The Sunday Papers

Sundays are pain and a list of reading about games without a pop song. But mainly pain.

• I was going to do a full post on this, but never got around to it. Let's get it out here now. Ron Gilbert replays the first Monkey Island and gives a director's commentary on the experience: "Most people know you can hit the period key to skip a single line of dialog, but I'm surprised when I run into people that don't know why I chose the period key. It seems obvious to me: a period ends a sentence." I admit, i didn't know that. Man!
• You want to hear me waffle? Well, Kirsten at Ready-Up makes me talk about creativity in games journalism and reveal my secret origin. KG: YEAR ONE. I had fun with this, as I suspect you'll be able to tell by the way my answers get increasingly hysterical.
• I don't think I've ever linked to anything from Tom "nullpointer" Betts before. Let's take care of that.Here's him on why minimal stories are the best stories in games - better Ico and Dear Esther than Fallout 3. I'd be interested to hear your take on this one, folks.
• Clever stuff: Dave Muller on Cognitive Daily reblogs an old piece on how human being process maps and similar, using videogames.
• Over at Resolution Barry White picks up the sort of thing I like to see - looking for good things in bad games. He starts with Kane & Lynch. This sort of nuanced thinking is increasingly important to me. If you reduce something to rock or suck, or turn even a shitty game into just a gag, you're closing so many doors.
• Casey Hudson, Mass Effect 2's producer, takes a just-the-facts approach to the forthcoming action-RPG sequel. Quite interesting to see a developer get as plain of what the game is and what the game isn't.
• Alan Au over at the Escapist interviews the major players about designing Religion in Civilization. Because there's a fun example of where a designer is both trying to create an interesting system and create something which won't mortally offend everyone.
• Lewis prodded me in this direction, I believe. Misanthropic gamer looks at the big things in life. That is, Birth, Nourishment, Sex, Propagation and Death in Games. Fun stuff. Also, a lot of House nods.
• We've had people ask us what we make of Windows 7. Only Alec has used it, who digs it. But Stardock's Brad Wardell thinks you should switch to it as quickly as possible.
• One for the indie-devs in our midst. DevMag do an article on indie-marketing. WARNING! Picture of me on the front page because it cites my own piece on how to use and abuse the games press. And actually while we're talking about stuff I threw out there, PopMatters interviewed me for a smarter non-games-centric NGJ piece.
• God, this is getting embarrassing. Why don't I just re-name the column the Sunday Game Set Watch columns? Let's cram 'em into one post. Lewis Denby goes and talks to Introversion about their recent - er - adventures, Phil Cameron on downloadable games and a piece of really pointed fiction from Simon Parkin about Wargame research.
• Well away from games, but you heard about what Pixar did for the dying girl, yeah?
• The reason for the terseness was Plan B's closing drinks last night, where I had some drinks which closed down my brain. Still - fun. And the DJ was agreeably Plan B. There was a particularly great string of records, which started with the eternal Prayer To God by Shellac. Which I suspect some of you haven't heard, so I'll link here. Ah - this brings back memories of a fun period at PCG I'll tell you all about another time.

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