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What’s on your bookshelf?: former Zachtronics’ Zach Barths and Matthew Burnsread-only
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Image credit:oldbookillustrations.com
Image credit:oldbookillustrations.com
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! It’s a double feature this week - Zach Barths and Matthew Burns of former Zachtronics fame! (Do read Edwin’s interview with Zach on theirunrealised 40K factory game). Cheers Zach and Matthew! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelves?
What are you currently reading?
What did you last read?
What are you eyeing up next?
As someone who loves David Foster Wallace’s essays, I also want to take a swing at Infinite Jest, but there’s no way I’m actually going to make it through that book…
In nonfiction, I’m interested in reading Werner Herzog’s memoir, Every Man For Himself And God Against All.
What quote or scene from a book has stuck with you?
Zach:Everyone remembers the opening line from Neuromancer (“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel”) but what about that terrible sex scene that comes out of nowhere! My wife and I joke about it sometimes. I have to imagine that after Neuromancer came out, everyone told him it was terrible and then he basically never tried again in any of his books. It’s okay, William Gibson, you’re still my favorite author.
Matthew:In The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa writes, “To express oneself is always a mistake.” I try to remember this before I make a social media post, or do an interview like this, or before I get my own book ready to release, as I’m doing right now (that’s a little tease, I guess).
What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?
ancient Athens you were allowed to go into someone’s house if you thought they stole something from you, provided you did it naked so that you couldn’t plant or steal anything yourself!
It also includes examples of situated legal systems (legal systems that exist within other legal systems) and anarchist legal systems (legal systems where no one is in charge, but laws still exist) that got me thinking about company structures and led directly to the creation ofCoincidence, our new anarchist game studio where all the ex-Zachtronics developers are working on new games, including some proper puzzle games! People can sign up for our mailing list to find out when we announce and release them.
What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?
Zach:That is a tough question for me, because I feel like any game adapted from a book would probably turn into something that is much too long and drawn out for me to want to play it. But, looking through my Goodreads history… I think I could get behind a Transmetropolitan game. I can picture it in my head, where I guess it’s a mid-90s voice-acted point-and-click adventure game? You play as outlaw journalist Spider Jerusalem, walking the city, talking to people, searching for what’s really going on, taking pictures and filing stories to let everyone know the truth… if anyone wants to publish this, get in touch!
Matthew:People may know that Black Myth: Wukong (and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West before it) loosely adapts a Chinese historical fantasy novel, Journey to the West.
I couldn’t help but feel that Xuanzhang’s descriptions of the numerous small kingdoms he comes across have a procedurally generated quality to them: he ritually mentions the name, the circumference and population of the capital city, the temperament of the people, local crops and fruits, how many temples and monks there are and of what denomination, and other facts. Interspersed with the straightforward description of lands and peoples are credulous retellings of fantastical legends and religious miracles. It’s fun to imagine a game like 80 Days set in this time and place. More generally, I’m interested in the way narrative games can follow the form of a pilgrimage, and I think The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions would be a rich and unique source of material for something like that.
‘The RPS comment section where several dozen genres were invented through sky similes’ is something I’d love to be able to reference in the future. Of course, the more genres there are, the more books will be written, moving the invisible goalposts that mark this column’s very secret goal further into impossibility. Sucks for next week’s guest, I suppose. Book for now!
