The Sunday Papers

Sunday's an ideal time to take stock of the week's events. So go and do that, if you fancy - anyone who stays can peruse the list of left-of-field and unusual stories we collected across these seven days, and now present to you while trying really, very, very hard to avoid linking to a Betty Boo video.

• Normally this is a must read thing. This is... well, something like that. Old comrade Tim "Maugeter" Fletcher made me look at Gamasutra's "Emotion Engineering: A Scientific Approach For Understanding Game Appeal" piece. It's a piece on formalising design laws and has - er - some of the best graphs I've seen in my life. I always rate games on graphicability, playabilityityity and shame.
• I've been reading some of future-possibility-writer Jamais Cascio this week. Here's a couple which tie neatly into gaming. His response to the Eve Guiding Hand Social Club Corporate Theft uses it as a springboard to looking at how this sort of behaviour contrasts in its effect with hacking (the latter destroys sense of security, the former destroys social cohesion). Then later, we have a piece on The Griefer Future, of the leap from antisocial online in-game behaviour to antisocial online out-of-game behaviour. And both of those paraphrases are particularly lumpen. Do read.
• On a happier note, the ever-loving Dracko points us that original Prince-of-Persia creator Jordan Mechner is working on a graphic novel with First Second of Prince of Persia. He's not writing it, but it's a rather unusual looking project. First Second aren't exactly the usual sort of publisher who does videogame tie-ins.
• Developer interviews. Tarn Adams of Dwarf Fortress fame in a lengthy interview at Kwanzoo. This one really gives a portrait of the man, and kind of captures his key dilemma of being trapped between need for success and need for control. Meanwhile, over at GameDaily Chris Beatrice talks about Hinterlands. We remain terribly excited about it.
• Noteworthy now, perhaps extremely interesting later. If you're a regular RPS comments thread, you may have seen Cliffski offering an occasional opinion on Piracy in the sporadic, short threads we've been known to have on the topic. He's now doing a survey for people who pirate his games.
• Simon Parkin deals with two of my favourite things over at Game Set Watch. Namely, Sex and Tetris. In short, Simon goes off to Amsterdam and has a red-light videogame experience, except not anywhere near as secretory as that makes it sound. As its comment thread shows, divisive, but bravely so.
• Betty Boo - Where are you Baby. Kitschadelic splendidosity.

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