I feel like such a dip. First I go on about Allen Varney’s writing, and now I feel the need to pimp out the work of Jim Rossignol, Keiron Gillen, and Alec Meer over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Kerion’s most recent post (very germaine to the site here, don’t you know) is all about the Making of A Tale in the Desert.

Abstractly these are simple challenges, but its implications could lead to all manner of human problems. To see how players reacted to this, consider the Test of the bureaucracy. “A few people are assigned the precious opportunity to start a bureaucracy,” explains [Teppy], “You do well in this test by growing it as big as you can. It’s an organisational puzzle. Anyone in the bureaucracy can take it over, and so gain its resources. It’s easy for them to do it. In fact, people who are lower ranked in the bureaucracy, so are giving lots of points for you, but getting few for themselves… and there’s the most of them, they have the most to gain by taking over, ruining your hard work and taking it for themselves. It’s a test to see how you manage a large organisation.”

Other great posts from the site include:

• Commentary on the first EVE Econ report.
• The true story of yet another bughunt.
• An interview with Henry Jenkins.
• The making of Dungeon Siege.
• A pimp for Drift City, an F2p driving MMOG.
• The making of Sacrifice. (I really love this game.)

If you’re into PC gaming (and if you’re not, why are you reading this site), I highly recommend their work. Poets all.