2010 dies tonight. Let’s celebrate by reviewing the Electron Dance year, because there’s nothing like churning out the same old content in a sexy new cellophane wrapping.

The Year In Links

For those who want to see Electron Dance in its early what-the-hell-am-i-doing days, the first post ever was back in April, a review of VVVVVV, which was nebulous longhand for it’s cool, you fool. I fumbled around for the right style for some time, most evident in The End of Hardcore. I eventually dropped the third person thing because it wasn’t my voice. A bit like my time playing The Aspiration… but that story is for next year.

Rokk Papa Cthulhu Shotg’n

No annual review can be complete without the big hitters that Rokk Papa Cthulhu Shotg’n deigned to link to.

Marvel Brothel tops the traffic league. 7000 hits to date and rising every day. The other Nicolau Chaud companion articles were linked from RPS too – the piece on disturbogame with great story Beautiful Escape and the interview with Nicolau himself.

Although the very first RPS link was for The Second Game where I got my violin out and griped about not having time to play games. This was the second most popular article of the year.

More recently, The Abstraction was featured on the RPS Sunday Papers and Critical Distance. Originally, I just wanted to show off a video that used the game metaphor to make the history of nuclear explosions more chilling. Somehow I spent five hours straight writing a post about the gamification of reality. To be honest, as an argument, it’s not as strong as I’d like it to be – it leaps far too quickly from lots of war examples into “Facebook sucks”.

And let us not forget Punchbag Artists, a piece that I wrote for Resolution Magazine about what developers put up with from the internet; this one got a fair bit of tweeting. This was the point at which Electron Dance crossed over from hobby blog to “second job”, although the site barely saw any spillover traffic from Resolution. (There are two companion pieces to Punchbagthe full e-mail interview with Dan Marshall of Zombie Cow and a one-way e-mail conversation with Tim Schafer).

New Year’s Human Resolutions

Until now, the Cylon plan has been to post something long on Tuesday and something short on Friday. This has proved difficult to maintain because I made the Cylon plan up as I went along like Moore & Eick of time constraints rather than lack of ideas. I’ve also had no time to work on complicated projects like Punchbag Artists or write any more unpublishable fiction. So next year I’m only going to promise one post per week, with the occasional bonus post if the mood takes me.

As for what will actually hit the disco floor in 2011, well I’ll finally write up that emotionally exhausting Neptune’s Pride game. And I’m pretty confident of putting together an actual Armageddon Empires tutorial.

I’m Still Bored

If you’re looking for some actual decent game writing, try Brendan Caldwell’s positive piece on gaming and children at Resolution Magazine.

And if you just want some new groovy game tune, try Paul Kopetko’s theme for Chaos Invaders, it’s just one measly Australian dollar from Bandcamp.

And Just One More Thing

Much thanks to everyone who has stuck around this year, particularly those that poked their head above the parapet and posted a comment.

A splendid and magical New Year to all of you.

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4 thoughts on “Sayonara 2010

  1. Always interested in Neptune’s Pride stories. That game is so very interesting. I would never play it for fear of losing my life to it seeing as I am borderline OCD but I love reading about it.

  2. Happy Nooz Year guys. Long live long, tangential personal stories. I could expand on a few tongential personal stories, but I’m a kiss and don’t tell man.

    @BC: Yes, keep away from Neptune’s Pride. You won’t find any fans here. Sid will tell you the same. Danger Will Robinson. Danger!

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