I interviewed Rebellion Games head Jason Kingsley today as part of an article I’m writing for the New Statesman about videogames culture in the UK. It went pretty well, and he seemed a nice guy. I wanted to talk to him because he and his company bought that quintessential bastion of British popular culture, 2000AD, a few years ago.

Anyway, at the end of our talk, he said something that I’ve been idly mulling over too. He said that the thing he was least proud of about videogames culture is its depiction of evil. “It’s portrayed as darker and malformed, but evil is deeds, not appearance,” he said. “That simplicity is disappointing and alarming”.

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Do I actually enjoy playing Oblivion? Judging by how much I was grumbling at the screen playing it last night, not very much.

That might not sound the most incredible revelation to pass on about some videogame or other. But you have to understand that I’ve put 45 hours of my scarce free time playing this rambling RPG over the last few months. And I daresay I’ll be putting a few more tens into it in the future.

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Just been to the European Wii press conference; you know, the one where Nintendo revealed the European release date and price of its new console. You’ll probably already know them but these are the big details:

Price: £179 / $249
Release date: 8 December

Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski played a bit of tennis onstage (real and Wii) and sports presenter Gabby Logan did some presenting, much to the indifference of the many European mainlanders in the audience. But all was redeemed when Satoru Iwata turned up. Man, he must have had a busy couple of days. He’s the best.

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With JPod having recently come out, I decided to finally get around to reading its 10 year old (virtual) predecessor, Microserfs. By Douglas Coupland, both are portraits of distinct eras in North American software and tech history. Microserfs, written in 1995, follows the lives of a set of programmers that start out working for Microsoft and end up forming their own company in California.

What I like about Coupland is his knack for nailing specific subcultures and periods, and he does it brilliantly in Microserfs. And what makes Microserfs particularly fascinating to read right now is that the world he depicts closely mirrors whats happening among the California technorati right now: today’s “Web 2.0” is Microserfs’ “multimedia”.

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If theres one person I wish I’d written about while I was still at icon, it’s Moritz Waldemeyer. He’s a kind of perfect geek, as tapped into the tech world as he is the glitzier side of design, and he’s not afraid to get involved in a bit of art, too.

That doesn’t exactly peg who he is – Waldemeyer is an electronic and mechanical engineer that works in design. He’s the one that made Ron Arad’s Miss Haze chandelier, a square of hanging Swarovski crystals and LEDs that act as pixels that can be controlled by PDA. He also worked with Troika on its Tool for Armchair Activists, a loudspeaker that speaks out mobile phone texts. He’s someone that knows how to get something really interesting done.

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I went to see A Scanner Darkly last night. Embarrassingly (look, this is the sort of thing I get embarrassed about), I haven’t read the book it’s based on, but despite Philip K. Dick having written it nearly 30 years ago the film’s vision of the near future felt very relevant.

For brevity, these are some of the things I loved about it:

• Its prosaic near-futureness – the characters drive crappy cars and live in nowhere LA suburbs. It avoids gleaming modernity, instead focusing on the decaying or frozen legacies of the past.
• The rotoscoped visuals. I don’t think they’re a case of style over substance – they provide a perfect sense of surreal drug and brain damage induced disorientation.
• The rotoscoping also allows a wonderful extra dimension to the characters – Freck’s rubbery paranoia and the wild scattershot impulsiveness of Robert Downey Jr.’s Barris.
• The scramble suits look amazing.
• The mix of intrigue, humour and pathos – funny rambling conversations about bike gears and paranoid plans seamlessly blend into the situational horror of the main character, Agent Fred/Bob Arctor (played by Keanu Reeves, who, considering he’s Keanu Reeves, is pretty good).

I didn’t like everything, though. The end of the film feels divorced from the bulk of the narrative, with whole new elements hurriedly bought into play and concluded in a blur. Until this last section, A Scanner Darkly compellingly maintains a strong theme about surveillance and loss of identity, but the sudden change in direction ultimately muddies it, and I came out feeling much less satisfied and more than a little confused.

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These are the things I took away from Nintendos first UK presentation of its Wii home console: a Tim Henman-endorsed tennis racquet and ball, a pulled muscle in my left arm and an intense feeling of relief.

My review of the whole Wii thing is in the latest issue of icon. Well, not all. A bit of the Wii thing. Wii Sports, to be precise. Would have been good to go into Wario Ware in more detail, but hey.

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More Audiosurgeon podcastery is now available on iTunes, or here by direct download. Well, that’s the first part, anyway, which includes an interview with the director of Little Fish and me banging on about the merits of Wii. It’s super. And If you’ve got enough energy and time there’s a second part, too – here. It includes an interview with Bugz in the Attic among other things, but to my mind it goes on a bit.

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Just a quick un to say the second Audiosurgeon podcast is up, featuring me and other members of Pixelsurgeon. We talk about Jet Lee and MySpace and there are interviews with Plaid and filmmaker Bob Jaroc, and Charli 2NA of Jurassic 5. Very nice!

Direct download here, or you can subscribe via iTunes or simple ole RSS.

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If you havent already got a DS, get a DS Lite. If you already have one, GAME will buy your ugly, bulky, dim-screened old one for £40. You could probably get more for it, but heck, when the icy fingers of temptation are clutching at your bowels, £40 is enough.

It’s bright, easy on the eye, comfortable in the pocket and light in the hands. GameBoy Advance games stick out of it in a rather unprepossessing way, but that’s OK. And, best of all, despite the beautiful looks it manages to feel tough – able to withstand the slings and arrows of everyday use.

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