Great profile on Tim Sweeney from Stephen Totilo. Again, part of my childhood gaming, especially ZZT, which was a brilliant editor and one of the first play/create tools I messed around with. Striking to see how much impact the shareware creators of my youth - Carmack, Sweeney, and all the Apogee/id/Epic crews - have gone on to have in the modern industry. Also: striking to be reminded how much of those early PC gaming days were about borderline geniuses writing terrifying graphics engines.

"After seeing there is a turing complete language in game, I felt like I should do something interesting with redstone in Minecraft. People already have done clocks and adders so I wanted to do something a little different while also be potentially useful. As a result, I designed out a ticker display." At least as crazy as those LittleBigPlanet calculators.

Another potential response to my regular "come on, where's Hypercard?" query.

"I suspect 'creating something personal, even of moderate quality' and letting people share it is going to be one of the business models of the next century. And one of the social movements. Which will happen if we can squeeze the convenience and scale of the internet into other places."

"But what if you make personalisation easier? Consider a game that brings your real world into your game world, all on its own. It could to grab data from the internet about the real world and the gamers that live in it, and weave it into the game experience, for an effect that is both surprising and personally meaningful. You would see yourself in a game without having to put yourself there. It’s not user-generated content: it’s user-generated, machine-mediated content – UGMMC, or as I like to say it, “Ugh-Meck.”" I am super-happy at how well Chris's writing for Edge Online is turning out.

Jolly good interview with Tim Sweeney, with lots on ZZT (hurrah!), and, I think most interestingly lots of on building games around editors and tools - from ZZT through Unreal to the present day. I like his acknowledgments of his shortcomings as a progammer - but perhaps also his shrewdness as a manager.

Matt's talk (in English) from Lift 09 is on this page , on scientific fiction, stories, and the design process. Good stuff - not too long - and wonderfully filmed: the cameraman focuses on his hands as much as his face, which is just perfect. Unfortunately, you can't link directly to videos which is, frankly, rubbish.

NeoGAF users band together to make a perfect, eight-stage, LittleBigPlanet rendition of Contra. Remarkable, especially the behind-the-backdrop puppeteering that makes the walking-into-the-screen levels possible. This had better not get a takedown slapped on it, because it's phenomenal.

Retrospective on Pinball Construction Set, as well as EA's subsequent forays into "construction kit" territory, as a brief history of accessible, mainstream game-creation tools.

"So why don’t we aim for a new tier - something that takes a chunk out of the 90, to lead it closer to the 9 and the 1? Why not give users a chance to enter something personal and creative, but let the system mediate, moderate and filter it into something useful?" Yes. The 90-9-1 pyramid is actually a very unhelpful metaphor, IMHO, and trying to explore and encourage creativity along a sliding scale rather than an absolute is important.

"What a wonderful idea," Jennifer noted. "We never get to see the people who make the games." Michael Abbott is talking about LittleBigPlanet.

Mitch just isn't inspired by user-generated content, no matter how charming a core game might be. The comments thread on this one is really good.

"How I asked my GF to marry me in Little Big Planet. My (now) Fiancee was playing the level. She was so shocked she kept playing and knew i was filming. Afterwords we hugged, she cried, and I gave her an engagement ring." This is amazing in so many ways, not least of which that she wasn't the first person to paly it.

"Normally, one of the first things that admin will do when they set up their blog is to go and remove the Hello world! post. But for this blog, we’ve decided to keep it. The feeling a coder has when they see “Hello world!” for the first time on the tool or system they’re creating is a great feeling. You’ve just given birth to something. It’s still young, fragile, and only a hint of what it someday will be. But it’s alive. Something you’ve made with your own two hands is starting to breath. It has begun."

"Scientists brought in to evaluate the game for potential education projects recoiled as it became increasingly evident that the game broke many more scientific laws than it obeyed. Those unwilling to comment publicly speak privately of grave concerns about a game which seems to further the idea of intelligent design under the badge of science, and they bristle at its willingness to use words like "evolution" and "mutation" in entirely misleading ways." Rather fine SEED cover article from Margaret, on Spore and just how scientific it is (and if it really matters). Some lovely stuff in here (and a cracking conclusion).

This is, fundamentally, good.

"The more you play, the more you get to build things" Which is only how it should be.

"Zelda Classic is a tribute to ... The Legend of Zelda. It has been developed into an exact replica of the NES version that we all know and love. Beyond that, Zelda Classic allows the development of new quests..." Looks fun.

"ScreenSteps brings simplicity to the labor intensive process of software documentation." Focusing on the screengrab, rather than video, as instruction tool. Could be a nice approach, especially if export is any good.

"The number one use of user-created content in virtual spaces is the screenshot. And that is user content creation. It is shared more widely, distributed, commented on, annotated." Raph Koster on form in this SXSW transcript