Rahul

Numerous screenshots of chats with various (apparently Indian) customer service representatives for EA doing a terrible job of actually servicing customers.

At a press event in Japan, Enders Project, a sequel to Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner was announced. Not much to go on yet, but there are some pictures from the event at the link. Thanks to duckroll and NeoGAF!

The Two Guys from Andromeda, creators of the Space Quest adventure games that were big in the 80s and 90s, have reformed as "Guys From Andromeda" and started a Kickstarter campaign to fund their new game.

I'm working with them to develop a set of prototypes during the campaign period. A new one will be released each time they hit $100k, and the first is already available.

Check out the campaign at http://tgakick.com and consider adding your support! Some of the rewards are particularly great, but of course the reward of a new game by these guys is why you're really doing it.

Siliconera has discovered a trademark registration and domain name claim by Square Enix for "Chrono Bind". I need to lie down. Square Enix is trolling gamers worldwide by registering a domain name and trademark starting with "Chrono" when in reality it's just a stupid minigame in FFXIII-2. Fuck you Square Enix.

"This is my childhood friend. We just had a conversation about how how it's hard to get the day started without red meat in your belly, and now we are going to St. Pigeo's School for Talented Birds."

The Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged. We'll continue with our reform work, which basically amounts to fully redoing the game, and hope to revive the FFXIV that should have been released.

This trailer for Xenoblade shows how it plays like Final Fantasy XII and gives an overview of what to expect from its battle system, overworld, and inventory/equipment.

Two scans of how Final Fantasy XIII looked when it was under development as a celshaded RPG for PS2, featuring Yuna and Rikku as temporary characters.

A Pokémon inspired comic telling of protagonist Ash's hypothetical letters to his Dad. Very touching. By Maré Odomo

An ingenious 2d platformer inspired by Mario in development for iPhone, Mimeoverse: Mimeo and the Kleptopus King features worlds designed to look like 2-bit, 4-bit, 8-bit and 16-bit environments. Power-ups seamlessly transition you between the different ones, affording you abilities depending on where you are. It's a true love letter to classic platforming reminiscent of 2008's Braid.

Gamepro editor John Davison explores the truth that Valve revealed to us years ago: video games are too long and too hard. Most people don't even complete them. A great quote from this article: "we're not playing it wrong. What's happening is that studios are starting to look at the way they make games and concede that they're making them wrong"

The idea of elegance is to use no more than is needed

A lot of foreign game companies hire pro screenwriters. Here we leave this critical part of the process to directors and programmers and other amateurs.

"The move positions the Respawn Entertainment leadership team as the owners of the intellectual property they create. The company will focus on creating state-of-the-art gaming experiences for global audiences." Interesting news considering yesterday's countersuit by Activision.

Blogusesthis.com features interviews with (geek) internet celebrities about what hardware and software they use. It includes notable game industry names Gabe Newell and Jonathan Coulton, as well as web developers like Joe Hewitt and David Heinemeier Hansson, and general famous people like Jakob Nielsen, Gina Trapani and Richard Stallman.

"The men 'morphed from valued, responsible executives into insubordinate and self-serving schemers who attempted to hijack Activision's assets for their own personal gain and whose actions threatened both the future of the Call of Duty franchise and future of Activision's (Infinity Ward) studio,' the complaint states." Time for things to get personal, it seems.