Passed without comment, but something to come back to when I'm beating myself up.

"...the Duke Nukem Forever team worked for 12 years straight. As one patient fan pointed out, when development on Duke Nukem Forever started, most computers were still using Windows 95, Pixar had made only one movie — Toy Story — and Xbox did not yet exist." Fantastic, dense, Wired article on DNF from Clive Thompson

"...there are an awful lot of excellent reasons for ending a blog, and that many blogs which do end are by no means “failures”. Social media coverage in general should focus a lot less on the things people do or don’t “achieve” via these tools, and more on the fact that conversation, writing, collaboration and suchlike are pleasants thing to do in and of itself. Reclaim social media for the flaneurs, is I guess what I’m saying!" Tom Ewing is right.

"There've been studies on how gamers actually become better business leaders," she says. "They're very familiar with that creative, collaborative team space that's so much a [part of] our businesses." And creative, unstructured play means letting players fail, she asserts.

Giving players the opportunity to have failure states -- not just a "strict message that's being delivered" -- is the right way to encourage players to learn and explore. She noted educational game Electrocity, a SimCity inspired resource-management game, that allows for mistakes and consequences. "Sometimes in those moments is when people 'get it' strongly," says Bradshaw.

"As I listened to Wil’s surprisingly impassioned speech, and the protestations of the other party members, a thought popped into my head: role-playing is when you make poor gameplay decisions on purpose." Dan values narrative success over ludic, rules-based success.

"You don’t need to be able to lose for a game to be enjoyable or challenging. You just need to be able to fail." Some good notes on the purpose of failure in games, and how to sensibly work failure as a mechanic into games without irritating players.

"I shouldn't even explain it- you should probably just youtube some gameplay footage if you're interested and watch the insanity." Gerard Way on quitting Force Unleashed - and hinting that he's going to talk more about other games he's given up on. That should be interesting.

"Yes, it's true that at no time while playing Prince of Persia did I feel any of the frustration that I felt on a regular basis in Mirror's Edge. But neither did I ever feel the joy of doing something right, of stringing together a perfect series of vaults and wall-runs and feeling like it was based on my own skill. Can one exist without the other? Is it impossible to create joy without difficulty? I don't know. But Prince of Persia lost something significant." I'm a bit worried about the new Prince, especially having read this; the challenge/reward balance is hugely important to it as a series, especially since the marvellous Sands of Time. Also, more worryingly: are developers shying away from letting players fail any more?

"If you want someone to fail, you want them to fail fast, before they spend a lot of money... [Miyamoto] would just say, 'Find the fun, and I'll be back in three months to take a look at what you have.'" Good advice.