The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for celebrating the birthday of previous Sunday Papers editor, Kieron Gillen. Happy birthday, old chap, we raise our morning mugs of tea to you and your vital way with words. Speaking of words...

• VG247 interview Valve's Chet Faliszek: "I’ve funded a lot of things on Kickstarter. I figure 60% of these projects will actually create something by the end, and I’m fine with that. It’s going to be interesting for projects that take a long time, for teams that aren’t as experienced, seeing what people think, and to see what’s going to happen two or three years from now. Are they actually going to deliver and come through with it? So yeah, that will be interesting to see. But I do hope that it maintains being a viable way, because I love being able to see people saying, ‘yeah, I’m just going to do this project.’"
• Why you can't hide in the shadows in Dishonored: ""As we are a bit perfectionist, we wanted it to work as in Thief and very realistically. With these two notions we got crazy and decided to eliminate the light parameters, because it was too difficult to have both.""
• Edge's Why I Make Games is a bit lightweight, probably thanks to being a repurosed magazine article, but there's nevertheless got some stars in there, talking about their motivations. Harvey Smith: "Ultimately, the reason I make games is that I still find it fascinating to explore the dark, the potentially threatening or hostile space; it’s thrilling to me to solve problems under duress, to fight monsters in the metaphorical sense. And I want to do it myself, expressing my own desires and quirks. I’d rather be there as an active agent in a truly dynamic, changeable situation, and games do that better than film or literature."
• Steve Gaynor ponders on the possibilities for a non-violent immersive sim: "Can a “non-violent Immersive Sim” even exist? For us, it comes down to extracting the specific definition of “simulation” as it applies to the games that inspire us, and applying that to the context of experience we’re presenting in Gone Home. Because “simulation” in our case is not a literal term. It’s not virtual reality or the Holodeck (or even Jurassic Park Trespasser.) What it means is allowing the player to do whatever their character might logically do within the game’s context, and ensuring that the gameworld reacts in the way you expect. The design challenges in pursuit of this goal involve deciding what to abstract away from literal simulation, and how best to accomplish it."
• Kotaku Australia's 30-year saga of a game's store/museum: "In their store in Penshurst, The Gamesmen built a museum. It has every console you can imagine set in chronological order. Above it is a timeline, charting the progress of video games: where they’ve come from, where they are at this present point in time. Throughout the last 30 years, among the most the most pivotal turning points in gaming’s history, The Gamesmen have been present, “rolling with the punches,” as Angelo Jr puts it."
• Some thought experiments for the apocalypse: "The game quickly becomes muddy as you work to strip away your conventional thinking. Would that homeless guy really be so bad to have around when you suddenly need to live rough? Is a criminal even a criminal anymore, or just a really good scout? Is that older fellow with the kindly face going to do anything besides break a hip in a crisis?"
• Tom Francis' posting about Guild Wars 2 has almost made me install it. But right now I am busy with Mechwarrior and Planetside...
• Don't forget to watch Quinns' and Paul Dean's boardgame show.
• And then maybe head over to Flash Of Steel for some strategic thinking.
• This is an interesting read, with a console gamer suggesting that gamers are ready for a "digital only" world. As a PC gamer I rarely get physical media anymore. I was surprised to receive a Carrier Command disc in the post from Bohemia this week. It's so rare that anything is physical, and it's been like that for a couple of years.
• The Skulls Of The Shogun programmer chap on deciding which platforms to plump for: "Small developers like us (3 people for a while, now up to 5 fulltime) face a daunting task – not enough resources to build cross platform titles for launch, and so many platforms to pick from. You have to at least make enough to survive on the first one to port it to the others. The shifts in platforms can feel like a rollercoaster ride – and not one of those polished Six Flags coasters, more like a rickety contraption in a traveling carnival run by a guy with one arm and an eye patch."
• I love that the Guardian ran a piece just on Dishonored's concept art. They also made sure they spelled it 'Dishonoured'. Well done.
• What Battlestar Galactica got right about naval combat in space.

Music this week is one for Gillen.