Due to a conflict of commitments I ended up as a substitute for Mathew Kumar covering the keynote speech from EA Sports President Peter Moore at Edinburgh Interactive 09 for Gamasutra. A very exciting development and learning experience for me and I would like to thank Mathew for hooking me up with the opportunity.

And here it is, my first article for Gamasutra.

I am off to Edinburgh Interactive 09 next week and I am looking forward to it. I will be taking in the industry conference, trying out Batman: Arkham Asylum, Mini Ninjas and interviewing Ian Livingstone Life President of Eidos.

It’s shaping up to be a great conference and I will bring you the best bits at Nidzumi.com. There’s a preview here.

This article also went up on Nidzumi.com (see previous post) however, today (7/8/09) it made the front page of Bitmob.com which I am exceedingly excited about.

After reading all the news that came out of this year’s Develop conference in Brighton some comments that Jenova Chen from thatgamecompany caught my attention. He had some criticism of the way that journalists approach reviewing games and said it was time we changed. This got me thinking so I did a little research and this article is the result.

Whilst trawling the web through twitter links I found an interesting site for gamers and those interested in writing about games. The site is called Bitmob and it was started by Dan “Shoe” Hsu and Demian Linn of EGM and 1UP fame. The writing is pretty interesting and it offers less well known writers a chance to blog and get their articles read by real people.

Click on the link and check it out. Yes, I am there too.

In my duties at Nidzumi.com I have turned my critical eye to Activision’s ultra-violent superhero sandbox adventure, Prototype. Read the review here.

I picked up Ska Studios’ The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai on a whim when it came out on Xbox Live Arcade. It was one of the most striking and entertaining games I have played in a while.

Read my review here.

EA were kind enough to send me a copy of The Godfather II, allegedly the last film license that they will ever make, so the least I could do is write a review of it.

Read what I thought of it here.

With the new ratings system coming in in the UK and the Germans still intent on putting developers of violent video games in jail I thought it was time to pass some sort of comment on the state of play (excuse the pun).

The new ratings system that PEGI will be implementing is a massive step forward for the industry (despite the eerie similarities to the BBFC symbols). Now consumers should be less confused as all games will be rated under the same system. It will also become legally enforceable by 2010 and so hopefully people will begin to exercise some consideration in the games they buy for their children.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on the matter.

I have decided to post some of my more fully formed commentary about the games industry in my blog space on Edge Online. You can view it here. Maybe something good will come of it, one day…