The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for chewing over the defeat of the Bavarian Illuminati, The UFOs and the Society of Assassins by the Network, considering another couple of tea and another couple of levels of Starcraft 2 and compiling a list of the fine (mostly) games related reading I've come across this week while trying to not link to some piece of pop music or something. That'd be horrible. I hope I don't do that.

• This was probably the biggest talking piece of the week in chattering circles. In short: Apparently Activision by matter of policy don't have female leads in their games.
• First Person Observer reports on Batman slowly learning how to fight Crime in his recent Arkham adventures.
• Remember Quinns headed off on search of the Citizen Kane of videogames? He's started to report on his findings. Oh yes.
• EPSN's feature on the history of Madden is so good that it'll enchant you even if you don't give a toss about the colonial no-foot-to-ball. Sterling stuff.
• James Thomas pointed me in the direction of Gamasutra's interview with Ian Bogost, the creator of the previously RPS-covered Cow Clicker. Fascinating game, in that it's both a critique and a paragon of that particular corner of the world.
• On a similar note, Nicholas Lovell writes about why Zynga killed off their popular Street Racing. Obviously, it wasn't popular enough... but what does that mean? Lots of exciting maths.
• Robert Yang's hailing of with Brendon Chung was in Lewis' mod news column, but I want to highlight it here. I love seeing developers talking about what influenced them.
• Tom Chick writes about his experiences with the people he meets playing Starcraft 2 multiplayer. I'm still in the campaign. Man!
• Electron Dance on gaming as you get older, and the pressures thereof.
• Comrade Gridleoctopus prints a whole interview with Gavriel State of Transgaming about Mac/PC gaming.
• Popmatters, inspired by Limbo, talk about what German Expressionism can tell us about games. Limbo really is getting a lot of yabber for what is basically a monochrome Rick Dangerous with a portentous soundtrack.
• Wipeout with an RC-car and cardboard. Crikey.
• When I saw these anti-Facial-Recognition face-paints, I wished that we'd seen them before doing the Curfew. I'd totally have had one character made up.
• Screenwriter Jonathan Gems on the effect of the abolition of the UKFC - and why the British film industry was fucked anyway.
• I'd somehow missed that Plan B's master of grime and everything that doesn't involve indie-boys staring at their feet and/or fringe has started music-blogging. Hurrah! Here's him on Street Fighter Riddim, which is even kinda relevant. Kinda!

Failed.