Portrait of the blogger as a young D&D addict
Here's a mid-1980s CBC News scare-story about Dungeons and Dragons driving kids to suicide featuring (at 2:49 onwards) me and my classmates (the video is dated 1985, but I'm pretty sure this couldn't have been later than my graduation from Junior High in 1984). Ignoring the crazy-ass fearmongering, it's incredibly nostalgic to see all those kids I grew up with, playing with their minis and rolling their dice. Dungeons & Dragons D&D Canadian Doc 1985 Part #2 (Thanks, Tim!)

Call of Duty: Secret Spielberg Level Unlocked
Video link. From James and Peter Serafinowicz.

Pretending and games, design, commerce and life
Russell Davies presentation on "pretending" and "barely games" from the Playful conference is a wonderful exploration of the importance of pretending to fun and games, a subject often missing when we talk about why and how games work. But it's not just a matter of dressing up. A successful pretending object has to delicately balance pretending affordance with not making you look like an idiot. That's why so many successful pretending objects are also highly functional. As anyone who's been down the Tactical Pants rabbit-hole can tell you it's easy to obsess for ages about exactly the right trouser

Please release me: Modern Warfare, Spore Islands, and Half Minute Heroes
For most, there will have been only one game released this week (and that most includes a number of major publishers, who, gun-shy from the competition, have pushed their own releases to Q1 of next year): Infinity Ward's return to the Modern Warfare franchise they laid down in 2007. Modern Warfare 2 [Infinity Ward, PC/PS3/Xbox 360] The developer has twice courted controversy in recent weeks, one for the very unfortunately devised viral video gag (for which IW has yet to offer a formal apology), and the second

Hacklab.to's laser-cutter really *does* play the Mario Bros theme!
I owe the Hacklab.to people an apology. Last spring I ran this post about how they'd tuned the motor on their laser cutter to play the Super Mario Theme as it repositioned itself, and I mentioned that it was too perfect, and wondered "if it's not just some video of a laser cutter with a flanged-out version of the theme cut into the soundtrack." Yesterday, I dropped in at the Hacklab in Kensington Market (it's an amazing place), and saw the laser cutter do its thing. A