To the tune of: The Durutti Column – Trust The Art Not The Artist Fuck provenance. The joy of many modern critics seems to lie in the attribution of intention to the auteur, or at least cause to the auteur, focusing on the backstory more than the object of study; the importance of something is
To the tune of: Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine I gone and done wrote something about Minecraft: Gamers, especially PC gamers, give the impression of being more than averagely intelligent. It’s a self-selecting set – a group of people who have the desire for and capability to buy a top-end computer and
To the tune of: Bloodhound Gang – Your Only Friends Are Make Believe GamesMaster Kieron has persuaded Quinns, Matt Sheret and I to join a game of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I’m playing a dwarven student called Grok. I’m already addicted. Stupid Human Year 2252. Dear mother, da, and family. Well, here I am in the Empire! I’m writing
To the tune of: Green Day – Brain Stew My preamble: One of the few blessings of attending Oxford, save for the acquisition of an archaic process of thought, was my acquaintance with my admirable friend Dr Paul Taylor. Paul is, apart from being an awesome trumpeter, a professor of Neuroscience, with a speciality in
Games journalism isn’t that clear. Some people don’t think it’s journalism, and they think that using the word ‘journalism’ in combination with games is bad for communication, as it weakens the acuity of the language, and especially bad for journalism, as it associates journalism with something distasteful. It’s something I’ve heard repeatedly over the years,…
To the tune of: Stevie Wonder – Happy Birthday . It was my eleventy-first birthday on Monday. Here’s what I did. Timestamp: 12.30 a.m. OH, what a night! A quiet drink with several friends ended with me dropping my switch card somewhere and Quintin dunking my phone in his Gulden Draak. The phone didn’t die
To the tune of: Vivian Stanshall – Sir Henry At Rawlinson End The story so far. The hapless and unusual Hubert, having unhappily chanced upon Sir Henry reliving the bombing of Dresden, has received a terrific thrashing and a crippling kick in the fork. He is now in disgrace condemned to his room. The body of
To the tune of: The Magnetic Fields – Always Already Gone (suggestion from Tony Ellis). I’ve been reading my dad’s old copy of McEachran’s A Cauldron Of Spells – it’s snippets of poetry that feel good read out loud. I think it’s helping. I’ve picked my favourites out and interspersed them below. She was a
To the tune of: Kate Bush – Pi As a PR and journalist, I’ve been frustrated by the non-gamers and anti-gamers – the people who haven’t played or would never play games – and how they control the media. As the years have gone by, their hold on the mainstream has been eroded and the