Kevin Toms Blog » Software Star

Thinking about Software Star

Kevin Toms — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:12:02 +0000

I was reminded of Software Star today. It was a simple game of managing a software business. It captured some truth, and I played with my son a while ago. That was a strange experience, to play a game you wrote, so long ago, and find out it is still fun to play! And you can remember little about writing it, except the animated chart idea being a good one. Oh, and the thing about Hype versus Honesty, which was a good idea!

Retro Gamer Interview

Kevin Toms — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:16:56 +0000

I haven’t read it yet, it has not made its way to New Zealand yet, but a “Desert Island Disks” interview with me has just been published in the latest issue of Retro Gamer

Retro Gamer Issue 63

Doing the interview brought back a lot of memories of those early days, and I still keep remembering new things, some of them funny, some of them interesting, some of them poignant.

I’ll write some up in this blog over time…

Software Star

Kevin Toms — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:50:19 +0000

This was a business game I wrote after Football Manager. Simple to play but lots of fun. I remember one person writing to me and complaining, because it was possible to succeed in the game sometimes by using hype. -And when you did that, it was more powerful than honesty in its impact. What they did not like was that hype was more potent than honesty. They felt that was immoral. My thinking was, it’s just a game, entertainment, but funnily enough, hype when it is believed in real life DOES tend to bring greater results than honesty. Sad but true, I am sure you can think of examples….