:(

"…let's not kid ourselves. If you sell a game that's a first-person shooter, then no matter how many RPG elements you shoe-horn into the game, the shadow that hangs over every character interaction that you have, no matter who they are, is the question in the player's mind of "What happens if I shoot this person?" And that's our own fault! We've sold the player that; we've made a contract with the player that says it's okay to kill people. Why would we then chastise them for exploring that?" Patrick Redding is brilliant. This interview, with Chris Remo on Gamasutra, is great – Remo asks some smart questions, and Redding gives some really smart answers.

"The game insists that I focus, even for mundane activities like carrying groceries, on carefully following directions delivered to me visually on-screen. The simple act of carrying groceries is subsumed by the mechanical procedure of executing a series of prompts _for no apparent reason_. This, for me, is the primary disconnect in Heavy Rain. My mechanical game-directed actions don't amplify or add meaning to the in-game behaviors they execute. They don't pull me in; they keep me out. " Hmn. I've been thinking about something similar recently. Time to fire up the blogpostmatron…

Lovely, lovely article explaining just how the PeepCode Blog works. The blog itself features unique layouts for every post. There's no CMS, no database, but what's going on under the hood is at least as clever – and the flexibility makes the beautiful and clear pages much easier to build.

"…for reasons that baffle me, my TV can only receive the four terrestrial channels, plus a grainy feed from the building’s security cameras. Easy choice."

Strictly speaking, "The Best of *American* Journalism", but there's lots on here I'd like to read sometime.

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"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"

"This is the S2H replay; an activity monitor/pedometer thing that does a similar job to the fitbit. Except it feels way more like the future than the fitbit because it's cheap, fashiony and simple. And you they'll actually deliver one outside the US." I like "fashiony" as both an adjective and a watchword. The S2H sounds pretty nifty, too, and Russell's write-up is great…

"Get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite, then cut and rewrite again – if all else fails, pray. Inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, we asked authors for their personal dos and don'ts." Huge, two-part article (presumably from Saturday's Review) with a great deal of advice – some sensible, some common sense, some insightful, some entertaining – on writing. And: much of it applies to other creative disciplines, too.

"Schell took this game-life integration to the extreme, describing a world chock-full of sensors, where you could earn experience points from a toothpaste company for brushing your teeth, or points from health insurance companies for walking to work instead of driving. Companies and even the government would have a vested financial interest in engaging consumers and citizens through game-like elements. It would be a world fraught with "crass commercialism," Schell said, but it would also be a world of opportunity for game designers." Hmmmmn.

"I'm imagining that Curling is project management: sweeping in front of the stone to both clear a path and influence the direction, but without touching it; a good curling strategy is to both knock the competition out of the way and get closer to the target, sometimes with different stones; …plus you can drink and smoke while you play"

"Magick is all about naming and control. So is journalism, and software engineering—related disciplines." yes yes yes a thousand times yes (the most wonderful sentence in James' write-up of a non-conference I didn't attend).

"Quantic Dream's latest may not only be the best game you've ever played – it could even become one of your favourite films." I cannot think of a more depressing sentence.

"I hugely prefer Windows ME to anything else.  The problem is that it’s difficult to run on most of the hardware I have and no other Windows edition cuts it for me. So, I’m down to using a Mac…"

"ASBOrometer is a mobile application that measures levels of anti-social behaviour at your current location (within England and Wales) and gives you access to key local ASB statistics… This app was created by Jeff Gilfelt and made possible by the data.gov.uk initiative, which is opening up UK government data for public reuse." What sensationalist rot; no number of pretty visualisations make this kind of fearmongering acceptable. It's nice that the data is open; it's a shame this is the best thing people can think to do with it. Whether you like it or not, this information is very, very loaded.

"“Notput” is an interactive music table with tangible notes, that combines all three senses of hearing, sight and touch to make learning the classical notation of music for children and pupils more easy and interesting."

"I had been studying this style of letters on similar buildings in Washington, D.C., and something about them always felt a little dull. But in the Claremount letters I found life in the charming way the awkward proportions and loose spacing came together. So I set about designing a Claremount typeface." Nice article on designing a typeface, and, I must admit, it's rather good-looking (especially for something named after me).