After finishing my tenure at The Cultural Gutter and jumping ship from Game Set Watch after a three-post stint, I threw together a summary of what I had been listening to over the previous year, and then essentially stopped writing. I thought I could keep the momentum going after that, even though I wasn’t really playing any games. But for some reason the muse abandoned me. And I abandoned this website.

So what have I been doing the past year and a half, aside from taking care of our beautiful daughter? Not a lot of gaming, that’s for damn sure. Once they start walking it’s impossible to keep up without feeling physically and emotionally drained at the end of every day. But it’s a good feeling of tiredness. Watching a child explore the world for the first time, with their only hardships consisting of having their face washed or going to bed every day at 9pm is often hilarious to observe. With free time becoming more of a commodity after establishing a fairly consistent schedule, I thought it was time to play some games and start writing in earnest again.

While I may not have been able to play games as liberally as I used to, I checked out some of the bigger titles and still kept myself informed of where popular culture was moving. Everyone had a Wii, the Nintendo DS was the most popular handheld, I was drowning under the recommendations for Iron Man and The Dark Knight, and the retro titles released on Xbox Live had me pining for a 360. I was asked (repeatedly) why I wasn’t using Facebook by friends and relatives alike. I became obsessed with discovering new music, which included an unhealthy attachment to Last.fm.

There were many times where I genuinely wanted to relaunch the site – the evidence is pretty clear in previous posts – but I don’t think I was ready. I had started a few reviews of games I had played in those months, but I never got the old feeling I had when I was writing here regularly. I had disconnected myself from the games industry at large, other gaming weblogs and the games themselves, and was content to play the few titles that my aging PC would allow. But mostly, World of Warcraft.

Last summer a friend and I got the crazy idea of starting up characters in World of Warcraft again, now that we were both getting into some predictable routines with our children. I thought I swore off the stuff for good two years ago, but once we got started it was pretty clear that this game filled a long-dormant need to play games. This time we had a party of three real-life friends that only played together, with the goal to reach level 60. For a while it worked out pretty good. But then everyone got busy, the commitment for instances evaporated, and I was paying World of Warcraft insurance instead of actually playing the game.

In late 2007, BioShock hit – a game that I was looking forward to as much as everyone else, and the only title in the last year I truly felt I missed out on when it hit stores. The subsequent glowing reviews and recommendations I received made me want to cry on the inside. I was out of the loop. Though now that I’ve played through it I can honestly say that it was all I needed to make me want to write again. But I’ll save the rest for my review.

After missing Bioshock and playing Call of Duty 4 on the lowest settings, I was faced with the cold hard truth that if I was to get back into PC gaming in earnest, I’d have to get a new computer. My gaming rig was about to turn six, and I was tired of reading about “minimum system requirements”. So this summer I finally set aside some money and ordered myself a customized XPS M1530 from Dell. A purchase that was mostly driven by technolust, I still consider it a fairly practical acquisition for me, as I now have no excuse not to be writing. The specifications are certainly not equivalent to what you can get for a desktop at the same price (true of any laptop), but it can handle Gears of War and Assassin’s Creed, and Crysis with a little help from third party video drivers.

During my time away from games and Tales of a Scorched Earth, I did the usual soul-searching any long time readers are probably all-too familiar with. Was the effort really worth it? Given the state of gamer culture before and after the games weblog phenomenon peaked, does it matter that a voice that attempts to promote thoughtful discussion on games exists? And I don’t think it does matter. Well, at least to the degree that I once thought it did. More people get involved in this hobby every day – and most don’t care about the details. They want to know if it is worth dropping $50 on and whether they can play it with their friends. They go to Metacritic or Gamerankings. I think I just needed to ignore this unfortunate side effect and take the proverbial leap into writing again. I love games and I loved writing about them, so why should it be so hard to get back into it?

Now that I’m playing with some regularity again, I realize that there is still so much more to say about gaming and game culture. I was happy to churn out 2,500 word essays on the best and worst games I have experienced. I liked knowing I was able to share those experiences with others who shared this passion for games, and even happier if it prompted a worthwhile discussion. As one reader pointed out in one of my final posts before the break, it is purest folly to expect to “keep up” and have that act as the driving force for writing about games – there’s no time to enjoy them. I don’t want to treat my website as something to maintain; rather, it should be a place to record these thoughts on gaming whether or not they are validated by readership.

I guess that’s just a long way of saying that updates will resume their quasi-regularity and continue to be painstakingly crafted. Tales of a Scorched Earth may fall silent for a little while again, but I will always be back. I can’t abandon the hobby that has provided so many hours of enjoyable entertainment over the course of my life and a source of excellent subject matter for my writing. I will always be a gamer at heart; there is no reason for me to hold myself back in the face of so much noise that surrounds the industry.