Gold Rush! by Sierra still does exist but you can't easily buy it. It will work in scummvm or you could use an emulator. Unlike books it is much harder to access and use older computer programs.

I enjoyed the book but it read like something by a well researched outsider, not someone with first hand game dev experience. E.g, references to 3.25" disks.

https://archive.ph/YoiQ5

"When her literary agent, Douglas Stewart, sent out the manuscript in January 2021, he felt in some ways as if he were introducing her for the first time. “Despite the fact that Gabrielle had several big successes before, there are people who had never heard of her before this,” he said. A frenzied bidding war with 10 publishers broke out, and Knopf won, paying a seven-figure advance. Shortly after, an auction for screen rights drew 25 bidders, and Paramount Pictures bought them for $2 million."

How does this work? An unknown author suddenly gets bid on for loads of money before anyone bought the book?

"Knopf, which initially printed 60,000 copies, has reprinted the book 21 times to keep up with runaway sales. "

Company paid more than a million and prints only 60000 copies? How do they intend to make the money back?

This makes no sense to me.

Also, nowadays I don't believe in grass roots anything, what I believe in is clever marketing on social media.

To save you a click: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow,_and_Tomorrow,_and_...

I have ever seen the cover of her earlier novel "Elsewhere" somewhere. Didn't know about her otherwise.

Turns out she has multiple novels the plots of which are quite interesting to me.

I am definitely going to try out this novel, Margarettown, and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. And maybe even Elsewhere, too.

Queue the HBO series in 3, 2, 1...

Money follows money. Truth holds the faltering hand of injustice. And so on...

"Zevin, who lives in Los Angeles with Canosa and their dogs, Frank, a pug mix, and Leia, a dachshund mix, is writing the screenplay for “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” a project that presents new narrative challenges."

Is this level of detail about her dogs necessary? Is this a journalistic thing?

> In March 2023, game designer Brenda Romero told The Washington Post that the game Solution represents a substantial, uncredited appropriation of Romero's own game, Train...

> “I have no doubt that Train is the best game I’ll probably make,” Romero said. “It is the one thing I will have to show for dedicating my life to games. And somebody decided that was just fair game.”

Don't look at the wikipedia page for Train unless you want a huge spoiler. Train has a VERY specific twist. It sounds like that was what was used for the novel, and Brenda Romero is right, especially as other games were credited.

The book was heavily pushed on tiktok because it hit the platforms target demo perfectly with the angsty young characters set in a video game backdrop that the average tiktok age group could understand.

Personally I was hoping it would have been more like the backstory episode of the Mythic Quest TV show and was disappointed. It was an average story at best with characters that never really matured, but that doesn't matter because I'm not the target audience. The target will connect with the characters and come away thinking it was a fantastic story and will gobble up any movie/tv show that comes out of it. Good job, author and marketing.

This book was really disappointing. The characters were all underdeveloped, remaining angsty melodramatic teenagers until the end despite them all being adults. It also tries to deal with some heavy themes but fails due to the immature characters. There is a lot of exposition to keep the plot moving, which is simply bad writing. Show don’t tell!

Hijacking this to ask for help on my own side-project.

I want to write a story to help young adults (i.e. 10-16 years old) understand how programs work, and the difference between traditional programs and machine learning.

My idea is to tell it from the perspective of AIs in a computer game of Monopoly. An ML player is introduced, initially clueless, but improves between iterations until it dominates and destroys the game. The game is upgraded with an ML rulebook that returns everything to order.

But I've never written a story before, and I don't know much about how ML. I'd love to get suggestions, advice, feedback, etc.

What is the criteria for “best seller”? Seems like a participation trophy by NYT standards.

The recent Tetris movie seems somewhat similar ? It was surprisingly pretty good !

Well reviewed, i was just about to start reading it :)

3 authors i interviewed recommended it too… https://shepherd.com/book/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow