The Sunday Papers

As evening closes in on a Sunday, when all should be heading to bed, I find it an ideal time to sit back and reason some of the week's more... yeah, I'm late in pulling the list together. But, as always, it's a list of interesting thought pieces and stories from across the week gathered by the faithful RPS word-poachers which I compile, while trying to resist linking to some music that's been having me dance around my house for the last seven days. Let's go!

• Brainygamer has been amusing RPS this week. First, he talks about his recent experiences with new media and old media, and makes a fairly strong point that the oft-assumed snobbish superiority of the old-media isn't quite as clear as they'd like you to think. Secondly, and more importantly, he coins a narrative manifesto. Which is always dangerous, but it's not actually his flag he's flying. He's noticed a strong trend in practitioners philosophy, and is excited about where it's going. As am I.
• Spore inches ever-closer. Gone gold, NDAed review copies reaching developers. Still time for a last bit of chat about it. For example: Will Wright talks to Eurogamer. The debates also has our Jim over at GianT Realm having a think about the concept of User-generated content, and why he thinks Spore is actually following a less interesting route than PS3-proto-fave Little Big Planet. Personally, I think he's about as wrong as you can get - or, at least, in his reasoning why. What's your take, peeps?
• And talking about cleverthinknugames that are being tightly debated... Braid's getting fascinating responses. Here's a couple of pieces which should get you in the mood for it when it hits here. Pro/Con: Tom Chick "Braid is an absolutely brilliant game and quite possibly a work of genius. I don't like it one bit." Mr Charles Ubisoft Designer: "You make me feel like everything I’ve done, everything I want to do, is in vain, because I will never make something as beautiful, or as full of depth and meaning. ". I may write a little about the indie-thing later this week - I've a few thoughts about the rise of independent games into the demi-mainstream, in a similar area to Eurogamer here.
• Okay - light relief time: Why your pulp fiction is lying to you - Top 5 reasons you shouldn't use a shotgun for zombie defence.
• Raph Koster is a clever-fella part 57359 in a continuing series: "The hot market right now is the Internet, not the console," says Koster. "The hot market is PC and multiplayer, and the hottest games on the market you can be done with in five minutes.""
• Indie-Dev blog watch: The N+ guys have a little think on the concept of sims versus games. Ste "Naked "is fantastic" War" Pickford realises that tutorials are hard.
• This week's freshest trend in games writing. The new-games/food journalism as Scott Jones of CrispyGamer goes to one of the restaurants of Billy "King of Kong" Mitchell and eats until he's cheerily bloated. I reviewed food once, but I did it in the voice of one of my characters, Minister Drill-cock!. I didn't do it again.
• Always worth thinking about this sort of stuff, I think: Ex-Shiny Dave Perry presents 33 ways to make money from videogames to Business week. It's a slide-show thing, so just click through the right arrow to see 'em. Fun ones include: "Freeware: This actually isn't a model to make money per se, but if you create something that's very compelling and it gets a lot of users, you can expect offers to acquire your software, company, or technology. So make it for free, get noticed, get bought or hired, and in a very roundabout way, you've monetized freeware."
• I can't really add more to this than the title. "Virtual Transgender Suit, avatar termination and other online world tales". You've clicked already, surely?
• Here's one I can't even read, as I believe it's in Portuguese. Nelson Calvinho, editor of the recently closed mag HYPE talks to No Continues. I was writing a monthly column for them until the closed, which I took great joy in bemusing an audience who probably were hoping me not speaking their language would prevent me writing for them. From what I could make out by the topics they covered and their approach, Hype reminded me of something a little more Entryist than Edge - Arcade, but without the lifestyle pretensions. I'll miss it, and I'll miss their money. And now someone tell me what it says in the interview, yeah?
• El Guincho. I love this.

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