Published inNarramblings·Oct 21Narramblings #4: Time’s up!How Disco Elysium and Pentiment use the flow of time as a narrative mechanism? — In the previous post, I wrote about how Dead Rising approached combining two things that seem eternally at odds in narrative: an open world and a sense of urgency. Let’s continue down this path and talk about the passage of time in games — and in the stories they tell…Disco Elysium5 min readDisco Elysium5 min read
Published inNarramblings·Jul 21Narramblings #3: What’s the urgency?When I first heard about Dead Rising, I hated the idea. An open world game with a time limit? What’s the point? Alas, I was also a broke teenager and it was literally the cheapest used game I found in the store. Beggars, choosers, etc. …Games5 min readGames5 min read
Published inNarramblings·Mar 20Narramblings #2: levity in the time of cordycepsWhy, yes, I am shamelessly coasting on the popularity of the TV show to talk about The Last of Us games. Specifically about why I never want to play the second one again even though I love it and I beat the original TLoU multiple times. …The Last Of Us5 min readThe Last Of Us5 min read
Published inNarramblings·Jan 11Narramblings #1: Game (not quite) OverHi! My name is Wojtek. I’m a writer who happens to love games and narrative design. In a bout of time-for-new-year’s-resolutions inspiration I decided to put that love into blogging. I will be sharing probably infrequent and definitely irregular musings and observations about storytelling in video games. …Narrative Design5 min readNarrative Design5 min read
Nov 9, 2022Why I’m not watching the World Cup and you shouldn’t eitherA longer version of this article originally appeared in Polish in Political Critique. I’ve been a fan for twenty years. Nothing except sleep and work takes as much of my time as football (or soccer, if you’re that inclined). Between watching games and highlights, browsing stats, and disagreeing with strangers…Soccer6 min readSoccer6 min read
Nov 3, 2021The workers’ momentSomething about work has changed. South Korea just had a general strike. India had one last year. Thousands are currently on strike in the US. In the past few weeks we also saw strikes in Scotland, France, and Poland. All the while the corporate world is abuzz with talk of…Work4 min readWork4 min read
May 11, 2021Elon Musk won’t fuck you. Or take you to Mars. Or save humanity.Billionaires feed their egos with messianic fantasies about colonizing space but they are not here to help us. — I originally wrote this article in Polish. It appeared in Political Critique. Roughly a third of humanity believes one lad sacrificed himself two thousand years ago to save the world. A smaller but just as vehement group is convinced that we now have a new savior. Except, Elon Musk is…Space7 min readSpace7 min read
Oct 5, 2020An open letter about crunch to the leaders of CD Projekt RED(Tłumaczenie pod wersją angielską.) To Marcin Iwiński, joint CEO at CD Projekt, and Adam Badowski, Head of CD Projekt RED. Few days ago you announced CD Projekt RED would introduce a mandatory 6-day workweek until the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. This news came alongside a report that some employees have…Videogames4 min readVideogames4 min read
Published inComputers Are Hard·Sep 27, 2020Computers Are Hard: building software with David Heinemeier HanssonIf you were to summarize the entire endeavor of software development, you’d say: ‘The project ran late and it got canceled’. We’ve reached the end of Computers Are Hard. After several conversations about how individual components of software come to be — from printer drivers to password hashing — I…Software Development14 min readSoftware Development14 min read
Published inComputers Are Hard·Sep 27, 2020Computers Are Hard: representing alphabets with Bianca BerningProvided you’re storing and processing text in Unicode, it just works. If you look deep enough, all data on our computers is binary code. Strings of 0s and 1s are the only language that processors understand. But since humans are not nearly as adept at reading binary, there are multiple…Technology6 min readTechnology6 min read
