"We need smaller studios and smaller games to train developers and staff up for big projects, and because sometimes they turn out to be good, or worthwhile, or interesting, or are able to take risks a AA game cannot. But, being honest, when was the last time you paid £20 for a game and expected it to take risks, rather than to provide a variation on an experience you have already had – especially when that £20 tag was not a deep discount a month after shipping in response to disappointing sales, like Alpha Protocol and Enslaved?" Lots of good points from Dan.

"A videogame is a staggeringly beautiful canvas. It's a window into another world. A world that lives only as long as the machine is on. A living breathing world with depth and soul that actually exists, right there onscreen, limited only by the vision and imagination of its creators. Seize that thought, and don't let it go." Less talk, more rock. (And: I am enjoying the BB one-off feature art).

"I got my Miranda. I also found out how many times I'll kill the same person in order to get my way, which is also helpful." Great stuff from Dan on Mass Effect 2, and the hoops we go through to make NPCs like us.

"The demo of Dante's Inferno provided absolutely the stupidest gaming experience I think I have had since possibly Ultimate Combat Mission on the Spectrum +2. I don't think God of War can meaningfully compete, because… well, because it isn't based on one of the most famous works of literature produced in the last thousand years. Dorothy L Sayers translated it, for God's sake. Kratos never really had to get past anything more culturally embedded than Clash of the Titans." Dan has been playing Dante's Inferno, and the end result is this lovely post, about classics, and living stories, and Just Plain Stupid Games. It's very good. "…there's nothing to stop an incredibly silly game being a very enjoyable game, but there's something about the abandon with which Inferno is being used art direction for a slash-em-up that is killing the joy of it a bit for me"

"The premise is simple – it's the 1920's, and you're a guy on a decadent cruise liner, one of four you can pick from the outset. Something goes wrong, of course, and the ship begins to sink. You have one hour, in real time, to escape the ship, while rescuing as many survivors as possible. Halfway through the game, the ship begins to sink and floods with water. If the time runs out, you're dead." Wonderful sounding Clock-Tower-y survival game for the SNES.

"This is my Sony Ericsson MBW-150 bluetooth watch, showing the next few SF Muni bus arrival times for a nearby stop. The code to fetch the arrival times is running on my Droid phone, and communicating with the watch using Marcel Dopita’s OpenWatch software for the Android platform."

Dan interviewed Tale of Tales for Wired; this, published on his blog, is the full interview, and it's got lots of great stuff in it. I'm really not sold by them – indeed, I'm less sold by the firm than I am by their work – but it's interesting to hear something from the horse's mouth, as it were.

Dan on Torchlight and Borderlands: "…they both tickle the same fetishistic urge to collect, developing bigger and better attacks to have much the same effect on bigger and better monsters as your last set of attacks had on the last set of monsters. Every single decent-sized beastie in each one drops loot when they die. Throw in a two-car carport and this is a precise map of adult life, except fun." I really need to do my goty.cx write-up quite soon.

"Use [ffffl*ckr] to find the photography you like using the simple idea that people whose work you like, probably like stuff you'll like. You start with a set of pictures – if you authenticate, it'll use 20 of your last 100 favorites – otherwise it'll start with somebody's favorites. Click any picture to load more. Don't like what that person likes? Scroll back and click a different picture you like. It's that simple."

Fascinating: GPS satellites are both high enough, and travelling fast enough, that you need to correct for relativistic effects in order for them to be effective.

"To whomever it may concern, In response to the unfortunate circumstances, some wives of Rockstar San Diego employees have collected themselves to assert their concerns and announce a necessary rejoinder, in the form of an immediate action to ameliorate conditions of employees." Jesus. Once again: the games industry treats its staff appallingly. As the first commenter says: "It's a video game people. Find a way to make one without imposing unethical, illegal, and debilitating working conditions."

"One of the world's finest compact fountain pens, the excellent Tasche measures just 98mm closed, but opened up becomes a full-size pen at 145mm long. The secret is the extra-long cap, which almost entirely swallows the rest of the pen when closed, but posts firmly onto the top of the pen to create the full length." Possibly another distraction before I succumb to buying a Vanishing Point

"The voice in Dear Esther doesn't tell you where to go – it only reads, at set moments, from a random selection of letters to Esther as you wander over a deserted and increasingly disrupted Scottish island. The letters are randomised, so no playthrough is the same, and a fragmented narrative of a car crash, a grieving man and a stolen library book is glimpsed but never resolved. When I asked Pinchbeck whether this strictly constitutes a game, he said that it was a game engine, a nice distinction in both senses." Dan fills in his Wired piece on Dan Pinchbeck with some supplementary material. It is very good.