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Found a great post via Jurie of Intelligent Artifice. (Who got it via Robin of gewgaw.)

It’s a recap of an incident at the Montreal Games Summit as blogged by Kim Pallister, a Microsoft employee of who-knows-what-type. Allow me to repost part of his blog, including the heavy French accent that somehow drives the point home.

“You talk about de need for critical acclaim. And you talk about de need for de big boodget. Der is a painting in France called de monah-leesah. It is famous. It might be very expensif too, if you can buy it, but you can’t buy it.”

Then he pulls out a peice of loose leaf paper from his pocket and unfolds it, holding it up in front of 600+ people, to show a cartoon drawing. Noticably choked up, he says, “Dis is a picture dat my son drawed for me. This drawing makes me cry, and de monah leesah doesn’t effect me one damn bit”.

Do yourself the favor of reading his post, here. I love blogs. Without’em we’d never hear these gems.

Crazy-happy-kill-yourself-fun-time. Yes, I also am participating in National Novel Writing Month, like fellow gaming bloggers Josh, Corvus, and Brinstar. Much like Josh, I’m thankful that NaNoWriMo isn’t about winning, but about writing. I already know I won’t be hitting the 50,000 word mark, but that won’t stop me from writing anyway.

Sure it’s not exactly gaming related, unless you count NaNoWriMo as a game which I suppose is possible. But it’s not a game I’m playing to win. I know I won’t be hitting the 50,000 word goal or anything, but I’ve always meant to get around to writing something of size, and this is as good as an excuse as I’m ever going to find.

On another topic, David Jaffe (dude who made God of War, Twisted Metal, etc.) made a good post today that berates the quality of gaming journalism. He argues that game journalists think that the line between Games and Games Journalism is a thin one. Rather, he argues that they are wrong. And if they truly want to help Games, then they should effectively put up or shut up. That doing their job and scrutinizing games with an honest eye is the best way to help Games. I think he’s right.

Admittedly he reminds me of a movie I watched recently, a documentary on Z-Channel that I recommend to all. It talks about how a bunch of people who loved movies (and reviewed them,) were able to change film via distribution, rather than solely critique. (Costikyan, I’m looking at you here, pal.)

In addition to when Jaffe calls for “LESS FUCKING PREVIEWS AND MORE FEATURES!!!!” I find it kinda funny when he brings up their interviews.

Did you see ROLLING STONE with the BONO interview?!? Give me THAT but with KOJIMA….OR MIYAMOTO! And no more of this bullshit about how he plays the fucking banjo and likes to garden. Wow, that’s hard hitting! Shit guys, dig into the man and let us know what makes him tick, what he really likes and dislikes, his political views, what his stresses are, what his vices are, does he feel stress to save Nintendo,etc….you know, go and WRITE something!

Seriously. If some anonymous blogger (me) can say ‘Hey, I wonder what Alex Seropian thinks about this,’ or have Mark Healey tell me “I would love to see all the corporate grey middle men banished from the industry, those that don’t care about games, only about cashing in on factory produced crap.” then a major magazine should have no problem not only getting big names, but big interviews.

Speaking of which, I should write a review of Rag Doll Kung Fu. In short: Worth the cash.