The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for writing a very small intro to your collection of fine (mostly) game related writing from across the week, because you want to include a massive quote in the first story. Oh - I will try not to link to some noisy pop music. I will.

• Remember Magnasanti? The ultimate Sim City 3000 city? Well, Francisco Alberto points me in the direction of Vice's interview with its creator, which is strong stuff. Example quote: "There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle - this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time." Go read.
• Tom Jubert - Narrative Designer on Penumbra - has started blogging. Plot is Gameplay's Bitch. It's striking stuff so far, and impressively candid. Here's him picking over the strong reactions to a little interactive dialogue he wrote. Here's an interview with Richard Dansky of Tom Clancy fame. And here's him working out whatever to make of Egron/Logos.
• Magical Nihilism wonders whether our new leaders have ever played Civilization. They totally could have.
• Roguelike Developer Andrew Doull, after playing Shattered Horizon, is depressed about the lack of near-future science-fiction games. I think he's got a point - especially about the fact it needs a little intellectual rigour to make work being a design limitation which developers shy away from.
• J Nash is still dropping his occasional science at his Or Something, archiving his nineties games reviews. Here's him on Toonstruck, in a relatively straight mode. And here's him taking apart Speris Legacy, in a fine example of why he's one of the few games writers I still have excited hushed conversations about with fellow believers, a decade and a half later. And here's him kicking Blackstone Chronicles for PCG which - if I remember correctly - lead to an odd weak where he kept on sneaking into the office to change the mark back to 3% from 4%.
• Seems amiss not to mention it: one of the bigger talking points this week was when Quinns review of the first Age of Conan add-on got pulled from Eurogamer. Here's Warpcore breach with a little commentary. It's a shame Quinns hasn't got a statement out on this, really. I wouldn't be expecting one soon because...
• He's now traveling across the Far East at the moment, having recieved a hot lead for Gaming's Citizen Kane. No, really.
• Following on from my session at Gamecamp, Denby over at Game Set Watch has a little think about how much you actually embody your character in videogames.
• Gaming Daily interviews Erin Robinson about the John-Walker loved Puzzlebots. Oh - and they've also finished their own Neptune's Pride diary. Hurrah for long-form diary pieces!
• Coilhouse on Kiana Firouz which is worth your attention if you're a Brit. Good work on Meredith Yayanos trying to get to the bottom of it all too.
• A week's a long time in... you, you know. Lots of excellent political writing across this week. My favourite was Matt Sheret's over at Global Comment talking about the netroots, because it's looking forward rather than smearing ashes in its face. The Future's Never Over.
• It's the sort of music-talking-point of the week. Are you PRO! or ANTI! Sleigh Bells. Perhaps inevitably - because they sound like the logical cross-collaboration between Betty Boo and Nuclear War - I dig 'em. NPR are streaming the album at the moment, so you can make up your own mind. I'd start with Infinity Guitars, as it's called Infinity Guitars.

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