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Man I’ve been behind these past couple weeks. I’ve barely had a chance to stop by and say hello. I suppose I could say I need more leisure time and fewer responsibilities, really I just need to manage my time better. Anyway, the IGDA is running my Culture Clash columns according to a different schedule, to accommodate the other writers (and the fact that I haven’t exactly been great with deadlines recently). So last month’s, which ridiculed Microsoft for the Xbox One launch, didn’t come out on that site until after they’d reversed their worst blunders. Now I can’t claim that it was my writing, and mine alone, that drove this decision. This one, meanwhile, I wrote and rewrote about a thousand times. Today. The first draft was probably fine, but then I thought I’d do something new with it, then I changed that idea, then I realized my thesis didn’t make sense, then I wound up with this version, which nobody will be happy with. But there’s always next month.  Enjoy!

This month’s Culture Clash column is inspired in part by a chronic affliction of mine: every twelve months or so, I undergo a strange frenzy of attention-paying to the work of Ice-Pick Lodge, the inscrutable Russian developer of Pathologic, Cargo!, and The Void. The studio’s website rarely sees substantive updates, but nevertheless I always tend to find something new there – though it rarely is anything about their activities. This time around I found a series of papers and lectures on game development, the translation quality of which was… quite poor.

Still! I like that stuff and it formed the basis of what I have to say in this month’s column. Despite it making complete sense to me, I have a feeling this is one of those installments that will make the eyes of other readers cross. Like Penny Arcade’s Twisp & Catsby comics, I try to only do that once a year or so. Enjoy!

I’m finally getting back on track with my monthly International Game Developers Association column, thanks mostly to the patience of the organization and my editor, Cat Wendt. IGDA Board of Directors elections were held a while ago. Sadly my personal favorite pick – the awesome Kate Edwards of Englobe Inc – won’t be joining the IGDA board, but I have a lot of confidence in those who did win, and lots of optimism for the future of the organization.

This month I write about the uniqueness of how games relate to their consumers, and how developers are inventing some clever new approaches to authorial control that ensures players see and experience what the developers want them to, despite gaming’s inherent affordance. Enjoy!

There’s a rumor – thanks 1UP – that a PS3-based, high-def collection of famed games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus will appear sometime in 2011, like the recent God of War HD collection. No official announcement has been made, but as 1UP points out, it would make fiscal sense for Team Ico to release an HD bundle of its games just before launching its still-mostly-under-wraps new title, The Last Guardian. Rant follows.

Review by Mike “Scout” Gust The Path Developer Tale of Tales Publisher Tale of Tales Released March 18, 2009 Available for PC (version reviewed)/MAC Verdict: 4/5 Thumbs Up “I soon came to realize that this was not your typical video game. In fact, it can reasonably be argued that it’s not a video game at all though I would claim it is. Most games take you by the hand and teach you how to play …

While I have never been what one might call an “intense” gamer, I have for years been a student of visual and printed forms of media.I have particularly followed the on-going argument related to computer gaming as art.I do this largely because it amuses me to find politicians who can barely spell “computer,” and lawyers who have an opinion about almost everything, expressing their remarkably intense and often nonsense-laden opinions.I truly believe they need to …

It is my belief that the term “computer game” is a misnomer.I have no trouble accepting the word computer, since indeed, we experience them on a computer.It is the word “game” that I have problems with.Surely most gamers are sophisticated enough to accept the fact that we have progressed to the point that the word “game” is not only incongruous, it is incorrect.