The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for waiting for a long-awaited Doom-3 mod to download while compiling a list of splendid (mainly) videogame related writing from across the week, while trying to resist linking to an archive of early nineties late-night TV music performances. Go!

• Alec and I were at the Games Media Awards this week. We didn't win, so spent our time being playfully bitter and stomping around. More seriously, I'm pulled between stressing the import of thesearetotallymeaninglessonlytheworkmatters and feeling happy that so many admirable people got recognised by their peers and kinda-peers. Man of the night was Pat Garratt of VG247, who swept every category he was in, including the Games Industry Legend award. Here's what the ur-reporter wishes he said on stage. And here's Tom "Tom Bramwell" Bramwell's heart-on-sleeve recollections of the man. Not that he's dead. He's a living legend, you understand.
• After Gameswipe, Brooker was interviewed by MCV this week. A lengthy one, which has been cut into three parts on their site. Go here! Or here! Or... er... the third part isn't up yet. Never mind.
• Edge do one of those glorious round-table features with gaming figures talking over a topic. This time, it's game narrative with Clint, Chet and Ragnar. We're on first name terms, because we've made out, with tongues and everything.
• Will Porter interviews Tim Schafer over at Eurogamer. Meanwhile, Simon Parkin interviews Uncle Charles Cecil and uber-artist Dave Gibbons about the anniversary of the seminal Beneath A Steel Sky.
• Quinns has a little whine about the interaction-death of Arkham Asylum's cutscenes. Don't fear interaction! You're a fucking game.
• Over at the Reticule, Steve Peacock gets frustrated with MMOs, which is something I suspect many of us will have sympathy with. The genre codification has left many of RPS with little urge to devote a hundred hours into a new one. Meanwhile, Greg Wild has a look at Rapture.
• Christopher Park of AI-War fame writes a long essay about indie-game marketing. Always love seeing Indie Devs share this kind of thing, as it really does matter.
• Steve Peeler of Depths of Peril fame is at work on a new game. No screenshots yet, but details of Din's Curse are discussed in this interview.
• Point and - er - elaboration on point: Slowdown coins the phrase Avataritis and discusses how shortsighted the ability to customise your avatar is, in that it alone doesn't lead to any meaningful emotional connection with it (That's a really bad paraphasing, I stress). The Artful Gamer picks up the theory and runs with it. I'm not actually sure I agree, and I think a rejection is overtly simplistic... but there's some really strong stuff in both posts.
• And... the other side of Indie. Stephen Totilo over at Kotaku does a great article of the unexpected genre that's taken over the XBox Live indie-marketplace. This says something, I'm sure of it.
• Videos from the Digital Distribution summit.
• Amanda Palmer Ex-Dresden Dolls writes at length about virtual crowdsurfing. It's grounded in her personal experience - obviously - but the topics she raises are the sort of thing anyone working in a vaguely creative field should be thinking about. How many devs work like this? The obvious one I can think of is Toady of Dwarf Fortress fame...
• Picked up from Tom Ewing, an article by Nitsuh Abebe on why Snark has come to dominate online discourse - and why it works. Oh, does it really?
• Walker was interested by Radiobutt's analysis of Last.fm figures. Fun stuff, but missing several interpretations of the numbers. Firstly, the obvious weighting towards the sort of people who use last.fm. Secondly, the more obvious interpretation that the top-right bands are those from people who have really limited taste in music, the classic one-album-a-year-Q-reader model. Because by definition, someone who listens to more music, listens to more music.
• Actually, we mentioned Brooker earlier, but his hastily-penned hastily-published piece on Jan Moir's Guardian column is well worth reading. Away from that though, our own John Walker is a little disturbed by the whole thing in a subtly different way. I'm still thinking about what I make of his position, to be honest. I'm not entirely sure I agree with his necessary rejection of everything the right have ever done, in terms of shaping discourse. Just because the right have been better at outraged letter writing doesn't doesn't mean that it's necessarily wrong tactic to appropriate.
• Ellis drew my attention to this lengthy piece by the always-good Susannah Breslin. They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They? is a lengthy piece of reportage on the current state of porn. Beautifully written, full fascinating interviews and historical overview, and clearly NSFW.
• The ever-wonderful bundle of sparkles Emma Vicelli is launching a webcomic tomorrow. She's actually sneaked it online this weekend though, so you can get ahead of the crowd.
• Seriously, Pencil Face scared the shit out of me this week.
• The Word, I stress, was an incredibly awful show. But at the cusp between when I could stay up that late on Friday and when I couldn't afford to go underage drinking every week, those musical downloads sandwiched in 55 minutes of shit were a lifeline. They've lobbed a load of performances up last month, including some of my faves. The splendid Bad-Alice routine of the KatieJane Garside fronted Daisy Chainsaw and their immortal sleaze dumbosity of Love Your Money. The Supreme Irritant of Huggy Bear's Her Jazz. And Hole's Beautiful Son, which burns so bright I'm still amazed it wasn't on any of their albums proper. Give us more, youtube (like a better version of Stereolab's me-theme-tune French Disko).

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