The Sunday Papers

Sunday means two things. Firstly, I don't feel as bad at sleeping in past mid-day. Secondly, I compile a list of interesting stories from across the week for your leisurely reading and try and add commentary without resorting to linking intense pop-propagandist soul-bearing. And then you read it and comment, or not comment, according to your leaning.

• I love this. Game-ism do a little post about Portal, looking closely at GlaDOS and theorising what Valve were trying to do with her design. Which involves bondage, and we're all about the bondage here.
• N'Gai Croal talks to a former-FTC lawyer about the whole Take2/EA knife-fight thing. What's interesting is that he thinks that the FTC may actually block the take-over attempt on anti-monopolisation-grounds. Hmm.
• 2Dboy's Ron Carmel, creator of RPS-lust-item World of Goo, talks about self-funded development. Meanwhile, in the week we published our own Battlefield Heroes interview, Gamasutra speak to its producer in a hefty interview.
• Pleo the Dinosaur - essentially a real world NPC, according to the RPS thinktank. Yes. Always worth noting the RPS think-tank mainly thinks about tanks being awesome. What's your favourite tank, RPS readers?
• Troy Goodfellow reviews Tim Guest's Second Lives book. You may know Guest from his series of columns he wrote for Edge on this very subject. "Good game writing is not very different from good travel writing", Troy starts. Now that's an idea. I hope someone runs with it.
• Leigh Alexander continues her glorious apologias for the debased and immoral in videogames in her Aberrant Gamer column, this time on the must-discussed Miss Bimbo. I suspect I'll have to write something about Miss Bimbo soon, but I also suspect it'll be about my desperate attempts to afford a boob-job. And in the game! Probably best to listen to Leigh. Oh - while we're at it, she's been having her own Final Fantasy VII week at her SexyVideoGameLand, which is worth looking at.
• Scott Miller of 3D Realms talks to the Hollywood Reporter about designing games with Hollywood convergence in mind. That is, realising the game will end up existing in other mediums. With my second-career as a comic-writer, I've heard this wisdom before - it was the common-sense position among indie creators circa 2000 when I was starting out. I ended up kicking against it then. It strikes me like starting a relationship while spending time thinking about who you're going to be dating next. Real greatness requires concentration. Or, in my case, real self-indulgent nonsense.
• Listen! Dexys - There, There My Dear. It's all awesome, but from 2:02 to about 2:45 is what RPS sounds like in my head when we're on form. Which isn't ever often enough, I know, but you gotta have something to aim for.

Fail.