Dead Space In Your Face: Gaming and Rent-Seeking

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Well, that was quick.

Last week I was discussing how monetization was going to be an issue in your gaming career – since there were many options that would obviously affect how you get paid.  Or if you get paid.  Or if you have any hope in hell of success.  Well, now I’m still talking about it – along with my current obsession of analyzing game careers, of course.

One of my inspirations for that post, by the way, was the weird news in Dead Space 3 about how one could purchase quicker collection of crafting materials.  Yes, a big console game that just happens to let you act like you’re in a typical free-to-play game, in a way that seemed kinda obvious.

EA was appropriately and mercilessly skewered by Penny Arcade, as was appropriate.  However they were also skewered by resource collecting bugs that made the micro transaction thing a null issue.

I’m wondering if they’ll patch it or not.

Here we see another risk to gaming – and a factor to take into any gaming career you may want to have.

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Editing Print Books

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Well I got the beta print copies of Focused Fandom: Cosplay, Costuming and Careers, and Focused Fandom: Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers.

One of the things I love about eBooks is what you see is what you get.  Print books, not so much.  Here’s just a few things I found:

  • The cover may not quite print as you expected – and any colors, graphics, etc. may not be what you expect in a solid version.
  • You can forget things on the cover period.  I’ll have to adjust one of the covers, in fact.
  • There’s breaks.  A paragraph you don’t have to break up in an eBook format may be damned hard to break properly in print.
  • Chapter formatting.  I love chapters that are on odd pages, so you have to get that right.
  • A lot of book elements like Table of Contents, Credits, etc. just seem “different” in print – and you have to make sure the breaking and formatting is right.
  • A re-scan of the print copy may help you find issues.

So I’ve got  . . .  about 600 print pages to scan.  I think I’m gonna be busy for a week or two on this.

Now as much as I complained here, I think you should consider print versions of your eBooks, if only for the sheer experience of doing one and discovering you don’t want to.  It’s pretty educational all around.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

Recipe: Quick Pasta Caprese

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This is a fast recipe that lets you make a classy, tasty dish quickly – and you can do it with ingredients many of us keep around anyway.  This is for a single serving, so scale accordingly.  It also makes a decent meal without a side dish.

For the pasta:

2-3 oz dried pasta.

Sauce:

  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tbsp dried basil (or about 1/2 of shredded basil)
  • 1/8 tbsp pepper
  • a few dashes salt (3-4)
  • 1 tsp crushed garlic
  • 1 slice mozzarella cheese (optional for vegans, but it’s not true caprese without cheese – that being said I don’t use the cheese much myself)

(note, you can leave out the tomato and have a rather tasty coating for 2 servings pasta)

  1. Mix olive oil, basil, pepper, salt, garlic, and cheese.
  2. Add tomato to mix, coat thoroughly.  Let sit at least 15 minutes in the fridge to allow flavors to blend)
  3. Cook pasta and drain thoroughly.
  4. Mix pasta with tomato mix, serve.