merbs writes: On the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear bomb, Motherboard's Brian Merchant toured its crater with one of the last living Manhattan Project scientists. Here's the inside story of the road to the bomb, with the 90-year-old Murray Peshkin—the youngest man to work on the Project that built the bomb, and the first to set foot in its crater. From the story: "There are still nine nuclear nations that, between them, have stockpiled 16,300 weapons. And this network of decades-old nuclear armaments, some of which are still aimed at various strategic choke points around the globe, leaves civilizational scale death-becoming a technical possibility. Before all that, though, the atom bomb was one of the most successful science experiments of all time. It was the product of billions of dollars in government spending, hundreds of the world’s top scientists working in concert, in secret, in a city built from scratch in the desert, and a bygone patriotism united by common, Manichean cause: stop Hitler, defeat the Japanese."

An anonymous reader writes "As discussed previously on slashdot, the Old Man Murray article was deleted from Wikipedia. After much controversy, the article has been restored. However, the debate to delete the article continues, with both deletionists and Old Man Murray fans swarming to the article."

shoptroll writes "In what can be best described as an unfortunate interpretation of the 'notability standards' at Wikipedia, Rock, Paper, Shotgun reports that the entry for Old Man Murray, once a mainstay of PC Gaming reviews and commentary, has been deleted. A sad day for gaming journalism everywhere." This is notable both because Old Man Murray was completely and totally awesome, but also because it was notable and influential on countless writers.

John Walker, of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, had the chance to chat with some of the principal folks behind Valve's most excellent puzzle/shooter hybrid Portal. He comes away with the goods from lead designers Kim Swift and Jeep Barrett, who discuss their momentous hiring by Valve, the evolution of Portal from Narbacular Drop, and the origins of the Weighted Companion Cube. Walker also talks to Erik Wolpaw, who not only wrote Portal but was co-writer on Psychonauts and the site Old Man Murray (back in the day). From that discussion: "Valve talks a lot about 'collective design process this' and 'collective design process that' to the point where, if I were me before I worked here and stopped swearing so much, I'd be like, this is some fake-ass marketing-ass Bigfoot-ass legendary bullshit. But, honest-to-God, I've seen it with my own eyes. Valve is the most collaborative creative environment I've ever heard of much less experienced. So the [Team Fortress 2] shorts grew out of basically everyone at Valve's desire to see these awesome TF characters put through their paces outside the constraints of the game. We did the Heavy as a proof of concept, and kind of freaked ourselves out, and then immediately decided to move ahead with the other eight."

Via Joystiq, an article at the GameInformer site generally about Valve's upcoming plans for Half-Life, Team Fortress, and Portal. In that article, they mention that some of the writing for Portal is being handled by veterans from the Old Man Murray site. From the article: "When you have that style of game it could just be very stale and very dry. It's just puzzle solving and you could put in a little techno music in the background and leave it at that. But we thought it would be much more interesting if we introduced this idea of the narrator. The original idea came from the training room in Half-Life 1 where you had that voice that was talking to you and whatnot. She was a little bit cynical, but not nearly as so as the voice in Portal. The writing for that is being done by Chet [Faliszek] and Erik [Wolpaw] who used to be Old Man Murray. They're at Valve now and one of their first projects they've been tasked with is to do the writing for Portal. So if you were a fan of Old Man Murray you're going to be a fan of that voice in Portal because it's the same wry cynicism."

Gamasutra's reoccuring feature "Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie" covers the subject of crates and barrels in games, (ala Old Man Murray) courtesy of designer Ernest Adams. From the article: "If there are crates in a place, there had better be pallets under them and at least one forklift as well. In fact, somebody wrote to me (unfortunately I lost his name in an E-mail crash) and pointed out that wooden crates are completely passé now anyway. Modern shipping is done in piles of cardboard boxes all held together with industrial-strength plastic wrap. Wood is heavy and expensive, cardboard is light, cheap, and recyclable. But our FPSes are still displaying 40-year-old shipping technology, even in futuristic science fiction games." He also touches on Rumble implimentation, Easy Mode, Split Screen, and Camera Angles.

Thanks to GameSpot for its interview with Double Fine founder and Psychonauts creator Tim Schafer, following the game's split with Microsoft and subsequent re-signing with Majesco. Schafer, best known for "work on Day of The Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango" at LucasArts, discusses originality ("One of the good things about the state of the games industry right now is that it's incredibly easy to be original. I mean, if you released a game these days that didn't have any army guys in it people would freak out. 'Omg. Where did they get the idea to not use army guys? Are they taking drugs?'"), shaping Psychonauts' story ("I still write most of the dialog. I had some help this time around from Erik Wolpaw from Old Man Murray."), and the state of the game ("We've got a few levels at beta right now, some others at alpha, others somewhere in between, and a new level that we're doing now. We're looking at an early- to mid-2005 release.")

Gamer Bitch X writes "Someone's trying to launch a gaming news channel (G4) and someone else is there to chat 'em up. From an interview at UGO where they ask if G4 were to feature a McLaughlin Group-style show, who would be your ideal panel and host?" CEO from G4: "Shigeru Miyamoto, Alexey Pajitnov, Chun Li, Will Wright and Max Payne , hosted by Bart Simpson (I still love him from my Fox Network days)." Okay, I take it back. If the above were true, I'd watch this in a heartbeat!" Riiight. I wouldn't mind seeing a few real shows about video games, but I'd want it hosted by Old Man Murray. It'd be nice just to quickly see video clips, but somehow I doubt that it could be done with integrity. I imagine a video game network being more like an infomercial channel, and well, yuck.

I've been a fan of the Myst series since its inception, so we pre-ordered Myst III shortly before its release a few weeks ago. I've now had the game for two weeks, and my review is below.

Really. He does. Quite eloquently. Clay Shirky's answers to our questions could easily be turned into an all-day seminar on where the Internet is today as a communications medium, where it might be 10 years from now, and how it is going to get from here to there. This is information you need if your career or business is affected by the Internet in any way. Lots of good debunking, too, of everything from WAP to the myth of increased media homogenization, all put forth with enough humor to keep even Clay's most depressing thoughts from bringing (too many) tears to your eyes.

einstein writes "Old Man Murray has this commentary on why the adventure game genre lost out to titles like Doom, Quake, and why players would "rather run around in short shorts raiding tombs than experience real stories..." also provides an interesting look into the eyes of an adventure game writer." Ah, Old Man Murray - some of the funniest reading out there, in my book.

Pizaz writes "Seems like the folks at Old Man Murray aint too happy about seeing their logo blazened across a wall in one of the Quake3 Arena levels. " I'd never seen this site before. Its pretty damn funny, and worth a read while you're waiting for a new Onion or Space Ghost, or if you want to learn about new games.