"While the two games have similarities, the consensus is that the collective poker success results more from the experience competition provides than the tactics and skill set utilized in 'Magic.'" Successful Magic: The Gathering players are moving over to professional poker. I particularly liked: '"I never want to play poker in my free time. 'Magic' you can. You can't make a living at 'M:TG,' but it's just the more enjoyable game.""

"A scrapbook collection of awesome videogame box art." Added to subscriptions immediately. This is going to be lovely.

"The Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing at Stanford University consists of several thousands of pieces of computer hardware and software. Dating primarily from the 1980s and 1990s, the collection chronicles the formative era of personal computing, specifically computer gaming." Amazing.

"Turf Bombing is a location-based turf battle game which rewards and encourages traveling and learning about different neighborhoods." Location-based game that forces you to travel out of your normal areas, and potentially explore transport networks. Also: not designed around specific devices, just laptop+wifi.

"Journalist Kareem Shaheen was attending at GAMES 2008 convention in Dubai, and asked us if we fancied writing anything about gaming in the Middle East. And we said HELL YES, as we like capitals." A nice, if brief, piece from Shaheen about a sector of gaming I know nothing about.

"A simple pocket knife can be more appealing and usable than a bristling Victorinox, and a dedicated little games machine like the DS can engage us far more than the sleek power of the PSP. You can feel admiration and even awe for the big power boxes, but for the DS you feel affection - and that, in marketing terms, is worth a whole heap more." I love Stephen Fry.

"Finally Taking Over The World is interactive fiction programmed in brainfuck. It is completely written by hand without the use of any compiler or the like." IF written in brainfuck. Blimey.

Junot Diaz on GTAIV in the Wall Street Journal. Excellent writing, on the nature of good vs. great and great vs. seminal; on what art does to us; on how it needs to go farther. Smart, engaged, written by someone who gets culture and who *plays*.

"Dweller is a simple roguelike targeted for Java enabled mobile phones" lovely - straightforward, classic ASCII Rogue on your j2me mobile. Two thumbs up!

"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.

"for all the evidence to the contrary I’ve observed since I’ve been an adult myself, it’s hard to entirely shake the old Dad Knows Best hangover." Great writing from Alec Meer about explaining games to our parents - and the hell of twin-stick contro

"Nintendo hasn’t truly gone backwards technologically. It has simply innovated in a different way." Good Forbes piece pulling together the usual threads on what Sony's really up against.

"Others have complained that the third valve is used only at the expert level, that even proficient players only score a maximum of 60 points per song, and that the "oompah" meter stays the same shade of gray even if every note is hit."

It's the 2006 Tim Rogers fukubukuro. Which translates as: 80,000 words of rambling on games. That said, some of it's very good - the "epic" section on Gears of War, amongst other things, is most perceptive.

Not quite ready for release, but anyway: MacLive is a nice Cocoa front end to XBox Live, with Growl integration (hurrah). Hoping it'll be ready soon!

Jesper Juul on "goal-less" games, sandbox or otherwise.

> GO SAM GO. Delightful

Good Edge piece on XBLA

While these budgets may seem high to indies, these budgets wouldn't buy coffee on a triple-A console title for the retail box channel

"Time Playing x Social Relevance = World Impact". Awesome, awesome stuff from Will Wright. Reading these notes alone makes me feel a possibility space expanding.

Delightful

"What one will then wear on the wrist will be, not a mini-computer, but a computerized dialling system to the big hook up." Jim R on fine form, on one of Brian Aldiss' many visions of the future.

Jane McGonigal's weblog - Jane guided us through a few games of Werewolf on Tuesday night at Etech. Much fun was had, and many innocent villagers slaughtered...

The connotations of morality that are attached to your MMORPG avatar

"Nintendo's theme for 2006 will be 'Create new fun'". Yes!

I've actually had vaguely similar thoughts at times, about turning applications into games. Turning the work ethic into a play ethic, etc. Level up!

"SNES - As Good As It's Going To Get"

Gaming podcasts with beer. Looks fun.

How Halo2 got put onto Live.