Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Is it Sunday? The clock says so, though the Jetlag and after-effects of drinking with assorted 2k Marin people (plus friends) last night make somehow difficult to know for certain. Let’s pretend it is. And if it’s Sunday, then it’s time to compile a big ol’ list of things to read to do with videogames while trying not to drop a link to Quinns-approved dancefloor fillers or a graphic-novel-for-web I’ve just finished. Because that would be disastrous.

• Jeff Green writes an impressive and extensive interview with Ex-Civ4/Current Spore chap Soren Johnson. My favourite areas covered involve the trouble of turning Spore into an actual game, plus the relative dearth of actual strategy games that aren’t afraid to be strategy games.
• You will never beat this chap’s high score in Peggle. Unless you hack it too, presumably.
• Troy Goodfellow looks at Dungeons and Desktops, in his book review column and pretty much takes it apart for lack of ambition. Not having read the book, I think Troy’s right in that there’s room for a computer RPG book which reaches further than mere archivism.
• Next Gen talk to Id’s Matt Hooper, Lead Designer, talking about Rage and the AI challenges that they’re facing (Running straight at you won’t cut it anymore, alas). Also, specialisation in development.
• Steve Kent writes a ten (count ‘em!) feature on the evolution of games journalism. Whose title immediately got my back up, as I knew before reading it meant “In the USA”, but Mr Kent actually pretty much immediately stresses that it’s a US only piece, and reognises the achievements elsewhere. Still should have changed the title, natch. I also think – especially for the US where their biggest games mags are made by a UK-import company, importing UK-concieved ideas – not actually going elsewhere’s a real weakness. Within its limitations, a fine piece.
• This turned up in the comments thread, and is pretty cute. The Silent Amateur. Hitman: Blood Money played for laughs.
• Everyone I know has been talking about threesomes to me this week, which is somewhat onerous, as I have trouble actually arranging a onesome. It even followed me into games, when Tom Chick makes the difficulties of Threesomes the subject for his Rush, Boom, Turtle column. Still – his thoughts on making a 3-way conflict in an RTS work are fun.
• God, there’s a lot of Crispygamer in my Sunday Papers document this week. Let’s go for one more, as David Thomas has a big ol’ rant about the crackdown on Sporn by EA. What price creativity, you FASCISTS?
• Dizzee Johnson with Calvin Harris ask you to Dance Wiv Me. Or Them. It’s hard to argue. Also, Busted Wonder, my collaboration with the supa-dupa-rad Charity Larrison concluded this week. It’s a revisionist fairy-tale about a magic circus and postmodernism. No, really.

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