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What I’m Reading

March 30th, 2011 by Troy Goodfellow · 5 Comments · Me, Media

One of the great things about working from home is that I can keep tabs on the people and sites I like almost at will while I cull things from databases and try to find outlets friendly to the types of things Evolve represents. Though my blog roll and contributors’ listings are good solid bets for good solid writing, here’s a post to remind you of some things that you may not notice if you don’t follow me on Twitter.

I remember when Quarter to Three started a zillion years ago as a site where Tom Chick and Mark Asher could write whatever they wanted. The front page atrophied for a little while until Tom started doing his own podcasts and now, with SyFy inexplicably pulling the plug on his great gaming blog Fidgit, he has turned to using that front page to write the sort of things he used to write there. He has pulled in members of the forum community to write game diaries of things they are playing from A-10 Warthog to Tactics: Ogre to Sims Medieval. And, even better, Bruce Geryk has returned to wargame writing with a compelling account of the awesomeness of War in the East. Great to see Tom make use of this space so well. Plus a couple of recent strategy game podcasts (Company of Heroes and Steel Panthers.)

One of my favorite new blogs is No High Scores. It comes from the pens of the core Gameshark staff but is separate from that. Bill, Brandon, Danielle, Michael and Todd are writing a group blog that has personality and focuses on things they are interested in. As a PR flak, I appreciate Bill’s editing of press releases and Brandon’s cooking posts are pretty fun. If you aren’t reading it, you should be. And not just because they are my friends.

Fog of Wargames, Blunt Force Gamers and Sugarfree Gamer are three wargame centered blogs that have entered my daily rotation. Still haven’t listened to Blunt Force’s podcast, mostly because I find I have little time for podcasts these days. But it’s on the list. Lots of AARs and analysis at these places, things I want to do more of, so please check them out.

As for books, I finally took the plunge and bought Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken. After GDC, I knew I had to get this book if only to see if it made more sense to me as a book than it did as talking points for a presentation. I may say more about it later. No surprises in the first hundred pages, but then I used to read a lot of books about games and science/psychology.

Of course, I am still reading my old standbys of forums and twitter and political blogs and the like. And the blogs written by my best friends, naturally. Fill the comments with things I should be following in the game world – new things if possible.

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5 Comments so far ↓

  • CFKane

    I am honored that Fog of Wargames is in your daily rotation. Hopefully soon I can generate some more content to justify having a readership.

    I’m thinking about writing something about EU3, but I am encountering some of the same problems you were talking about with your EU3 tutorial AAR.

  • spelk

    Thanks again for the shout out Troy, much appreciated.

    I’ve been deep in the Anglo-Zulu War recently, trying desperately to conjur up an Advanced Tactics scenario covering the Invasion of Zululand. Beyond that I’ve been shooting muskets in a highly disciplined regiment playing Mount and Warband: Mount & Musket mod. If you have ever dreamed of being a part of a linebattle, organised infantry blazing muskets in ripple fire across the battlefield then I strongly encourage you to try it out.

    At some point, (*looks up*) Chip and myself will start another Battle of the Blogs AAR.

  • tecben

    I like posts like this. The only place that I know that does this well is The Atlantic’s “What I Read”.

  • boogsarah

    Excellent post – I’m always looking for new sources of info in the war/strategy gaming space.

  • Peter S (Mind Elemental)

    I’ll second Troy’s recommendations; in particular, what Tom has done with the front page of Quarter to Three deserves special credit. Throwing it open to game diaries from the community members plays to our diversity, because it allows Qt3 to showcase the mindboggling array of games out there.