Off-topic Sunday: everybody is elsewhere

Oops. Apologies for the quiet week, folks. Most of the AR team has been away, is busy with other projects or is working on something which will be featured here soon.

My only excuse is that I introduced my girlfriend to Minecraft. We’ve been playing the Xbox version splitscreen and it turns out that’s a really refreshing experience after all the hours I spent playing it mostly solo. I’m spending a lot of time underground, hunting for a Stronghold, whilst she’s taming cats and experimenting with animal husbandry. Opposites attract!

Here’s a quick round-up of odds and ends. 

• Electron Dance has launched its Appendix, not into space but into webspace as a forum for communicative missives. The site’s a premier location for in-depth discussion of video games, so I’m expecting the forum will fast live up to that reputation.
• I’m mildly obsessed with articles exploring the way children who are used to interacting with modern technology and interfaces respond to older technology. I can thank Charles Stross for this. Here’s a great example, TV Is Broken, about a kid raised on Netflix streaming encountering network television and ad breaks for the first time. 
• Zack Kotzer at Killscreen reckons Jazzpunk will be the funniest game ever, which may or may not prove true, but in amongst that article there are some interesting points about physical comedy. Killscreen are on a roll with this stuff at the moment, as the week before they published a feature on Mega64 that argued video games are really bad at comedy. This is clearly because Dylan hasn’t finished his Twine yet.
• A friend at the pub was haranguing me for only having played the demos of Monkey Island 3 and Grim Fandango. Another friend told me there was “no excuse” for not having played Full Throttle because it’s so short. I get harangued for not having played or watched a lot of things, to be honest. How about you?