The Sunday Papers

Ah, Sundays. A fine day to take a break from trying to get Frontlines to work on Steam Vista and have a read of some of the week's thought-words fired into the inter-ether. Hey - why don't you join me? I'll provide a list of such stuff, and try really hard to not link to a random indie band I'm listening to. Let's go!

• As an interesting follow on from Iron Lore closing their doors, their Creative Director Michael Fitch posts on Qt3 about his frustration with PC development. It's perhaps most notable on his thoughts on piracy and the fallout on their makes-game-crash protection they used with Titan Quest, which he argues unfairly gained the game a reputation as being buggy. Which, to RPS, strikes us as a good example of how counter-productive some anti-piracy measures can be.
• Nick Montford of MIT argued the superiority of Passage over Portal over at Grand Text Auto. Which is always going to be a fun one. Wonder what he makes of Gravitation.
• Some GDC hangover, as Primotech provide an overview and audio of Valve's TF2 design presentation. And - y'know - some teasers of the forthcoming Scout video.
• A little random retro; Robin Clarke writes about Stunt Island. I admit, I've never played it - but always had a soft spot for the Assembly Line's Cybercon III.
• Heading ever-more academic, Eludamos, the Journal of Computer Game Culture, have their first volume of 2008 available for reading. Picked up by comments-thread regular Theory, who learned something from Matthew Jason Weise's the Critical Historical Perspective on Bioshock. And since we always need some more Bioshock theory in the Sunday Papers, let's link to it.
• Vince D Weller Watch: The Age of Decadence lead designer writes an essay on Non-combat game-play in RPGs, noting that "You can often see "Different ways to play the game!" on a game box. 12 out of 10 it means "different ways to kill things.". Which is a tricky one to argue with.
• And Antarctica Takes It! are fun in a more-pugnacious Belle and Sebastian kind of way. Try Circuits, but it's a shame there isn't album opener I'm No Lover on there. Pah!

Fail.