"Think of it as theatre. Picture books are a lot like theatre, 32 pages of performance to help parents entertain, educate, encourage an audience of one – over and over again. Thousands of copies, each one a paper theatre. You provide the script, the sets, the costume, the stage tricks." Yes, that.

Dan Abnett talks about writing. A lot of his writing is formulaic and genre-based, but he's really eloquent about the craft of writing to spec, and the simplicity of getting to know your medium. Really enjoyable talk about craft that percolates nicely.

"I like co-op games where the other player gets a beer, not a second controller, but can still be utterly pivotal to the outcome of a game." Yes, that, and indeed, all of this lovely post from Margaret. I should return to FTL – I played a lot of it last year, and loved it, even if it mainly was a game about seeing how quickly somebody would asphyxiate when the Oxygen Machine blew up. Again. Sigh.

"The best lectures are also full of what the Elizabethans called ‘lively turning’ – strange juxtapositions, leaps of thought, rhetorical tricks, jokes and the element of surprise." Very true – a nice piece by Joe Moran on lecturing in the MOOC age.

"…drawing, even at a representational level, is the construction of ideas. Therefore the conscious manipulation of ideas through the act of drawing becomes highly fruitful for a designer." More from Matt on drawing, and particular approaches aimed at unlocking drawing-as-thinking. Excellent as ever. I continue to vaguely try drawing in all workshops and for myself, and am still amazed by the number of people who, in design workshops, illustrate what they mean with sentences. For reference: I am a truly appalling draughtsman who was the despair of many an art teacher.

Both of these are great, and express some of what I've been trying to say in recent talks far better than I've expressed myself.

Rather good interview with MJH; covers lots of bases, carried out just before Light was published.

John Gray on M John Harrison – not just the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, but also Viriconium and Climbers.

"…I feel like five or ten years ago we had a common critical vocabulary robust enough to talk about what is going on in low-agency, linear, or hypertext games, but that the community has shifted enough not to be using that vocabulary now that there are lots of such games to talk about." Emily Short's roundup of the 2013 IF Comp. Really good notes on the state of the modern competition; also good notes on the nature of interactivity. Worth your time.

"Had our correspondent developed the gift of foresight? No. He really had heard these stories before. Spend a few moments on Google and you will find that the tale of how Procter & Gamble developed the Swiffer is a staple of marketing literature. Bob Dylan is endlessly cited in discussions of innovation, and you can read about the struggles surrounding the release of “Like a Rolling Stone” in textbooks like “The Fundamentals of Marketing” (2007). As for 3M, the decades-long standing ovation for the company’s creativity can be traced all the way back to “In Search of Excellence” (1982), one of the most influential business books of all time. In fact, 3M’s accidental invention of the Post-it note is such a business-school chestnut that the ignorance of those who don’t know the tale is a joke in the 1997 movie “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.”" This is a brilliant article on the literature – and culture – of talking about 'creativity'.

"Why doesn’t popular fiction encourage writers as entertainingly skilful as this? Because we do not value the skillset itself, only the story it mediates. We long ago separated the skillset out and donated it to literary fiction. Danny MacAskill doesn’t tell a story. He just is. Indeed, by the look of it, he just is the skillset. As a result I cry every time I watch him perform, because the performance is so much more intense than anything I’ve ever made." Great writing, by a great writer, about a great performer. Perfect.

"Castles In The Sky is a tiny window into a delightful bedtime story. I imagine parents reading it aloud to their children as the child is fascinated by the huge bounds the boy makes through clouds. Very little happens but kites and planes go by; the music gently ebbs into your mind and as the story ends you feel peaceful and contented. It has thawed me a little, from a week of thinking only about GTA V and how serious life must be all the time. It has made me think about how five year old me used to listen to stories in our community library crosslegged and have to shut up, at least for a little while." This is a glorious piece of writing from Cara. And: a reminder that the thing I've always known is that being read to – and reading aloud to others – is so often a complete delight.

"I was no boy naturalist, unlike Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri – whose collecting habits earned him the nickname Dr Bug among friends. And yet I vividly remember catching my first tadpole in a Golden Wonder crisp packet, then cradling this sloppy pouch all the way home to a sluiced-out jam jar. When you know Tajiri wanted to make a game to communicate his joy in catching insects as a boy, and look at Pokémon, it is impossible not to feel how powerfully he succeeded." A really lovely piece of games writing, about breeding and trafficking Pokémon as an adult – but, secretly, about the appeal of the series to players of all ages.

"…the 808 is such a storied instrument in electronics. It casts a large shadow. There's whole genres based on just the kick or the snare or the cowbell sound. As soon as you turn it on and start working, you hear every single gesture that's happened in electronic music since its advent. It's this crazy machine of history, and it's really hard not to be beholden to it in that way." Daedalus on the history embedded in instruments, as part of an interview about his use of technology for Resident Advisor.

"The compass knows the map, son, it knows when the map is near. Let the compass direct you to the map but whatever else you do in this stained forsaken world keep them apart. Else there won’t be sufficient salt water in the oceans to quench the soles of yr burning heart."

This is a great piece of writing from Frank Chimero, if only because the thing it emphasises is not a brutal the-work-above-all-else approach, but a gentle talk on the same idea. And the thing I'm slowly shifting towards in the manner of my work (if not always the practice of it) is a particular kind of quiet gentleness: be kind; work hard; keep going. Gentle is underrated, and gentle is not the same as easy or soft-touch. It has value for all involved. Also: I loved the point where he wrote "you have to earn those words". Yes.