Three and a half years ago we started Generation Minus One, and every Monday since then we’ve posted a comic. We’ve had lots of fun coming up with these one-off comics, videogaming gags and the occasional short string of vaguely plot-oriented strips, and it’s taught us a lot about all aspects of making comics, and given us an opportunity to hone our skills. But for the past few months it’s become increasingly obvious to us that we need to take a step back and reassess what we want to achieve with Generation Minus One. The one-offs haven’t been exciting us the same way they used to, and the necessary retirement of the Teph & Mana characters was the final nail in the coffin of the embryonic ‘plot’ we’d been working towards since the beginning. At the same time, we started coming up with new comic ideas that we wanted to work on, ideas which were already more developed in terms of plot and character, ideas with more potential than just being another weekly videogame gag strip on the internet.

So we’ve decided to take a short sabbatical for November and December to focus exclusively on these new ideas, and ensure that when we return we have something that excites us, something which inspires us to work hard and become better artists and writers and all the other skillsets which go into making comics. Thank you to everyone who’s stuck with us through the past three and a half years, and when you see what we have planned, I hope you’ll be as excited as we are!

By god, I don’t have a Kinect, and at this rate probably never will, but if I did…

Aimed at “three-year-olds or college dorm rooms full of drunken 20-year-olds,” says Tim Schafer. Yeah. If I had either of those this would be a must-have.

League of Legends just launched their new game mode, Dominion, so this evening – despite jet lag and it being hot enough in here to roast a small newt to a crispy finish – I popped on to give it a go.

First, the bad: the devs haven’t worked out how to get AI working on it, so no playing against bots to get a feel for the new map, mechanics, items, etc. When I went to check the lay of the land it was desolate, not even easily-dominated minions to squish, but after running round for a couple of minutes I felt comfortable enough to give it a try.

To follow on, the good: whereas common-or-garden League of Legends is a carefully weighted strategic affair, reading the battlefield, slowly inching forward when the chance presents itself until the inevitable moment where two teams clash and one of them dies in a shower of particle effects, on first impressions Dominion is the perfect foil to that, a frantic, chaotic dash for points, holding territory king-of-the-hill style for seconds at a time, spiralling round the outer track of the map as the opposing team lunges to neutralise your advantage. It feels like one continuous rolling teamfight, from about a minute and a half in until the destruction of one of the two nex…i?

And while it’s still riddled with the same douchecrumpets who insist on bitching about everything under the sun, it feels fresh and exciting. I’m not sure I’ll play it with the same fervour I played the original map with – it’s rather too frenetic for more than one match a night – but for now it’s an interesting alternative if I want a splash of fast-action PvP to spice up an extended session.

- Writing about games writing always risks getting stuck in an infinite feedback loop and ending up a gibbering wreck, but I couldn’t not mention Alec Meer’s superb article on Bastion over at Rock Paper Shotgun. It does exactly what great games retrospectives should do: evoke the emotion of playing the game, alongside deeper considerations of the questions asked by the game. Of course, it helps that Bastion raises those questions in the first place, but it’s still a thought-provoking piece (even if I do disagree with his opinion of the art style).

- For the three or four of you out there who still don’t own a copy of Portal, it’s still available free for a couple more days. At this rate, every Steam client should just come with Portal and Team Fortress pre-installed. And speaking of using games as educational aids, I haven’t checked out the Minecraft teacher for a while…

- Shameless plug time: Moving away from gaming for a moment, I want to mention my new audio project, Postcards From Lepari. Every day I’m writing, producing & podcasting a short piece of fiction , two-minute snapshots of a city on the verge of revolution. Stop on by and have a listen, and let me know what you think.

It is full of things. Things such as this, which makes me embarrassed to be a gamer, which makes me cringe when game-averse colleagues make sweeping generalisations about this artform that I love based on the bloody misogynistic slaughter carried out by their children/friends/ex-partners.

It’s also a marvel of technology and convenience, bringing creative people together and giving us a stronger sense of community than perhaps we’ve had at any point in history. And when it takes me thirty-two seconds to find a perfectly serviceable facsimile of the Gears font created by a fan, download, install, and be ready to add the finishing touches to this week’s comic, I can’t help but be impressed.