The novel and its sequel Divided We Fall are set in a dystopian nation in which the government keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. Citizens must be careful about what they say because there are surveillance cameras everywhere. Meanwhile, the Church has become as powerful as the State, and people who resist are called Heretics and face execution.
The books follow a young man called Seven who wakes with no memory in this surveillance society. His amnesia gives him a blank-slate perspective that helps him see through the propaganda, and he soon gets involved with a group of rebels called The Underground.
The new text adventure follows Chapter One of We, The Watched, in which Seven wakes up in the middle of a forest with no idea of where he is or how he got there. It’s a lot of fun and is a great introduction to my books for new readers! You can play the game below or in full-screen here.
Also don’t forget to check out my other We, The Watched game, Watched Sweeper!
You might not have known this, but my dad is a fantastic musician! While professionally he is an architect, he’s been playing guitar, banjo and other instruments my whole life (and most of his). Over the years, he has recorded many tunes for himself, family and friends, but has never released his music to a wider market.
Until now!
For quite a long time, I had been pushing him to release an album, and now it is finally available in CD from CreateSpace and Amazon, and MP3 download from CDBaby.com.
His first album, Terrain, is a bittersweet collection of original instrumental music that draws from baroque, ethnic folk, jazz and blues, featuring finger-picked guitar, as well as banjo, mandolin, ukulele, clarinet and harmonica.
Sample and/or purchase the entire album below! The digital version should also soon be available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Google Music and other popular retailers.
Change! Innovation! Weirdness! These are all things that led me to buying a Steam Controller. My experience since then has been a mix of wonder, excitement and frustration.
For those who are unfamiliar, the Steam Controller ($49.99 at Amazon) looks like this:
The Steam controller with included batteries, USB wireless dongle and PC attachment.
That might look kind of flipped when compared to this Xbox One controller, which you’re probably a little more familiar with:
Credit: Microsoft
That’s because the front of the Steam Controller actually bends inward (concave for you geometry fans). This is to make it easier to access the signature feature of the Steam Controller — touch pads! Yes, touch pads have replaced traditional control sticks. (Except for that one stick they threw in at the last-minute when people freaked out … but it’s only one and most games use two.)
So do the touch pads they work for gaming? Yes … but it takes a lot of getting used to. I read in another review somewhere that this is like an “alternate universe” controller that decided against control sticks. Pads can work just as well, but the problem is our thumbs have become accustomed to the movements associated with pushing a stick.
As you might expect, then, the pads work best as a replacement for a mouse in games built for a keyboard/mouse setup. I found Valve’s flagship Portal 2 to work pretty darn well with this controller. However, in a game made for the Xbox controller–such as Batman: Arkham Knight–by default you have the pad simulating a control stick, and it’s kind of weird.
See, when you simulate a mouse with the pad, as in Portal 2, it acts a lot like a trackball. Keep rolling it in the direction you want. It even feels good thanks to haptic feedback. But when it’s simulating a game pad, you’re “holding” an imaginary stick in the direction you want the camera to turn, and then returning your thumb to the center of the pad when you’re done moving it.
After about a week of play, I did find myself getting better at this. I could definitely play Arkham Knight and do well. However, I always felt handicapped anytime I needed to make small, accurate movements such as aiming the cannon of the Batmobile, or checking on the position of unsuspecting criminals before making a sneak attack.
Gyros and customization to the rescue!
After more time spent with the controller and hanging out in the Steam community, I found two solutions. One that made me feel a little better about the Steam Controller, and one that makes me think it might even work better than an Xbox controller.
The truly cool thing about the Steam Controller is that you can customize just about everything with the controller. This includes more than what the buttons do in a game. You can adjust sensitivity of inputs, turn the touch pads into a keypad and much more. And if that’s all too technical, you can simply apply control schemes uploaded by either the game developer or other people in the Steam community. Meanwhile, Valve itself continues to add more functions to the controller as users provide feedback.
The first thing I discovered that made Arkham Knight play more easily was the ability to change the behavior of the right touch pad (which stands in for the right control stick and controls the camera) to work as a “mouse-like joystick.” This mode, Valve says, is built for games that don’t let you play with a gamepad and mouse at the same time (actually I don’t understand how a two-handed person would do that anyway). Through magical engineering (or something), this just lets you use the pad as if it’s a rolling trackball.
That feels far more intuitive, at least, but it still does not feel super accurate, especially when you’re under fire in a Batmobile and a helicopter keeps dive-bombing you.
That’s when I discovered motion controls. Or, I should say, the Steam community discovered them. Turns out the Steam Controller has a gyro sensor, much like the Nintendo Wii controller, which allows it to track physical movements of the hands. Well, what happened is that some genius (not sarcasm) in the Steam community got the idea to turn this feature on in addition to the mouse-like joystick behavior.
When I switched to this control scheme, I kid you not — it was like removing a neck brace
To turn this on, go to the controller customization settings and select the gyro icon under the center of the controller diagram (it looks a bit like an atom). Set this up as a mouse joystick and you’re good to go!
The motion controls let you adjust the camera (or your cross-hairs) by moving the entire controller up, down, left or right. To ensure you don’t do this accidentally, it only detects movement while your thumb is on the right touch pad.
This would never work by itself, because you’d basically have to turn away from the TV if you ever wanted to do more than 45-degree turn. But for small movements–lining up the cross-hairs or taking a quick peek at something peripheral–it feels very natural. When you do want to make a bigger turn, you swipe the touch pad like before … and to be honest it’s fine for that.
When I switched to this control scheme, I kid you not — it was like removing a neck brace. In fact, now I really can’t imagine going back to the old way.
Worth the trouble?
You might be thinking to yourself: “That sounds cool, and it’s great that you got the Steam Controller to work for you … but the Xbox controller already works for me. Why bother?”
Yes, I would agree that is a fair point. If you’ve got an Xbox controller already, and it’s working for you, and you have no desire at all to try something new, there really is little reason to get a Steam Controller.
Besides the pads, the Steam Controller’s other big issue for me is the placement of the A, B, X & Y buttons. While in reach, the placement of this diamond arrangement feels a bit low and could lead to some wrong presses until you get used to it.
Also, I should caution that I’ve only tested the Steam Controller in console-like action games. I’ve not tried it for mouse-intensive genres like real-time strategy. I’ve written this article from the perspective of someone who wants a controller for games made for controllers.
However, if anything about the Steam Controller intrigues you — perhaps the customization, or maybe just the fact that it’s not made by Microsoft or Sony — I am here to say that it is in fact a solid controller that can do a lot now and has promise to do a lot more in the future. Buying a Steam Controller is not the equivalent of buying a knock-off Mad Catz Xbox controller (sorry, Mad Catz) to save $10 off of the official brand.
You do have to go in knowing that it’s not necessarily going to work perfectly from the moment you start up a game. There will be fiddling. In the future, there will be more community control schemes available that will make this fiddling easier. But you’ll still have to fiddle to make the Steam Controller work for you.
It’s hard to write a great song, and it’s even harder to write a great album. The artist must pull together a collection of solid tunes that work together as one cohesive unit, holding the listener from beginning to end for 30-60 minutes.
Whenever we draw near the end of the year, I like to reflect on my favorite music from the past 12 months. Check out my picks for 2015 and listen to them via Spotify below!
Above photo: Sufjan Stevens by Jules Minus via Flickr
Sufjan Stevens Carrie & Lowell
Quietly brilliant, this album will hypnotize with acoustics and whispered vocals. Not a good one to play at parties, but if you’re looking for an escape from the hectic and want some reflection time, this is your album of the year. It’s mine, anyway.
Foals What Went Down
I’ve been following Foals for quite some time–loved some of their songs, felt ambivalent about others. On What Went Down, the band finds their best balance yet of booming arena rock, intricate guitar pieces and sing-along anthems. Beyond the excellent singles, my favorites are “Night Swimmers,” which harks back to the tight guitar interplay from their debut LP, and “London Thunder,” a slow-building anthem that shows off a new power to tugs at the heart.
Wavves V
And now for something completely different. V is the perfect vitamin when you’re looking for an energy boost. Combining the upbeat shimmer of Blink-182 with the substance and sneering attitude of Green Day, Wavves is producing some of the best pop-punk since those golden 90’s. Turn it on and rock the f*** out!
The Libertines Anthems for Doomed Youth
The boys in the band are back! After a decade hiatus, I wasn’t sure Pete Doherty and Carl Barât would ever reunite. Doherty is a brilliant artist who seems to effortlessly write hooks but has a tendency to get distracted by drugs. Barât is a master of tight, no-nonsense tunes who brings out his partner’s strengths while reining in his nonsense. On Anthems for Doomed Youth, we see that dynamic working just like it did in the early 2000s, only now with the addition of road-worn maturity.
Happyness Weird Little Birthday
Fans of Pavement, Yuck and Earlimart, take note–this is your new jam. Happyness effortlessly gets your head nodding with a blend of mellow guitar rock and fast-and-loud alternative. They’ve also really got a knack for singing catchy lyrics about the sad and disturbing. Take “Naked Patients,” which opens with: “There’s something so funny about a sick body and the things that it does that it shouldn’t do.” Yes, it’s nice to see the alt-rock spirit of the 90’s still alive and well.
What are your favorite albums this year? Sound off in the comments below!
Hey, listen up! Will Norman of AuthorReads, a podcast that features exciting books by indie authors, interviewed me recently about my novels WE, THE WATCHED and DIVIDED WE FALL.
I offered some thoughts on the government surveillance debate and what makes a great dystopian novel. I also read an excerpt from WE, THE WATCHED and — I have to say — my unique voice-acting talents must be heard to be believed.
You can listen to the entire thing below via SoundCloud!
