The Sunday Papers

The Sunday before Christmas is for wrapping presents. Assuming of course, you've bought some presents. Which I may not have. Man! I may as well distract myself from the horror by making a list of the best pieces of games writing across the web for you to read while trying to not link to the greatest Christmas song doesn't get played in every shop across the land.

• Since this is me linking to someone else's compilation of best writing, we're perhaps getting a little meta. Let's ignore that and press on. Simon Parkin compiles his annual list of his favourite writing on games of the year. If you've been following games discourse over the year, you'll have read some of them. But you won't have read all of 'em, and you really should. Go!
• I suspect we got distracted by making jokes about the Halo MMO in our 2008 September feature, because we failed to mention anything about Ensemble's closure. Which is a major failing. Trust Troy Goodfellow to give one of the most prominent and successful PC developers of the last decade a proepr send off in an enormous three part retrospective over at Crispygamer.
• I haven't linked to anything the Escapist has published for a while, which is probably an oversight. Let's make up for it by pointing you in the direction of When I Was A Sex Goddess where Amanda Yesilbas talks about her erotically charged experiences in the land of online text.
• I was almost tempted to do a post about the Spike awards, since World of Goo won an award. But then I remembered that I don't exactly approve of the Spike awards. As did the famously un-prudish Miss Sex of videogames Leigh Alexander.
• I enjoyed this critical analysis of Audiosurf. You may too.
• The Reticule continue to get interviews with developers we want to. The Chilean mind-wrongs behind the forthcoming Zeno Clash chat to 'em.
• Oh yeah - and RPS has a Last.fm group. Join and let's see exactly how messed up the weekly charts of videogame players music taste is.
• Just Like Christmas - Low.

Failed.