All very beautiful, but I like "Down and Out…" best.

"My main point brings me back to Pretending Apps. Because there are lots of other things you can steal from games, many other aspects of gaming that people find appealing and some of them might be more easily and usefully extracted." Yup. This was one of my main beefs with the whole "let's make everything playful/gamey!" trend that kicked off a few years ago: "game-y" was associated with "having points", and really, that's not what makes a game at all. (Other things that make a game: pretending, as Russell mentions, and visible mechanics, as I think I have to write about soon).

"There seems to be some sort of consensus that the highest form of play is fully immersive, interactive live theatre. Well not for me. The rhetoric of these things is often about people making their own choices, being free to act, creating their own narrative, etc, etc. And I always end up feeling like a piece, a pawn." Totally; not for me, either, though I'm not totally into "Social Toys" either – but Russell's points are perfectly valid and sensible. (I do like theatre, though). Probably ought to write more than a few hundred characters on this.

Solid illustration comedy gold, mainly from the 70s and 80s.

"Hitotoki stores literary 'sketches' of moments you experience every day. No check-ins. No bullshit badges. We think the most interesting stuff happens in the space between places. Hitotoki is built to help you capture those moments."

Bookmarked because I'm fed up of watery allusions to this (last seen: Malcolm Gladwell, Freakonomics (which is annoying because it's watery despite Levitt having *worked on the paper*)). $5 for the *actual information* seems far more interesting than any volume of popular economics books.

Hard to explain, but a must-watch; lovely spatial music sequencer/toy. (And: I miss Offworld :( )

"The picture clearly shows the path of the sun through the sky over the last six months." Brilliant. (And: so simple!)

"Philip K. Dick fans from around the world have contributed to this scanned collection of over 650 PKD book covers." Some of these are awesome, from the crazy french covers for VALIS to the German editions of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – retitled as "LSD-Astronauten".

"I missed this earlier in the year. In their issue 923, Domus magazine published this hidden illustration of ‘Miss Web 2.0’. Imagine planning it." I daren't. That's amazing.

Jolly good, that man; speaking sense and pointing out the hypocrisy of the media talking this all up. And: how is this different to the hoo-haa over expenses in any other year? No, I don't know, either.

"Classic records lost in time and format, re-emerged as Pelican books. Just for fun." The Penguin thing is a bit over-done, but there's a care and attention to detail here that really sets them apart.

"…there’s no real hope for the Survivors. Each trip through a campaign is different, but it begins with them knee-deep in the undead, and ends with them escaping to an uncertain future. We never see the Survivors truly safe. Between chapters, they rest in Safe Rooms, but they can’t hide there forever. Most unsettlingly, there are signs that the Survivors themselves remember doing all this before." Francis, incidentally, hates Beckett.

"Design is about risk. We all fear authentic public response to our work, but we have to be brave enough to overcome." Jack gets interviewed by Jennifer over on the Kicker blog. And: "Always have nice pens".

Um. An "artwork/game/digital poem/world of scribbles" from Jason Nelson. Stop trying to "get it".

"My Favorite Book Covers of 2008" Some I'd seen before; some I'd not. Some very beautiful things here.

"I come from a software background, as well as an artsy-fartsy one. I want to see games as art, but they’re also supposed to work as logically-constructed bodies of code. And in a lot of cases, reviewers need to see them as software rather than as art. Here’s why…" I think Steve has some good points here, but I'm not totally swung yet; after all, games might _be_ software, but do we _experience_ them as software? I'm not sure that we do, and that's why we respond to them in the manner we do.

"The ultimate resource in grid systems."

Pretty much spot on. Especially when it comes to GRIMDARK PIRATE COMICS.

"Does the road to ludonarrative unity really lead us where we want to go? Is the destination reachable? Is it possible to embrace a design aesthetic that takes us in another direction that could be just as fruitful, if not more so? Okay that was three questions, but it's my blog so I get to ask as many as I want. Now if I could only answer them." This is going to be interesting when I come to write about Far Cry 2.

"a poster-sized calendar with a bubble to pop every day". Yes please!