The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for meat. We all know that. But sometimes they are for vegetables too. Parsnips, even. But when the food is gone, we will need something else: intelligent commentary on the modern phenomenon of video games. Where could we find such rarities? Where indeed.

• TimeGate's Adel Chaveleh talks self-publishing: “We would kill ourselves to make a great game and carry it across the finish line of development,” says Chaveleh. “Then we would hand off the baton to another party, where they were responsible for things like PR, marketing, distribution – and a lot of times we saw stumbling happen then. A lot of time, we had to swoop in and take over. Other items we had to sit here and our hands were tied. We got tired of it, to be frank.” We're going to see more and more of this. Traditional publishers could find their days numbered? Maybe? Right, wishful thinking there, sorry.
• The Telegraph interviews John Carmack.
• TIGSource produced a rather lovely post linking to a whole bunch of indie game soundtracks and their creators. Go take a look listen.
• Eurogamer's If Trailers Told The Truth is brilliant. Funny, and actually kind of brutal. One of the best things on EG in a while.
• Leigh Alexander talks to a Black Ops veteran, the unlikely-named Wolfgang Hammersmith, about Call Of Duty. It's a fresh visit to the topic of violence in games, but more surprisingly it turns out that Hammersmith wants games to be more hardcore: ""I think games can wield people's attention, and maybe even teach them how to wield their own attention," Hammersmith reflects. "What I would think about changing is, let's have a way to shut off auto-aim and extra lives, and having infinite ammo, and let's find a way to turn off the radar so you don't know where your opponent is. Let's have a game that allows you to use more of a field, to do things that make tactical sense." Maybe he should get a copy of Arma 2.
• Billy Bob Thornton thinks games are to blame for making movies worse. Sorry about that, Billy. I hear critics make movies worse by panning them in the press, too.
• That Jim Rossignol guy went to an architecture event called Thrilling Wonder Stories II, and there were videogames. Splash Damage's Ed Stern even spoke about Brink. It was all jolly good.
• OXM's Mike Channell suggests that games won't get you the girl. Well, they won't get him the girl, at least. Poor old Mike.
• Michael Mateas on AI, Games and New Media, via Five Players.
• Are you aware of The Dancing Plague Of 1518? I'm not sure why I am linking this here, except to point out that they built a stage.
• The Quietus produces a superb interview with the grandfather of British sci-fi/fantasy (well, the surviving one, anyway) Michael Moorcock. This is well worth a read. For example, on the lack of intellectual content in Steampunk: "Yes, that's right, and they think, "oh great, big airships! Wow!" You're a bit suspicious of people who like too many big airships. You think, maybe you should be writing porn, you know!"
• Was April 11th, 1954 the most boring day of the 20th century? Probably. Someone should make a game out of it.

And that's me done for the day. I'm going to trudge out into the snow to chop firewood with my enormous axe. I might have this on my MP3 player as I go. Ah, sweet dissonance.