"This ghastly indie-art-game prose: it’s writing that tries to communicate ideas in the same way that game mechanics communicate ideas. Such writing offers allusions and suggestions, hints for the player to assemble, but it shies away from specifics or a through-line plot. Characters often go unnamed, or are named something thuddingly symbolic, or are Everyman. Theme is presented heavy-handedly (you wouldn’t want players to miss it!) and via the most cliché images. Expect frequent references to light and dark, cold and loneliness, broken hearts and shattered dreams. Memories may get a look in. Also death. It’s like reading a collage of the manuscripts sent to a high school poetry contest right after one of the students got in a fatal crash." Emily is right, and it's something I hate about certain games: just how *self-consciously* "indie" they are.

"While everyone else is going sleek and elegant and natural, Tiger is all experience points and loading screens and instant challenge pop-ups and club-tuning holodecks. Skate feels like skating, Fight Night feels like boxing, and Tiger feels like a game about golf." I don't like golf; I love computerised golf. I don't like Tiger; I love Links in all its forms, and before that, Leaderboard. This is a brilliant – if long – piece of writing on a short history of PC golf, and what's wrong with Tiger in this day and age. (Apart from, you know, the whole sex-addict thing).

"…most public objects – and certainly all municipal objects – should offer APIs. Furthermore, specifically with regard to public infrastructures like transit systems, I believe that this should be a matter of explicit government policy. What’s a public object? A sidewalk. A building facade. A parking meter. Any discrete object in the common spatial domain, intended for the use and enjoyment of the general public. Any artifact located in or bounding upon public rights-of-way. Any discrete object which is de facto shared by and accessible to the public, regardless of its ownership or original intention. How’s that for starters?"

Better than GetBundle, apparently – hunts down unofficial bundles on github and the like, as well. Nifty.

"What a wonderful idea," Jennifer noted. "We never get to see the people who make the games." Michael Abbott is talking about LittleBigPlanet.

Leanoard rounds up his favourite DS homebrew games. Some good stuff in here that I didn't know of.

"This is just one of many examples that show you can participate in online community without having to pretend to be something you’re not. In fact, participating with authenticity is not just morally good, it’s measurably more effective."

Powazek is right; this is definitely smart advertising, and full props to EA/W+K for just taking the credit and not trying to make it "viral"; it'll do that anyway. Although: it really is a glitch, you know.