Video Gaming

Media Size and The Changing Media Environment

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(Last week I posted to a link on an article about rejected SF and Fantasy novels, and one of our regulars noted that Dune had been rejected for length at one point – and then noted how some series and books seem to be overlong.  That got me thinking and this column is the result).

What is the ideal length of a book?  A series?  A TV episode?  A movie?  A movie series?

You have an idea in mind.  Publishers, TV executives, authors, and everyone has an idea in mind.  I daresay you could, with little prompting start quite a conversation – or argument – about the ideal length/duration of any form of media.  We all have ideas about such things, some held quite passionately.

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Are We Loosing Our Creative Breathing Room?

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Technology allows us to deliver content and spectacular speeds to an audience of ready fans.  We writers can get our eBooks out faster than anyone in publishing dreaded of a decade ago.  Those of us in gaming can get out a game in parts, or keep the DLC flowing until a game's sequel comes out.  Musicians can deliver one tune at a time until the DVD burns or concert season comes up.

We can keep delivering content all the time.  There can be almost no gap between one product than the next – in the case of novels, with continual e-chapters, it never has to end.

I'm wondering if this is a good idea, or if at the very least it'll be hard to adapt to:

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Are You Designing For A Maximum Audience?

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I used to have a tradition in my programming days, of going to the Interface Hall of Shame (now quite out of date http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/) to find out the latest things not to do.  And yes, as you guessed, my programming days were quite awhile ago.

Anyway, to get away from my age to the subject, one of the things I learned as a programmer was that designing a good interface was not obvious.  Most people designed interfaces with . .  . well I'm not sure what they had in *mind* since thinking was not often part of the process.  Let's just say I saw some bad stuff.

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