“Marge, I want you to admit you have a gambling problem.” – Homer Simpson
“You know, you’re right, Homer. Maybe I should get some professional help.” – Marge Simpson
“No, no, that’s too expensive. Just don’t do it anymore.” – Homer Simpson
Any time I start writing a post for this site, I can never be sure just how long it’s going to end up. Sometimes, I’ll think I’ve got some big post that’s gonna take awhile, only to find myself done much quicker and shorter than I thought. Other times, I’ll figure I’ve got a nice compact idea for a Compare & Contrast, that I’ll just knock out a few hundred words in forty-five minutes or so. Two hours later I’m staring at some sixteen hundred word monstrosity and I have no idea how the hell it happened. Some posts just sprawl on me.
Well, I’m here today with the all time grand champion of sprawled posts. What I originally thought would be a quick and dirty post about The Simpsons: Tapped Out has ended up as a fat, 10,000 word ebook called, “Tapped In: How EA Combined The Simpsons with Video Gambling to Make $130 Million (and counting)“. Here is the table of contents:
1 – Quarters, Dollars, and Credit Cards: The Games We Pay
2 – Designing Addictively Rigged Games for Fun and Profit
3 – Chips vs. Brains and Machines vs. People: We Don’t Stand a Chance
4 – Domesticating the Beast: Video Gambling to Video Gaming
5 – Training the Beast: Fixing Mechanical Problems and Increasing Flow
6 – The Infinite Profit Margins of Colored Pixels
7 – Machine Gaming: Greed on a Tilted Playing Field
It’s about half as long as “Zombie Simpsons: How the Best Show Ever Became the Broadcasting Undead“, and just like that one it’s for sale at Amazon for Kindles and Kindle apps. (Also, I appear to have an affinity for long subtitles that start with the word ‘How’.) Since it’s much shorter and took much less time, the price is a mere $0.99.
Just like its predecessor, it will eventually be published in full and for free right here at Dead Homer Society. The first chapter is live now, and a new one will be going up each week until they’re all here. DRM remains stupid and counterproductive; and I remain convinced that giving it away and selling it is the only way to go. So you can read the whole thing right now for Kindle, or just read along over the next few weeks. Either way, I hope you all like it.
Click here to read the first chapter.
