The “Gaming Made Me” series of video game retrospectives started by Rock, Paper, Shotgun came from games industry writers, journalists and the designers that make them. It’s become a kind of collective autobiography sourcing the video games that shaped who they are.

Of course, the cynical part of me expected this community-driven effort to consist of mostly name-dropping key titles from the history of video games. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the response of webloggers that have taken up the mantle where Rock, Paper, Shotgun left off¹.

So now I feel the need to contribute, because I think it is absolutely necessary for anyone who loves to play or write about video games to recognize the ones that got them into the hobby. Or in the case of game designers and professional writers, what made them get into the industry itself.

I have been into computers since very early on in my life, and playing computer games was a natural extension of that interest. However, I had no idea that this hobby would result in me creating a website to talk about them. I’m no industry figure, weblogging personality or budding game designer – I’m just a guy that loves to play video games, and write about them. For the people that truly love video games, they are as important as the books they read or the movies they watched when growing up.

For any game weblog, I’d say that writing something like “Gaming Made Me” is more essential than an “About” page. It’s important to let readers know where the author is coming from, and what games influenced their lives and opinions of what makes a great video game. It provides context for the reviews and criticism they produce.

At this point in my life, video games are no longer just a hobby. They have made me a writer, and they have taught me to be critical of things beyond video games. Both video games and this website have become such immutable aspects of my life, that I can’t imagine it without them.

It was hard to come up with this list. So hard, that I had to split it into two. I wanted it be a list of games that shaped me as a player of video games, as well as my viewpoints on what makes a great video game, instead of simply rewording a “favorite games of all time” list. So I’m not going to list off the Zeldas, the Half-Lifes, the Thiefs, or the Rainbow Sixes. That would be too easy for me. No name dropping of the classics and pretending as if they meant something to me in my early development as a gamer. The following list of games got me started in the hobby, tempered my opinion of the medium, and introduced me to the genres I love. Most importantly these are the games that eventually led me to write about them². They are the ones that left an indelible mark. And for that, they must be recognized.

Alley Cat (1984)

Bill Williams’ Alley Cat was one of the first games I got for my IBM clone desktop PC when I was nine years old (it had been out for a few years). The PC had no hard disk, and I had the game in PC Booter format – it booted right into the game without the need for an OS. The computer and game arrived in my house at the same time a lot of my friends were getting NES consoles for their TVs. I thought the whole home arcade thing was stupid. I could do more with a computer.

Except that all I had for my computer was a monochrome monitor. So I could play Alley Cat in black and green, or black and orange, or black and pink, or black and white. That’s some variety! Who needed the NES and its 8-bit graphics and low-fi chiptunes. I had a PC speaker.

Obviously, these experiences established my allegiance to PC gaming at an early age.

I played the living shit out of Alley Cat, mostly fueled by a white-hot jealousy of the friends that had an NES and Super Mario Brothers. So I got good at it. And for what appeared on the surface as a game for kids, it’s actually pretty hard. Jump into a window in an apartment compex, play a mini-game: a maze in a giant piece of cheese, a fishbowl with electric eels…it was pretty surreal and often frustrating. One of the mini-games involves seducing a female cat to increase the difficulty level, after which the other mini-games could be replayed. Alley Cat helped me define “keyboard bashing.”

Alley Cat was the first computer game I remember committing myself to, even if was for the wrong reasons. I consider it the start of both a rewarding and extremely damaging relationship with video games.

SimAnt (1991)

After the success of Will Wright’s SimCity, there were a series of games developed to leverage the “Sim” brand, which included SimEarth, SimLife, SimAnt, SimTower, SimTown and SimTunes. Little did we know this was just the beginning of a publisher’s business model built on the sales of expansion packs!

SimAnt is generally considered to be a critical and commercial failure for Will Wright, as it seemed to be too eccentric a riff on the SimCity formula. Instead of focusing on large scale empire building or ecosystem shaping, SimAnt was about digging tunnels in the ground, collecting food, managing population happiness, defending the colony, and avoiding lawnmowers. Most gamers weren’t ready for that.

A friend gave this game to me to try, because he thought it was cool. I was 12. I was so past the age of thinking bugs were interesting, so why would I want to create an electronic ant farm? The whole concept seemed ridiculous. Nevertheless, the game gripped me for months. It was better than SimCity: this game taught me about sustaining life³. I was so captivated by my ant colony, striving every day to keep my Queen alive so that it may prosper, that I began to assign my own narrative to it. I would later use these ideas to write a short story for my school’s creative writing contest, where I described a lowly ant’s adventures in saving his colony. I won fisrst prize for it, too. People thought it was such a creative and original concept. If they only knew it was inspired by a video game.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is my favorite game of all time⁴. It made me love computer games, and electronic games in general. It made me appreciate good scripting, dialogue and voice acting. It made me believe that an original story based on a well-known property could actually result in a good game. It also made me wish it had been made into a movie.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was the first game that helped me break down the barrier between “toy” and “medium” for video games. It is a game I go out of my way to play once a year, like watching a favorite film or reading a favorite book. The endgame brings sadness because I know it will be over soon. I have yet to encounter a video game that instills these feelings. Fate of Atlantis made me realize video games would be part of my life forever.

Diablo II (2000)

After finishing Ultima VIII: Pagan, I needed something similar. The game had captivated me with its isometric viewpoint, simple combat, epic quests and inventory management (really! I would have to leave excess stuff in people’s desk drawers and then come back to get it later). In response came Blizzard’s Diablo. While I would have to wait a year to play it (didn’t have the horsepower in my PC), I knew it was The Answer. See, Ultima VIII still had elements of adventure in it, as the world of PC RPGs hadn’t yet made the transition to the action-ready clickfests most of them have become. And you can thank Diablo for that.

Though Diablo was just the beginning of an obsession for me. The claustrophobic setting of a church with stairs that go down, down through relentless packs of monsters, down straight into hell, would occupy most of the time I spent with my computer. With Battle.net, Blizzard gave us multiplayer and co-op and (theoretically) endless replayability with their randomly generated dungeon levels, but it started to get tiresome. And with the release of Starcraft, the teaser trailer for Diablo II included on the disc confirmed its existence. It also gave me my reason for being as a PC gamer.

The wait for Diablo II was torture. It was the self-inflicted hell that the hero at the end of Diablo endured. My appetite for news on its development would not be appeased. I looked at screens, learned rumors of the new class types and the expansive maps that we would be treated to. The scheduled release was Spring/Summer 2000. I waited.

Closer to this time , I went to a local electronics superstore and asked for a specific street date. The woman who worked there looked at me funny and said, “You’re the 14th person to ask me about this game today. What’s so special about this Diablo II?” I had to bite my tongue at that point. Clearly society would never understand the cultural impact of video games.

I was away at University the week the game came out. I had to wait until the weekend to pick up my reserved copy, which was back home. After waiting over two years, you’d think that a few extra days wouldn’t matter. But knowing that it was there, waiting for me, just made it worse. Incidentally, I vowed to never pre-order a game after that. It hadn’t yet become as widespread a trend, but I could see that pre-ordering at a specific location tethers you to it. It provides no advantage over picking it up at any other store. Instead, you are made a prisoner with your own money and the con artists laughing at you from behind the counter.

But we are talking about Diablo II, the computer game.

The night I picked it up, I installed it on my parents’ computer. Over that weekend I must have logged close to 20 hours and stayed up way too late. I put the savegames on a diskette and packed up the CDs to go back to school. That week, I finished the game. In all it took me about four days, completing every quest and visting every random dungeon. I had beaten Diablo again. But where was Baal? The solid prospect of an expansion pack after I had finished the game helped sustain the euphoria of victory. These would be the best games ever made.

Of course, I was able to look past the hideous low resolution graphics (releasing a game in 640 x 480 game in 2000? Really, Blizzard?), the repetitive nature of the quests, and the game’s nefarious ability to make you want to collect things while in the perpetual loop of clicking a mouse button. Diablo II would provide the model for Blizzard’s own MMORPG, and an entire genre would be dominated by this game in the years after its release.

There’s no arguing Diablo II‘s impact on computer games, and video games in general. The simple “Click-Kill-Reward” concept had never been used to such devastating effect. This was a game I could install and play like some would play Solitaire, to pass the time. Everything became mindless, reflexive. I don’t think I’ve finished a game so many times as I did Diablo II. Hardcore mode provided an outlet for the experienced Diablo II player, where the character dies permanently. Losing my level 43 Sorceress stacked with a selection of rares and uniques to some pack of Fetish Shamans casting Inferno forced me to new depths of humility.

Diablo II was also responsible for something else. Back in that summer of 2000, another game was released. It was called Icewind Dale. Creating a mostly storyless dungeon crawler with the familiar rules and deep game mechanics of Baldur’s Gate had me equally gripped after I had finished Diablo II. So I decided to write an essay comparing the two. I thought Icewind Dale was the better game. I used pathetic excuses like “deeper”, “better soundtrack”⁵ and “nicer looking graphics”. I published the article on a website dedicated to games that didn’t last long. In time I realized I had betrayed a game that provided so many hours of enjoyment, and created stories I could share with the friends that also obsessively played it. Diablo II galvanized my love of PC gaming, and video games in general. Video games were more than a distraction to me at this point. I thought about them all the time, about their multiple layers of presentation, and how they were quickly establishing themselves in our cultural consciousness.

I began thinking about a proper website. I would have to write more about these things.

This is the first part of a two-part series. Read “Part 2: Critical Mass”

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.

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.

After nine months of waiting, I finally met the little person that was growing inside my wife. The biology of pregnancy is quite amazing when you think about it – and while the most well-meaning people will often try and scare you with stuff that can go wrong, or things your wife should be eating, or the right time to buy a crib – I constantly fell back on the advice of our prenatal class instructor: this is supposed to work.

As an expectant parent, everyone tells you it’s this huge life changing experience that you will never forget for as long as you live, and there isn’t anything else out there that comes close to the way parenting enriches your life. Alongside the incessant advice-giving, I have to admit I was completely skeptical of the gravity of the event to come. I really had no idea how wrong I could be.

I was there for everything. I saw the birth. And as much as the Life network and the movies shown at the hospital try to prepare you for what to expect, there’s really no replacement for actually witnessing it. Yes there is blood and gore and pain and the squeezing of hands and all that other stuff people love to mention when talking about childbirth, but none of it matters when you see that tiny human come into the world.

From that moment on priorities change. They have to. For the last two weeks I’ve been learning to be a parent. Dealing with crying jags. Changing diapers at 3 a.m. I have begun to make lists. Things that I have to do, things that I should do, and things that I would like to do. Everything related to the baby is in the first list. Housework (and sometimes feeding ourselves!) ends up in the second list. Gaming, and everything related to my computer, has been in the last category, if that.

At first I was a little uneasy about the lifestyle change. Like everyone else who has grown up in a generation where education, career and technology are everything, it was very easy for me to push the idea of raising a family aside for the time being. When my wife and I got married we both knew we wanted children…eventually. After we moved into the new house, we started thinking about it seriously. Just in time for Christmas, we found out we would be parents.

Now I have to find a new balance. And it doesn’t bother me that much. I have to admit I’ve watched a lot of T.V., more than I have in the last five years combined. Commercials still mostly suck, daytime television is for the unemployed (bad movies galore and every commercial break is an ad for going back to school), and in the evenings I’ve watched the Red Sox go from struggling ball club to a full-on end-of-season collapse. I’m often used as a pillow for our little one’s sleeping arrangements, leaving me pretty much incapacitated for most of the day. While this sedentary lifestyle may not be for me, I know it gets better.

It’s exciting to watch this little person sneeze for the first time, or grab my finger, or vomit all over my wife’s back. I watch in amazement as our golden retriever tries to comfort our baby with a drool-caked toy, or the way she is always sleeping wherever the baby is. It’s been so much fun, I’ve pretty much forgotten about everything else. The best part is that baby has no idea if we’re doing anything “wrong”; they have nothing to compare to. It’s very reassuring.

Things may slow down here for a while, but as I find equilibrium within this new life production should return to normal. I may even start polishing off some of my forgotten unfinished reviews to maintain some semblance of an update schedule. In the meantime I’ll game whenever I have an appropriate opportunity.

Last year I shared the fact that I got a dog with the entire internet. I battled my most primal urges to post a photo, out of fear of becoming that kind of weblog. This time is different.

As most long time readers know, if there’s anything I want out of this website it’s thoughtful discussion on games. And I have to admit that requiring commenters to register has ensured that – for the most part. I’ve also learned that it’s almost impossible for me to write short posts. They just feel…incomplete. I love the details. In some cases I’m sure I’ve bored someone to tears before they even get a chance to comment. But that’s beside the point.

Allow me to share some observations and commentary after writing a gaming weblog over the past three years:

• A question every weblogger, not just a games weblogger, has to ask themselves: Do you like to write, or do you like attention? This is kind of a rhetorical question. Everyone who has a website wants attention. Otherwise it wouldn’t be there. The important thing to remember is that this need for approval is kept under control. Let the content speak for itself. Producing content for someone else to read can be a really gratifying experience. It can also be an extremely gratuitous one. If you’re selling adspace, I’m pretty sure you’re going with option #2. But don’t expect anyone to take your opinion seriously once the steady commentary becomes incessant droning for clickthroughs. I’d like to think that this surge of interest in games writing over the past year has done well to promote sharing the love of the hobby, while taking it under serious consideration in intelligent discussion. But I don’t think it’s working – there’s too much antagonism towards print media. It sucks, I get it. So do most high profile gaming sites. There’s also some serious backlash for the games weblogging community. It’s annoying. Let’s move on and talk about games.
• Never apologize for a lack of updates. Unless you’re being paid for it. But then you should be apologizing to whoever hired you that is paying for you to produce content. Not your readers who are consuming it for free. I keep seeing this phenomenon. I’m pretty sure I’ve done it once or twice in the past. I have no idea why. There are hundreds of gaming weblogs out there. The news will be picked up somewhere else – it’s not a big deal. If you have something interesting to say, sit on it. Make it better. Chances are some correction will be issued in the next couple of days anyway and you don’t look like so many other twitch bloggers. There’s really no need to post something if you have nothing to report. You have a life. It’s ok. Posting something about not posting is insulting to the reader who expects real content.
• The siren call of a new release. Everyone feels it. A new game is out and we all want to be the first ones to report on it. The big gaming websites already had a leg up – they’ve been playing a gold master copy for weeks. But weblogs are (theoretically) different because they have a unique opinion that doesn’t necessarily follow a standard outline of the game’s features. It’s important to have your own opinion – it’s what makes weblogs interesting to read. But I find that some of them get caught up in carrying the hype. They don’t want to seem like the party crasher. They don’t trust their own opinion of the game and seek validation by joining the crowd. I’ve seen it time and again. Then a month or two later the “real” reviews start pouring in, saying the game was overhyped or isn’t nearly as good as everyone first thought. It’s a vicious cycle. Allow your thoughts to congeal. Take some time to formulate a cohesive argument. Take advantage of the format. Maybe it is that good, and you want to explain what makes it great. I absolutely cannot stomach reading reviews that are unsubstantiated, or are clearly rushed to simply get something out there. It’s not doing anyone any favours, and carelessly squanders the concept of having a weblog that answers to no one.
• The Slashdot effect. Slashdot used to be a great place to get breaking tech news and decent commentary from the community. Not anymore, because it’s competing with a hundred other sites doing the same thing. Similarly, the majority of game blogs seem to link to stuff with a quick opinion and let the comments section pick up the details. Which is fine, if the proprietors don’t mind being interchangeable with each other.
• MMORPGs will ruin your life. Obviously an exaggeration and nothing to do with weblogging, but there’s some truth to it. I played World of Warcraft on and off for 10 months before quitting in Februrary. It’s a good game for a while, as long as you understand that nothing else in your life will matter. The social aspect is great – if you don’t mind spending all of your spare time in the game. Trying to level just so you can quest with friends or guildmates is a huge pain in the ass. I’d rather play at my own pace. Though at that point it’s a lonely experience, and I might as well be playing Oblivion. Despite what people may think, this game model is not going to change. It makes money and satisfies most of the customers that aren’t screaming on the official forums. And that’s ok – I just won’t be playing.
• Fun fact: Most of what you read here starts out on actual paper. I keep a notebook accessible whenever possible, especially when playing a game. It makes it easier to remember points to visit in detail. The worst thing about coming up with a great topic to write about is having no place to record it.
• I enjoy writing full length articles. So much that I’ve accumulated way too many of them that are still sitting in an unfinished state, most of them reviews. Golden Sun, Knights of the Old Republic, Spider Man 2, Tales of Symphonia, Fire Emblem, Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, Astro Boy: Omega Factor, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, Metroid Prime 2, Baten Kaitos, Brothers in Arms, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, F.E.A.R… the list goes on, unfortunately. But I don’t have a problem with that. Some will see completion “when they’re done” (to borrow from our beloved industry), and some will probably remain as collections of text from a time where my heart was in the right place but the writing just wasn’t there.

So I continue to write when I feel like it, about games I have played, articles I have read or media I have consumed while trying to maintain a level of quality that doesn’t make people feel like they’re wasting their time. My only hope is that I can keep this up for three more years. Because it isn’t getting any easier.

So over the next couple of weeks if you find an article or review you swore wasn’t there the last time you checked, you’re probably right. To everyone who’s still reading, thanks for being patient.

• I contemplated shutting down this site. Lack of time, motivation, and overall frustration with not being able to finish my ideas left me feeling like continuing would just be wasting my effort.
• That didn’t last long though. I soon realized that the gaming blogosphere, and weblogs in general are not worth getting worked up over. I should have learned in the past two years that with such a low point of entry crappy blogs only propogate, they don’t disappear.
• I spent a lot of time training (and re-training) our new puppy. I’ve exercised as much restraint as one man possibly can in avoiding the posting of photos, so I figure this small mention should be good enough in staving off the desire to share my dog with the entire Internet.
• Shortly after the last post we lost our cable connection (including internet and TV) to the dog. See, she thought it would be cool if she severed the incoming coax cable to our apartment. It didn’t matter though, because at that point we were getting ready to move again.
• We packed for, and executed, another move – to our final destination in Markham. I feel more at home than I ever have in this brand new house. A brief note to U-Haul: when one reserves a truck two weeks in advance, one expects to get it the day of said reservation, and the size of truck reserved. One does not want to wait in line for an hour and then be given an unmeetable deadline to return it. Also: Bell Canada lost a staggering number of customers in our new neighborhood due to their contractors being on strike. I’m sure FCI Broadband thanks you.
• I didn’t take the news that it would be impossible for me to run the Battlefield 2 demo very well.
• Having minimal access to the internet has ejected me so far out of the gaming news loop that I’m having a hard time determining what’s actually worthy of my attention now that I’m up and running again. Though it is the summer, and let’s be honest here: there are really only four months of the year that publishers and news outlets really care about.
• Baten Kaitos is actually pretty good, despite essentially being a direct adaptation of Tales of Symphonia with cards.
• I purchased and fully consumed Billy Corgan’s new album, TheFutureEmbrace. I had actually started to write a review, but the underlying tone of disappointment left me feeling depressed and unwilling to finish. A good effort, but when I went to the concert on July 2nd I think I was more enamored with the thought of seeing Billy Corgan live, than seeing those songs performed. You lose something when your band consists of a computer, fake drums, and a scary looking backup singer. Though the second opening act, Doris Henson, kicked the crowd into high gear after the abysmal performance of The Crimea. Doris Henson reminded me a bit of Treble Charger in their early days; too bad it’s not 1995. They might have been big.
• I was extremely close to cancelling my World of Warcraft account. After not playing it for roughly four weeks without any mental or physical signs of withdrawal, I thought myself free of its barbed tendrils. This is not true. All it took was thinking about starting a new character, which I will be doing in about five minutes.

In a couple of days things should be back to normal and my writing can resume in earnest. Real life keeps me busy, but the one thing I’ve determined during my time off is that giving up this website would leave me incredibly bored.

let me out

I’m not going to continue kidding myself. This website is a job.

It’s partially my own fault, because instead of writing short, link-and-quote type posts I’d rather talk about the larger issue, or write a full article about a game. The former would certainly be easier at this point, but I’m not going to settle for that. There are enough sites out there that are happy to quote other people’s work and pass it off as writing. Good for them.

I said in last year’s year in review that this website would be more like a collection of articles as opposed to a “weblog”, a term I never really made amends with. I never wanted to obey some hidden schedule and feel obligated to post regularly, but as I continue to gain readership these feelings are unavoidable. I’m flattered that I’m on the list of someone’s daily reads or regular source of information. I’m glad I could share my passion with fellow gamers or people who cared to read about it.

I continue to harbour some kind of grudge against the “blogosphere”, too, which is another phenomenon that I would rather disassociate myself with especially in light of recent events. In the past year the number of gaming weblogs has increased to the point where it’s becoming harder to distinguish between them. They all want to be the voice of gaming in this grassroots effort to take back control from the ubiquitous gaming media empire. They all link and quote each other. They revel in their independence and ingenuity. This all sounds too familiar, though, and is the reason I hated weblogs to begin with. I don’t want to be, or consider myself, a part of that.

For those that have supported me since the beginning I appreciate your kindness. This was always a hobby, a side project that allowed me to articulate some thoughts about my favorite pastime. Little did I know this would actually have an effect on people. It’s a weird feeling, and never something I wanted when I started writing.

Forgive me for sounding like I’m about to give up, becuase that’s not my intent. I have more than enough ideas and half-written articles to keep me updating this site for some time to come. I just ask you to understand I’m simply a guy with a website, who occasionally updates and talks about games.

Here’s to another year at toase.net.

tending to the sores that stay

My first reaction was that this was some kind of sign, a portent to remind me that I should be playing what will probably be the tactical shooter of the year. Amidst thoughts like, “that body armour looks awesome,” and “check out those helmets and headsets,” I was completely lost in the moment. I was lucky I didn’t hit any of the gawkers lining the curbs that were trying to see what was going on.

This confusion of gaming and reality disturbed me, because when the thoughts had passed I came to the stunning realization that I live here.

I once made a habit of sneering at anyone in possession of an iPod. They seem like such a fashion accessory, the owners flaunting them like it was some sort of status symbol. I laughed when the flashmugging site went online, and the subsequent downturn in the number of white earbuds I saw on the street. Forget subscribing to Apple’s school of over designed hardware – I wanted a Nomad Zen NX.

My flimsy shell of rebellion was swiftly shattered by my in-laws this weekend, who surprised me with a gift from Hong Kong – a 6 GB iPod mini. Something I never expected, because while I was over there I specifically avoided this type of technology because it was too much of a temptation (and still way too expensive). So now I join the ranks of the MP3 player elite, ashamed to be counted among this unstoppable marketing force. Though on the same token, eternally grateful for such a generous gift. I hear that the visions of Avril Lavigne t-shirt wearing high school students rocking out to their Minis eventually subside. Mostly.

After opening the obnoxiously arty packaging and rubbing my body with the deliciously sleek, silvery device, I decided to try it out. Apple loves to make their hardware completely idiot proof, but when someone other than an idiot wants to know how it works or configure the shit out of it, things tend to happen.

I remember downloading and installing iTunes when it became available for Windows. This was shortly after iPods became usable with Windows, and was considered a kind of watershed for digital music. I’ve always wanted to replace WinAmp with something less, well, WinAmp and figured that was the answer. Little did I know I was basically downloading Windows Media Player designed by Apple, and uninstalled the damned thing a day later. It had an interface that was smooth and appealing to the eye. In fact, it made sure to maintain the design conventions carried over from Mac OS. But what it didn’t tell you was what it was doing to your meticulously organized digital music library in the background. iTunes loves to make you think its doing you a favour, but it’s really just an annoyance dressed up in brushed metal. I have a 6 GB portable storage device, and the only way to use it is through that blasted program.

Loading songs onto my iPod mini was effortless, but I noticed that most of the ID3 tags were completely off (my own fault). The iPod onboard menu automatically organizes your songs according to album, artist, genre, etc., so this is pretty important if you expect to find a specific song to listen to. I can’t stand the singles-driven music culture that MP3s players foster, so for albums, track numbers are doubly important. Otherwise you’re listening to The Wall in alphabetical order, and suddenly “Another Brick in the Wall” Parts 1 to 3 are back to back and completely lose all their meaning. Adding or changing any of this information in iTunes will only update your library database, and not the MP3 file attributes itself – for that you have to “convert” the ID3 tags first. This made me constantly refer back to Windows Explorer and my beautiful hierarchical folder structure to correct them manually. Of course, this will only affect those that get tired of iTunes’ sluggish response and wish to use their old MP3 player. Custom playlists are easily creatable, and an “On the Go” function on the iPod itself will allow you to create playlists on the fly. I found that especially handy if I wanted to listen to a few albums in succession.

In the iPod’s Extras menu, you have the ability to store “To Do” lists, text files, contacts, and sync with iCal (if you have the program). This is a great idea! It’s not like any of this stuff takes up space. The coolest feature outside the obvious music playing one is the games. In this age of gadget-philia, everything must have games on it to be useful. The iPod mini sports Brick, Parachute, Music Trivia, and Solitaire. Solitaire definitely has the best graphics. I felt it was my actual hand on screen moving those cards. Brick is that age old classic Arkanoid dressed way, way down, but it’s fun to use the magic touchpad. I don’t know how often I’d play that one in public though, because it would defeat the purpose of wearing shitty headphones.

It’s hard to believe I can put half of my music collection on this thing, because in reality I doubt I’d ever make it through the playlist in my entire life. I think knowing that I have this capability makes this feel comforting, even though iTunes is essentially tying my hands.

as you claw the thin ice