The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for getting back from the MCM Expo in the very early hours, having sung songs featuring the word money replaced by the words "Lunney" (As in, awesome-if-famously-intimidating cartoonist Liz Lunney) all the way home (e.g. Mo Lunney, Mo Problems, Lunney Can't Buy You Love, Lunney Lunney Lunney), snatching a few hours of sleep then getting up to do it all over again. Except still finding time to hammer out a list of the (mostly) games related reading from the week, trying not to link to some piece of pop music.

• The PCG blogs had a good week. Tom's eye-rolling at Bioshock 2's gold-club game-mode is cute enough, but Craig writing about why he doesn't play Halo any more is genuinely striking. When people tell stories about games, they rarely choose ones which paint them badly - unless, of course, you're the sort of game-trolling sociopath who uses such things as a badge of honour - so it's interesting to see Craig do that.
• Pat has a very special moment over on VG247.
• Ars Technica on why they deliberately avoid placement on Metacritic. I've got to admit, it makes RPS' life much easier not having review scores.
• Leigh on why she's let games down. Specifically in her ability to describe why she likes them to non-gamers. More provocatively, she argues why Alan Wake is too well made to be scary.
• Ready-Up on Ethics and morals in games
• James Andrewartha points me at Hoyden About Town seeing misogyny in the PR of Zombiecow's Channel-4 funded Educational game Privates. A delicate one this - as always with any feminist point, it's better to shut the hell up and listen - though my main note that I think it's borderline cultural imperialism when someone from outside the culture, unaware of the subject of the satire (The Daily Mail), unilaterally declares the satire is out of bounds. Not all countries are the same, and diktats to pretend they are irk me
• Another interview with the chap behind THAT indie deal
• DrugCrazed on the Humble Indie deal. Analysis and graphs! We love graphs!
• For those who thought fake-doors were entirely videogames' purview.
• I was fascinated by these dual long-form features on major pop figures emerging so close together. I'm mainly interested in how they both manage to be so good, while having totally opposite aims. Moran's piece in the Times on Lady Gaga is a valedictory cheer and a portrait of the artist as a glorious decadent. Conversely, Hirschberg's piece in the NY Times on M.I.A. is one of the most elegantly vicious petard-hoisting I've seen in some time.
• I've been all over LCD Soundsystem's new one this week. Dance Yrself Clean is the one which I've been singing while wandering around London, but Drunk Girls was probably the way in.

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