Sunday means two things. Firstly, I don’t feel as bad at sleeping in past mid-day. Secondly, I compile a list of interesting stories from across the week for your leisurely reading and try and add commentary without resorting to linking intense pop-propagandist soul-bearing. And then you read it and comment, or not comment, according to your leaning.
- I love this. Game-ism do a little post about Portal, looking closely at GlaDOS and theorising what Valve were trying to do with her design. Which involves bondage, and we’re all about the bondage here.
- N’Gai Croal talks to a former-FTC lawyer about the whole Take2/EA knife-fight thing. What’s interesting is that he thinks that the FTC may actually block the take-over attempt on anti-monopolisation-grounds. Hmm.
- 2Dboy’s Ron Carmel, creator of RPS-lust-item World of Goo, talks about self-funded development. Meanwhile, in the week we published our own Battlefield Heroes interview, Gamasutra speak to its producer in a hefty interview.
- Pleo the Dinosaur – essentially a real world NPC, according to the RPS thinktank. Yes. Always worth noting the RPS think-tank mainly thinks about tanks being awesome. What’s your favourite tank, RPS readers?
- Troy Goodfellow reviews Tim Guest’s Second Lives book. You may know Guest from his series of columns he wrote for Edge on this very subject. “Good game writing is not very different from good travel writing”, Troy starts. Now that’s an idea. I hope someone runs with it.
- Leigh Alexander continues her glorious apologias for the debased and immoral in videogames in her Aberrant Gamer column, this time on the must-discussed Miss Bimbo. I suspect I’ll have to write something about Miss Bimbo soon, but I also suspect it’ll be about my desperate attempts to afford a boob-job. And in the game! Probably best to listen to Leigh. Oh – while we’re at it, she’s been having her own Final Fantasy VII week at her SexyVideoGameLand, which is worth looking at.
- Scott Miller of 3D Realms talks to the Hollywood Reporter about designing games with Hollywood convergence in mind. That is, realising the game will end up existing in other mediums. With my second-career as a comic-writer, I’ve heard this wisdom before – it was the common-sense position among indie creators circa 2000 when I was starting out. I ended up kicking against it then. It strikes me like starting a relationship while spending time thinking about who you’re going to be dating next. Real greatness requires concentration. Or, in my case, real self-indulgent nonsense.
- Listen! Dexys – There, There My Dear. It’s all awesome, but from 2:02 to about 2:45 is what RPS sounds like in my head when we’re on form. Which isn’t ever often enough, I know, but you gotta have something to aim for.
Fail.
Related Stories:
So no Phonogram videogame, then? And here I was hoping for the joyful fusion of mid-nineties point-and-clicks with guitar hero rhythm-action.
I think we should speak more about bondage.
Hey!, the girl drawing is strangely hot. Dont look me like that.
fyi, people who sleep in have a higher mortality rate. Just throwing that in there.
I suspect people who stay up all night do too. C’est la vie. Or not la vie, as the case may be.
KG
My favourite tank… Ooo, any of Hobart’s Funnies, probably.
You’ve got to love that name.
Give me two months!
And any mention of tanks clearly requires a reiteration of the two fish in a tank joke. The best of all time.
“Good game writing is not very different from good travel writing”
There was a pretty awesome Red Eye collumn which used this idea. The phrase “Postcards from Imaginary places” (which won’t leave my brain) may have been used.
I remember reading this for some reason, but I can’t for the life of me remember anything else but that line.
I believe Mr. Gillen was being ironic. Or sarcastic. Definitely one of those things that Americans don’t seem to ‘get’, anyway…
see?
You spoil my fun, Hobbes.
KG
This is my new favourite tank, displacing the almost equally insane proposed German super heavy tanks.
Ah, no I don’t. You were just fishing for compliments.
Which you really shouldn’t do, given how low the stocks are currently, and following the whole EU Compliment fishing directive debacle. If you’re not careful, you’ll see us at war with Iceland again.
anyway, I’ve always been fond of this Pleasingly idiosyncratic effort from the Swedes.
” “Good game writing is not very different from good travel writing”, Troy starts. Now that’s an idea. I hope someone runs with it.”
I lol’ed.
Good lord, Mister Puffins…… You found a Baneblade!
My favorite tank is the mammoth mk3. A close second is the IS-2 that they let us drive in Red Orchestra; those things could kill kraut tanks like there was no yesterday.
Or were we talking about real world? :P
Definitely the bad-guy tank from Ghost in the shell. They didn’t have to be a *real* tank I hope.
ooh yes. I’ve always had a fondness for insanely high ROF autofire.
So maybe it’s not Lester Bangs, but Waverly Root we should be looking for?
My favorite tank is the the Merkava mark 3b, but only because that’s the only tank I served on.
What’s wrong with you people? Favourite tank:
METAL SLUG SUPER VEHICLE-001
Got to give an honourable mention to the Sherman from Company of Heroes (and presumably reality). They’re the foundation of my entire strategy, which is to build lots of Shermans.
FINE.
There are these two fish, right? And they’re in a tank. Yes? Everyone with me? Two fish, in a tank. One says to the other, “How do you drive this thing?” and the other replies, “I don’t know. I’m a fish.”
Captain Bland Weakness Number 1: Doesn’t detect Humour on Sundays
Or, of course, the slight variant: Two fish in a tank, one says to the other, “You get the gun and I’ll drive”
“I know a place where we can lay low, but my fins are all messed up — so YOU better drive, brother!”