It's nice to see the bigger blogs doing regular columns (even if they scroll off the page so quickly due to the amount of posts!), and Joystiq's Scott Jon Siegel pinged me about his 'Off The Grid' interview with Brian Reynolds about Big Huge Games' Xbox 360 Live Arcade board game conversion Catan.

One thing I particularly like is that Reynolds cares a lot about the subject matter here: "I've been a big fan of Settlers of Catan (and the games of Klaus Teuber in general) for years. In fact I have a 1st place trophy for Settlers of Catan from our regional Maryland tournament, and the fact that I'd played the game at the tournament level was definitely a help in doing the A.I. It's funny, but if anything working on Catan Live has gotten me even more into playing the game."

He also revealed how the project came into being: "It was actually Microsoft who approached us – last spring I had no idea the project possibility even existed, but Microsoft was looking for developers to bring "Euro" board games to XBLA, and they came to us early in the process. Obviously once we knew about the project we were very excited." Great interview, and I'm very much looking forward to the game, which may hit as early as next month.