I've only played one and didn't finish it because I got busy with work, but I was enjoying it until then. Seemed to be building well on the lessons they'd learnt from the Runaway trilogy. I'd love to go back to it one day.

I still have the emails, too. I'm indebted to Nate at Ars for his early encouragement and feedback, here and in subsequent articles, in sharpening my writing and self-analysis tools.

I worked hard to draft a ~2.5k word history of adventure games, then based on the quality and breadth of my writing was asked to make it way longer (for an increased fee) and to add more detail about the actual experience of playing the games.

Here is that article: arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/...

I didn't know there was a new Anno set in ancient Rome until a few minutes ago, so your article gave me an excitement-disgust whiplash.

"By 2020… “our judgment” could no longer risk straying too far from “the judgment of the crowd” voiced on Twitter. “We’re not ‘American Idol’” went the same way as “We are not resistance”—into the past. Such mottos no longer fit a media business built on soliciting subscriptions as donations."

With the slipcover off.

That sucks if true. I'll try my copy tomorrow. I only opened NSS1 and 2 while I was doing my football book. (Both worked fine.)

The Bungie chapter is about 10k words, and the Marathon trilogy is maybe half that.