"I think this is something that’s mostly forgotten about in games writing: for a lot of the people who play games, there’s not much separation. The games get mixed up with the same insecurities and pettiness that exist in real life and the experience is emotionally heightened as a result. Planetarion is forever imprinted in my memory entirely because of these arguments, and despite the immaturity of fighting, it’s heartening to think of gaming as such a direct extension of real world relationships and emotions." Some nice stuff from Graham Smith. I too played Planetarion for a while at secondary school too, although with my Quake chums, looking for something to be played in the working week, away from 2fort5.

"You tell these stories to Your People without reservation. Your People love your stories — fiction and all. They love how you tell them, they laugh about the lies you tell yourself, and then they stop and they tell you the truth." I like his point about us turning our experiences into stories. To be honest, I like the whole thing; one of my favourite Rands pieces in a while. And he's right: it's always worth finding Your People.

Oh my. Slides from Ludicorp's presentation in which they launched Flickr at ETech 2004. So much that's still so relevant, still not always understood. Wish I could just throw this at people at Develop instead of my talk.

"the phatic function is communication simply to indicate that communication can occur." Leisa Reichelt on "ambient intimacy", Twitter, and some Bakhtinian ideas.