Features: 'Designer's Notebook: A Letter from the Cockpit'

In today's main Gamasutra feature, regular "Designer's Notebook" writer and veteran game designer Ernest Adams finds a 'lost' letter from an ancestor, and uses it to help illuminate some of the possible problems in the flight-based game genre. Adams explains in his introduction to the feature: "This letter came into Ernest's hands following the death of Lady Cecilia Hawkins in the autumn of 2004. It appears to have been written by her brother, Lord Earnest Hawkins, to their father, the Baron of Brampton. Earnest was a pilot during the Battle of Britain." The missive then starts: "Well, I know that writing letters with secret information in them is strictly forbidden, but the events of the last few weeks have been so extraordinary that I simply must make some kind of a record for posterity, just in case I don't make it through. I'll give this to you by hand the next time you're down this way, and that way it won't have to go through the censors. Please put it away somewhere safe – perhaps the family vault, where nobody would think to search – and that way even if the Hun overrun England (which God forbid) they won't get their paws on it." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).