The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for Bacon, Batman and compiling a list of interesting (mainly) game related reading from across the week for the RPS-readers' delectation, while trying to avoid to linking some quasi-ironic piece of pop.

• Quinns has started blogging about games more regularly. You may be aware, he does a lot of traveling. Here's things he learned about real traveling versus 16-bit RPG adventure traveling. For example: "1) On a real adventure, you will not find the lowest-level enemies first. Low-level enemies must be found through trial and error. 2) Warthogs are not low-level enemies. 3) Bandits are not low-level enemies. 4)Rats are DEFINITELY NOT low-level enemies". Lots more, natch. He also reviews WET without having played it.
• Jim's been busy too. Here's his Ragdoll Metaphysics column from Offworld, which is one of the best things he's written for ages, and here's his opinion on GTA5. As in, the GTA5 which he dreamed of last week. I suppose it's at least more relevant than my Kevin Rowland managing a Rallying team dream, which yields no point after several days of examination.
• Ian Bogost writes about the furore around the word "Sambo" in Scribblenauts over at Gamasutra. The last page is particularly good.
• ASCIIportal hit this week. To celebrate, Just One Game did a massive two part interview about it. Woo!
• In a week of VIDEOGAMES WILL KILL US ALL, it's good to see at least one mainstream source arguing VIDEOGAMES WILL SAVE US ALL. Good work, Steve Jones at the Telegraph, focusing in on actual science-related work-into-games stuff rather than the "Faster high eye co-ordination" stuff.
• As Dragon Age inches closer, Crispygamer talk to Greg Zeschuk about story as a reward in RPGs. Which, I think, the a correct mechanistic way of viewing it, y'know? It's certainly the thing which pushed me off my hard line anti-cut-scene bias when (I think) Ex-LG/Ion-Stormer Randy Smith rolled his eyes at my puritanism.
• Actually, while we're talking Dragon Age, Tom Chick does a really strong interview with Kate "Voyager Lady" Muldrew about voice-acting.
• Over at Resolution, Chris Evans interviews Indie Dev Kyle Gray, mainly about the experimental game project.
• Lack_26 sent me this, about videogames apparently needing a more representative and diverse array of characters. Frankly, I don't disagree - but I do think the methodology for this research one is all over the shop, from the nature of the biggest games not necessarily allowing true representation (i.e. Front line combat normally does mean less women) and the weighting towards the biggest sellers worsening that (i.e. If Call of Duty sells most, the effect is magnified) and - most tellingly - it's based solely around the US demographics. As in, it's based around the belief the entire world should be representitive of a single - admitedly, large - market
• Gamespot reports on designer Andrew Mayer's PAX talk about whether farming sims are the future of gaming.
• Stat Watch: All the gaming consoles in America use the same amount of electricity as San Diego. Crikey.
• This was shocking if True. Royal Mail worker writes about the open corruption of managers.
• Big-brained lovely chap Matt Jones of The British Engineering Rocket Group writes about what cities are for in a wide-ranging essay, taking about the cross over between fiction and architecture in the splendidly titled A City Is A Battlesuit For Surviving The Future.
• A restrained and really elegant shot she's dropped on her tumblr on friday reminds me that I've never linked to any of Katie West's photography before. Go see, though be warned it's probably NSFW (unless you work in a place where nipple wander freely). I now know what her favourite My Chemical Romance track is, so have one less thing to bully her about whenever I see her around.
• God Hates Protestors really has its moments.
• Comrades Merlin and Sean Azzopardi finishing their OGN-for-online Necessary Monsters this week, which I like a lot. AiT/Planetlar are publishing it in the near future, I believe, but you can go read here. Agreeably nastily pointed and smartly cogent. And if the chicken-headed chainsaw-combatants don't sell you on it, nothing will.
• While we're on comics: The Marvel Bullpen Moustache competition highlights. If this is office-wisdom, you can see why hiring someone like me doesn't seem to be an act of insanity.
• Spaced was at least half of RPS' favourite TV show when it was on. It's a definitive portait of geeky (as in, normal) 20-something life. It's 10 years on. The cast reminisce in a length interview over at Empire.
• Pete Stanley interviews Tom Ewingg about his total-history-of-Brit-number-1s Popular for the independent. I wonder if the state of #1 has ever mattered in videogames? We don't seem to care at all.
• The French Horn Rebellion's Up All Night. I find it all too easy to imagine Alec and I, standing on the street-corner of Camden, flirting in a similar manner. The video is simultaneously very human and very Williamsburg, which is a difficult mix to pull off. I've only ever been there once. Who took me? Arch-gamer-hipster Leigh Alexander, of course. Man!

Failed.