The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for lazing around in a dressing gown, catching up with your reading, getting ready to play some electronic videogame and compiling a list of the fine (mostly) game related reading from across the week while trying to avoid to link to some music or start yabbering about some of the stuff that was drunkenly talked about post-Gamecamp last night.

• Clint Hocking's Leaving Ubisoft post is probably the most interesting thing anyone put out this week. Key quote: "I am a person of habit. I have many good habits, but the reality is that new habits develop and reinforce themselves everyday, and it is rare that one just picks up good habits. We pick up bad habits, mostly, and the good habits we have and the few we are lucky enough to adopt often atrophy into bad ones. That is what was happening to me in Vancouver a decade ago, and while it is hard to look at your life and say ‘this is unsustainable’, it is even harder to look at your life and say ‘the reason my life is unsustainable is because I am unsustainable.’ "
• Stephen Hopbson pointed me at Wolfire's post-Humble-Bundle analysis of Piracy Numbers, which puts a different spin on the piracy numbers. Specifically, arguing that the 80-90% piracy number that generally emerges doesn't mean that 80-90% of PC gamers are pirates. In short: Pirates download more games than customers actually purchase, so that 90% could easily be 20% of PC gamers. Go read, as they're more to it. It's far less convincing on its figuring of what the real reasons for falling PC sales are. Hailing Blizzard is great - but when their biggest selling game is from a genre which is a rock solid DRM you can't just put it down to some inherent quality.
• Games are too big and too hard, thinks Games Pro's John Davison. Fun use of the numbers. Of course, it's worth thinking about how those numbers are interpreted.
• The GAPS system, for measuring gamer/game compatibility. The future of marking or something, I suspect.
• Destruction post a image of relative size of videogame worlds, via their maps. Not totally right - Far Cry 2 is twice the size they show - but fascinating to look at.
• Gamecamp was crazy fun yesterday. I'll try and write it up tomorrow in a proper feature, but until then, here's Denby's notes on the event.
• Talking about Denby, when reading his list of 5 people whose games writing he's currently digging, I hit upon Laura Michet's Let's Come Up With Reasons Why I Die In Spelunky piece. THERE HAS TO BE A REASON.
• Dan Stapleton over at PCG talks about 5 things he can't talk about in the Starcraft 2 Beta. Quite.
• I posted the interview with the Fate of the World folk on Friday, and I suspect that it's not the sort of thing which has screamed READ ME! to most RPS readers. Frankly, if you're the sort who reads the Sunday Papers, you'll want to read this.
• The Mac Gamer interview Valve's lovely writer Marc Laidlaw
• Music from games you'd like to hear in a club?
• Okay, Goat Tongue Torture. You need a goat. Make it thirsty. Put someone in the stocks. Pour salt water over their feet. Then the rough tongue of the goat licks and licks, getting every more thirsty, until the flesh is torn asunder. The chap who told us about it last night made it go all the way to the bone? Is that even possible. Probably not. But trust RPS: We'll find out, as soon as Alec gets back from ATP. And we find a goat.
• I'll save "Warren Spector - Will He Respect Her?" for the write-up though. Or perhaps never.
• You'll have seen this, but Galactic Empire State Of Mind. got me back into listening to the original. I do love the Bobba Fett shot.

Failed.