The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for wondering why the mysterious shoulder injury you somehow picked up in the week has not been fixed by two successive nights of boozing. Has ale really lost its magical healing properties? These thoughts are of grave concern. But oh well, you don't need to be able to lift heavy objects to collect some of the more interesting bits of videogame commentary from across the interworld. Let's see if any of those have healing properties...

• Kirk Hamilton is writing his own novelisation of The Witcher 2. It features exciting events from the first part of the game, as well as herbal lustiness. "Also, I threw in a "sex" as a verb just for you guys," he explains. Thanks, Kirk.
• Comrade Abraham points out that Ian Bogost's output has been pretty strong this week. Firstly there's this: "Arguing against a stripe of neoconservatism in games that paints certain forms of design as aberrant and others as natural, academic and developer Ian Bogost examines the very nature of creativity and art and offers up an analysis of how the medium can move forward with a rich palette of choices." And then there's this: "Why Debates About Video Games Aren’t Really About Video Games." These are both in the category of Essential Reading. Bogost strong! Bogost smash puny internet!
• In Challenge Everything Miodrag Kovachevic examines videogame difficulty: "It often boils down to the actual difficulty of the challenges you faced. Did you find a particular section hard? Was the game too easy? Is the CPU a cheating bastard? Achieving proper difficulty is hard. The more elements you include in your game, the harder it gets to stay fair towards the player."
• Ars Technica explains how PC ports can get all fucked up: "This is something that continually drives me crazy, and it's only getting worse. You sit down at your computer, log into Steam, launch the game, and then you need to set up another account or log into another service before the game launches. You better set up a dedicated password for each service, as well, because it seems as if everyone in the world has either been hacked or is about be hacked. Everyone wants your personal information, and it seem as if no one has a good way to keep that data safe." Combine this article with John's guides for PC developers, and it should not be hard to create a PC version of your game.
• Epic talk to CVG about the PC and some other stuff, like the PC having changed: " Everyone quotes World of Warcraft as being the obvious one, but there's a massively thriving community of hardcore gamers on the PC still. The way they get their games is different where it's nearly all online delivery, so you've got the likes of Paradox, who do a variety of niche content but it's all massively hardcore and serves that audience. You've got the World of Tanks guys who have something like a million concurrent users or something stupid like that. That is not a platform that is in trouble. It's just different, it's changed."
• Some dude called Alec Meer was interviewed by MCV. He has this advice for aspiring Alec Meers: "Go your own way, be proud, don’t let yourself be locked down somewhere where you’re treated like disposable meat who can be replaced with someone younger, cheaper and keener if you don’t toe the line. If you’re good, you’ll be able to attract the attention of someone better. Don’t compromise. Find what works for you, not simply what you can work for."
• Splash Damage get profiled in The Telegraph, ooh fancy.
• Hilariously-named Australian outlet Crikey writes about gaming as a spectator sport: "Last month, 87,000 people watched the livestream of the grand final of the popular DreamHack Summer tournament, 5000 more than attended the 2010 NRL grand final in Sydney. While the television audience of more than 3.1 million for the rugby grand final dwarfs the audiences for any StarCraft II match, the 3.2 million registered players worldwide for the game suggest the potential viewership is not far behind the domestic competitions."
• Mr Harris has been producing more works of photographic wonder at Dead End Thrills. He is some kind of professional screenshotteer.
• This is how many buttons the space shuttle has. (Had?)
• This post by BERG's Matt Jones on "The Robot-Readable World" is fascinating and awe-inspiring.

Music? Well you're probably already listening to the Bastion soundtrack. I love that game. Can't wait for it to land on PC. (Just a couple of weeks!)

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