Specialized or not, I’m in. Although if you wanted to pivot to say, 10,000 word tear-downs of viral game mechanics placed in historical context - well, I wouldn’t be offended.
Welcome, Ian, I am glad to see you here. We offer writers advice as best we see fit, but there of course many ways to use this space and I look forward to seeing what you do with it.
My only complaint is that you list me as CEO. Do you mind changing that? Chris Best is CEO. I am a cofounder but my title is Chief Writing Officer.
How well Substack supports "witty banter" depends on how many people you get through the door. At about 5,000 to 10,000 subscribers, you can run chat discussions that resemble forums/Twitter. You also will be at that point pointing several hours a day into Substack, so make sure that is what you want.
As for Twitter 'dying', this strikes me as rather premature. The gnashing of teeth and the sackcloth and ashes routine reflects the collapse of a frankly unjust censorship regime inside Twitter, the consequences of which go beyond the scope of a quick comment. Certainly, anyone who cannot converse in a public forum with free speech may have to consider leaving. I personally have more faith in the people of this planet, and am 'enjoying' (if that is the right term) watching US Elites enter a non-violent civil war. It was long overdue.
Anyway, welcome to Substack! I've been here for a short while now, enjoying an indulgent aesthetic deep dive into... Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was not something I ever anticipated.
I also love Twitter short-form content while strongly disliking it as a platform (people always want to REPLY to the content, and it's maybe the worst platform for real discussions there is!) so genuinely looking forward to this experiment and, with apologies, sort of hoping that Twitter DOES melt down so you make more use of it :)
A decade ago I unsuccessfully attempted to troll Peter Molyneux at the Unity3D "Unite 2012" conference after his insufferably vainglorious keynote presentation of his "Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?" Cube Clicker game.
His "Curiosity" game was the epitome of dopamine addiction games, all that was wrong with Zynga/Facebook games, the rage at the time. Nothing at all original about that: a total cop-out of game design.
I chatted him up afterwards and attempted to troll him by guessing that the big surprise inside the cube was a cow.
I don't think he got the point that I was trying to make an ironic reference to your Cow Clicker, which is a parody of and social commentary on the pro-greedural rhetoric of dopamine games.
I tried to explain the joke to him, and he still didn't get it. At least you had the self awareness to design Cow Clicker in the service of making a critical statement about game design, and the capacity of shame to be embarrassed when it was an accidental run-away success.
Unite 2012 : Keynote - Founders & Peter Molyneux (The BS starts at 1h 8m 21s -- It's been 8 years since I saw this live, and it's much worse than I remembered, especially now knowing how it turned out, especially for Bryan Henderson!)
>1h 48m 06s, with arms spread out like Jesus H Christ on a crucifix: "Because we can dynamically put on ANY surface of the cube ANY image we like. So THAT's how we're going to surprise the world, is by giving clues about what's in the middle later on."
Pseudo-Seinfeldian post and lovely! Look forward to your sporadic micro-posts and their ensuing challenge to the Substack firehose. I've had to unsubscribe to some because ... well, there's just so much, too much, and such little time in life.
I guess the fact that we're sailing through the grief process with Twitter's death right now doesn't help a bit with starting something else either--and yes, truth to be told, it was awesome--I don't think we'll ever have another opportunity to get smarter by publicly honing our conciseness skills, but still.
As for myself I only looked after you @Twitter because I stumbled upon your work on Edge before, so I don't mind changing platforms at all. Best of luck, keep it coming!
Agree you don’t need to “specialize.” Just, like, write — same way you just did. I think you’ll find that, for some reason, people are happy to read longish-form here. Maybe even more so than on traditional publications, which are optimizing for short attention spans. I don’t have the data, but it might be a bad gamble. If a person is willing to read in the first place, length isn’t really an issue so long as the writing is good.
Welcome, anyway. I’ve been here for a few months and so far it’s been great. Looking forward to your stuff, micro or not.
Specialized or not, I’m in. Although if you wanted to pivot to say, 10,000 word tear-downs of viral game mechanics placed in historical context - well, I wouldn’t be offended.
Good to see you here, Ian! Long time fan of your writing. I'm looking forward to reading your newsletter. Cheers!
Reading ramblings are still entertaining. Way more human than pointed theses. I wish I took your class when we were both still at GT!
Well, Ian, you certainly never learned how to be brief. It will be interesting to see you in micro.
Welcome, Ian, I am glad to see you here. We offer writers advice as best we see fit, but there of course many ways to use this space and I look forward to seeing what you do with it.
My only complaint is that you list me as CEO. Do you mind changing that? Chris Best is CEO. I am a cofounder but my title is Chief Writing Officer.
Hi Ian! Hope you are well.
How well Substack supports "witty banter" depends on how many people you get through the door. At about 5,000 to 10,000 subscribers, you can run chat discussions that resemble forums/Twitter. You also will be at that point pointing several hours a day into Substack, so make sure that is what you want.
As for Twitter 'dying', this strikes me as rather premature. The gnashing of teeth and the sackcloth and ashes routine reflects the collapse of a frankly unjust censorship regime inside Twitter, the consequences of which go beyond the scope of a quick comment. Certainly, anyone who cannot converse in a public forum with free speech may have to consider leaving. I personally have more faith in the people of this planet, and am 'enjoying' (if that is the right term) watching US Elites enter a non-violent civil war. It was long overdue.
Anyway, welcome to Substack! I've been here for a short while now, enjoying an indulgent aesthetic deep dive into... Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was not something I ever anticipated.
Bon voyage!
I also love Twitter short-form content while strongly disliking it as a platform (people always want to REPLY to the content, and it's maybe the worst platform for real discussions there is!) so genuinely looking forward to this experiment and, with apologies, sort of hoping that Twitter DOES melt down so you make more use of it :)
I came here hoping to click cows.
A decade ago I unsuccessfully attempted to troll Peter Molyneux at the Unity3D "Unite 2012" conference after his insufferably vainglorious keynote presentation of his "Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?" Cube Clicker game.
His "Curiosity" game was the epitome of dopamine addiction games, all that was wrong with Zynga/Facebook games, the rage at the time. Nothing at all original about that: a total cop-out of game design.
I chatted him up afterwards and attempted to troll him by guessing that the big surprise inside the cube was a cow.
I don't think he got the point that I was trying to make an ironic reference to your Cow Clicker, which is a parody of and social commentary on the pro-greedural rhetoric of dopamine games.
I tried to explain the joke to him, and he still didn't get it. At least you had the self awareness to design Cow Clicker in the service of making a critical statement about game design, and the capacity of shame to be embarrassed when it was an accidental run-away success.
Unite 2012 : Keynote - Founders & Peter Molyneux (The BS starts at 1h 8m 21s -- It's been 8 years since I saw this live, and it's much worse than I remembered, especially now knowing how it turned out, especially for Bryan Henderson!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AY4fJ66xA&t=1h08m21s
>1h 48m 06s, with arms spread out like Jesus H Christ on a crucifix: "Because we can dynamically put on ANY surface of the cube ANY image we like. So THAT's how we're going to surprise the world, is by giving clues about what's in the middle later on."
https://www.eurogamer.net/the-god-who-peter-molyneux-forgot
>The God who Peter Molyneux forgot: For Curiosity winner Bryan Henderson, the prize inside the cube has been anything but life-changing.
this is gonna be great
Pseudo-Seinfeldian post and lovely! Look forward to your sporadic micro-posts and their ensuing challenge to the Substack firehose. I've had to unsubscribe to some because ... well, there's just so much, too much, and such little time in life.
I guess the fact that we're sailing through the grief process with Twitter's death right now doesn't help a bit with starting something else either--and yes, truth to be told, it was awesome--I don't think we'll ever have another opportunity to get smarter by publicly honing our conciseness skills, but still.
As for myself I only looked after you @Twitter because I stumbled upon your work on Edge before, so I don't mind changing platforms at all. Best of luck, keep it coming!
Interesting…
Agree you don’t need to “specialize.” Just, like, write — same way you just did. I think you’ll find that, for some reason, people are happy to read longish-form here. Maybe even more so than on traditional publications, which are optimizing for short attention spans. I don’t have the data, but it might be a bad gamble. If a person is willing to read in the first place, length isn’t really an issue so long as the writing is good.
Welcome, anyway. I’ve been here for a few months and so far it’s been great. Looking forward to your stuff, micro or not.
✌🏼