Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sundays are for working your way from Agatha-Christie-esque countryside across the country towards an eventual destination of evening Agatha-Christie Sunday Evening Cheesy Adaptations. But on the way I take a break to chew on pop-corn, sip tea and compile a list of some of the fine reading that came to my attention this week, present it for your delectation and try not to include a link to a couple of pieces of pop music. I must try. I must.

• Edge’s Making Of articles are always pretty decent, especially when it’s on a genuinely good game. You don’t get much more genuinely good than Deus Ex. The nameless Edge-hero chats to Warren Spector on the Doom where you could talk to the monsters.
• Point/Counterpoint: The New York Times’ Seth Schiesel thinks Rock Band: Beatles may be the most important game of all time. Conversely, Crispygamer’s John Teti thinks that the New York Times’ Seth Schiesel’s review of Rock Band: Beatles may be the worst game review of all time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for… God, this is a Long one. Anyway, Sundays are for heading to the evil South, having lunch, coming back and compiling a hefty list of splendid reading about games and similar things while trying to resist linking to one of the may things which were filling my late-night music listening last night, at least until I started playing AAAaaa(”Snip”-Ed) at 3:30am.

• Graham Smith has the misfortune to share a house with John Walker and an Office with PC Gamer’s Tim Edwards. He has no peace. Occasionally, he finds the strength to write something as he huddles and weeps. In the week that Spelunky went 1.0, his old piece on Spelunky’s Rick-Dangerous-where-the-random-danger-is-good caught my eye. Also, his piece on the now-forgotten Lotus 3, which – through the eyes of hindsight – seems to be Spelunky: The Racer. Someone should dig into that, I think.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for doing a lot of work, avoiding that lot of work with games of Champions and compiling a list of the fascinating (primarily) games related reading from across the week while resisting linking to a genuinely stunning performance.

• Games Workshop are doing a new edition of the lovely PC-game inspiring boardgame Space Hulk. Over at Downtowntime, Rab writes about Space Hulk. It’s heart-on-sleeve gaming romanticism and my favourite piece of games writing of the week.
• In the week of its console release, The Reticule interviews famous writer Paul Dini about the aims behind the writing of Arkham Asylum. What I find most interesting about it is that Dini – the veteran of animation – clearly both loves and is highly aware of what they’re doing with the tone: “It threw a lot of the restrictions out of the window… The level of intensity was a little more extreme so we were able to include everything that we wanted to whilst keeping the fantasy element intact. I’d like to think there is something in the game for angry teenager in all of us.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for coming back from Poland full of admiration for their ability to throw down, getting disgusted at the idiocy of British Rail Staff, seeing how your Beta Ray Bill pages in issue 3 turned out and compiling a post of all the fine reading from across the week while trying to avoid linking to some piece of pop music you rediscovered in the last week.

• Average gamer is fat, depressed and 35. Yeah, a lot of people exploded at this one. I suspect we all will too.
• Comrade Ste sighed nostalgically as he realised it was 10 years since the wonder of Old Man Murray’s Drakan Theme week. It’s not actually 10 years yet, but such pedantry is only for the noxious. i.e. Walker.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for downloading Indie Strategy Games, sipping tea and compiling an enormous list of the fun and fascinating reading from across the week, while trying my jolly hardest to not link to some fine 80s indie miserablism which I found myself listening to this morning…

• RPS and assorted friends-of-RPS have been nominated for the GMAs. That is, the Games Media Awards 2009. I’ll hand you over to the justly nominated for specialist online writer, Simon Parkin to talk about it. While still clearly enormously silly, it’s… well, I was going to say “getting more credible”, but it’s still very silly. Just not as silly as before. We’re in the blog category, as opposed to last year, when we were in the website category. VG247 is in both, somehow. And Nowgamer -as much a website as Eurogamer or C&VG is – is in blogs. It’s gloriously mental. At least it’s a good excuse for a piss up, eh?

Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for sitting, drumming fingers, waiting for your new comic to be announced at WizardWorld Chicago and compiling a list of the (especially fruitful) interesting (main) videogame writing across the week and try and not link to -er – some poetry? That doesn’t sound very me. I blame womankind.

• Simon Parkin plays proper journalist over at Eurogamer, and does a beginners guide to the whole Timothy Langdell situation – fundamentally, Langdell aggressively pursuing anyone who uses the word “Edge” in videogames for infringement of trademark. Strong games journalism, to say the least. And, according to Simon’s twitter, Langdell is unsurprisingly threatening to sue. Go read.
• Gamasutra do a hefty interview with Rhianna Pratchett on games writing. Both about her and the craft generally, if you actually want to know how games writing works currently and who and what you should be blaming for its shortfalls, this is a great grounder.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are inexplicable jet-lag, luxuriating in the glow of a 7-1 Blood Bowl victory and compiling a list of the finest (mostly) games-related writing from across the week in a handy list format, while trying to not include a link to some manner of pop music or another.

• Interview of the week, and no mistake. Sarinee “Home of the Underdogs Founder” Achavanuntakul breaks her silence and gives Rob Cummins her first extended interview in years. Extensive coverage of every issue around the Premier Abandonware site and community the Internet has ever seen – what developers said to her, what the industry did and the whole diaspora of sites that have emerged in her wake. Great stuff.
• Jordan Garski on the death of Matrix Online this week. What went wrong? Well, he says, I jacked out pretty quickly. For old time’s sake, here’s my on-release review. Also, this piece on the Escapist which has stuck in my mind years after reading it, about how its playerbase differed from the standard Fantasy MMO. And it sounds as if the end was pretty. It’s kind of a theme this year, isn’t it? The turning off of those games who failed in the 3rd wave of MMOs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for sitting in a darkened hotel room with your comrades in arms still snoozing, trying to compile a list of the interesting reading from across this week – and since I’ve been away, that’s a relatively sleight one – for the RPS readership’s delectation while trying to avoid sliding in a link to some manner of pop song. And then throwing some clothes on and heading back to my table on the Image stand at Comic-Con. Yes.

• Reading through this gamasutra piece on the charts about consumer research into buying upcoming games, and I hit an particularly eyebrow-raising snippet: “Elsewhere, Left 4 Dead 2 now ranks fifth among all upcoming titles, with the ratio of awareness to purchase intent the most notable statistic: six out of ten gamers who have heard of the title say they plan to buy it. Only Alan Wake, God of War III and Modern Warfare 2 have higher ratios. “This data point is the best indicator of franchises that have a passionate and loyal fanbase, and Left 4 Dead 2 has accomplished this feat in a remarkably short period of time,” says Williams.”. In other words, that boycott isn’t exactly catching on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for jet-lag, 110 degrees Vegas heat, and crouching on an old friend’s apartment whilst being harried by her dog. Also compiling a list of the notable games writing from across the week while trying not to lob in a link to one of the most glorious noble follies of Eighties pop music.

• Game Set Watch sidles up to another one of our writers, gets them drunk and then takes them home to have their wicked way with them. This time it’s our man in Canada, comrade Quinns, starting a new column – BATTLE KLAXON! – which seems to be about whatever is in the inside of his funny little noggin. This time it’s how Warhawk is an overlooked pleasure. And it’s certainly overlooked. I can’t find it on the PC release schedule anywhere. Man!

Read the rest of this entry »

The Sunday Papers surprises me. Sometimes it can be Thursday and my document is nearly empty. I think it’s going to be a small one. And then, Sunday hits, and I’ve all the writing in the world. So, as is Sunday’s wont, I compile a particularly bumper selection of the fine games writing across the week, while trying not to link to some pop-band who’ve managed to surprise me totally in the same period.

• Loyola Professor David Myers has been playing City of Heroes as part of his research. Which strikes me as a good thing to do. However, he’s been playing his Alt Twixt as… well, only obeying the rules of the game rather than the social rules. This lead to becoming one of the most hated players and recieving death-threats. He’s written a paper on it, and a book is forthcoming, but this article has an over-view of the events plus a link to one of his papers. Myers comes across somewhat naive, frankly. Gaming social groups act like social groups? Yeah, so what? And why shouldn’t they. Myers, from their perspective, was acting like a sociopath with no interest in societal mores.

Read the rest of this entry »