The beginnings of an encyclopedia for Roguelikes; some useful stuff in here, given current interests.

Lovely: closing your eyes to change the state of the world, and thus make progress through the world.

"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.

I swear, just go and read this right now; it might look like it's about games, but really, it's about space, and memory, and Memory Palaces, and wrapped around a retrospective of a marvellous game, and a little bit about how games make us who we are, in ways their creators might never have imagined.

"We already know the decapitated Statue of Liberty in Deus Ex can tell a story; perhaps I want to know if a building can tell me a poem.

In that vein, "Butte, Montana. 1973" is a game where you dig around in a box of dirt."

This is marvellous; thoughtful, interesting, perhaps not entirely successful, but the trick of the rain at the end is a very, very nice touch.

"At this moment of awards-giving and back-patting, however, we can all agree to love movies again, for a little while, because we're living within a mirage that exists for only about six or eight weeks around the end of each year. Right now, we can argue that any system that allows David Fincher to plumb the invention of Facebook and the Coen brothers to visit the old West, that lets us spend the holidays gorging on new work by Darren Aronofsky and David O. Russell, has got to mean that American filmmaking is in reasonably good health. But the truth is that we'll be back to summer—which seems to come sooner every year—in a heartbeat. And it's hard to hold out much hope when you hear the words that one studio executive, who could have been speaking for all her kin, is ready to chisel onto Hollywood's tombstone: "We don't tell stories anymore."" This is good, and sad.

"If you’re like us, your knowledge is spread across several places: Gmail, Google Docs, Basecamp, and more. Redwood makes it easy to search across these sources, right from your desktop." Clever.

"Well, it’s hard to make female characters. First of all, in order to accommodate female characters in our pipeline, you’d basically need to re-code the entire engine from the ground up. Because the technology we have today just wasn’t built to be able to handle stuff like that." Matthew Burns answers the hard questions.

"The best signpost to the future I know is to follow whatever happens after the word "computational."" Kevin Kelly being smart/interesting/as usual.

"We live in a world where the game of the movie of Where the Wild Things are, Motherfucking Where the Wild Things are, was a fucking cash-grab. This was a game based of Maurice Sendak. This should have been teeming with imagination. This should have been infinitely creative, a wonderful adventure inspiring generations of children. What is it, instead? It's a boring platformer. That's it. Just a generic, ordinary platformer. Are we okay with that? Are we okay with living in a world where a game based on a Maurice Sendak book is anything less than breathtaking, let alone underwhelming? I'm sure as hell not." 'Where are the children's games?" is, in fact, a good question; I can think of a few answers – but nowhere near enough. And, more to the point: there's a lot packed up inside that question that applies to things that aren't children's games. This is a topic I shall be returning to, I feel sure.

"I keep reading books and seeing movies where nobody can fucking say anything except fuck, unless they say shit. I mean they don’t seem to have any adjective to describe fucking except fucking even when they’re fucking fucking. And shit is what they say when they’re fucked. When shit happens, they say shit, or oh shit, or oh shit we’re fucked. The imagination involved is staggering. I mean, literally." Ursula LeGuin on obscenity, swearing, and the way it's used on contemporary media. (LeGuin is someone who, for reference, has always used language precisely and carefully; she is not a prude, just bored of a lack of imagination.)

This large image (4400×2364 pixels) is completely marvellous: a genuine history, reaching back into trends from the dawn of literature, and with a healthy chunk of 19th century gothic/mystery in there. Makes me very happy, especially in terms of fond memories of books I've enjoyed.

"The first 5 summoners who received 1+ week suspensions who reply to this thread – I will reply to your post with additional details explaining the suspension." Great thread: trollers and griefers ask to know why they received bans, understanding that the complaints against their names will be revealed in public. Then, some of them appear confused as to precisely why their crimes were considered so. Interesting piece of transparency from the LOL staff.

Shutterbug vs the Super Metroid soundtrack, from the new Team Teamwork joint. Oh yes.

GSW/Gamasutra's write-up of Eric Chahi's Another World retrospective. Marvellous stuff in here, about the organic, improvisational manner of development, which explains why the beginning is perhaps the most striking impression the game leaves – it had a disproportionate amount of time spent on it. Some nice insight from Chahi; what a creation.

"We attempt to further examine the nature of the chicken: is it a particle, or a wave? Watch to find out." Great experiments of physics, built in Minecraft, applied to chickens.