation & Empire to name a couple.
I was also interested to see he noted a game called Battle: Practical Wargaming as an inspiration.
Final point I was also fascinated to read was that the reason there is a wide range of factions and races was the idea you could use other game’s minis are stand-ins. For example the Adeptus Arbites were there so you could use the range of 2000AD Judge Dredd minis (which GW, back then sold) in your game.
I could not find a link to the interview, but he has a new game coming soon…
From Snapshot to XCom to Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics
Over at Auroch Digital, on our new series on the podcast, we’ve just put out a 2 part ‘potted history of Turn-Based Tactics games. Basically we start with Snapshot (from 1978) to Xcom (various incarnations!) right up to our Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics.
Oh and Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics is on sale now on Steam – 25% off!
Networked Conspiracy & Disinformation – Must Read Article from 2018
As we’re in the Christmas break, it’s good to get a bit of time to think about some of the bigger issues. If you’ve followed the blog for a while, you’ll know I have a long standing interest in networked media, indeed my PhD was on this topic. Earlier in the year the issue of how key the networking of our media forms resurfaced for me personally:
I’m far, far from the first one to note the issues of the automated linking of YouTube videos and how they pull watchers towards the lowest common denominator of content, which in turn leads to more and lower.. This article is a must read on the issue looking at how conspiracy thoeries overtake realty on YouTube:
Every time there’s a mass shooting or terror event, due to the subsequent backlash, this YouTube conspiracy genre grows in size and economic value. The search and recommendation algorithms will naturally ensure these videos are connected and thus have more reach.
In other words, due to the increasing depth of the content offerings and ongoing optimization of YouTube’s algorithms, it’s getting harder to counter these types of campaigns with real, factual information.
