What I had to learn about writing novels (after lots of short stories)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 17, 2018

We’re wrapping up edits on the second Blood Creek novel (Blood Creek Beast!) and I’m currently writing the third. I’m very excited about how Blood Creek Witch is doing, especially now that it’s an audiobook. Of course, I could always use 100x the visibility it currently has, but I’m pretty pleased with how this has […]

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Writing: Dealing with Rejection

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 23, 2018

If you create anything, you are going to have to deal with people who don’t like what you create. At best, they are uninterested. In some cases, you’ll get some people who derive joy from trying to destroy what you created, and tear you down. Sadly, the only other option is never to share anything […]

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Wanted: Professional Gamers. $50k Minimum Salary, Plus Bonuses, Health & Retirement Benefits…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 28, 2017

The Far Side cartoon from the 1980s was intended as a joke. It started coming true only a decade later, as professional “E-Sports” and competitive network gaming started taking hold. While “professional gamer” isn’t necessarily a growing career field (neither is “game developer” these days, it seems…), it has definitely taken an interesting turn right […]

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Good Crunch, Bad Crunch, No Crunch

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 23, 2017

I’ve written about this before, but I’ve recently encountered some people who have responded to the stories of crunching (particularly in the games industry) with a universal backlash that all crunch is bad, and that you should never crunch. In my mind, his equates to an admonition that you should never, ever work hard. And that […]

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The Publishers Who Will Destroy Your Career

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 24, 2016

A publisher can be awesome. Even as an “indie” – having someone else manage the crap you don’t want to may be absolutely worth it. Things are changing, and the role of a publisher is changing along with it. And in many cases, a publisher can really make a tremendous, positive difference in your sales […]

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The Downsides of the Long Tail

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 23, 2016

The “Long Tail” is a glorious thing in the modern world. Thanks to global markets, digital distribution, and so forth, things don’t really have to retire from the marketplace. Wanna buy a tested, working, good-condition Commodore 64? It’s out there. Want to buy a copy of a book published in the 1930s? There’s a chance […]

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Game Dev Employees vs. Hobbyists vs. Entrepreneurs vs. Old-Schoolers vs. Everybody Else

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 19, 2016

A few days ago, Alex St. John enraged the game development community with an extremely tone-deaf post about game development working conditions. A gazillion articles have been written lambasting this article, so I’ll actually sidestep that pile-on just a smidgen. I’m not going to defend him, because he’s wrong, but I would suggest there’s a […]

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Navigating a Negative Review Crapstorm

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 18, 2016

This is how reviews generally work on the Internet. Which is more of a magnification of how word-of-mouth has worked since the dawn of language: (Image from Happy Monday Comics) Again, this is human nature. My brother once called the number on the “How is my driving?” bumper sticker to report how conscientious a particular […]

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Ultima V, Publisher Contract Dangers, and Why We Needed Indie

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 16, 2016

There were a whole lot of reasons why I was an evangelist for the indie revolution. Just making sure that game developers had a reasonable path to create and distribute their creations without having to go through the giant gatekeepers was a big one. Reducing the barriers to entry was huge. But there was another […]

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Consistent Quantity of Sufficient Quality, and the Long Tail

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 14, 2016

Across the board, entertainment industries are overwhelmingly hit-driven. Super high-quality and super innovation both have a chance of knocking things out of the park in a HUGE way. Combine with some luck (the right game at the right time at the right price) and / or excellent marketing (sometimes fan-driven), and the rewards are tremendous. […]

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Is Microsoft Making Moves To Close the Windows Marketplace?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 4, 2016

Is Microsoft setting the stage so that no games taking advantage of the evolution of hardware and the operating system can be sold outside of Microsoft’s own marketplace? This article in the Guardian makes it sound that way. And Microsoft has been making moves in that direction for a long, long time: Microsoft wants to monopolize […]

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Amaranth Games Retires From Game Development – For Now

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 1, 2016

Well, ya’ll know I’ve been a fan of Amanda Fitch and Amaranth Games since the release of the original Aveyond: Ren’s Quest (then just called Aveyond). It was one of the first commercial releases of an RPGMaker-based game, and even if was the first of the open floodgates, the series remained among the highest quality RPG […]

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Personal Relationships with the Audience

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 17, 2016

I’ve recently noticed that about half of the video games I play and the books I read are written by people I am personally acquainted with. Maybe not close friends – in some cases they are just people I’m Facebook friends with, or who I’ve exchanged emails or forum posts with, or who I’ve chatted […]

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LTUE 2016 – What I Learned

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 15, 2016

I came home with dozens of pages of notes from Life, the Universe, and Everything.  I think I gathered an average of 2 pages of notes from each of the panels, and hit an average of five panels a day, dealing with such topics as: Managing a giant project, marketing on a budget, how to […]

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What’s Clogging the Crap-Filters This Year?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 2, 2016

I picked up a game on Steam over the weekend that billed itself as a 3D roguelike. I won’t name the game. I try to avoid dumping on indie games here, even when they really deserve it. And man, this game deserves it. What makes the game terrible? It came across as a Game Jam […]

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Game Canceled After Partners Allegedly Blew Kickstarter Funds on Liquor, Bars, and Strippers

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 1, 2016

This is both awesome and terrible, but leans more on the side of terrible: Ant Simulator Canceled After Devs Spend Kickstarter Money on ‘Booze and Strippers’ Technically, it wasn’t the game that was funded by Kickstarter funds, but a tutorial series (unless there was another crowdfunding campaign that I missed). But the cash from crowdfunding plus […]

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