Crashing in from a gathering of sequential narrative fans, what I like to do is sit down and have a read of some lovely thoughtful pieces on games. But what I have to do is pack up my life, so this will be a shorter-than-usual Sunday Papers. As always, the idea is that I hammer out a list of things that caught my eye this week in the world of games writing while resisting linking to some completely irrelevant record on Youtube.
- Strategy specialist Troy S Goodfellow has been blogging about the history of Ancients videogames – Romans and chums! – and has now reached the end of his list. From Legionnaire in 1982 to Rome: Total War in 2004, it’s comprehensive and thought provoking series of retrospectives. Offer unto Ceaser clicks.
- In what’s a fairly unusual spin on the perennial “Games writing is rubbish”, N’Gai Croal takes the mainstream media for task for not actually engaging in with the medium when they choose to review it. In other words, not actually mentioning the bloody game.
- Gamasutra interview CD Projeckt’s PR Maestro Tom Ohle. You don’t actually get to hear PR talking about their dark art, at least to developers, so it’s interesting to see Tom talk about what’s rustling beneath his cloak. He also says nice things about us, which will always get a link.
- Erik Wolpaw thinks that GlaDOS has found new employment. We should all leave the country, except we clearly can’t.
- Too tired to think of record to link too.
Success! Yet somehow this still feels like Fail!
Related Stories:
Alex 
Dinger 
Zuffox 
mrrobsa 
Kadayi 
phuzz 
zima 
Either GlaDOS is actually Tom Ohle, or you mislinked ;)
Fixed. Cheers!
KG
Through that Flash of Steel link I discovered that Gary Grigsby is making a wargame based on the American Civil War. Most excellent.
Ah! a sucessful ’sunday papers’. Jolly good show Mr. Gillen. The picture comment makes me rather worried though.
Here’s your record link.
A song for tired people.
Also, N’Gai is beginning to get a bit tiresome, for me.
Re: N’Gai Croal
Is it just me or has he started using the royal we?
“When we wrote those two paragraphs…”
Run to the hills, people! N’Gai Croal seeks to make himself your master! Run to the hills!
Tom Ohle’s interview reveals him to be smart and engaged in the medium, although I have to question his line:
Unless, of course, it cost you two hours to convince that one person, and, since that one person couldn’t get anyone else to look at her(his) blog, odds are he(she) isn’t a good investment of time. But, then again, 100% market penetration is its own reward.
I won’t mention the other, quality, details of the interview, since I’ve used up my RPS troll quotient for the week.
N’Gai just seems to be beating around the same bush that’s been addressed years ago by other nutcases who seem to think they can make a good living in this profession (more power to you gents, by the way). GTA III is a very different beast from GTA II (and the transformation was complete with Vice City). GTA went from a pure hedonistic “cops and robbers” overhead-view game (=for which there are clean lines of influence within the videogame world going back at least to some Sierra product) to a gangster game, heavily influenced by movies, to the point where they could finance cinema actors.
So, heck, yes, by all means, the proper way to express a game is to describe the experience. For that matter, it works for some