This Saturday night was all about browsing online shops and resisting dark urges that must be suppressed, or else my lady will truly leave me for someone who doesn’t stink of resin and glue. But Sunday is a joyous time. For today is the time I compile a list of fine pieces of reading to distract you this afternoon, while resisting the urge to link to old Austin-based SY-influenced indie-rock singles for no bloody discernible reason.
- About once a year PC Gamer’s Tom Francis takes a swing at something really fun and hits it out of the park – which is about the home-run rate my favourite writers on games manage. Last year was his GalCiv2 diary. This years, I suspect, will be his cheerily stalkerish attempt to find a girlfriend while playing MMOs. You’ll laugh! You’ll wince! You’ll never let any of your womenfolk anywhere near him!
- When doing the link-grab for the Fruit Mystery post I found myself noting Jonathan Blow has linked to scans of a recent XBox 360 World preview of the game. Which is splendid stuff, and applies just as much to the PC version.
- Julian Murdoch of Games with Jobs writes a piece on Pinning Butterflies, specifically about how writing about games has made him love games more. To my mind, entirely right. People talk a lot about turning games-into-job so losing all pleasure in it – but the other side is that actually actively examining your sensations when playing a game increases the experience: an unexamined life isn’t worth living, or so some dead greek dude once said, and I suspect the same may go for virtual ones too. I recall talking to Super Foul Egg, curmudgeonly gaming oracle of game commune State, after it was winding down, picking up my usual why-don’t-you-write something leitmotif. “When you actually gonna write something about Games, Egg?”. “When there’s no more games left to play”. As ripostes go, just about perfect and – right then – unanswerable. If you replayed the scene today, I’d have linked to Murchoch’s piece.
- Talking about examining gaming lives… Irish Gamers talk to Jim about his book. You know: This Gaming Life.
- I was so pleased at describing Jane McGonigal as a Hyperbrain last time I mentioned here, clearly I’m going to have to link to her write up of the Hide & Seek festival which I attended the opening night of, if only to have a chance to do it again. “It was probably one of the top 3 fun weekends of my life,” says Jane McGonigal, Hyperbrain.
- Not quite Hyperbrain: The RPS chatroom does a RPS room in the Google’s new Lively service. The Horror, The Horror…
- Look past the chatlog formating to the content, as Reticulated Splines talks to Asi Burak of Impact games, who made Israeli-Palestinian Diplomacy game Peacemaker.
- Mistakes & Regrets – … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of The Dead. Still as painfully compelling as being dumped by someone unexpectedly. Also, for those who ever played my old Deus Ex mod, The Cassandra Project, the slightly-squiffed inspiration for the name of the bar you walk into at the start.
Failed.
Related Stories:
Can someone explain how, in an advert for ‘Car Games’ and ‘Bike Games’, there needs to be a sub-section for ‘Racing Games’?
And, Parking games? Yes – over 12 of them on the site.
Anyway – Hide & Seek was great fun, though I was only there on the Sunday. McGonigal is quite right when she remarks about how ‘game’ real-life players are as opposed to online (which is why I much, much prefer playing my TF2 in the same room as my opponents or teammates). When you’re surrounded by people smiling and giggling for half the day, even my general misanthropy takes a step aside. A few people wondered if it was all a bit immature, but the thought and effort obviously put into it suggest very much otherwise.
The RPS room is quite the experience.
We were going for a Spectoresque Wall-of-RPS effect.
Tom Francis is spectacular. I read his blog whenever it’s updated, and that article was par for the course. Fantastic.
Interesting quote from the interview with Jim:
“And I assumed that I didn’t know very much about games at all. I mean I’ve been playing them obsessively my whole life but that was just how I lived.”
This never happens anymore.
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could love a woman who didn’t, just a little bit, somewhere deep down, want to be a spaceship” is my favourite quote from any piece of games writing, ever.
Many thanks RPS and to Jim.
And Francis’ piece was pretty hilarious. I do wonder what’s going on, if anything, with the lady he met at the end.
Damn, downloaded the Cassandra Project only to find out that Gametap’s weird butchered Deus Ex doesn’t support it.
Loving the Hide and Seek coverage, to the point that I’m hoping to join in with the next one. A little disappointed that igfest (which is virtually ‘local’ to me) clashes with birthday celebration plans. Ho hum.
Tom Francis is as amusing as ever too, obviously.
“Gametap’s weird butchered Deus Ex doesn’t support it.”
Same with Steam, actually – doesn’t support mods either. Digital distribution for the lose, apparently :(
You may be able to fix it by overwriting your Gametap DeusEx.exe with the .exe from the 1.112fm patch, but back everything up before you overwrite.
I loved Source, Tags and Codes – Worlds Apart, not so much. Hope they’ll get back on form with the new album.
Rubbish, I’ve managed it. The shortcut needs to be something like this:
"C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\deus ex\System\DeusEx.exe" ini="c:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\deus ex\HotelCarone\System\hotelcarone.ini" log=HotelCarone.logEdit: I have no idea what’s going on with the huge gaps there. It’ll be fine if you copy/paste.
RE: Trail of the Dead – Somehow they were on Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse/Dethklok tour last fall and the pairing couldn’t have been more wrong(souring me on their music). They did at least inadvertently provide some amusement for the crowd while waiting for Dethklok to hit the stage.
Have Trail jumped the shark? I certainly hope not.
Trail of Dead – the only indie rock band that does that rock part. Please excuse me for using the words indie rock.
RPS = migraine inducing with about 4 looped audio clips going on all the time tbh.
Oh wow, that Hide and Seek fest sounds really cool, I’ve always wanted to try games like this. I’ll have to see if I can get to one, or if anything is going on up in Edinburgh.
For some reason, the coverage reminded me of 1000 blank white cards. Which has to be responsible for one of the most enjoyable evenings of my undergraduate degree. Unfortunately its also the kind of game where the right players are paramount, and too many people just look at you bemused when you try to explain it. (Not to mention some people seem to take themselves far too seriously.)
Theory: it’s because the text is justified
Great links :)
Man, I fancy Kate Bush.
Then, I mean, obviously. Possibly now to, but I’ve not seen recent photos.
Weird MINERVA-scented puzzling, anyone?
(The persons in the RPS Steam chat thinger have been doing sterling work, incidentally!)
Heh! 1KBWC was precisely what came to mind over that Gype entry. Did you ever Kingdom of Loathe, James?
My only prior expose to “and they will know us by our trail of dead” was when they opened for Dethklok in La. Not a great band but they tried
@Rosti
No, although I’ve had several people suggest it to me now. I had a quick look at it a couple of years back, but didn’t go further than tha. Perhaps it is time for another look.
Theory: Interesting, I never got that to work. A couple of us have been fiddling with enabling mods for Steam-DX over in our little corner of the world, but I guess we should try Carone and see if we can get that to work. I don’t believe there’s any technical difference between Carone and eg. HDTP.
Oh man. I just reinstalled GalCiv 2 to get the new expansion pack and that article has totally fired me up. Unfortunately it’s 1am and starting a game now would be entering a world of pain.
Excellent papers!!! I like the sound of ..’Trail of Dead, reminds me of a local garage band in my small town called East Ash (their ancient you-tube contribution).
“writing about games has made him love games more.”
Isn’t that why every single one of us has RPS bookmarked? AMEN.
It almost gave me a new reason to go back to WoW, as I didn’t tried too hard to hang out with the girls I met, I may have missed an important “feature” of the game…
Tom Francis rocks.
nabeel
Because every inch of hope becomes a world of shame!
Any update on the Sins of a Solar Empire SF Quote contest? If I’ve missed it I’ll feel appropriately deficient, but I’m also curious to see what kind of entries there were…
I’ve inquired about previous contest entries before as well, all appear to be sucked into a huge vacuum of silence.
They’re going to piece together some kind of meta-novel using nothing but the quotes, obviously.