I have not played a game in exactly seven months.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I should probably specify that I haven’t played a console or PC game in seven months. I’ve gamed on my Treo 650 and my video iPod. I spent all of 15 minutes with Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. But does it count?

To be honest, I don’t really miss it all that much. Life is busy with the little one, and I now know that time actually can pass faster. Changing responsibilities at work and at home has left me with very little spare time, and even less of a desire to sit at my computer and have to install and learn a game, and possibly squeeze in a play session. It doesn’t feel right.

Nevertheless, I keep coming back to this place and looking at the last time I updated it. While I like writing for the Cultural Gutter, I don’t really consider those “updates” in the purest sense, because I’m writing for someone else. After two more articles I will no longer be writing there anyway.

I recently felt the urge to write about games like I used to, but I haven’t played any that provide suitable inspiration. Well, except perhaps MoonFighter, a devilishly enjoyable exercise in navigating extremely basic physics. It is on my Treo.

I missed the holiday season, and the post-holiday season. My sister and her finance have a Wii that I haven’t touched yet (but desperately want to). Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is on Xbox Live Arcade. Computer Games Magazine has died a premature death and I never submitted a feature. I don’t recognize the shelves of my local electronics retailers anymore. I have no idea what games people are talking about. The only newsworthy item I can relate to is the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which made me laugh because I had written a preview for the game to be posted on my site in 2003. It has been getting decent reviews. I may even play it.

I don’t want to abandon Tales of a Scorched Earth completely, but I’m having trouble approaching what I’m going to do with it. I always said I prefer writing substance than linking and quoting, and that’s not going to change. I have also come to the realization that I liked writing about games more than I did playing them, because it is a form of entertainment that is still emerging and being shaped more by the people that play them than the media that reports on it. I have also come to the understanding that this is an integral part of my life, and harder than I thought to separate myself from. I hope to be returning within the next few weeks as my life approaches a semblance of equilibrium.

One thing I’ve learned from doing more reading than writing in the past seven months: bad writing isn’t just a boil on the ass of game journalism. It is everywhere and it is inescapable. Good criticism is mostly forgotten or buried under the piles of readable, yet completely innocuous commentary that people are paid for. As ridiculous as it sounds, weblogs are still providing better entertainment be they inane or thought-provoking. As much as I hate the idea of them, they are a fair reflection of society at large. They are unconventional, they are brutal, they are sometimes (?) completely misinformed – but they approach the sort of verisimilitude you would expect from a crowd of like minded individuals. At least one thing hasn’t changed.