Links: Awards in Spain, Discounts at Spiel & Obsessions in Editors and Artists

In Hall 9 the distributor Heidelberger is really making crazy prices. Big box games for 10, 15 or 20 euro. Small and middle box games for 5 or 10 euro. This year, for example, 20th Century was for 10 euro. For 5 euro Magestorm by the out of business Nexus games (actually re-born in Ares games).

Is this really helping the game market? Of course players are attracted there to see what you can find for a very cheap price. And if you are lucky and you didn't already bought the game before, you can have a bargain. On the other hand if you paid the same game 20 euro more you are starting to think: Next time I'll wait before buying a game for a big price...

You start to read in a different way. You start to see the sentence as machinery. You focus on the gears and levers that connect words to one another; you hunt for the wayward semicolon, the unintentionally ambiguous phrase, the clunky repeated word. You even hope they appear, so you can kill them. You see them when they're not even there, because you relish slashing your pen across the paper. It gets a little twisted.

There was talk of ordering some food. I looked down at the sandwich menu: kiln smoked salmon and horseradish chive creme fraiche in toasted wholemeal bread. "Kiln smoked" probably should be hyphenated, I thought – it's acting as an adjective modifying smoked salmon – and "creme" needs the accent. Also, does "in" make sense here? Wouldn't it be better if it was "on"? Was this some kind of innovative sandwich that involved salmon being placed inside the bread?

Why do so many artists behave so strangely? If their odd-looking work isn't enough to make us scratch our heads, their weird behavior confirms our suspicions that they are charlatans, getting away with artistic murder in a laissez-faire and degenerate art world in which personality and image are more important than the quality of their work. ...

[Perhaps] artists' strange behavior is not due to their creative or marketing genius but a profoundly human response to a serious problem that all artists, in one way or another, face on a daily basis.

A painting is a weak and vulnerable thing because it is just not necessary. Smelly oil paint smeared across a canvas cannot be justified in this conditional, transactional world. Yet vast, complex institutions and networks have emerged to do just that, whether through the auction house (art as priceless luxury item), the museum tour (education), or the local chamber of commerce (art as community service, cultural tourism, or urban revival). That art is ultimately gratuitous, that its existence is a gift to the world, creates anxiety and insecurity in the art world. Everyone involved, from art collectors and dealers to critics and curators have to justify their interest in this seemingly "useless" activity – and justify the money they make or spend on its behalf. Art simply cannot be justified.