The Sunday Papers

Morrissey said that everyday was like Sunday. The bequiffed miserablist was wrong! Other days of the week don't see RPS posting a round-up of interesting items for sedentary examination in list format, while Kieron resists going off about the gig 3/4 of RPS went to see on Friday.

• EA's CEO John Riccitiello's keynote is mainly being reported for claiming that Garage Development would be dead by 2010, but what I find more interesting is admiting they "blew it" with their treatment of Westwood, Origin and Bullfrog. On a similar EA note, their chief visual and technical officer, Glenn Entis, talks about where graphics are heading to GamesIndustry.biz.
• A couple of big-figure interviews caught my eye. Firstly, Richard Garriott over at Gamasutra. Secondly, Edge's hefty one with Warren Spector reprinted over at NextGen. Features an image of him doing mouse-ears with his fingers, which is well worth seeing.
• You may have noticed that Eurogamer are going increasingly article-lead. Dan Whitehead's history of the Open World is a really good example, with him walking through a history which takes in many of what I consider the greatest games of all time. While the RPG people often lay claim to the idea of openness, I think the lineage that follows Elite is more interesting. Also, name-checking Hunter. There's not enough people talking about Hunter. Like, ever.
• More summit big-thinks from Gamasutra - Ray Muzyka of Bioware, Ken Levine of Irrational and Greg LoPiccolo of Harmonix on Narrative in games. And since we've mentioned Ray, N'Gai Croal's talked with him why Bioware didn't defend themselves over the recent furore around Mass Effect's sex scene.
• Following on from our previous coverage of Gordon Brown cracking down on games, The Guardian have more (er) stuff.
• Probably my favourite piece about games this week was Andrew Doull's Amateur column about the difference between Indie and Amateur. Judging by the comments thread, not many people seem to Get It. You need to accept Andrew's terminology and then just roll with it. If you do, it manages to nail a fundamental difference in the approach of developers to the work and throw a lot of great one liners too. I especially liked "Indies release when they're ready for a private beta; Amateurs release when the game compiles", "Every odd numbered Introversion title (Hacker, Defcon) is indie; every even numbered one (Darwinia, Subversion) amateur" and Peter Molyneux being analysed as the patron saint of amateurs.
• Seriously, when they dropped You! Me! Dancing! I thought the entire building was going to be torn apart in pritt-stick-fume powered zine-kid melee of orgiastic violence.

Failed.