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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on June 28, 2009.

Sundays are for tea and compiling a list of interesting videogame readings from across the week for the RPS-audience’s delectation, while trying to not break into an improvised tribute to a real titan who passed this week or link to a pop song. Must… try…

• I get to the RPS-Sunday Papers document and I find three – count ‘em! – stories from Gamasutra. That’s a good week, so let’s make ‘em top story. Firstly, the history of the original videogame(tm) Space War. Secondly, on the design of the RPS-lusted-after APB. Thirdly, on them examining the point where accessibility goes too far, specifically around the automatic walkthrough system. Which is worth thinking about. After all, you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. I think that’s the naive argument. Much like quick-save and in-game teleportion, if it’s there, you’re going to use it.

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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on June 21, 2009.

Sundays are pain and a list of reading about games without a pop song. But mainly pain.

• I was going to do a full post on this, but never got around to it. Let’s get it out here now. Ron Gilbert replays the first Monkey Island and gives a director’s commentary on the experience: “Most people know you can hit the period key to skip a single line of dialog, but I’m surprised when I run into people that don’t know why I chose the period key. It seems obvious to me: a period ends a sentence.” I admit, i didn’t know that. Man!
• You want to hear me waffle? Well, Kirsten at Ready-Up makes me talk about creativity in games journalism and reveal my secret origin. KG: YEAR ONE. I had fun with this, as I suspect you’ll be able to tell by the way my answers get increasingly hysterical.

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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on June 14, 2009.

Sundays are for sitting and compiling a list of interesting gaming reading from across the week, and finding myself remembering that the chatter by games journalists about a fall in standards is just ludicrous. We’d have been lucky to get pieces as splendid and varied as the ones gathered here in a whole year in the early nineties, let alone in a single fucking week. Wouldn’t it be good if someone would admit that games writing has never, ever been better than it is right here, right now? Wouldn’t it? WOULDN’T IT? AS IF A FUCKING TYPO IN A GAMESPOT PREVIEW MATTERS AT ALL IN THE LARGER SCALE OF CUNTING THINGS AND… oh, I better not include a link to a pop song.

• I suspect I shouldn’t have kept this for the Sunday Papers. Roburky has been writing an alternately hilarious and genuinely heart-breaking diary of playing as a homeless single-parent family in the Sims 3. If you haven’t picked up on it from any of the places its been linked to, you should go catch up now. It’s almost certainly going to end up the premier piece of popular games reportage of the year.

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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on June 7, 2009.

Sundays are just like a normal work day. Scripts to write, showers to have, Sleater-Kinney to be howled. A normal work day, with one exception: today is the day which a list of noted (primarily) game-related reading from across the week is compiled for the RPS readership’s attention, with me trying to resist to any pop music that caught my eye too. Go List! Go!

• Here’s an intelligent young writer who I’ve got a lot of time for. Jim Rossignol runs an obscure little blog where he writes about philosophy and architecture - but in his latest post, he’s shown himself something of a commentator on games too. Good for him, I say. He’s writing about videogames as a device to explore the inner-space of humanity, taking in the Fermi paradox, JG Ballard and how potentially rewarding unreality could be. Go read.

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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on May 31, 2009.

Sundays are for lying, working on my tan and hacking through big ol’ Russian novels. Or so I hope. But Tuesday nights are for rushing around, desperately trying to pack, write a script and generally tie up all my business… including doing the Sunday Papers five days in advance. Let’s hope no major stories break between now and Sunday, eh? So, as always, here’s some interesting reading gathered from across (er) the last two days which I show to you, while trying to resist linking to a late-nineties zinekid micro-classic which re-impinged on my consciousness when panickedly running around yesterday.

• Mindless Ones are primarily a smart and funny comics blog, but they went deep down the hole marked gaming nostalgia this week with a post on the glory of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. Plenty of memories to be prompted, but great for focing on exactly how evocative those covers were. Go see.
• There’s a never ending string of articles about what’s wrong about the games press and how people should fix it – enough that I’ve been wanting for a few years to write an article giving 10 reasons why games writing now is better than ever. Leigh Alexander goes for something I think is much more fresh – as in, looking at what’s wrong with Games PR and how they should all ditch the predictable script in favour of genuine transparency.

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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on May 24, 2009.

Sundays are for… Sundays are… for. Okay, try this again.

Sundays are for crashing into bed after serious drunken Stafford Wedding dancing, having a scant few hours sleep, be up before 8 to get a train which somehow finds a route from the Midlands to Euston which takes three hours, going to a big hall full of thousands of people dressed as Death Note characters, limping to the pub for a couple of desperate hairs of dogs, crawl into a train, get dragged home and then pushed in front of your computer to try and compile a list of interesting reading from across the week for the RPS readers, while trying to avoid posting a piece of early nineties pophouse that was dropped at the wedding and warning the audience that if anyone says anything about the grammar, spelling or anything else in this formed-through-denial-of-physical-pain-post then next week will be the first skip-week for the Sunday Papers ever, you bastards.

• Brad at Stardock has had an interesting week of blogging. Firstly, a big long post about what the hell happened with DemiGod. Secondly, he canvases opinion on a design choice in their forthcoming Elemental. As in, which of two economic systems would the gamer prefer. Following the debate, it’s clearly neither going to be option 1 or 2 – but rather an option 9 or 45 – but I’d be interested in hearing which way the RPS readers lean.

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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on May 17, 2009.

Sunday cometh. Hence we compile a fine and noble list of all the interesting gaming reading from across the list and strive towards an equally fine and noble day when I don’t slip into a link to a piece of pop music that’s been working on me over the same period. We really do try.

• We didn’t pick up on the Star slagging off social internet game My Queen. Thoughtshake did, and spoke to developers Blouzar about the controversy, and the actual game.
• It’s not just Walker who’s been obsessing over Thief this week. Jim has some thoughts about Thief and Thief 4 over at OffWorld.

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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on May 10, 2009.

Fridays are for compiling a list of interesting reading across the week for the RPS readership’s attention to be posted on Sunday, because I almost certainly won’t be around and/or sober on Sunday due to some Best Man Duties and if I do it now, I can set it to go up automatically then and not worry about it any more. Let’s just hope I don’t do it in such a rush that I end up linking to some bally pop music.

• 2K Marin’s Steve Gaynor writes about what he describes as Single A Games. As in games which are neither the hyper-budget AAA nor the deliberately restricted aesthetics of the underground indie/retro scenes. Cases in point, Zeno Clash and The Path. He wonders whether this is a sustainable new niche between the two. The comments thread is also interesting, to say the least, as Jonathan Blow notes it’s almost certainly Zeno Clash making enough cash to pay for its team. Of course, there’s an expense of living aspect to that too. SF is a little bit more expensive than Chile.

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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on May 3, 2009.

Sundays are for avoiding tidying up the house by compiling a list of interesting reading from across the week, while trying to avoid mentioning a certain comic that may have been released. And how much I’m trying to avoid tidying can be ascertained by the length of this hefty Sunday Papers special…

• The most essential thing from the week was Chris Delay’s look at Introversion’s 2008, where he talks candidly about how Multiwinia almost brought down the company. Full of totally hearbreaking vignettes. Choice one: “Tom had always fantasised about building a sales counter that would sit in the corner of the office and tick up whenever we sold a copy of a game. This time around he actually did it, building the device out of second hand parts bought from Ebay and writing custom driver software for it that linked directly to our Multiwinia sales counter. During our launch party dinner and celebrations that evening, what was truly amazing about this counter was how little it was actually going up. I’m not kidding when I say that we actually checked the connections and the software several times to make sure it was actually working, only to find out it was. Even then that very night we knew it was bad, that our whole future was in doubt.” Go read.

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The Sunday Papers

Written by Kieron Gillen on April 26, 2009.

Sundays are for sipping tea with sun falling the wide windows of a rented Krakow apartment, thinking about things which need thinking about and compiling a list of articles from across the week (mainly) related to videogames, while trying to not link to the first single from the new album of one of my favourite bands. Again. Go!

• Mr Parish ex-EGM announced GameSpite Quarterly, where he writes elegiacally about the death of print magazines and so sets forth and starts working towards a Quarterly Print-on-Demand collection of essays. It’ll all go online eventually, but for those with a nostalgia or fondness for physical artifacts, they can get this first and nuzzle up to the paper. Hmm. Print on Demand collections for a niche fanbase? That’s an interesting idea…

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