"Left 4k Dead was made by Markus Persson, for the 2009 Java 4k Competition. The entire game is less than 4kb." Impressive, and even a bit fun.

"Mirror's Edge is not a perfect game, perhaps, but it is something more important: it is an interesting game. It can be played and experienced on its own terms, for its own sake, if players would only allow themselves to take a single videogame specimen at face value rather than as yet another data point on the endless trudge toward realistic perfection." Ian Bogost taking a considered approach to Mirror's Edge.

"'Why do you build your own computers?' Gloria asked earlier this week. 'Why don't you buy just buy one that's already built?' … It's because computers are fire… If I was a caveman (I'd be dead, because I can't see clearly two feet in front of myself without glasses, but that's not the point), I wouldn't go to the guy who discovered fire and ask if I get a light off his torch. I might let him explain the process–documentation, as it were–but then I'd go off, hold the torch backwards, cut myself with the flint, and generally do it wrong."

This appears to be some kind of 3D-tinged mind-mapping software; Flatblack were behind the rotoscoped look of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly; this is clearly an interesting digression for them.

The Offworld 20 "…isn't just a list of independently made and under-appreciated games, it's a list of the games that celebrate what makes Offworld Offworld: the beautiful and the bizarre, and the games trying to push the medium forward and give us something we've never seen before, in whatever incremental way." Smashing. I love Offworld already, and this is a lovely list.

"Monopoly, in spite being the classiest of all board games, unfortunately is packaged just as boringly and uncreatively as every other garbage board game on the shelves. So, I decided to repackage it… turning the class up to 11." Very pretty, but I miss the original typeface: the 30s-style sans-serif was very important to the tone.

"…my feeling is that the barriers to verismilitude in video games aren't technological– lighting effects, texture work, mocapping– but /technical/. They're matters of technique, mastering the extant toolset in order to produce the novelistic details that make for the feeling of authentic transport. Game design doesn't need a better camera, or a holodeck. What it requires is old-fashioned artistry and imaginativeness, an obsessive and nerdish Flaubert who will come along and show us how games work."

"…it’s become apparent to me that social software is a medium turns all communication into a self-representation game whose ultimate goal is popularity."

"I am a terrible gaming evangelist. Every time I think I’m onto something my mind’s invaded by Marcus Fenix and his sweaty, homoerotic pecs, by Cloud and his implausible sword and cod-philosophy and, most poignantly, by me, in my pajamas aged nine playing Tetris on the toilet and by me, in my pajamas aged twenty-nine, playing Tetris on the toilet." And Simon powers straight into /my/ favourite games writing of 2008. Bravo.

"The Whale Hunt is an experiment in human storytelling." 3000+ photographs, with what seems like a confusing-and-shiny interface to explore them – but hides a detailed metadata manipulation layer underneath. Beautiful pictures, too. Something really quite special; the "interface" pages should explain more.

"Still, overall, Left 4 Dead's opening cinematic is a shockingly complete primer to the rest of the game. With only a few exceptions, almost any player going into Left 4 Dead for the first time will know exactly how to play the game: they already know the gameplay, the weapons, the enemies, the win scenario and the strategies they need to get through the game alive… the only thing not covered in the opening movie is the specifics of the interface." Yes – had this exact same conversation a few days ago. Although John is awfully down on Louis, which seems a tad unfair…

"The obstacles that exist are mere impediments to my motion, puzzles placed only to slow me down or stop my free-flow kinetic improvisation. No time to think or overanylize, only time enough to move. This is what the essence of gaming should feel like: a sincere, wholehearted attachment to the action (or actions) that one sets into play. It is a moment where the motivation at hand is intention only, whose aim is exploration and discovery, refined. It is the escape, distilled and realized." GWJ on Mirror's Edge, and never rewinding, never looking back.

"Metro Rules of Conduct is a game about the awkward situation of commuting in my hometown, Stockholm. Look at mobile phones, MP3 players and breast for score, but whatever you do – avoid eye contact!" Wonderful; the art-style works really well, as does the head-bob.

"Melville was torn between writing a ripping nautical yarn and a metaphysical odyssey, and it shows. Rockstar was torn between constructing a sandbox and a stage, and it shows. The result was a tenuously fused work of genuine Americana: a disorderly paean to the American city, a bit of ultraviolence, a stonkingly beautiful soundtrack, a fable, a simulation, a gonzo critique of capitalism. It's a game we deserve. " Pliskin on what GTA4 meant. Perhaps hyperbolic, but it's an important signifier of this year. The Redding quotation about Far Cry 2 is also a stonker.

All 226 entrants for the 2009 IGF. Heard of – and played – some of these, but many are unknown. Exciting to see the list, though, if only to be reminded that there's this many games being made and funded independently, at the large and small scale.

"aphex twin + vassily kandinsky + doom 2" – now that's a tagline.

Welcome to GPSTagr. Our service allows you to geotag your flickr photos using a track file from a GPS device in 3 easy steps.

"We’ve just finished a project for Yahoo called purple pedals (a.k.a. the yBike). In a nutshell, it’s a bike that takes pictures and uploads them to flickr in real time."

"This year, I have no apologies about any of my top five. Here’s my list of the cream of the crop…" Emily Short on this year's IF competition entrants.

"This project installs menu items into the Adobe Lightroom interface that allows photos to be tagged with geographic information through the Lightroom interface."

"# Find links to audio files on the Web. # Huffduff the links—add them to your podcast. # Subscribe to podcasts of other found sounds." It's like delicious for audio, but it spits out a podcast. Some really lovely work from Jeremy.

Adam's a smart guy and all, but god, most of this just really rubs me the wrong way. He's correct about business (or rather, he's correct about many of the things I hate about Web Entrepreneurship at the moment); I don't really think his views on product design ring true, though.

"Bandai will soon be releasing two new hybrid pedometer games to keep you entertained while racking up the miles as you go about your life. … [The] idea is to set personal goals of exercise and achieve them in a fun way."

Jordan Mechner is serialising – and backdating – his journals from making the original Prince Of Persia. This post is a corker, if only for one of the early videos of Mechner's brother running and jumping. If you've played the original game, you'll understand what I mean the second you see the video.

"In this chapter I'll try to shed some light on the creative and technical decision-making processes that went into crafting the story and narrative elements of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (POP for short). The team's approach was practical, not literary; our challenge was to find the right story for a mass-market action video game." Jordan Mechner on writing Sands of Time; well-crafted, and very pragmatic.

"The Unfinished Swan is a first-person painting game set in an entirely white world. Players can splatter paint to help them find their way through an unusual garden." Beautiful.

"The future is terribly easy to predict. It’s predicting the instantiation that’s hard."

"These travel posters by Steve Thomas, Amy Martin and Adam Levermore-Rich promote travel to exotic eras and destinations, such as the Crimson Canyons of Mars, Tranquil Miranda, or the Winter Wonderland of the Ice Age." Beautiful.

Lots of sed-goodness here.

Javascript demoscene craziness from Matt Westcott; 3D, music, and the most incredible editing tool I've seen in JS ever.

"The rest of this article will be a tutorial showing you how to host and manage Git repositories with access control, easily and safely. I use an up and coming tool called gitosis that my friend Tv wrote to help make hosting git repos easier and safer." Nice guide to getting up and running with gitosis.

"Turning the economic crisis into one of those clever internet memes." Lols.

"The Mugen (infinite) series of toys from Bandai Asovision has now brought us the Mugen PeriPeri, a keychain toy that aims to replicate the pleasure of opening a package for the first time. Snacks, boxes, and other tear-open packages tend to reveal good things, so perhaps experiencing this sensation boosts endorphins and sends us into pleasure mode." Tear-off wrapping you can tear forver.

"I've just added a new feature to the site: maps showing many places at once. They allow you to, for example, see all the churches in London Pepys has mentioned in one glance. Or London streets, or places outside Britain, and more." Some fantastic maps-and-pins from Phil and Sam.

"The series "A New Taxonomy of Gamers" wrapped up last Friday. For your convenience, here are the links to all 11 parts in one convenient post." Oh, this looks good.

Heard some of this last night; a superb BBC documentary about Brian Wilson and some of his production techniques that shaped the Beach Boys' albums. Some great interviews, and lovely musical deconstruction of harmony and voicing. Obviously, as a "listen again" programme, it's only around for six days – so get listening!

"Hired as visual artist in the summer of 2006, my challenge was not only to clearly present Braid's mechanics and behaviors, but to help tell a story that was anything but literal: part anecdote, part artifice, part philosophy. This article explains the process of developing visuals for a nearly-complete game with a highly idiosyncratic identity, the challenges encountered, and some of the nuts-and-bolts of our methods and tools." David Hellman on his work on the art of Braid.

Man, SIGGRAPH papers have the best titles. This is a lot of seriously hardcore, cutting edge, graphic-programming nous. Also: "jiggly fluids".

"The negative side of this, as your experience illustrates, is that Braid just lacks any immediate sense of fun. It does not set out to entertain you, and with the exception of some pretty aesthetic moments it makes you earn the pleasure you take from it. (Portal, which makes for a good point of comparison, wants the player to like it and desires to be understood in a way that Braid does not.)" I think Pliskin is spot on, here

"An interesting article at Rock, Paper, Shotgun tackles BioWare's tackling of issues tackling modern society, tackling one of my Mass Effect plots in the process. I responded in the comments, and after looking at how much I yammered on, I figured it was worth posting here as a look inside how these things get into the game, and why some things that seem dumb get done." Patrick Weekes follows up the RPS post criticising his own plot elements with some frank self-criticism, and some interesting explanations; a reminder of how hard creating any kind of meaningful choice can be.

Yes.

A blog from Tom, Flora, and no doubt shortly et al, about life in Hackney.

Now this *is* interesting: a comments thread in which Michael Abbott's readers put questions to Iain Lobb, one of the designers behind Meta4orce… and he answers them candidly and informatively. Interesting stuff about the limitations of building games around TV shows for public service broadcasters.

"I thought it was a parking ticket, and was annoyed. But up close, I saw it was just an empty envelope someone put there…" I'll let you click through for the punchline. Delightful, nontheless.

Great selection of posts on how brands need to behave (and how they sometimes fail to do so) from Grant McCracken.

Narrative-driven flash game from BBC Switch. Combines animated cut-scenes with minigames representing key plot aspects; as such, it's very linear. Script by Peter Milligan, though! It looks expensive; I'd be interested to know how successful it's been. As it stands, it's a little bit Freakangels-lite, a little bit Torchwood. And yes, I know how that sounds.

A nice article about context, contracts, and a few other things related to game AI design. If you're interested in the field at all, it's a nice read.

"I believe that the “auteur” school of game development is not only outmoded, but dangerous to the vitality of the medium. Instead, we must pursue deeply collaborative work styles and seek out diverse teammates if indie game development is ever to reach new heights and thrive beyond its current audience." I need to come to a better understanding about auteurship in this field; I'm not entirely convinced by this article.