The Sunday Papers

Having returned from the PC Gamer Showdown, feeling a little rough, there's one thing I like to do. That's play electronic videogames all afternoon. But what I've actually got to do is the Sunday-RPS staple of compiling interesting articles for the last week, publishing them in a list format and trying not to link to some Youtube video thing, or a completely self-serving interview on the subject of comics.

• Midway Designer Rob Hale thinks about Metabalance in Warhammer Online. Specifically, what he describes as "The Cool Factor". Specifically, he's thinking of how Warhammer appears to have turned over industry wisdom about the Good side having larger populations.
• We covered ("Coat" - Ed) before, but Kotaku picked up a couple of essays from Acid For Blood and Feminist Gamers which critiqued it for Gynophobia and general misogyny. Which - y'know - is a hard one to actually argue against totally, especially the former - but I think the core of the game really is more pure misanthropic body horror. The debate around it is fun too - take this chap over at Kotaku. It's really hard to take someone's pronouncements about what is or isn't sexist seriously when their icon's someone holding their own tits. General rule of life: If your icon involves bouncing boobs, you've actually sacrificed your right to anyone listening to anything you say.
• Thomas Sutcliffe of the Independent on why we (as in, the mainstream) doesn't take games more seriously. A rare example of someone outside the medium who absolutely Gets What Time It is.
• John Keefer of Crispy Gamer trying to start a debate on whether Embargos hold back games journalism in a harmful way. I'm not entirely on side with John with a couple of key points, but it's worth thinking about what he's saying.
• L.B. Jeffries has a go at parsing Lester Bangs. Bless him..
• Comic Book Resources interviews me about my forthcoming comic series Phonogram: The Singles Club. Which will be at least half a dozen awesomes. Oh - and I've been listening to Ladyhawke's Paris is Burning a load.

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