From: http://news.filefront.com/gaming-today-qa-akellas-mariana-vashurina-discusses-disciples-iii-renaissance/

More about Disciples III: Renaissance

From: http://www.downthewall.com/archive/2008/03/interview-age-of-decadence-developer-says-choice-defines-rpgs/

more about the focus on player choice and freedom

Vince: No more than 60%. How does it compare? Well, many companies and publishers believe that most people will play a game only once, so they focus on making that single playthrough as memorable as possible, without worrying about replay value. Consider Knights of the Old Republic. First, the “OMG! I’m Revan!” surprise works only once and it tends to overshadow the replays. Second, there isn’t much to replay (unless you really love the story and want to experience exactly the same thing again). Keep in mind, we aren’t talking about the overall quality of the game here, we are talking about the replay value.

We designed the game with replayability in mind. You can replay the game 3-4 times taking different paths, discovering different things, arriving to different conclusions. Almost like playing several different games within the same story arc. Needless to say, we can’t rely on twists and surprises. Instead we focus on the player’s perspective, different ways to progress, and different storylines to follow.

More about Age of Decadence

Scifi dimensions has a podcast interview with Ken McLeod http://www.scifidimensions.com/podcast/2008/07/14/the-scifidimensions-podcast-11/
I’m glad I found it as I somehow had missed that he had a new book out. I happen to read this McLeod’s blog, too, although it is not updated very often, but he hadn’t pimped the book there that I noticed (I have been busy this summer but still!).

It seems it is another one of his near future thrillers - I liked his far fetched books better, but he’s a very enjoyable writer in any mode (as long as you are open minded about speculative politics, that is).

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

While on the subject of speculative politics, or political scifi (usually thrillers), here’s a nice article at the Huffington Post about a selection of them which came out this summer, by another good author and editor, Jeff Vandermeer - here’s the article. The only one I had heard about is Cory Doctorov’s, but I will have to look them up.

To think Jeff Vandermeer was once so little known I got an email from him for just mentioning his book on my wishlist here… I think he lost track of who mentions his books nowadays. I havent read anything by him in a while, he seems to focus on editing, or I missed the books like I missed McLeod’s…

I think I will request some of these from the library, give these authors a boost