The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for trying to get the core of your work done before you find yourself assembling Skaven, playing Dragon Age and going off to Comiket at the ICA. This work includes compiling a list of fine mainly-games-related reading from across the week while trying to avoid linking to two splendid leftfield pop-icons sharing an intimate stage. Go list!

• ABC News reports on finding that sleeping makes you a better gamer. Basically. The idea being, dreaming is part of the learning process. This seems... well, it seems to match up with my own personal experience. If I get stuck on something last thing at night, I tend to beat it first thing in the morning. Of course, there's lots of other reasons for that - not least the fact I'm no longer angry/tired/frustrated/whatever - but it's a fun one to think about.
• Parkin pointed me at this Brainygamer piece hailing the power of the author in videogames.It's arguing against people like Clint Hocking who argue forcibly in favour of abdication of narrative drive to the player rather than simply copying the "authored" narratives of other media. Well... saying that they're missing something. I find L.B. Jeffries' comment below particularly on point - the problem with abdicated authorship in an action game is that the player ends up doing really boring safe things. What is sensible and what is dramatically interesting are rarely identical.
• Mobygames have a long article about the history of Hentai RPG games. The sort of thing I'm glad someone is mental enough to write. All history is worth documenting.
• David McCarthy starts blogging from the land of the rising number of people who hate David McCarthy.. Wherever he lays his hat, he is bemoaned.
• Quinns writes about SWAT 4 as a Halloween game.
• Laurence Elliot over at the Reticule finishes writing about Religion and games. Oh, it's so hard to know what to believe.
• Chris Evans publishes the interviews he did for his look at the Russian industry. Ice-Pick Lodge, 1C Company's Anatoly Subbotin and Dreamlore's Alexander Scherbakox.
• A splendid apostrophe-use flow-sheet.
• For the Brits, an eye-raising piece on a graphic novelist being denied the right to travel to the UK due to being "underqualified". Fundamentally, because he didn't have a degree, despite all the acclaim. I suspect this could also trip up a lot of game developers.
• Alan Moore is interviewed and gives some advice for young creative people.
• Sarah Jaffe interviews Antonino D’Ambrosio about Johnny Cash.
• Always good to see Iain Banks have a yabber, here talking to Empire about the early stages of an actual Culture Film. Banks remains on that big old list of people we'll love to interview. C'mon, Iain. We'll bring the whisky.
• Crikey, I forgot to mention I had a comic out a couple of weeks back. Dark Avengers: Ares is a black comedy about the God of War being forced to train grunts. The preview pages are here, and it's terribly characteristic of its style. It reviewed really well. I've also got a couple of books out this week. Firstly, S.W.O.R.D. which was created by Joss Whedon of all people and is basically Marvel's planetary CIA-esque organisation. There's a six page preview here. Oh - and there's another issue of Phonogram out. At last. They'll be drinks in London on Thursday if anyone's around. Follow my twitter for details, obv.
• Gonzales with Jarvis Cocker with a Grand Piano in a mainly-burlesque club in LONDON. Pretty glorious. I'm in a table on the front row. Drinking.

Failed.