The Sunday Papers

Sunday are for writing too long first-link-post so not having enough room for a proper intro. List of good words. Must not link to pop.

• I was going to link to this piece by the Superbrothers over at BoingBoing last week as a singular discussion piece. You may have seen it already, but if not, go have a look. Less Talk, More Rock argues that games' natural language isn't spoken or written, but in the doing, both on the creation and the playing side. It's easy to see it as a games-purist argument... but while it overlaps with it, I'm not entirely sure that's right. The games it hails - Another World, Prince of Persia - are actually both most noteworthy in how they reduced the pure-game element, in favour of in-game narrative cut-scenes. With retrospect, we look at them as narrative classics... but that's not how they were taken at the time. These were games which didn't rock hard enough for at least a good chunk of the gamers - which lead to Flashback's more game-heavy approach to similar terrain. This is, of course, both a strength and weakness of the argument, depending how you want to spin it. I also note that it's a vague enough manifesto so that everyone just lumps their favourite games inside it. Still - it's a more subtle argument than it initially appears, even though I suspect the "rock" terminology doesn't help with that. Thoughts, folk?
• Spinning off that, Chris W directs me at Jamie Love writing about that second class citizen of gaming: the word.
• Chris Hecker thinks that Indie-Jam culture may actually be somewhat harmful and people should just finish their fucking game. The conversation between Cactus and Hecker is well worth reading.
• Richard Cobbett gets nostalgic over DRM. Ah, codewheels. Those were the days.
• Alec's going to be writing about his time with Sleep Is Death soon, but Leigh Alexander writes extensively about her experiences with it over at Kotaku. This is sounding increasingly interesting.
• via Lack26: New Scientist on whether World of Warcraft predicts the future? in its interview with sociologist William Sims Bainbridge about his book, the Warcraft Civilization.
• Quinns asked me not to link to his defence of the unique stylings of Tim Rogers' games writing, because he was going to do an article in his style the next week to sort of round it out. This was three or four weeks back now, so I'm linking to the defence. You had your chance, Quinns. Yeah, you heard. Outside.
• Meanwhile, over at Resolution, Denby writes about people asking him if he likes Halo. Which you fear will be all too cynical, but really is heartwarming stuff.
• Hefty interview with Vic Davis of Cryptic Comet.
• The Evony versus Bruce Everiss case comes to an end with Evony throwing in their cards.
• Kyle Francis on why Yakuza 3 does boredom right and Heavy Rain does boredom wrong.
• This is playful. Tom Ewing starts thinking about how a gaming meta-layer could help the music industry. Achievements for record listening! Which is a hilarious idea, both because it's hilarious and because someone will, inevitably, do it.
• I fully admit I haven't read this yet, but it's Arthur interview with Alexandro Jodorowsky about everything, including games. In short: Jodorowsky is one-half of RPS' heroes. Glorious full on mental. Go reads.
• Talking about full-on-mentals, here's Jim being interviewed by Cliffski for his blog. THE TABLES HAVE TURNED.
• Brilliant artist/writer Colleen Coover writes about her love of Dragon Age.
• This article at Pitchfork - entitled "What's the matter with Sweden" - talks about the effects of arts funding by governments, across several countries. Useful stuff to apply across to games, frankly.
• Paul Gravett writes about blind prejudice against Manga.
• Beautiful military spending.
• I dug this short comic by comrades Si Spurrier and Chris Mitten.
• Excerpts from the Coldplay's Roadie book. ROCK AND ROLL.
• The A-to-Z of awesomeness.
• It's actually been a great week for music and me, and I've no idea what to pick. I'm going to go with the newest thing which popped into my twitterfeed, being the first review of the Indelicates new album, which includes a track to listen to. Hurrah The Indelicates: the AIMs of Pop.

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