The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for swinging across the country in an enormous metal track-worm, then desperately trying to pull together a Sunday Papers before house guests turn up for a game of the just-bought Dominions and... what's the Sunday Papers? Oh, you know, sweeties. You know. Let's just hope I can get through this list of fine (mostly) game related reading before the urge to link to a pop song becomes overwhelming.

• Jordan Mechner was Prince of Persia/Last Express. Eric Chahi was Another World. They talk, in French. It's translated at Gamasutra. Two auteurs on auteurism. Got to be worth reading, yeah?
• Julian Murdoch over at Gamespy talks about the Problem of Religion in games with a variety of designers, such as Molyneux and Ken Levine. Talking of which - seen that Irrational have started blogging?
• Unity give their gaming trends for 2010. They're a damn sight more interesting than "there will more first-person-shooters". Go polite futurism!
• Over at UserCreated we have an interview with the Nameless One modders. Yay!
• More videogames are good for you over at the Guardian.
• Even more Videogames are good for you over at PopSci, explaining how a school uses videogames to teach people.
• VVVVVV's Jet-Set-Willy-esque room names? The writer discusses it. Splendid stuff.
• A fascinating piece of board-game history with PlayThisGame offering the full rules and components for Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker! Don't know why it's important? Costikyan will tell you all about it.
• Last week I said a few words about Leigh's position as EMINENT LADYWORDER OF GAMING LETTERS. Her right to reply.
• (We don't have a right to reply at RPS, as anyone who's tried to make the reply-function work in the comments thread will testify)
• Oh, here's Leigh on Every Day The Same Dream and why it's an exemplary art game. I tend to agree.
• This is old, but Simon Park dragged it up again, and I think it merits re-linking. Early-80s British videogame-based comics. I'd revive the fuck out of all of these.
• BLDGBlog on Nakatomi space. Seriously, go read and pretend you're Rossignol for ten minutes.
• Let's cross the stream. Shimelle Laine was my first Internet Friend, met back on a mailing list in the mid-nineties. I became the Father Of New Games Journalism. She became the Warrior Queen of Punk Rock Scrapbook. We chose the two fields it was easiest to become controversial, basically. Here's on why she Scrapbooks.
• Adam Curtis blogs about Brits in Yemen, back in the day.
• Tom Camfield linked me to (one of my heroes) Paul Morley interviewing (one of Jim's heroes) Brian Eno. The quote Tom pulls out: "All the signs were in the air all around with ambient music in the mid 1970s, and other people were doing a similar thing. I just gave it a name. Which is exactly what it needed. A name. A name. Giving something a name can be just the same as inventing it. By naming something you create a difference. You say that this is now real. Names are very important."
• McSweeny's cookery spot. YUM! DELICIOUS!
• Dog Days Are Over - Florence And The Machine. For personal reasons. Oh - fuck it. Since Alex has just twittered it, let's get some Camera Obscura in there too.

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