Betterblog

Today sees another content release, with a big pile of changes and enhancements to the economy. This is the next step in a long-term plan, and I wanted to talk a bit about what we're up to. Nearly three years ago I sat down at the PC in my spare room and started writing and coding Echo Bazaar. I ca... [More]

All across the web there are places that Failbetter players go to exchange stories, plan cat-swapping, meet other EBZ players, plan social actions and speculate about why exactly there are no foxes in the city. We've noticed the same questions and conversations coming up again and again. So we... [More]

You might have seen the interactive project that we built for Harvill Secker to publicise Erin Morgenstern's 'The Night Circus'. It just won Best Digital Marketing Campaign from the Bookseller's FutureBook Innovation Awards.  Lovely book, delightful project, charming people to work with. Thank... [More]

Another new feature for all you delightfully appetising Bazaar people. The inventory on the Me tab looks different: tidier. More flavoursome. We've separated a number of items into categories. Some, like Wines or Rubbery or Mysteries, will be familiar... others tease changes yet to come. It's all p... [More]

Stagconf is the slightly alarming name of a conference where the speakers are to be decked with asphodel, transformed into deer and rent to gobbets by the frenzied audience. Wait, wrong PR notes. Stagconf is the slightly alarming name of a conference about storytelling in computer games. There has... [More]

Rambly, speculative, Sunday night blog post. Every interactive story is haunted by the ghosts of those choices not taken: and also, by every choice previously taken. Here's an academic sort of take on this and here's an enthusiastic one. This often means you've replayed the story, but it can ... [More]

We've always said that Echo Bazaar will provide a satisfying conclusion to your personal stories, as well as the grand saga of the Neath itself. We don't want just to drag on, or peter out.  Last week at the writers' meeting we refined the road-map for that commitment. Currently, the plan is t... [More]

I've never really learnt to be careful when I have a mike in my hand. Not because I'm some sort of rebel, just because I came to public speaking rather late. It's got me in trouble a couple of times before, but now I know to be extra careful when there's press in the room. Last Tuesday I spoke (alo... [More]

After the BioWare seminar, we got a number of requests to do something similar back home. I trailed the idea on Twitter and got a promising response. So, here: http://complicity.eventbrite.com/ - a Failbetter seminar on narrative engineering, Wednesday 24th August 2011. But the really exc... [More]

In a moment I'm going to talk about Wilmot's End, the first of several content chunks we're releasing to bring a bit more joy into the narrative economy. It does some experimental things, so I want to talk first about experiments. We like to mess about with style in EBZ. As Yasmeen just outlined,&n... [More]