“Casual games developer and publisher PopCap Games recently announced the hiring of Andrew Stein to the newly-created position of Director of Mobile Business Development.

In this exclusive interview, Games On Deck talks to Stein about why he chose to join PopCap and his plans for the company’s mobile future.”

It’s been three months, roughly, since Games On Deck launched, so I think it’s about time to mention it again here. Things are going excellently at the website, with this interview just a small example of what’s been going on. I’m particularly proud of the articles I’ve commissioned, rather than wrote myself; such as this week’s postmortem of Pillowfight from Capybara Games (who are, funnily enough, based here in Toronto.)

But here’s a list of everything I’ve written for the site since my last update: SNAP Mobile: Nokia’s Antoine Doumenc; Q&A: Vipul Sawhney, President of Hovr; Q&A: Mahi De Silva, Co-Founder And CEO, Frengo; Q&A: Mobile Complete CEO Faraz Syed; Q&A: Christian K-L Yau Heilesen, CEO, Funmobile; Q&A: Bob Shireman, Chief Publishing Officer, SkyZone; Q&A: Paul Maglione, President of Vivendi Games Mobile; Q&A: Tom Sperry, CEO of Exit Games USA and Q&A: Jim Blackhurst, Producer, Tomb Raider Legend.

That’s a lot of Q&As!

“I’ve got a big idea, readers. Why don’t we all get together and declare that we’ve had enough of the same old clichés that lazy Japanese RPG developers like to foist upon us, eh? Just draft up a nice letter, get someone to translate it, and send it off to “All videogame developers, Japan.” I’m sure it’ll get to someone. And viola! No more amnesiac heroes with a vague but important secret. No more precocious young lads from tiny villages who turn out to be the chosen one. And no more heroes that stand mute, while their companions talk and the plot progresses around them.”

It’s interesting to note that even with the traditionally argumentative Eurogamer readership, there’s not a single comment in defense of Japanese RPG clichés. Offhand, there is an argument that the kind of clichés I’ve mentioned suffer not from overuse but from simply never being used in interesting ways, but, you know, I don’t buy it. They need to be put to bed for a pretty long time.

“ARR! Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End hits this week and as the third second sequel to hit this summer it’s got some stiff competition. Nice to see though that they’ve made sure it beats Spider-Man 3 in at least one respect, in that at 2 hours and 47 minutes long, it’s a good half hour longer. It’s nearly as long as Inland Empire (which is finished at the Royal now, so we promise we won’t mention it again) and apparently, almost as confusing. Reviewers have mostly come to the conclusion that they didn’t have a clue what was going on, but we think NOW’s Deirdre Swain put it most eloquently: ‘It would take the sharpest sword in the armoury to cut through this sailor’s knot of a plot; I couldn’t explain it if I wanted to.’

Much like Shrek, we enjoyed the previous two films hugely (yes, we genuinely enjoyed the sequel) but we hope that, unlike Shrek, we won’t be utterly unimpressed by the third in the series. Please don’t go and see Shrek The Third, readers; it’s incredibly boring, making us laugh only once. You’ll only convince them to make Shrek Goes Forth, which is the title for the fourth film that we [alright, our girlfriend] came up with on the way home.”

If anyone cares, the one bit of Shrek the Third that made us laugh was the final split second of Shrek’s bad dream. The demonic roar of “DADA” is so surprisingly incongruous that I laughed until I felt like I was going to vomit my windpipe. I almost wish I hadn’t consciously made myself stop laughing, as, as I’ve said, there were no other laughs in the film at all.

“‘But!’ you might cry, ‘I care little for movies by, for, or about, witty confirmed bachelors, or about super low-budget experimental flicks. What can sate my hunger for the next big summer thing?’

That’d be Shrek The Third, then.”

Inland Empire is pretty great. I don’t want to add to the swathes of largely ill-informed, meaningless analyses of the film that are currently swamping blogs across the world, so all I really have to say is that it really doesn’t feel like three hours. It is truly enthralling.

“Hands up if you remember when ‘arcade-perfect’ meant something.

If you remember running home with a copy of Your Sinclair, Zzap64 or Amstrad Action from your newsagents each month, ready to pour over the month’s news about the latest arcade conversions, it’s pretty amazing to think how far we’ve come. After all, not only do we no longer have to patiently wait each month for the latest videogames news, it’s beamed directly into our houses using magic wires. And, in a move that would quite potentially break my brain in 1987, you can now get a literally arcade-perfect conversion of Double Dragon by doing little more than hitting a few buttons on your Xbox 360 (and stumping up 400 points, natch).”

Rather pleased with this review, if I don’t say so myself. Perhaps it’s because I managed to shoehorn in a reference to some of the most essential reading for any aspiring games journalist: old ’80s computer game magazines. As unusual as it was, my poison was Amstrad Action, as I owned a CPC 6128 which I loved dearly. In fact, I can remember reading a review of a port of Double Dragon 3 in one issue, intently trying to work out if I wanted to get it or not (in the end, I think I stumped up cash for Hudson Hawk. Which genuinely wasn’t that bad, but I’d completed it by the afternoon of the day I purchased it.)

Anyway, owning an Amstrad CPC is probably the main reason I have a soft spot for Alan Sugar. I don’t know why no one on the UK version of the Apprentice ever mention the system to him – it’s all I’d ever talk about!

“This week, the biggest news in movies is that Warner Bros. has decided to stop all advance promotional screenings of its films in Canada, in attempt to stem the flow of pirated movies from Canada. Yo ho ho! Unfortunately, they’ve likely decided that Canada is a hotbed of disgusting movie pirates on some pretty wonky data. Though apparently there’s no law against recording movies in a theatre onto a camcorder in Canada, which is kind of crazy.”

This week, comments indicate people aren’t very happy with the fact I hated 28 Days Later. Sorry folks, but that film, from the script, through the “zombies”, to Christopher Ecclestone’s scenery-chewing performance, sucked. I admit that’s not the deepest analysis, but sometimes it’s just not worth the effort to rip a film to pieces.

“First things first: some of us still have normal-person televisions. Catan is yet another game that completely ignores the fact that some people will need to play it on SDTV. Much of the text is tiny. Worse, it’s tiny for no particular reason at all. Double-worse, it’s actually pretty tiny on an HDTV, too.

This is criminally idiotic, and means Catan gets 0/10 immediately. Or would do, except that would be to play into its hands, wouldn’t it? Trying to trick me, eh? Fortunately (for me and developer Big Huge Games), it’s nigh-on impossible to ruin a game as tightly designed as The Settlers of Catan, the German hex-based board game on which Catan is based. Even if you try.”

So there’s this Microsoft sanctioned concept, right? It’s called the “10 foot experience.” It claims that, hey, you know? People might be sitting more than inches away from their monitor or TV to use your software, so you’d better make sure it’s usable from that distance.

How on earth this hasn’t filtered down to Microsoft’s quality assurance team on Live Arcade releases I don’t know, but it’s one of the many flaws which turns Catan, based on the best board game ever (that’s not Scrabble) into a staggeringly near miss rather than an instant purchase. Quite a shame indeed.

“David Lynch, man! David Lynch, man!
Does whatever David Lynch can!
Spins a tale, any size,
Confuses viewers, just like flies!
Look out! Here comes David Lynch, man!

Actually, wait, that last bit might not be true.”

This may be the best introduction to a Film Friday column I’ve ever written (and yes, I’m well aware “Confuses viewers, just like flies!” Doesn’t make any sense.)