Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
I was doing another round of link research for the blog (you'll see some new resources soon), and once again Bonnie and I ran into another round of dead sites. You've heard me rant about this before – there's so many blogs and sites out there they would be awesome, interesting, and progeeky if they were actually updated.
In ranting to a friend, he simply said, "Oh, like Geocities?" That stopped me in my mental tracks.
(Last week I suggested spontaneity and surprise were elements that people making media could use to add value and increase interest. I wanted to explore that more.)
As I've suggested before, spontaneity and unpredictability is an element of a media product (a story, a game, etc.) that can get, maintain, and expand people's interest in the product. Spontaneity, combined with relatively fast access to the spontaneous content, is a unique way to add value to a media product as its un duplicateable and plays on our love of the unknown and novel. Getting that spontaneity is thus important – but varies from media to media.
Every kind of media has its different advantages and disadvantages in adding spontaneity to it. Changing technology has also altered how this can be done, and changing expectations have altered what people expect. I'm going to take a look at the different kinds of media and how spontaneity can be added to them.
I love hint books for video games. Sure they're fun to get help on a game, but they're also chocked full of interesting details on the game, extra tips, and even instructions superior to the game manual. They usually boast good production values as well – the really good ones are a pleasure to read and thumb through. I think my love of hint books is easy to understand.
As I'm quite fond of hint books, I've noticed some trends that makes me wonder what the future of these large, beautiful guides is:
So between more games, people getting used to electronic access of books, and the free online services used by people to get their game-hint fix, what is the future of Hint Books? As you may guess, I'm going to attempt to answer this because it's a geekonomic area, and an area of career interest – besides for some of you hopeful writers out there, it might give you some career ideas.