Giving thanks

Above: I'm not above recycling a Thanksgiving image.

Often, I see people lamenting the lack of good games criticism. I do this myself sometimes. But really, the state of things is better than it's ever been, so long as you know where to look. On Thanksgiving last year, I took a time out to pay tribute to the many terrific games blogs that I read. This year, that list is longer, and once again it's worth giving a shout out to the great work so many people are doing. Below is a list of all the game-related blogs I'm subscribed to. Some are dormant, some maybe extinct, but all have justified their inclusion in my reader. If you see some unfamiliar ones in here, please check them out. You'll probably like what you find.

Thanks to all of the following blogs, podcasts, and miscellaneous sites:

• Above 49
• Acid for Blood
• Banana Pepper Martinis
• Big Red Potion
• brilli.am/writes
• chewing pixels
• Christ and Pop Culture
• Click Nothing
• collision detection
• Critical Distance
• Cruise Elroy
• Design Rampage
• Discount Thoughts
• Dubious Quality
• Eat | Think | Game
• Ed Borden: PWNING 9-5
• Experience Points
• Fierce Punch
• Finding the Fun
• Fullbright
• Game|Life
• Game Design Reviews
• GameInsano
• Gamers with Jobs
• GameSetWatch
• Giant Bomb
• Graffiti Gamer
• Groping the Elephant
• Hardcasual
• Hit Self-Destruct (RIP)
• Hot Fighting History
• Infovore
• Joystiq
• Jeremy Parish
• Kotaku
• Laser Orgy
• Magical Wasteland
• Man Bytes Blog
• MTV Multiplayer
• No More Gamers Anymore
• Noble Carrots
• Offworld
• Pixelated-Glee
• Press Pause to Reflect
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun
• Save the Robot
• Sexy Videogameland
• Shawn Elliott
• SLRC
• The Autumnal City
• The Brainy Gamer
• The Cut Scene
• The Escapist: Zero Punctuation
• The Quixotic Engineer
• Valuable Games
• Versus CluClu Land
• Vorpal Bunny Ranch
• You Have Lost!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The obligatory Thanksgiving post

Above: Charlie Brown would have made a great blogger, and Snoopy a great troll.

I'm not going to get all sappy on you here, but I'm genuinely thankful that, over the past year, I've discovered dozens of terrific gaming blogs. The "games" folder in my Google reader grows by the week. The best part is that I know I'm still missing some great stuff, which I'm sure you can help me fix by suggesting more in comments.

Anyway, on this Thanksgiving, let me just say thanks to all of these blogs for entertaining and enlightening me on a regular basis -- even those dormant ones that I just can't bring myself to unsubscribe from, in case they come back one day. In alphabetical order:

• brilli.am/writes
• collision detection
• Cruise Elroy
• Dubious Quality
• Eat|Think|Game
• Ed Borden: PWNing 9-5
• Experience Points
  
• Fierce Punch
• Fullbright
• Game|Life
• Gamers with Jobs
• GameSetWatch
• Giant Bomb
• Graffiti Gamer
• Hardcasual
• Hit Self-Destruct
• Infovore
• Joystick Division
• Joystiq
• Jeremy Parish's Page on 1up.com
• Kotaku
• Level Up
• Looky Touchy
• Magical Wasteland
• Man Bytes Blog
• MTV Multiplayer
• No More Gamers Anymore
• PixelVixen707
• Save the Robot
• Sean's VideoGame Musings
  
• Sexy Videogameland
• Shawn Elliott's Page on 1up.com
• SLRC
• Sore Thumbs
• The Brainy Gamer
• The Escapist: Zero Punctuation
• The Quixotic Engineer
• Valuable Games
• Versus CluClu Land
• Vorpal Bunny Ranch

And yes, I do read them all -- all the ones that post less than 20 times a day, I mean. Now get outta here, ya knuckleheads. Go eat some pumpkin pie.

(Posting will resume on Monday.)

Friday afternoon tidbits, Wednesday morning edition

Above: I can feel my tummy rumbling already!

It's nearly Thanksgiving, which means we're doing the links a little early this week. These should make for some good postprandial reading, if you don't lapse immediately into a meat coma.

(By the way, did you know my first job was at a turkey farm? I have intimate knowledge of how that bird gets to your table. I've seen things I can't un-see.)

-Simon Parkin is taking nominations for the best game writing of 2008. I'd never be so tacky as to nominate myself, but, you know, if you think there's anything I've done that might be worthy of the honor, I certainly won't stop you from suggesting it to him. Ahem.

-One of those fascinating cross-blog conversations blew up this week. At issue is whether game reviewers sufficiently value innovation. Leigh wrote two posts saying that innovation gets short shrift, N'Gai rebutted by saying that execution is paramount, and Leigh responded once more that there may be more common ground than N'Gai gave her credit for. For myself, I agree with N'Gai's points. Innovation is a means, not an end. The goal, in my view, is to make fun games that are easy to play.* If innovation helps with that, then innovate away! But without execution, innovation doesn't mean much. Sometimes you might have a great idea without being able to work out all the kinks, which seems to be what happened with Mirror's Edge.

(I covered some of this ground in a post last summer, "Standards and practices.")

-I loved Daniel Purvis's write-up of playing Left 4 Dead with strangers. The notion of the players' personalities creating a storyline within the more open-ended framework of the gameplay is exciting, and something I wouldn't have expected. My copy of Left 4 Dead is still in the shrinkwrap, but I think this weekend I'm going to rectify that.

-Tim Rogers's review of Gears of War 2 is insane. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean the man's passion for the game has transported him to another plane of being, where he is unconstrained by your petty human concerns. He has become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.

-Is it Christmas?

*Not to be confused with easy games.