I've talked about David Sirlin a couple times before. I think that if you were to crack open his skull, his brain would look physically different from other brains; I play his games because they're good, but also in an attempt to figure him out. I felt confident that he'd have a useful perspective on the "clonin' fever" that swept the web recently, and I wasn't wrong. He makes a distinction I think is vital, and desperately missing from the utopian/free love model of creative work - what amounts to an Aesthetics Of Cloning. His games Puzzle Strike and Yomi are playable online at FantasyStrike.com.

About 14 years ago Tycho and I were roommates. We lived on Top Ramen and Kool-Aid. If we weren’t at our shitty jobs we were playing games. Then came Penny Arcade. We had some difficult years, made some pretty huge mistakes and very nearly gave up. It was at that point that you guys stepped up. We decided that before we threw in the towel we’d try one last thing. We asked you guys to support us with donations. We asked for a couple thousand dollars a month so we could pay rent, buy groceries and get games. You gave us ten thousand dollars in the first month. You supported us for a year through some very difficult times and I don’t think we can ever thank you all enough for that. What we can do is try and use the power you’ve given us to keep making things you’ll like and that make our community better.

Most enthusiast gamers "get" Angry Birds almost immediately, and move on. For those outside our order - that is to say, the vast majority of bipedal sentients - the ubiquitous Angry Birds is one of the first opportunities to understand what their children are always on about re: vijamagames. It's ridiculously easy to get and subsequently play, made so by the fact that even my grandparents carry around portable touchscreen computers with perpetual access to the dataverse. This is something even a life ass-deep in science fiction did not prepare me for.

Just like it says on the tin.

Our Boston Indie Showcase at PAX East will feature some of the best in mobile indie games. We got a lot of entries but we've picked the top six and you'll be able to play all of them at PAX. Check out this site to see the winners.

There's some kind of thing going on where EA is attaching things to things and then the things are whatever. It was one of many fanciful ideas, and was chosen ultimately because it had the lowest lethality index.

I I realized this morning as I twittered about the first season of our Trenches comic ending that I had forgotten something. What I had forgotten was to tell anyone that this is what we were going to do! You see it has always been out intention to run the strip for five or six months then take a one month break before starting the next season. We just didn’t tell anyone else about that plan.

It's true enough; we do have Vita software, but no Vita hardware, which is alternately worse and better. If I were creating a social media site about this phenomenon, I would call it "tantalizr." I would register it, but the device comes out next week. There isn't really enough time to do the IPO.

I debated talking about this but I think it's important. If you're playing SW:TOR this post will have some spoilers with regards to the end of the first story arc.

I had quite a few requests for a large version of today's strip minus the text. Kara and I have been watching two episodes of Downton Abbey every night since we discovered it. I am so in love with the look of the show that I just had to drop Tycho and Gabe into Downton.

Seriously, though. Are you up for it? Grab the application here, and mail it to Kristin Lindsay at klindsay@penny-arcade.com.

Alright, so, now his Downton Abbey thing has found its way into the very bones of the strip. Nothing to worry about, I'm sure. I'll pay very close attention to him, I'll see if he takes "tea." I'll put myself on Sconewatch.

Cracker or Jeremy Brett's incredible run on Sherlock Holmes or Prime Suspect or Doctor Who or the good episodes of Torchwood and it doesn't penetrate the carapace eventually you decide to invest your energies elsewhere.

I finished my cover for the new Adventure Time comic. You can pick up issue one today at the Boom Studios site or your local comic book shop. My cover will be appearing on issue five.

It has become obvious by now that Moms crave games, they crave them; theirs is the hunger absolute. One of the games these ravenous moms crave is Words With Friends.

I ended up enjoying FF XIII by the time I got to hour thirty or so. My biggest problem with that game was how slow it was to start. Also the story didn’t make any fucking sense but I don’t really care about that. By the time I got the hang of the paradigm system I was bored with the game. FF XIII-2 gets rid of all the bullshit set up and throws you right into the fun stuff.