The Sunday Papers

Look, two Sundays in a row. It's a regular now. Welcome to another lazy weekend afternoon, and our chance to sit back and chew over some assorted articles in our best simulation of a broadsheet. So, let's have a nose what the world has offered us, and hope we don't start wondering whether the Style Council's reputation is really fair.

• Leigh Alexander has done the unthinkable and taken a week off games. And then she writes about her experiences over at GameSetWatch in her aberrant Gamer column, working through the odd emotional response she went through.
• Over at the Escapist N. Evan Van Zelfden describes his experiences at Games Conferences, and argues what he thinks their purposes are. Which makes it sound somewhat boring, but an article about this is all about the anecdotes. In a week where everyone's been asking me whether I'm going to GDC - I'm not, I can't afford to get there, alas - it's making me wonder what I'm going to miss from not going there. Last time a friend of mine was at GDC, he blagged his way into a ridiculously exclusive party by claiming he was Peter Molyneux.
• GameSetWatch has clearly had a good week. RPS comments regular and developer of Unangband, Andrew Doull, writes about WYSIWYG game design in his The Amateur column.
• Jim brings me the exciting news that Julian Dibbell has put his first book online. You can buy from Lulu, or download a PDF version of My Tiny Life. Spinning off the infamous and influential Village Voice article A Rape In Cyberspace, it was one of the first and remains one of the best voyages into the heart of an imaginary place. As the book describes itself: "Being a True Account of the Case of the Infamous Mr. Bungle, of the Author's Journey, in Consequence Thereof, to the Heart of a Half-Real World called LambdaMoo". If you're reading this, you should have read it, and if you haven't, now's your opportunity. I'm also reminded I haven't read Dibbell's latest book, Play Money.
• And, seriously, they're not that bad. Shout It To The Top is great!

Failed.