Doc Burford posts
It's docvember!
Hey! So, I've been hard at work on a bunch of stuff. I'm prepping three different articles and wrote 7200 words last weekend.I also wrote the final part of my shooter series here.https://docseuss.medium.com/building-a-better-first-person-shooter-part-3-enemy-mine-51ec8543ebb8I have been laid up in bed (doing wh...
building a better shooter
alright, so, last month, we published part 2 of building a better shooter, which is about guns.https://docseuss.medium.com/the-way-of-the-gun-part-2-of-building-a-better-shooter-a506ac861432i'm working on the next one, but i had a very bad personal tragedy that disrupted my weekend. right move, but difficult. griev...
it's august!
Early this month, I wrote about rethinking how we talk about games criticism.https://docseuss.medium.com/lets-reconsider-how-we-talk-about-video-games-ae8857f12073I've got about... 700 pages worth of writing I'm working on, plus seeing about getting someone to edit some of my essays into a collection, and the v...
new article soon
Hey, so I've been working on an article--or rather, a series of articles, likely 7-8 parts long. Part 1 is finished, several of the others are very far along--but they need to be published all at once. It's a really difficult project and I don't feel ready to post it yet.Some stuff has been happening over t...
on violent games
This month, I wrote about violent games.https://docseuss.medium.com/people-always-ask-why-games-are-so-violent-so-lets-give-em-an-answer-94b9f8274783I'm pushing really, really hard on some stuff at Mischief right now, but I've been working on several big articles. Just wrapped up getting a bunch of material fro...
2018 article
Hey! Things are rough right now healthwise, so I'll keep it short:With Kingdom Come 2's release, I thought I'd dig into my old drafts and find my article on the last game, so here you go:https://docseuss.medium.com/i-did-not-like-kingdom-come-deliverance-so-heres-my-unpublished-review-from-2018-about-it-ac7...
it's 2025
https://docseuss.medium.com/i-was-a-teenage-exocolonist-and-so-can-you-0946b1d9ade0I wrote about I Was A Teenage Exocolonist.Actually, I wrote about being abused. It was hard to do--I don't talk about the abuse publicly except for vague references like this. Rather than discuss the details, I think it's best if...
it's november!
A microphone is coming in the mail. A script is ready to go. Footage was being captured.Then my computer died. And my spare parts computer. And my third attempt at a spare parts computer. Some other stuff happened--grandma's having dementia and it's getting bad, work stuff got me overloaded.It's slowed me d...
new article!
Hey, here's the latest article:https://docseuss.medium.com/the-secret-ingredient-to-coming-up-with-good-ideas-for-a-story-2b10ed4a1b5fI'm working on a few new ones. They're at a combined 80,000 words or so. One of them has to be run past legal to make sure everything I can post in there is something I can s...
september
Hey, everybody! I'm working on the new article. It's about copyright and it's beefy. However, my health has been poor, I've been doing a bunch of medical testing stuff (just had a gastric emptying test last week) and so when I had the opportunity to visit Airfest 30 at Argonia this year, (for the first ...
new articles!
Locked the script for my next game, codenamed Waifu Death Squad. It's 328,142 words long! Can't wait to show it to you.Here's the articles (plural!) for this month; a brand new one, and two that are more than ten years old, which I managed to dig up and preserve here.https://docseuss.medium.com/writers-bloc...
cyberpunk part 2 is done!
I am currently editing Cyberpunk part 2, the punks.Things are very bad for me right now. I have an ultrasound scheduled for next week. I apologize for the time it has taken to write this piece, but I hope it was worth it. It's a pretty beefy one, probably in my top 5 lengthiest pieces, and I hope you will enjoy it....
TWO articles in May? YUP, You read that right
First up, we've got IMPOSTOR SYNDROME, PART 2. This piece is about some rough stuff I've been through, and stuff I'm hoping to help people avoid.https://docseuss.medium.com/impostor-syndrome-part-2-you-are-not-special-but-dont-let-the-man-get-you-down-73ac9912cfb9The second piece was about some common horro...
new article time!
I'll try to keep this one short.Originally, I intended to have an article or two out way earlier in March. For several reasons, that didn't happen, but the article is done, and you can read it there.https://docseuss.medium.com/the-biggest-threat-facing-your-team-whether-youre-a-game-developer-or-a-tech-founder-...
it is february
Today, we finished writing draft 1 of waifu death squad's final major script file. There's a few interstitials to do, tutorials, stuff like that... but this scene is The One. It's almost 90 pages--that's a feature film length script--and I'm just... sitting here, thinking about it. I had dental surg...
january, february
Hey, so, 2023 was a rough year in between serious health limitations, getting WAIFU DEATH SQUAD (still a code name) funded and in development (we have one sequence of the game left to write and the main plot is done. it's almost as long as Game of Thrones).I wish I could tell you that I'm doing okay, but I'...
it's december!
Well, the year is basically over. I've written a lot this year--literally like one hundred thousand words over on docseuss.medium.comMost recently, I wrote a piece on how writers sabotage themselves and how to get out of that.https://docseuss.medium.com/as-writers-we-face-a-common-pitfall-im-gonna-give-it-to-you-st...
IT'S DOCTOBER
Hey! So!Here's a short story that may be the basis for a game... ;)Yes, we have a whole game planned out. Phil and I worked it out over a couple evenings and it's something we have to make now.https://docseuss.medium.com/micah-benedicts-opus-aa7c2d07638And here is one of my biggest essays EVER!! This one is tha...
It's September!
Hooray! We made it this far!Yesterday, we read through Waifu Death Squad's entire past outline. Without reading the finale (which we'd been writing that day and did a read through on), it took 90 minutes. The past is a big part of the game; it's the series of events that lead up to the investigation where t...
oh man, august!
Hey!So, work is going well on Waifu Death Squad, and the Danganronpa Piece, which is REALLY hard, is still coming along.I worked on a 'quick' piece (it's like 11-12k words? so it's beefy!) about how to enjoy art more. I apologize, my health, mental and physical, has been quite bad. But I did get work do...
oh wow, june!
Wow, it's July already. Halfway through the year! I did a ton of writing, but only published one of those pieces, because I'm actually actively editing another one. That 'other' one is about 30 pages long and I'm ~getting footage for it~ now. Because. Yes. It's a video. Kevin and Phil, my cowrit...
twofer! it's june
Hey, I wrote two articles this month:https://docseuss.medium.com/you-know-what-sucks-new-coke-c53470b387a4https://docseuss.medium.com/i-beat-impostor-syndrome-and-heres-how-i-did-it-b6879422af2bThe first one is about issues I have with a lot of AAA games in general and how these games work out. The second one is about ...
It's May!
I literally wrote all day yesterday and today!Today, it was mostly Waifu Death Squad stuff--one of my cowriters, Kevin, suggested a character relationship sheet, and we've got at least 25 characters with opinions about the other. 25 by 25 is 625 cells. 625 cells with an average of ten words--and I'm sure we'...
Thank you! (also it's March now!)
Hey, so!OUR NEW GAME IS IN PRODUCTION STARTING MONDAYI mean, we've been working on it for a while, but we've been signed, we're basically funded, like, we're all good to go.This slowed down my writing a bit--but don't think I ain't workin on it. I'm actually hard at work on two essays simult...
hooray, it's february!
I was gonna do this really cool thing where I posted not one, not two, but three articles in my January update, but then I wrote four articles and one of them took longer than expected so anyways, with this update, you are going to see four articles instead of my usual two! Was hoping to do the video this month but my ...
it's december
You might recognize this text. It's from an essay here:https://docseuss.medium.com/on-the-art-of-how-to-be-making-your-players-give-a-fuck-4d20dbde4241I've been telling you for a good long while that I wanted to take my essays and turn them into a video. Well, my friend Kevin Fox, who's a writer out in Holl...
November!
I wish I had good news, but my grandfather passed as I was working on my latest article, and that's made it very hard to finish it up. We're at around 15,000 words; it's almost done, I just have 2 sections left to write, but it's just really hard right now.Additionally, my computer decided to shit the b...
it's DOCTOBER! and i just published 17,000 words for you
https://docseuss.medium.com/i-am-going-to-solve-the-cyberpunk-discourse-forever-part-1-the-pigs-74305168990fboom. 17,000+ words on Cyberpunk 2077 and how copaganda works, but that's not all. I also dug up an older essay of mine that laid out the design philosophy I'd later use in Adios. If you want to read it, ...
august
So, there's one article everyone asks me how to write, and I've never known how to answer it. "How do I write a story?" Like... I went to school for years to figure out how to do it, and even then, it wasn't enough. It took a lot of writing on my own to get there. But nobody wants to hear "pract...
it's august!
So, hey, over on docseuss.medium.com, after a 3 and a half year hiatus, we brought back the bundle cruft death match: 20 games I got in bundles, flash reviews of all of 'em.I don't normally like listicles, even if articles like these are fun, because I feel like I gotta work harder than that when I write, but m...