As I was playing Dungeons of Daggorath again this morning, I was struck by how much clever audio can enhance a game, more than making up for simplistic graphics and the like. I think we have a tendency to strongly underestimate the power of sound for suggesting certain emotions and sensations.

I was asked a question this morning on the professional networking site, LinkedIn, which moved me to a somewhat long-winded response that I thought I would share, unedited. Maybe it answers this gentleman's question, maybe it doesn't, but it certainly had me reflect on the good fortune that I've had since January 2004, when Armchair Arcade officially launched. While I was doing occasional freelance writing prior to that, it was really the co-founding of this very site that kicked off the most interesting projects I've worked on, including the books and feature film, with the promise of so much more to come. The question was, "Beside writing, how does one really get started as a author and or freelance writer?". My response follows:

I'd love to hear others' opinions and thoughts on this topic, so I may as well lay my own out first. Matt had sent me an interesting link yesterday about Steven Johnson's writing techniques and mention of his recent use of DEVONthink, which is listed as a "Personal Information Assistant", and is essentially a database for copying and pasting all kinds of info in an organized manner for later access, and is particularly useful for those writing books or research intensive articles or papers. Always intrigued by such things, I checked it out, but alas it's only for the Mac platform so it's not something that's viable for me at the moment since I use those as secondary, not primary systems (which are still all Windows XP- and Vista-based). This got me reflecting on my own ever evolving writing style and idea/reference storage techniques over the years.

Lately, I've been reading a very exciting book called The Wisdom of Crowds, authored by James Surowiecki. I don't usually write about books here at AA, but this one is just as good as Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things, another must-have if you do any reading whatsoever on technical topics.