The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for downloading Indie Strategy Games, sipping tea and compiling an enormous list of the fun and fascinating reading from across the week, while trying my jolly hardest to not link to some fine 80s indie miserablism which I found myself listening to this morning...

• • RPS and assorted friends-of-RPS have been nominated for the GMAs. That is, the Games Media Awards 2009. I'll hand you over to the justly nominated for specialist online writer, Simon Parkin to talk about it. While still clearly enormously silly, it's... well, I was going to say "getting more credible", but it's still very silly. Just not as silly as before. We're in the blog category, as opposed to last year, when we were in the website category. VG247 is in both, somehow. And Nowgamer -as much a website as Eurogamer or C&VG is - is in blogs. It's gloriously mental. At least it's a good excuse for a piss up, eh?

• Actually, while on the subject of Si-Si The Parkster, here's his interview with Ex-Goldeneyer Martin Hollis about what he's up to now and how he got there. Hollis is one of my favourite developers, because - er - he's lovely. Sometimes it really is that easy. Great stuff.
• Over at Edge Chris Dahlen wonders whether we'll ever play videogames on an interplanetary scale. He talks to NASA about it. Conclusion: Urban Dead's more likely than Left 4 Dead 2. And not because Martians are big for the L4D2 boycott.
• Robin Clarkes' had a busy few weeks, y'know. Retrospective on the ever-awesome Deluxe Paint. Arguing why APB MUST succeed. And most relevantly to RPS, a hefty over-view of the history of the Shareware game.
• Valve are studying sign-language for a deaf-Half-life character. Interesting.
• Talking about Devs I Like, I liked to Randy Smith's new Iphone game earlier this week.Now he writes about the experience over at Edge. Er... making the game. Not me blogging about him.
• I haven't gone through all of it yet, but the New York Time's enormous piece on Rock Band Beatles and the whole rhythm-action-toy-game-thing is seriously hefty. Double-multiplier points for its title: While My Guitar Gently Bleeps.
• The web's finest home of AARs, The Blue Casket, starts another one. It's Peggle Noir. Yes.
• Popmatters' Jack Patrick Rodgers on Final Fantasy VIII. Heartfelt and clever, but more than a little disingenuous when it claims that FFVIII was reviewed badly. FFVIII almost drowning in in reviewer semen was actually the moment my dislike of Final Fantasy hardened into an actual grudge. Those unskippable guardian forces are literally unforgivable.
• Lou Castle, now of Instant Action, thinks the industry is on a "Bad Spiral". Specifically, spending all the effort to please whining sods like us lot.
• We haven't done an interview DoubleBear on ZRPG because we thought it was probably too early. RETICULE THINKS US COWARDLY KNAVES!
• Very Cute. Bobsy obsesses over the Cricket and Spelunky simultaneously.
• Couple of pieces from Resolution. Firstly, Fraser McMillian on loneliness in Indie Games. Not in, "you have to be lonely to play them". And the final part of that games-and-militarism series I've talked about before.
• Paul Wedgwood starts a dev-diary on the forthcoming Brink over at the Bethblog.
• Videogame advertising used to be amazing. You seen the Club Centipede advert for the Atari?
• Actually, before I go onto the less-game-related stories, just something I've been thinking about. The Sunday Papers seems to have been ballooning in recent times. Which is great, but I can't but help feel by having so much stuff here, a lot of it's going to be overlooked. I'm thinking of actually spinning more stuff into actual RPS posts, leaving a body of work for here, but moving stuff which perhaps needs more concentrated debate to their own story. I mean, to choose one from the last few weeks, the Abandonware Interview was probably a post in of itself. I mention this to feel people out. Of course, it wouldn't even be an issue if we were the 20-posts-a-day style blog like Kotaku or whatever. It's just that with our relatively low turn-over, it may appear a little odd. Or maybe not.
• I liked this fake NYT story about Peter Parker writing about his mutant room-mate.
• Lady Gaga: Puppet Of The Illuminati. One for the Deus Ex 3 writers to consider integrating, methinks.
• Jim loved this hefty conversation between Francois Roche, Geoff Manaugh and Warren Ellis over at Tomorrow's Thoughts Today.
• You'll have seen the Billion Dollar Gram. But in case you haven't...
• The Smiths - What Difference Does It Make?

Failed.