I say they should just give in and start making iOS games. They’re not going to win this battle.

I wish John Gruber wouldn’t talk about games, because I don’t think he really understands them. Here he’s reacting to Nintendo’s surprise 2DS announcement.

Sure, Nintendo has a lot of problems. And, yes, many of them are a result of losing a vast amount of control over handheld gaming since the advent of iPhone. But still. He sees games/devices as a ‘battle’ in which sheer numbers are the only marks of success rather than long-term passion and wonderful expressions of creativity (you know, like many of the things he celebrates Apple for). He’s also ignoring the clear and present benefits of gaming-centric hardware. Like many, I don’t want a future in which handheld gaming devices don’t have physical buttons and joysticks. Broadly speaking, 3DS is better for games than an iPhone. Anyone who loves games should abhor the idea of them losing such vital parts of themselves.

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I really like Naoya Hatakeyama’s Blast series of photographs. I’ve had the following as my desktop background for months.

I came across the A BIRD/Blast #130 series earlier, and it’s an amazing piece of visual poetry. There’s the initial calm over this otherworldly place of bare rock and dust, a bird in the sky above.

And then it explodes, and it becomes even more unworldly.

Meanwhile, the bird veers from its course, apparently panicked by the explosion, and incredibly almost framed by the rubble.

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This isn’t some defence of Apple, much less a defence of some typically crass marketing message. But it is a defence, of sorts, of technology.

There’s an article doing the rounds at the moment called In 20 Years, We’re All Going To Realize This Apple Ad Is Nuts which criticises the tone of a new iOS ad, reasonably suggesting that the ad’s focus on products over people is a misrepresentation of what’s important about design. That’s all fine, but the article also includes a list of the ad’s various images of people being immersed in their iOS devices:

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Crusader Kings II¹ is suddenly starting making a lot of sense.

My elderly petty king, Áed Ua Conchobair, better known as King Áed I of Connacht, is now tearing through Ireland, having made decades of clodding mistakes in his earlier years. He’s creating spurious claims on every territory around him, assassinating untrustworthy vassals, and steadily swallowing the island up.

It’s a pity about Áed’s eldest grandson, though. Tadg threw his own wife (who happens to be William the Conqueror’s daughter) in prison after Áed finally relented to giving him his own title and lands. When old Áed dies (given that he’s 84, it won’t be long) I’m going to have to play as this fucking clot, because he’s next in line of my proto-dynasty.

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I got a bit obsessed with this showcase of 125 animated fighting game backgrounds today. Just the backdrops from different stages (as far as I can tell all by SNK, dating from the mid to late 90s, and probably ripped from SNK Wiki), stripped of player sprites and health bars, they’re gorgeous flowerings of visual design.

Truth be told, I’m a bit tired of pixel art, but work like this aspired to transcend mere pixels. And I think that’s why it still packs a punch for me today. It’s evidently not content with the paltry colour depth and resolution it’s forced to use. It’s not about celebrating its form, unlike today’s pixel art, which is all about the form and evoking aesthetics of the past without quite nailing their fundamental nature. Instead, these backgrounds are all about what they depict – little scenes, ripe with little stories and humour, and inflected with travel pornography.

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The first time I heard ’experience’ used in earnest as a marketing term was during a trip to Microsoft’s Redmond HQ in 2008. Very much in earnest, in fact - I was there to see New Xbox Experience, which is what Microsoft was calling its new Xbox 360 dashboard design.

New Xbox Experience. This was no mere update. Microsoft was fashioning something that would touch every user and shape their entire conception of the Xbox 360. Which is kind of true, in the sense that Microsoft put out a redesign that’s between mildly and seriously annoyed everyone who’s ever used it since. That’s because NXE was not really focused on improving the experience of its users. It was actually mostly about pushing Xbox Live Marketplace content and advertising at them.

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With mobile app deep-linking, users will be able to tap a link to either view content directly in your app, or download your app, depending on whether or not they have your app installed. → dev.twitter.com

Tweets that directly download games or point to specific features in them, then. Could initiate multiplayer games, show highscores or -shudder- in-app purchases.

Suddenly Twitter becomes about the most flexible and open game network around. Let’s not think about the volume of spam it’ll generate, eh.

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It’s not art, but I like it.

For a linear shooter, anyway. The rush of Important Complicated Explanation at the end was rather too much, there were too many guns, a few of the Vigors lacked sharp enough differentiation, and I spent too much time rooting in bins and desks for coins. But all that was easily made by up its often breathtaking art design, detailing and set-pieces, plus its fluid action.

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Sorry, I don’t get the drama around having an ‘always on’ console. Every device is now ‘always on.’ That’s the world we live in. #dealwithit

…said Microsoft creative director (ex-PopCap senior designer and LucasArts creative lead) Adam Orth on Twitter yesterday.

…his personal views do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers.

…said Microsoft.

File Microsoft’s failure to deny or confirm the next Xbox will be always-on under ‘we do not comment on rumour and speculation’. File Orth’s comments under ’loudmouth’. File the enormous stink they raised on the internet under ‘big problem that won’t go away soon’.

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Today I took receipt of a new passport. I will get my next one in ten years. I’ll be 47.

Ten years ago, I had yet to get my first writing job. I had just finished a six-month postgraduate course in periodical journalism at the London College Of Printing, during which I stood in front of my class and said I wanted to write for Edge.

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