"Cole Phelps has no health bar, no ammo count, and no inventory. He doesn't write journal entries, and has no safe house or property. He doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, doesn't smoke or drink or sleep around or go out with his friends. I have seen nothing of his wife and children, his passions, his hates or his desires. He walks into a crime scene and barks his introductions like a dog, rude and abrasive; petulant and bullying. He carries himself like a child playing dress-up, weak-chinned, pale, and aimlessly angry. Cole Phelps is kind of a prick.

But when I look at what's going on around him, I can't really blame him. What to make of this Truman Show-esque existence, this vast, toothless city? If I were trapped in such a purgatorial nightmare, I'd probably behave badly, too." This is good, and expresses in poetic and critical terms one of the many reasons I just don't care about LA Noire.

"Videogames are systems, not themes, but dress a system in the right theme and you can catch the attention of someone who would not otherwise be interested. So it is for my father, who, in these awkwardly rendered moments, catches a glimpse of what I'd been seeing my entire childhood." Lovely, lovely piece of writing from Simon.

"If Kane were to have a symbiotic partner in the world of videogames, it would be the Metroid Prime trilogy".

SO ANGRY. SO SO ANGRY. PUNCHY PUNCHY.

"For instance, when a film critic with a Twitter account says that video games are not art, the natural followup becomes, "Well then... what is art?" And suddenly we're in some goddamn flourescent-lit student lounge, sitting on a nine-dollar couch across from a dude whose shirt is self-consciously spattered with daubs of encaustic, hip-to-hip with the girl who stamped each page of a copy of The Feminine Mystique with an ink print of her own labia, hearing the guy over our shoulder mention Duchamp for the sixth time this week, and it all just needs to stop right now." Well said, Steve.

"This is a list of old game releases. These games were priced at nearly $50 a year ago, now probably a lot less. Why buy a new game when there are plenty of fun games out there worth renting or buying for less?" Games released twelve months ago this week, by Andre Torrez. He's right, you know - games don't have to be about nowness all the time.

"That is not to say that videogames need to be more sensationalist, more vulgar, or more crass, but that they need not fear being more transgressive, or more expressive, or more visceral. They need not to shy away from their darker depictions of our fantasies, or become embarrassed when people point out how they dwell on violence and excitement. This, the safe excursion to the gladiatorial arena, is what games do best." Rossignol on Ballard, and jolly good too.

"The problem with all this is that we're asking the wrong question. The “are games art?” question is boring...
The interesting question, to me, is what /kind/ of art games are. That is, we should be asking ourselves what kind of formal dynamics and pleasures are inherent in the medium, and be able to identify when these formal capacities are used well." Sensible, rationally thought out, and also a reminder as to /why/ Kane is used as a benchmark. "Command of formal capacities" is an important phrase.

112 different games1 It's amazing to think that "Moving Shields" and "Zigzagging Laser Bombs" could be counted as different game-types, though, and presumably that number comes from all possible combinations. The videogame industry's obsession with bullet-points on the box is deep-rooted, it seems. (From Simon Parkin's lovely "Box Art" blog).

"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.

"There was a correlation between their performance on the game and their improvement on certain cognitive tests, Kramer said. Those who did well in the game also improved the most on switching between tasks. They also tended to do better on tests of working memory." Playing the game (Rise of Nations) didn't affect all tasks, but it had improvements on some - seemingly those involving task and process management.

Oh wow; it's like a developer network for LittleBigPlanet. Smashing.

"We need a National Videogame Archive. Luckily, we've just started one. We're going to preserve videogames for the nation. For better or worse. Forever. It's going to be brilliant..." Oh, that it is. Jonathan Smith on *every single bloody thing* that's perfect about Micro Machines 2 on the Mega Drive is a highlight so far.

Long thread of patched and hacked 8-bit and 16-bit ROMs, some bringing a vast amount of customisation.

Timelapse, merged photographs of videogames. Beautiful, especially Tempest.

"It's a shame to me that a game with Braid's narrative, artistic, and aesthetic aspirations is inaccessible to so many people hungry for exactly those things." Yes. Much as I adore it, Braid can be awful hard at times. A smart game for smart gamers, alas.

"I wanted to take portraits of people that would reveal a hidden part of their character. So I had them play videogames."

"Dark Room Sex Game is an award-winning multiplayer, erotic rhythm game without any visuals, played only by audio and haptic cues. The game can be played with Nintendo Wiimote controllers or a keyboard." Um, wow.

"The holy grail for me now wouldn't be the game that can create infinite story - but a game that could procedurally generate infinite interesting content." Jamie Fristrom on games and storytelling. Good stuff.

Lots of choice quotations here, but most are too long for a 255-char delicious box. Changing this prevalent perception is going to be hard; changing gaming is as hard. Lots to chew over int he coming years, really

Fairly old now, but some great notes from Henry Jenkins.

MLA style for citing a videogame

"I worked out, after twenty years, how to make the little man jump." - a nice tale of programming and doing bad things, despite the odd duff fact.

"SNES - As Good As It's Going To Get"