My story Anda's Game for Android

Last year, IDW published a collection of six comics adapted from my short stories called Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now, all of these stories also licensed under Creative Commons. Now, Robot Comics, a firm that provides comics for Android mobile phones, has begun to make the comics available free under the same CC license for mobile phones, beginning with my story Anda's Game (which was also included in my short story collection Overclocked, and podcasted as a reading by Alice Taylor of Wonderland.The adaptation is by the excellent Dara Naraghi, illustrated by Esteve Polls.

The story is a riff on the way that property-rights are coming to games, and on the bizarre spectacle of sweat-shops in which children are paid to play the game all day in order to generate eBay-able game-wealth. When I was a kid, there were arcade kings who would play up Gauntlet characters to maximum health and weapons and then sell their games to nearby players for a dollar or two -- netting them about $0.02 an hour -- but this is a very different proposition indeed.

Cory Doctorow's Anda's Game

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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ben

Hmm very nice. I think the app does what it needs to do, namely, displaying sequential images. I find the crappy part of a lot of mobile comics is the way they split up the panels, and I think Anda’s Game is cut up pretty nicely judging on what I’ve read so far.

Overall, its great to see more CC content coming to the G1. A lot of the apps currently focus more on app programming rather than providing good content, so using excellent CC content like this is refreshing.
Mr Brown

i hv g1 & will cek itout.
Mr Brown

quick notes on the interface:

force orientation — not a favorite of mine. understandable, though. … and it seems not to have fkd up rotation in general, which is the greatest hazard.
lack of zoom — not a feature
page turning — it feels like you should be able to make a fast motion on the screen and zoom through many pages but you cant. other wise soooth*
long press for screen browser — good
autoconnect to market — personal choice
what is this “Tween” thing of which you speak?

*just discovered you can zoom thru screen browser. xclnt.

now to maybe actually read the thing.
Shonzilla

Tweening is a term from animation world – introducing intermediate frames to create an impression of smoother animation.

In the case of Anda’s game, “Tween” refers to type of transition between two comic pages.

Cheers!
Shonzilla
Zergonapal

I really liked the Anda’s Game podcast.