infoneer-pulse:
For years, it was a schedule as predictable as a calendar: novelists who specialized in mysteries, thrillers and romance would write one book a year, output that was considered not only sufficient, but productive.
But the e-book age has accelerated the metabolism of book publishing. Authors are now pulling the literary equivalent of a double shift, churning out short stories, novellas or even an extra full-length book each year.
They are trying to satisfy impatient readers who have become used to downloading any e-book they want at the touch of a button, and the publishers who are nudging them toward greater productivity in the belief that the more their authors’ names are out in public, the bigger stars they will become.
“It used to be that once a year was a big deal,” said Lisa Scottoline, a best-selling author of thrillers. “You could saturate the market. But today the culture is a great big hungry maw, and you have to feed it.”
» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)
It’s taken me four years to get my trilogy to a nearly publishable state… I’m scared!
Looks like Port Merion to me…
good reply man. I also played D1 and 2 I just want this to be so dam good, I know the hack and slash game was already around but blizzard's way of going about it re-invented the genre, I want them to build on that achievment, and bring hack and slash to a whole new comsumer sure we have had a few decent hack n slash games since D2 but lets face it Diablo doe's it right, we gotta remember the whole reason WoW is so popular is because at launch they lifted alot of things from D2.
True… I hope you’re right and they build on the best… but how many of the original Diablo crew are even still at Blizzard these days?
Wizards of the coast had the same problem with the D&D franchise, no one that worked on it had any idea where the original concepts had come from or what the alternatives were. Hence it came out borked…
I really agree that Blizzard got the D1 and D2 games right… that’s what worries me.
Things like the way the inventory filled up and forced you back to town, or you had to start throwing stuff away… from what I hear that aspect has been really reduced because the character can carry around more weight than a mule… Damn, trying to figure out how you could re-arrange the inventory to carry a little more was half the fun for me… It made Inventorying into a mini-game.
Hopefully they won’t have improved the fun away, but I won’t hold my breathe Blizzard in 2012 is very different corporate entity to Blizzard 1996 or 2000!
(C:
UFOs and cross stitching?
You saw it here…
gameraddictions:
wordsfailme-:
Need I say more?
mine should be here very very soon!!
Diablo 1&2 were okay games, and I enjoyed them 10 years ago, but I honestly don’t understand this launch frenzy.
I’m going to wait and see how over-hyped this one is… Internet connection REQUIRED purely for the shops to work? Really? Why?
Taking potions has a cool down time? Why? That doesn’t make any sense… and every class has a different “mana” which does the same job as “mana” but isn’t called “mana” - ooh exciting design choices - I think this might turn out to be Diablo 4th Ed… but we’ll see…
Still the artwork on the box is quite pretty so I guess lots of people will buy it for that alone. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I’ve never seen a game launch a sequel a decade later that was ever as good as the previous instalment… Basically gaming IPs get weaker as platforms get more powerful seems to be the rule, I’ll be interested to see if diablo can buck that trend.
I won’t be buying it as my laptop’s graphics card and centrino duo processor won’t cope.
WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?
I have ways of controlling my emotions…
Exercise, sleep and venting are all practical and efficacious in most cases. Sleep acts as a natural hormone regulator, which levels out even the more extreme male hormone mood swings. Exercise gives one a rush of endorphins that can act as a ward against the worst excesses of depression. Venting is a writer’s favourite method of emotional control: Something or someone annoys you, and suddenly a new annoying character is added to your novel, before being ripped to pieces by wild animals, vivisected by mad scientists or simply having their position ridiculed in a dialogue between characters. It allows one to use that negative emotion for a positive purpose - which must be a good thing.
If those fail then we can fall back on food - as food is sleep according to the people of the Arctic circle - company, allowing you to vent with immediate sympathy, but is not as purely positive as venting in writing, unless perhaps, you are a comedian - any breathing technique that alters the heart rate and slows the breathing rate will also have a positive effect upon mood, the most common form of this is crying…
But what I do not do is drink. Alcohol will never elevate your mood, it may reduce your inhibitions allowing you to have a good time, if you’re the sort who cannot relax without medication, but in terms of mood elevation a cup of tea, a bar of chocolate or even ten minutes of crying is much better medicine.
emergentfutures:
2022 is a long way off, but key digital developments are already in hand. The current explosion of mobile connectivity will surely exert an influence 10 years from now. Desktops and laptops — even tablets — may be hardware of the past, as we access the information stream using voice, gesture, and retinal displays. Immersion in this all-enveloping data field will change the way we work and think.
The displacement of information from devices will be reflected in the displacement of the worker from the workplace. Accessing the collaborative environment anywhere, anytime, a nomadic workforce will expect IT to manage the streamlining of data through virtual platforms.
As for social media, we’re not going too far out on that unpredictable limb. Will Facebook (or perhaps a successor) swallow the Internet whole, locking us into a fully socialized online experience? Or will an adverse reaction set in, driving users back into isolated silos?
Full Story: Internet Evolution
whatever happens in the next 10 years, it will almost certainly be both more and less than any futurists imagine. The last 10 years have changed the internet very little - but it has changed the diversity of users radically.
10 years ago the main debates on-line were developers arguing about the use of Flash plug-ins verses html websites, and security online… Not that much has changed there then.
