The Ice Planet

A s we prepare to celebrate 60 glorious years of a woman who has done little worth noting, ghoulish questions nag at the back of the mind. When, for instance, will the Queen die? Elections remove presidents in democratic republics. When your country is governed by the hereditary principle, however, only abdication or death can dispense with the sovereign. As Elizabeth II is 86, and has shown no desire to abdicate, we must wonder when the grim reaper, who scythes down royal and commoner alike, will bring us a change.

The first question raises a second. Will the leaders of the British state allow the succession to pass to Charles Windsor, a man whose ill-formed and incontinent mind renders him unfit for the role of constitutional
Carry on reading

by Nick Cohen at May 20, 2012 11:30 AM

In Rum Doings 107, we begin by revealing not only how much this damned thing costs us, but an outbreak of sheer honesty. After plotting the demise of a clock, we return to your subjects about which you want us to be angry. Which kicks off with people who stop suddenly on pavements. HNGH!

We establish the rules on looking into people’s windows, spilling things on shirts, and are cornered into discussing how cats are annoying. Is saying “sigh” acceptable? How severely should we punish prestige car drivers?

Nick gets awfully cross about litter, and then when asked to be cross about American politics, we slightly miss target and rant about British and Ancient Roman politics. And some podcast recommendations:

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
99% Invisible

Also, to fill in people’s mental hole, here is a picture of Judge Coxcombe and Nicholas Mailer at John’s wedding:

Please leave a review on iTunes. We hate iTunes as much as any other sentient individual, but reviews on there are what get podcasts promoted, and we’d love some promotion. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to pay us back by writing a quick review.

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by John Walker at May 18, 2012 02:21 PM

I fell in with bad company while I was on a story in Oslo last week: American conservative journalists. I am glad to say confirmed the public’s stereotype of reporters by enjoying their drink. (They make it their first task after landing in a new city to find the best bar, an example that should inspire us all.) But they bore no resemblance to the European stereotype of the ignorant, right-wing yank. They were cosmopolitans who were at ease in Europe. They were well read. Although they would hate the label, they were also crusading journalists, who had made the cause of the dissident opposition to Putin and Lukashenko their own. They had no time for social conservatives, who wanted to police private morals — but, I told them, they had ended up in the same political camp with know-nothings who thought that dinosaurs roamed the Garden of Eden and conspiracy theorists who thought that Barack Obama was a secret member of the Mau-Mau.

How could they stand to spend a minute in such company?

The viciousness of the American left drove intelligent men and women rightwards, they replied.
Carry on reading

by Nick Cohen at May 15, 2012 10:18 AM

For a moment at the Oslo Freedom Forum, it was possible to believe that Pyotr Verzilov was the coolest guy on the planet. Breathless and unshaven, the young performance artist arrived in Norway from the street protests in Moscow. With the élan of an exultant radical, he explained the personal and political reasons for taking on Putin’s kleptocracy.
Carry on reading

by Nick Cohen at May 13, 2012 09:41 AM

I’m feeling biographical. Perhaps that happens to you in your mid-30s, I’m not sure. This is indulgence. Indulgence is acceptable. I’m conscious of a couple of things. Firstly, that I want to process being creative, and secondly that I want to ponder what it is I’m actually doing. And it seems to be the case that I do my best processing in the backend of a WordPress site. I mean, this is essentially the ‘room’ I go to every day to do my work, and my work is, I would argue, to be creative.

I think people reach games journalism (and let’s ignore the semantics of ‘journalism’ – I’m aware that I’m not in warzones or uncovering governmental corruption, but “games writing” suggests I’m writing the games themselves, and I’ve yet to find a better term) from a lot of different paths, with a lot of different motivations. For some, it’s because it’s their absolute dream, to be writing about video games. For others, it’s because they love playing video games, and want to find a way to make money from that. (I always advise those latter people away from the career, because, well, I’m an idealist. I used to because it meant they stood no chance of getting anywhere, but I think that notion is somewhat outdated now, and instead I just find the approach personally offensive.) For me, it’s because I want to write. Why I want to write is a much more convoluted question. But why I write about video games is simple: I think video games are incredible, and they provide me an opportunity to write. (I imagine to some that’s equally offensive.)

I’m passionate about games. I’ve loved them since we had our first Atari 2600, and as much as I revel in great film, literature and television, gaming is the medium that most connects with me. It’s the medium that lets not only the story engage with me, but me engage with that story, and through interaction I receive a connection that’s unique. And because I am wired the way I’m wired, my desire is to express that which I experience, and I am blessed and fortunate enough to be able to do that in the job I have.

I think that some see the task of writing articles for a gaming site (a peculiarly common job these days) as something functional. I think there’s a lot of merit to that. There’s an industry, and there’s an audience for that industry, and the games journalist is able to report on the industry to that audience. That makes a lot of sense, and while it’s argued frequently that it causes the writer to become an un/witting part of the PR machine, it’s a pragmatic and useful role. For me, that role is a by-product of the job I want to be doing. So, Rock, Paper, Shotgun (RPS) serves this function, posting most of the significant news about games that we hope readers want to read. And yes, that’s very often in the form of promotional material released by publishers. Like it or not, people want to see the trailer for the game they’re looking forward to playing, and a trailer is a good way to get a feel for what the game is going to be like, and so on. While I’m as guilty as many of being incredibly busy with other articles and just throwing up a trailer with a quick comment (although in light of a trend on some other sites, adding a quick comment is a gesture of generosity to your audience), I tend to see such things as an opportunity to make some dumb jokes, write something short and silly that will hopefully entertain someone, even if they weren’t interested in the trailer below it. That’s the motivation for me – not the function, but in fact to distract from the function, to use the trailer, etc, as a reason to do something else. Even if that something else is a single sentence of nonsense. Like, the most recent trailer I put up was on Thursday (Friday is my day off) about Assassin’s Creed III – the first in-game footage of a very big game, which perhaps should have been a time for analysis of its content and discussion of what it means for the series… But I was working pretty hard on some other stuff, and after threatening to tell readers’ parents on them, wrote of the War Of Independence-set game, “As you can see, it’s set during the American Civil War, when Canada fought Mexico over the right to Orlando.” A masterpiece of modern writing, I’m sure you’ll agree. But the point is, it’s some nonsense that’s hopefully a half-second grin if you couldn’t care less about Assassin’s Creed III. (And for some, a reason to point out the mistake in the comments.)

I distracted myself. My point is, I love to write, and I love to write about my experience, and I love to write nonsense, and gaming affords me a great opportunity to do that.

I guess I feel more and more like I’m rebelling against the industry I’m in. I’ve not changed, but gosh, the industry has. And let’s be clear: I do appoint myself an obligation to be somewhat useful to readers. People come to RPS for all sorts of reasons I’m sure, but a great many will want to know about a game. If I write a review (They’re not reviews! – People In Denial) of a game that in no way lets the reader know whether it’s the sort of thing they’ll be interested in, nor whether it’s worth spending their money on, then I’ve written a crappy review. But this is an industry that is taking itself increasingly seriously, believing itself to be comparable with the most highly regarded investigative journalism of the most respectable newspapers, all the while posting their exclusive screenshots of a game a publisher wants them to promote. It’s a nonsensical situation of pomposity in denial, a confusion because sometimes we’re a mouthpiece for publicity, and other times we’re critical of those same publishers. For me, I see my job as entertainment (nonsense, trailers, screenshots, etc) and consumer advocacy (reviews, criticism, investigative articles), and I’m comfortable with its being both, and not pretending it’s neither. I’m able to post a trailer and say, “Coo, this looks exciting!” and then review the game and say, “It’s stinky poo-plops, no matter how exciting it looked – don’t spend your money on this!” Perhaps this is naive in an industry increasingly focused on pre-orders and motivated to get the former “Exciting!” coverage to drive that. Perhaps I should finish every article I write with, “Don’t pre-order games, you idiots.” I mean – what an extraordinarily stupid thing to do. Paying £40 for something that isn’t finished, and may be a piece of crap – huh?

Blimey, I didn’t intend to write about games at all really.

The point I’d meant to make is that I am feeling, I think, a sense of frustration in my creative side at the temporality of what I do. If someone makes a game, that game is around forever, possibly played years later. When I write an article, no matter how much effort goes into it, by the end of that day it’s disappeared off the bottom of the front page of the site, and is likely never thought about again. Certainly a couple of things I’ve written have had a more lasting memory. That sodding review from 13 years ago, certainly. And then more positively, my Wizard article for The Escapist, a review I wrote of Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, and some of the stuff I’ve done for RPS looking into addiction, violence and EA’s naughty ways.

But of course that’s how it should be. These are works of literature, or results of years of effort. I think I need to start looking at RPS as a whole as my long-term achievement. We just had the splendid opportunity to boast that we’d had our audience numbers independently audited, and came out with over 2.1 million unique monthly readers, and well over 110,000 individuals reading the site every day. And we know that was in one of our weakest months in a long time – our own numbers showed March as being a real, fortunately temporary, dip. We’re doing incredibly well. And as I said in the press release we issued for it, we did that without resorting to the tricks and cheats that very many sites use. We don’t employ SEO (search engine optimisation) chicanery that our rivals put remarkable effort and money into, we don’t make deals for giant exclusives that prevent other sites from covering a game and force readers to us, and we don’t link-bait with cheap posts about the 10 Best Tits In 2012 or whatever. Were we to, I’m sure we’d be reporting vastly higher audience numbers, but we’d all feel dirty and hate ourselves. We created RPS to escape that sort of practice, and to prove that it’s not necessary to succeed. You succeed more slowly, and less impressively, but it’s success I argue is far more worth having. Oh, and you make less money. And the reason we have the luxury of being able to do things how we do is because we’re entirely independent, owned by ourselves, and not beholden to shareholders or greedy, tedious bosses who can drain the creativity from even the most passionate of writers. I want to say we’re pretty lucky to be in this position, but we’re in this position because we all worked incredibly hard and incredibly defiantly. Turning down big-money offers to work for others under their rules was always odd when the next day we’d carry on working for almost nothing. But it’s paid off. RPS pays my salary now.

So I suppose I didn’t quite ponder being creative. I think what I want to do is create a portfolio of sorts, a collection of links to the pieces of which I’m most proud, and put them somewhere. Try to give them a greater sense of permanence, and somewhere I can point to and say, “Look, I don’t just post trailers and then talk rubbish.” Maybe we need a section on RPS called “The Very Best Of RPS”, and then link to each of our finest pieces. Perhaps I should make a link called that on the front page, and then have it just link to the front page, and then laugh at how smug I am.

I know what this is really all about, all this ponderous wibble. I want to create something else. Which means write. I want to write something else. I just don’t have any idea what it is.

by John Walker at May 12, 2012 09:36 AM

In episode 106 of Bum Pooings, while we don’t discuss the over-population of Britain’s towns, we instead received your tweets explaining what makes you annoyed. Whatever it might be, we decided we’d be angry too.

Whether a listener should join the army distracts us slightly, and then Nick breaks his own rule and starts going on about games as usual. Then we do get cross about the data retention directive, the use of “gay” as a pejorative (although we do end up banning the word entirely), bad service, and then distract ourselves with suspensions and expulsions from school.

Learn that John can pick up heavy things, and then we get back to being enraged, this time about plug sockets. Is John an insane homophobic bigot when it comes to marriage? Then Nick tries to get John even further in trouble. And then it ends.

Please leave a review on iTunes. We hate iTunes as much as any other sentient individual, but reviews on there are what get podcasts promoted, and we’d love some promotion. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to pay us back by writing a quick review.

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by John Walker at May 11, 2012 11:10 AM

When all else fails, greed and fear explain otherwise inexplicable behaviour. Understand their power and you will grasp why the apparently tough-minded David Cameron and Alex Salmond still defend Rupert Murdoch. The ordinary rules of politics say they should abandon him without a moment’s regret. Base survival instincts ought to tell them that the scandals around News Corporation are a disease that may never be cured.

A by no means exhaustive list of the horrors ahead begins with Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks appearing at the Leveson inquiry this week. The non-Murdoch press will not shirk our duty to recall the fabulous social whirl that was once the “Chipping Norton Set”. We will remind you of how Brooks, Elisabeth Murdoch and Matthew Freud slapped and scratched the backs of David and Samantha Cameron at country homes, while Jeremy Clarkson flitted in and out of their parties – gambolling through the Cotswolds like a portly court fool.
Carry on reading

by Nick Cohen at May 06, 2012 10:46 AM

It’s the onehundredandfifth episode of Rum Doings, which is far too many of anything. Our beginnings are found in Nick’s having illegally recorded John’s ugly road rage, which is reproduced for our listening pleasure (with some subtle editing). Then after a foray into burns and tattoos, proving that all lesbians are robots, and noting the arrogance of Newton, we take to the homepage of the Daily Mail, to explore the reasons behind their success.

The extremely right-wing paper betrays itself with a peculiarly grungy tabloid bottomless column of celebrities with their boobies out. But have John and Nick ever heard of either of them? We focus more especially on one story, because it’s about buying a rolling pin, before we realise quite how foul it is. This would be Courtney Stodden. You can read the story here (although they appear to have finally edited some of it.)

We then get a bit distracted by our thieving ways, and grumble about how rubbish DVDs are.

Please leave a review on iTunes. We hate iTunes as much as any other sentient individual, but reviews on there are what get podcasts promoted, and we’d love some promotion. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to pay us back by writing a quick review.

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by John Walker at May 04, 2012 10:39 AM

The New Few, or A Very British Oligarchy: Power and Inequality in Britain Now
By Ferdinand Mount (Simon & Schuster 305pp £18.99)
If you want to imagine the Prime Minister at seventy, gaze on the features of his cousin at several removes, Sir William Robert Ferdinand ‘Ferdie’ Mount, 3rd Baronet, of Wasing, and one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher. As so often, distant relatives look more like each other than close kin. To a disconcerting degree, Cameron and Mount share the same moonish face, the same soft skin and contented look. Not the smallest of the good lessons The New Few teaches is that appearances deceive.
Carry on reading

by Nick Cohen at May 03, 2012 10:55 AM

Self-censorship is, in many ways, Cohen’s real thesis, which makes me wonder if his title wouldn’t have been better as You Don’t Want to Read This Book. His chapters on the credit market implosion and the Hobson’s choice faced by institutional whistleblowers are among the finest in this book because they examine both antiquated and self-defeating
statutes as much as ingrained human psychology. Conservatives can appreciate Cohen’s description of contemporary corporate culture as a kind of velvet dictatorship where thunderous egos reign in the boardroom and underlings are too terrified to say that the boss is talking utter nonsense, lest they should first lose their jobs, then be reputationally boxed out of their inustries altogether. Whatever kind of enterprise this is, it is not “free.”
Read it all

by Nick Cohen at May 02, 2012 02:44 PM

n Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day, Milne, an idealistic journalist, describes the limitations of newspapers, and then gives the best argument for press freedom I know of. ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he says to Ruth, the bored wife of a mining tycoon. ‘I know it better than you — the celebration of inanity, the way real tragedy is paraphrased into an inflationary spiral of hackneyed melodramas — Beauty Queen in Tug-of-Love Baby Storm… Tug-of-Love Baby Mum in Pools Win… Pools Man in Beauty Queen Drug Quiz. I know. It’s the price you pay for the part that matters.

‘Junk journalism is the evidence that society has at least got one thing right, that there should be no one with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins.’
Read on

by Nick Cohen at April 30, 2012 01:51 PM

The Panglossian wisdom is that the web allows access to new sources of information and blogs, tweeters and online journals will replace the old newsrooms. But the pinpricks tiny sites can inflict on a target do not begin to match the cudgel blows the mass media of the 20th century could deliver. Of course, an oligarch or leader of a dictatorial regime would prefer that no criticism appeared anywhere. But he can rest easy if the criticisms are hidden in obscure corners of the web and do not enter the mainstream. The PR with the resources of a state or oligarch behind him is there to maintain a cordon sanitaire.

Read the whole thing

by Nick Cohen at April 29, 2012 09:47 AM

In episode 104 of Rum Doings, we do something we said we’d never do. We Skype. It’s not going to be a habit, but hopefully it’s worked out pretty well. We don’t discuss those food colourings, but instead talk over each other and then John has Nick deported. Then it’s time to discuss the family Murdoch’s appearance at the Leveson Inquiry. Which of course means Nick brings out the libel. Should you visit Bath? Should you? We talk about the hypothetical version of reality where Dexter isn’t immortal, and the terrible crimes of Biddles.

Do you have to be insane to murder 72 people? What about to murder one person? What is sane? Was Hitler sane? Find out today! Then we consider our retribution-based criminal justice system. John regails us with the tale of the lying idiot who crashed into his car, and we consider what Victoria Wood is for now. Finally how to cope with compliments, how funny we are, and how we’re adored by young people. Oh, and heroin.

Please leave a review on iTunes. We hate iTunes as much as any other sentient individual, but reviews on there are what get podcasts promoted, and we’d love some promotion. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to pay us back by writing a quick review.

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by John Walker at April 27, 2012 12:39 PM

“Both Our Friends in the North and White Heat stop in the early 1990s. Coincidentally or not, that is the moment when former leftists veered off into irony, nostalgia, kitsch and parody; when they all but disappeared in a fit of giggles and hid any message they might hope to convey with knowing winks and “playful” references.”

Carry on reading

by Nick Cohen at April 26, 2012 09:02 AM

The old American definition of an honest politician is that ‘once he’s bought, he stays bought’. The same does not apply to the Dirty Digger. Hunt is the latest in a long line of ministers to find that you can’t buy Murdoch. You can only hire him. He’s going down, and is determined to take with him all those in the London and now Edinburgh governments who offered him favours in return for propaganda.
Read more

by Nick Cohen at April 26, 2012 07:59 AM

Episode 103 of Rum Doings is voiced by two tired, over-fed, and cold-riddled men, hidden away in a dark lounge while their wives sleep. We don’t discuss how it could be possible that there’s a hosepipe ban AND flood warnings!!!! Instead we explain the new rules for standing ovations. We discover that we’re both terrible Jews, but not as bad as Mel Gibson.

We remember our ridiculous lunchtime meal, where Nick definitely didn’t ignore the basic tenets of his inherited religion, and then almost instantly move onto Nick’s favourite topic, games. Which he keeps bringing up. This time Kickstarted games. Then the dangers of bacon-flavoured drugs, why cocaine makes you a dick, and how LSD became naughty.

Talk of cats gets us to superstitious pigeons, and eventually Elmo. Then we feel oooooooooooold. Also, now, from 80 years old laws don’t count for you. Oh, and people called Lee are banned from listening.

Please leave a review on iTunes. We hate iTunes as much as any other sentient individual, but reviews on there are what get podcasts promoted, and we’d love some promotion. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to pay us back by writing a quick review.

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by John Walker at April 20, 2012 12:04 PM

In a somnambulistic, rather long one hundred and second episode of Rum Doings, we don’t discuss whether it’s time to stop not discussing things. Nick and John still find the effort the argue despite the late hour. Beginning with Galloway, things naturally quickly switch to Just A Minute and Indian politics. And then back to British politics, and the current trend for pretending to like Islam.

We enjoy some splendid lemony booze from the lovely Ed Stern, argue over what age people become humans, ponder the last time we listened to a CD, tape cassette or VHS tape. We are old. John discussed the Mountain Goats/Anonymous 4 gig he’d recently seen, we question the possibility of monitoring everyone’s emails, and then things get a little heated as we consider the strip club.

Nick recalls when John was on the receiving end of some sexual attention, discuss Enid Blyton again, and Nick tells us about the evening his stomach went on holiday. Then we get uncharacteristically serious and talk about anorexia and bulimia. Then things return to normal as we talk about the uselessness of pandas.

If you are suffering from an eating disorder, or know someone who is and want information or help, please visit here, or here.

Please leave a review on iTunes. We hate iTunes as much as any other sentient individual, but reviews on there are what get podcasts promoted, and we’d love some promotion. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to pay us back by writing a quick review.

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by John Walker at April 13, 2012 09:33 AM

In Rum Doings 101 we eat sweeties! Sugary sugar-free sweeties. And then enter something that’s going to dominate most of our Eastery episode – a leaflet from the local health food shop, promising it can cure all our ailments. That’s enough for most of an episode of Rum Doings.

Please leave a review on iTunes. We hate iTunes as much as any other sentient individual, but reviews on there are what get podcasts promoted, and we’d love some promotion. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to pay us back by writing a quick review.

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by John Walker at April 06, 2012 04:39 PM

Before we get onto business, we’d like to ask people straight away to make the effort to leave a review on iTunes. We hate iTunes as much as any other sentient individual, but reviews on there are what get podcasts promoted, and we’d love some promotion. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to pay us back by writing a quick review. There are 10,000 people listening to this – come on, action.

The other thing to note is that for some reason Audacity decided to go all choppy about 20 mins in. It lasts a minute or two, then gets better.

In the Rum Doings episode 100 spectacular, we don’t discuss the fact that it’s the 100th episode. So instead we talk about what we’ve been up to for the last few weeks, including John’s stories of being in America, and indeed the Lake District.

For some reason that we aren’t going to mention, we have all manner of rum goodies in the episode, including a rum sponge cake from Nick’s wife Victoria, gingerbread rum from Nick’s brother, and rum butter from the wilds of Windermere.

With our faces stuffed we rank American cities in order of bestness, argue about breakfast, and explain how John fell down the stairs. And how he broke the hotel. And then we’re back in England, where the sausages are apparently boiled. There are some very serious concerns about the North West’s cream tea provisions, and their parking prices.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter @rumdoings. If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

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by John Walker at March 30, 2012 10:43 AM

I’m in my Kingdom. San Francisco, this time, for GDC. I’ve not been before, but think I’m going to do it very well. If my head will stop loop-the-looping.

Flying to the West coast is always a novel experience. Usually eleven hours in the air (although today some favourable tailwinds brought it down to a far more bearable ten), but you only advance through time by about three or four. So leaving at 9.45am, I arrived finding the afternoon had ripped loose from its moorings and started itself over again, and Friday is showing no signs of ending. It’s 2.10am according to my brain and laptop clock, but this city refuses to agree.

So in attempt to stay awake I’ve filled my tummy with pulled pork, beer and coffee. What’s that you say? Food and beer will make me sleepier?! Try telling me an hour ago that.

I’d like to congratulate San Francisco for its unique ability to be both too hot and too cold at the same time. It’s a rare skill, and you do it with a flourish. And for your hills, which are faithfully modelled on Crazy Taxi.

by John Walker at March 03, 2012 02:37 AM