Ahoy - time for another round-up of the more interesting Gamasutra columns and news for this week (or at least, the GSW-worthy ones!), and there are some smart things to check out, hopefully:

- 'Playing Catch-Up' this week talked to Greg Johnson, co-creator of the ToeJam & Earl series, and has some excellent stuff on early influences: "It was during [a UCSD] course that Johnson encountered the game that would inspire ToeJam & Earl more than anything else - Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold’s 1980 randomised dungeon crawler Rogue. “I ran across it during a programming course at UCSD,” he recalls. “I stayed up many a night until 3 or 4am in the morning trying to get deeper into the dungeon. That was a great game. There were certain things about the mechanics that I just loved.”"

- We tracked down Ubisoft's Tony Van, who helms the Petz franchise nowadays, and got him to chat about the virtual pet series' resurrection, among others, why they rawk more than Nintendo's version: "Nintendogs is a high quality product, and Nintendo has done a great job of raising awareness of their game and setting the bar for a quality pet sim. That said, you can't get Nintendogs on PC, PS2, or even GBA. Nor can you play Nintencats, Nintenhorses or Nintenhamsters at this time. And our DS games offer experiences that Nintendogs doesn't, so anyone who is tired of Nintendogs can check out Dogz or Catz DS and see what it has to offer."

- A podcast transcript talking to The Behemoth's John Baez has some good bits about how indie indie is, exactly: "There was a lot of acrimony in some of the game development forums, just because they claimed we weren't an independent game developer. And the problem is that a lot of people who are saying that have second jobs and have health insurance. They didn't quit their jobs to make their game."

- Jim Rossignol's latest 'Blogged Out' column has some interesting feedback on whether the developers of Bully do, indeed, have significant social responsibilities, and Jim suggests: "Perhaps I’m on the wrong track – after all we do want games development to be more intelligent and less exploitative on sensation and controversy – but I feel that more accountability on the part of developers only ends up inhibiting inspiration."

- We chatted to IGF entrant Keith Nemitz about his fantasy RPG Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!, who "describes the game as “a teenage fantasy set in the 1920s” that “uses a virtual board game metaphor” and allows players to “scour their intolerant hometown with brazen hi-jinx”" - Keith is an interesting developer, and it's good to see him entering the IGF again.