"We need smaller studios and smaller games to train developers and staff up for big projects, and because sometimes they turn out to be good, or worthwhile, or interesting, or are able to take risks a AA game cannot. But, being honest, when was the last time you paid £20 for a game and expected it to take risks, rather than to provide a variation on an experience you have already had - especially when that £20 tag was not a deep discount a month after shipping in response to disappointing sales, like Alpha Protocol and Enslaved?" Lots of good points from Dan.

"I got my Miranda. I also found out how many times I'll kill the same person in order to get my way, which is also helpful." Great stuff from Dan on Mass Effect 2, and the hoops we go through to make NPCs like us.

"The demo of Dante's Inferno provided absolutely the stupidest gaming experience I think I have had since possibly Ultimate Combat Mission on the Spectrum +2. I don't think God of War can meaningfully compete, because… well, because it isn't based on one of the most famous works of literature produced in the last thousand years. Dorothy L Sayers translated it, for God's sake. Kratos never really had to get past anything more culturally embedded than Clash of the Titans." Dan has been playing Dante's Inferno, and the end result is this lovely post, about classics, and living stories, and Just Plain Stupid Games. It's very good. "…there's nothing to stop an incredibly silly game being a very enjoyable game, but there's something about the abandon with which Inferno is being used art direction for a slash-em-up that is killing the joy of it a bit for me"

Dan interviewed Tale of Tales for Wired; this, published on his blog, is the full interview, and it's got lots of great stuff in it. I'm really not sold by them - indeed, I'm less sold by the firm than I am by their work - but it's interesting to hear something from the horse's mouth, as it were.

Dan on Torchlight and Borderlands: "...they both tickle the same fetishistic urge to collect, developing bigger and better attacks to have much the same effect on bigger and better monsters as your last set of attacks had on the last set of monsters. Every single decent-sized beastie in each one drops loot when they die. Throw in a two-car carport and this is a precise map of adult life, except fun." I really need to do my goty.cx write-up quite soon.

"The voice in Dear Esther doesn't tell you where to go - it only reads, at set moments, from a random selection of letters to Esther as you wander over a deserted and increasingly disrupted Scottish island. The letters are randomised, so no playthrough is the same, and a fragmented narrative of a car crash, a grieving man and a stolen library book is glimpsed but never resolved. When I asked Pinchbeck whether this strictly constitutes a game, he said that it was a game engine, a nice distinction in both senses." Dan fills in his Wired piece on Dan Pinchbeck with some supplementary material. It is very good.