Not a "Real" Gamer

It's amazing how easy a trap it is to fall into, really.

As a working parent of a 6-month-old, there's always something to do. I pick her up from daycare on my way home from work, and my evenings are a maelstrom of dinner time and bath time and bed time and cleanup and setup for the next morning, when my alarm will go off at 5:59 and I will do it all over again. And as many other parents of young children before me have learned, the first thing to go is the idle time. Hobbies aren't gone forever, but they're on the back burner for a while.

Last night I was about to lament, "I haven't played a video game in months." The problem is, that lament is false in every way.

I got a 3DS for Christmas. A purple one. I love it to pieces. Not a day has gone by since the morning of December 25th that I haven't picked it up.

When my husband gave it to me, he also got me Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies, and a few days later I bought myself Animal Crossing: New Leaf.*

I've been prancing around my town fishing, planting trees, and talking to the neighbors every day for six weeks. But I haven't played a video game in ages.

I've been working my way through a soap opera of ridiculous cases in a somewhat unhinged version of the Japanese justice system for a month. But I haven't played a video game in ages.

I've been playing games on my phone--Candy Crush Saga among them, I reluctantly admit, but also loads of Triple Town and Plants vs Zombies 2--with my free hand while holding the baby to nurse with the other every single day for six months. But I haven't played a video game in ages.

Despite knowing exactly what the pitfalls are, despite analyzing this problem for a hobby and onetime for a living, despite thinking of myself as a person who works really hard to be open and inclusive with gaming, I've fallen into the trap.

Not a big-budget AAA game that you play with a controller? It's not a "real" game.

Something women play with one free hand while wrangling the kid with the other? It's not a "real" game.

It's so insidious. The culture sneaks up on you so easily. And while I watched my husband finish his personal-canon Mass Effect trilogy replay in the evenings, I sat and stewed and lamented that I don't appear to be a gamer anymore... while holding my 3DS in my hand.

Maybe I'm not a gamer. I probably never was. I probably never will be again. But whether I'm bouncing around waiting for Dragon Age: Inquisition, or whether I'm defending my brains from zombies column by column, I'm playing games.

And if I can't remember that for myself, I sure as hell can't expect the broader culture to remember it for me.



* 1048-9696-0755. I still haven't visited other towns or had visitors to mine. Feel free to leave yours in the comments, or to DM/e-mail it to me. ;)

The Game of Life: No Cheat Codes Available

> N
You are in the NURSERY.
> look
There is a CRIB here. You hear a PURRING SOUND.
> i
You are carrying a BABY.
> put baby in crib
You cannot put the baby in the crib.
> examine crib
There is a CAT in the crib. It is purring in its sleep.
> remove cat from crib
There is an INDIGNANT CAT on your feet.
> put baby in crib
You are in the NURSERY. There is a CRIB here. There is a BABY in the CRIB. There is an INDIGNANT CAT that gives your ankle an annoyed nibble.

At a ripe old four weeks of age, our daughter is too young for games of any kind.  Peek-a-boo doesn't quite take when you've only barely learned to focus on anything, and as she hasn't yet figured out the whole "hands" thing, toys are still a bit of a non-starter.  (Though we are getting there quickly, on both counts.)

For me, on the other hand, my whole life has become something of a game.  It's an endless one, and the kind that's more perversely difficult than it is entertaining.  It's a series of puzzles, a sequence of boss fights where the rules keep changing every time you think you've mastered a skill.

There are definite elements of Tetris. If I put the support pillow *here* and the blanket *there* and the baby *just like this* then I can hold all the things at once... at least until I have to open the door.

Sometimes it's a racing game (perhaps the Rainbow Road track from Mario Kart). If I find a pacifier, and prop it in *just so*, then I can race to the bathroom and back and beat the clock, returning to scoop her up before she notices she's been left alone and cries.

Mainly, though, I've started thinking of my daily life in terms of the clear meters of The Sims. How hungry am I? How badly do I need to pee? Have I slept in the last three days? Showered this week? She is napping for thirty minutes -- which meters are the most urgent? I'll handle those first.

Guybrush, meanwhile, has decided he is all about the escort missions.

In this time of profound upheaval, I find myself turning to games with clear rules for a touchstone of sanity.  A half-hour a day of Civ V (which is easy to play one-handed, while holding or nursing an infant) keeps me feeling human in the same way that Law and Order marathons (my background noise, of late) find me getting alienated and detached.  It is hard to stay in and of the world while parenting a newborn.  For me, much of my world has been gaming.  And if Alexander the Great is unpredictable (he isn't; the bastard will always backstab during a declaration of friendship, if you have land he wants), he's got nothing on a baby -- a baby who is, at this moment, apparently bound and determined to punch herself in the face as much as possible.

Parenting is not a game, of course.  If it were, there would be cheat codes or hacks available.  I could increase time or decrease the need for sleep, increase money and space or decrease need for food.  Mainly, though, if I could only have one cheat code right now I think I would use "decrease_newborn_gas."  Then she wouldn't wake herself up all the time from farting, and everyone would be a lot happier.  Or at least better-rested, which in the end adds up to the same thing.

If someone could just tweak the collision plane on the crib so the cat can't get in, though, that would help for now.

Blogger Life Update: Explanation of Hiatus

Readers will notice that posting has been extremely light and sporadic this year.  It's not that I've lost interest in games, or in writing.  It's that I've gained this:

Her name is Miranda Claire Cox.  I spent all of 2013 (and a little bit of 2012) growing her from scratch and she joined the world at 7:49 a.m. on Thursday, August 15.

The combination of pregnancy and finding and settling into a new job took up the bulk of my physical and mental energy over the past six months.  And the combination of recovering from (an unexpectedly surgical) birth and learning who this little person is (and how to keep her fed) is taking up all of my mental and physical energy now.

I do plan to return to sharing my thoughts on games and gaming.  There's a lot going on to investigate, question, and think about.  A new console generation is coming in a couple of months, and that changes the commercial landscape.  There's more than ever going on in art, experimental, non-commercial, and indie gaming.  And frankly, parenthood in general and motherhood in particular are changing my focus and perspective.  The dadification of games and Boobjam in particular have my attention.  I know plenty of men in gaming and writing with kids, but almost no women with kids, and there are reasons for that.  There are systems and narratives and prejudices that need poking into, and I plan to keep poking into them.

But not this week, or this month, or probably the month after.  This time's for my family, which I now have, and that is an incredible feeling.

Hardcore Scrabble

I tend toward perfectionism, I admit, and toward completionism.  These are (especially together) nearly as often failings as they are virtues.  Still, we all have our own issues and despite my drive toward achievement I tend to shy away from competitive games; I don't like to get into contests that I have no chance of winning.

It's not that I need to win all the time; rather, it's an awareness of my weaknesses.  I'm an overweight asthmatic with a bad knee; I wouldn't enter footrace unless I planned for some reason to place last.  I do enter trivia contests, because at least there I have a chance to rise or fall on my own merits.

This means there's a genre of gaming I tend not to tackle.  I stick to single-player games, whether narrative or competitive, or occasionally to cooperative multiplayer games.  I don't want to put myself in an us-vs-them situation either on my own merits or as the weakest link of a team.  Competition is, of course, easiest with the gaming partner who lives with you, but I'm particularly adverse to competing against my spouse.  It's a level of marital discord that I simply don't need.

But speaking of my spouse, thanks to deals on sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, we manage to get away once or twice a year on little, inexpensive-but-lovely B&B trips in the region.  (There are rather a lot of picturesque country getaways within a 3-hour drive of Washington, DC.)  We take these trips as a time to unplug, but sometimes find ourselves with some quiet afternoon or evening time to fill.

As it turns out, nearly every B&B on Earth seems to have a Scrabble set somewhere.

Not a euphemism: we play Scrabble on vacation.

 Here's the thing I like about playing Scrabble with my husband: we're both terrible at it.

I'm great at thinking of words, but without the right tiles in hand or the right spaces on the board on which to put them, it doesn't matter.  Meanwhile, his strategic sense is better than mine, but I have an unerring ability to steal exactly the letter he was going to build from on his next turn.

We're both awful.  And we're matched 2-2-1 over the last year's worth of trips, from Labor Day weekend 2010 to Labor Day weekend 2011.  And we both stay awful, and thus the games, while competitive, remain fun and not hostile.

Here's the thing about gaming: we really are all designed to overlearn the system.  It's just how games and players work: we look at a system and then we dismantle and master it.  And it's something each of us does methodically (though methods vary), up until the point where the pleasure wears off.

That "splort" is so damn satisfying.

When the pleasure wears off, some of us quit.  I don't tend to play Fruit Ninja much on my phone anymore, because I reached a mastery plateau: incremental increases in high score take far too much play time, and suck the fun out of the attempt, making it instead a grim, pulp-covered death march to the next "correct" move.  Others double down and find a new pleasure, in the competition itself.  When you've mastered the game, you no longer derive joy from your own high scores -- pssh, of course you're awesome! -- but from knowing your score beats others.

When the going gets tough, some of us go for a walk outside and some of us plan to become national champion.  It takes all sorts.

When we talk about "casual" gamers vs "core gamers," I don't actually think we mean the type of game each camp enjoys.  There are Boggle and Scrabble players who will absolutely school you, and who make it their mission to do so.  Somewhere out there, there's someone who's gotten a 100% and an Ace on every level of Peggle and Peggle Nights.  In EQ2, there are folks out there who are so hardcore into the crafting system (and just the crafting system) that they know more about it than the dev team does.  And no matter who you are, someone out there is way more into (and better at) Wii Tennis than you.  Meanwhile, there are folks who play Call of Duty once or twice a month for fun, gamers who pop into World of Warcraft occasionally just to chat with buddies, and players who don't care about their KTD ratio in Halo or Counter-Strike.

When we collectively talk about gamers and gaming, though, we tend to separate the "casual" and "core" gamers by their preferred genre.  There's a definite dismissive attitude ingrained in the culture: "Mom's not a real gamer, she just plays Facebook games."  And yet, what if she plays them consistantly, constantly, to a point of true mastery?  And of course, even a competitive PvP game isn't really good sport if girls are winning.

From my point of view, I think one of the biggest challenges we have in talking about gaming and gamer populations comes from our whole really being made of two halves.  This is where the constant (and somewhat exhasting) ludonarrative debate comes from, among critics and writers.  In short: when we talk about games, are we talking about their rules and forms of mastery, or about the stories they tell?  Both, or neither?

Seriously, more time on animation than on fighting.

On the one hand, we have a physical challenge, one that can be mastered and set aside.  But in our biggest games, the skill or reflex mastery comes paired with a narrative that has to run its course regardless of the player's level of accomplishment.  For the first half of Divinity II, the fights are too challenging; for the last third, they're far too easy.  When starting a Japanese-style party-based RPG like Chrono Cross, fights begin as an elaborate process that you can have difficulty learning -- but then, aside from bosses, descend into farce, taking up your time with repetitive intro and outro animations and fanfares.

A film director can and does control the pacing and delivery of the entirety of his product.  A game designer has more trouble with the pacing.  If a game is strictly, 100% linear with no deviations, it's a niche product: an interactive novel, or the game-film.  The tautness, delivery, and coherence of Heavy Rain varies depending how you play it.  One way it's a thriller; another way, it's slightly disconnected; a third way, it's a drama.  In the end, though, there are a total of four characters and 12 endings, and so David Cage and Quantic Dream are able to shape it to their whims.

There's only one way to play Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and only one way to play Uncharted.  But there are a dozen ways to play Mass Effect.  Can BioWare forsee that I'm going to go search every planet and complete every side quest in the galaxy?  Can they predict which one I will finally skip?

For me, of course, the answer is back up there in the first sentence: I tend toward completionism, and will perform, and try to master, every skill a game sets before me.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to start a New Game Plus in Bastion.  It has these proving grounds, you see...

The true meaning of Social Gaming

Today's a big holiday here in the USA.  Everyone's throwing large barbecues and big drunken parties, because that (along with small, colorful explosions) is how we celebrate in this country.

Okay, large colorful explosions.

I threw my own large party last weekend, though; it's why I was on the road for a few days.  I've done it every summer since I was 14, and every year it's a little more awesome because we've aged into appreciating a rare chance to see all our friends in one spot.

It's a casual summer barbecue and I do it at my parents' house, because they have a grill and a backyard and also don't live 400 miles away from most of the guests.  (I have neither grill, nor backyard, and Google Maps says it's actually more like 450-500 miles.)

There are some guests who I have known since 3rd grade, and some who I just met at PAX East 2011.  Some from college, some from high school, and some who I know I have known for a decade but neither of us can remember any longer how we first met.  Some are my parents' friends, and some are my friends' parents (who admittedly, are also my parents' friends).  We eat and drink and make merry and unexpectedly run out of chairs, and a good time is had by all.

But I, overthinker that I am, was particularly observing the way that games drove the day and brought people together.

My mom's DS was in the living room and people kept picking it up and playing around with Brain Age 2.  Later, I found my mom and three of my old friends playing Cribbage in the kitchen.  (She always wanted me to learn but I never really did.)

Meanwhile, my friend brought newest version of the tabletop card game that he'd been developing, hoping to find some players, and I pointed him to a group of tabletop gamers I met at PAX.  From the laughter and shouting, I assume that table was having fun.

And then I busted out Action Castle.  (And the sequel, as well.)  A GM I am not, but I'd seen it done before and had a chance to read over the cards so I managed pretty well.  Granted, I gave a little more useful input than a traditional text parser would, but a traditional text parser doesn't have to apologize for having forgotten the player has a lamp in inventory so there's that.  (Oops.)  Also in the interest of keeping the party lighthearted, exits might have been, north, east, SOUTH GUYS, and west.

When the sun goes down and the mosquitoes come out, we generally move inside and my husband, who was apparently born to be a game show host, gets his time to shine.  He hooked his laptop up to the TV and I heard a round of The Price is Right go down, and then it was time for $100,000 Pyramid.  That one always goes down tournament-style, because in two or three years running, Sam and I have proved to be a pretty much unbeatable team.  And with 20 people in the living room, every game show does indeed have its live studio audience.

We were there in May 2010, actually, but they didn't allow photos so this isn't ours. Being there really does feel like being in the TV.

For all that I love writing the deep, critical theory and studying narrative games as cultural artifacts and cultural mirrors -- this is where the real heart of our hobby is.  This is where it all began: you have a group of people together, in a room, and they find a way to play.

Developers like Zynga may claim that Facebook and mobile platforms are "social gaming" now and forever, but for my money, it gets social when you can break bread together.  Mainstream (non-gaming) society derides the D&D player as "antisocial," and yet he -- in all his stereotypical adolescent, pimpled, awkward glory -- sits around with friends, says, "pass the chips and soda," and has a good time in good company.  And of course, we all know how little bearing a stereotype has on reality.

I don't like to engage in competitions usually (or at least, not competitions I don't actually stand a chance of winning) so aside from some trivia games I tend to avoid the multiplayer sphere.  But sitting around with a glass of sangria in one hand (that my friend makes better than I do), and hearing my buddies laugh... now that's the kind of multiplayer I wish I could do more often.

Blog Admin, June Edition

This is just a quick note to say that Your Critic's brain has melted.

Or at least, that it's about to.

We will be out of town or otherwise unavailable for roughly a week, in transit on Friday and on Monday, and this trip coincides nicely with my need for a few days away from writing.  Thus, we'll be on hold for roughly a week over here; you can expect the next post on Wednesday, June 29.  I can moderate comments fairly easily on the road so feel free to carry on relevant discussions while I'm away.

If I can, I'll get part 2 of the Gamer's Gaze up this afternoon or evening, but in the midst of packing and preparing for a buttcrack-of-dawn flight some things don't happen.  If I don't, it'll be first up when we're back.

Meanwhile, enjoy your summer.  (Or, for the surprising number of my Australian readers, your winter.)  I shall be eating too much, drinking too much, and making just the right amount of merry this weekend.  When I get back, I'll be discussing my opinions on Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, finally starting L.A. Noire, and wondering just how the Fallout: New Vegas DLC could be so story-great and gameplay-poor.

Also when I get back, I'll be starting to post occasionally at GameCritics.com, which should be fun for us all I hope! 

In conclusion, Guybrush the cat likes Fallout 3 as much as I do, and bobbleheads rather a lot more.

I freaking hate bobbleheads. But the lunchbox is cool.

Your MOTHER'S a gamer!

Oh wait, I mean my mother.  Silly me!

My mom and I get along quite well, really.  I don't call enough, of course.  (Who ever does?)

But she and I live on different technological planets.  I'm constantly on AIM, on GChat, on Twitter and sometimes (rarely) even on Facebook.  I blog and I game and I carry an Android, a Kindle, and a DS in my purse.  I've been using computers fluently since I was four and we had a Commodore 64-compatible Atari computer in the house, and I've spent the 21st century upgrading and building my own gaming PCs.

Mom technically has an e-mail account.  (I know because I helped her create it.)  I'm not sure she knows how to use it.  She could, of course, but mainly, she just strongly prefers not to.  Tech is not her thing -- and that's cool.

But she had some brain & neurological problems in 2009 and 2010.  During her recovery, doctors told her and my dad that she needed to keep her brain active.  I remembered a nun study from when I took neuroanatomy (half of AP Psych) back in high school many years ago, and the studies about how crosswords, other puzzle games, and indeed even video games had helped senior citizens (which mom is not yet, for the record) age in a more neurologically healthy way.

So of course, I did what any gamer would: I thought, "Mom needs Brain Age."

After running the idea past my dad, I got mom a DSi XL for Christmas last year, and my husband went in with me on getting her Brain Age and a cartridge full of crossword and word-search sorts of games.  I wanted to ease her into it; the DSi menu is actually a lot more confusing than the DS Lite menu that the two of us were used to.  But the bigger screen and easier-to-hold stylus were necessities.

I gave it to her feeling mildly nervous, and half expecting that, come late 2011, I might find myself the owner of a gently and seldom used burgundy DSi XL.  But we showed her how to use it, and gave her the games, and stood back.

"Your mother spent half the night playing Brain Age," my dad informed me a couple of mornings later.  I grinned.  "Glad she's getting some use out of it."

M and I had a pile of DS games with us, as we'd had plenty of time to kill in our 16 hours of round-trip Amtrak time.  (Well, the trip home ended up being more like 13 hellish hours all by itself, but that's a different story.)  I had Professor Layton and the Unwound Future in my bag, and I handed it to mom when she expressed curiosity in other games.

90 minutes later, she brought it back, expressing exasperation -- not frustration with an inability to play the game, but clear annoyance with writing and game design functions.  Annoyances that I share.  (There's a reason I pick up my Professor Layton games for $10 or less these days.)  After she left the room, I turned to M and wondered, "...is my mom... becoming... a gamer?"

Christmas was five months ago, and Mother's Day is this weekend.  Dad's told me mom could really use more DS games and so I just sent her Brain Age 2 and Plants vs Zombies.  (I hope the PvZ DS port is good -- I've apparently put 55 hours into it on Steam but I don't know first-hand how it handles for portables and just grabbed it on spec.)  She's still asking after Professor Layton so when M and I head up for a long weekend in June, I plan to bring her our copies, as well as the first one or two Phoenix Wright games to try.

I really shouldn't be surprised.  My mom can school anyone at cribbage and until I was almost 17 she could almost always beat me at Boggle.  Games are for everyone.  Mom'll probably want to kill me when dad prints this post out for her and she finds out I've turned her into a gamer.  But they're good games and it's for a good reason.

I promise, mom: I'll never try to drag you into Portal or EQII.  We all have our limits.  But yours are way beyond where I foolishly thought they were.  Happy Mother's Day.  :)

[Edit, 05/08/2011: I called my mother yesterday and she says she's completely hooked on Plants vs Zombies and her brain's only been eaten twice.  Success!]

A Brief Interruption in Blogging

Your Critic had really wanted to play Portal 2 last night.  I'm in Chapter 5 and thought I might be able to get near the end of the single-player game.

Remember this little guy?

Guybrush Ulysses Threepwood Cox, Evil Mighty Pirate Cat.

He has a lot of teeth in that no-so-innocent little kitty mouth.  Several days ago he managed to sever the plug end of the gaming headset (but luckily, only the mic cable, so at least I still had headphones).

And yesterday, we got home from work to find that he'd made neat work of my mouse. 

"THE CAT ATE MY MOUSE," I angrily tweeted, and was immediately asked, "That's not a thing a cat can do, that's a terrible pun!!  Does your cat understand how reality works? That it is not in fact pun-based??"

Well, no.  Our cat is indeed pun-happy.  When Your Critic's spouse left for work this morning (an hour after I did), he reported that cat was going to town on my PC speaker wire.  *sigh*

Meanwhile this is on its way (for less than that) to Your Critic via Amazon and local express shipping.  I'm a PC gamer forever, even as I slowly learn to use our PS3, but I'll admit -- wireless controllers have never looked so tempting.  Too bad the wireless Razer cost more than three times the one I ordered.

So, a slight delay in game completion; I'll probably have something to say about Portal 2 next week, and we've just started Mass Effect 2 as well.

Winning?

Over the holidays last year, my husband and I were visiting my parents.  I was spending some down-time late in the evening on the sofa in their living room with my DS, much as I've done ever since I got my first DS in 2004.

My dad wandered into the room and finding me apparently intent on my little screens, asked, "So... are you winning?"

And although I heard him clearly, my only response was: "Huh?"  I literally didn't understand the question he was asking me -- "winning" was never even on my mind.

I get that games, in their traditional sense, are all a competition.  Chess has a winner and a loser.  So do baseball and backgammon and poker.  You win or lose at roulette or blackjack or even Pong.  But I can't even think of the last time I thought of a video game I was playing in terms of winning or losing.

The games I've played -- even back into the mid-1980s -- are always stories.  You complete a level or a game, but you don't win it.  We win the battles, sure, when we take down that boss, but you don't win Metal Gear Solid or Fallout or even, I think, Super Mario Brothers.

And you most certainly don't win a Professor Layton game, which is what I had in my DS at the time.  I couldn't win at that game any more than I could win at Star Wars or The Hobbit.  I could solve the riddles, and I could complete the story, but... winning?

Every time I have a serious discussion about gaming (and a discussion about serious gaming), I have it reinforced to me that we treat competitive multiplayer gaming as a completely overlapping circle to all gaming, and that's a bad idea.  Sure, they're a Venn diagram with a gigantic overlap in the middle, but single-player narrative gaming is a different beast from, say, hopping onto a Counter-Strike map with some people.  In due time I'll be finished with Mass Effect, just as I finished Bioshock and Fallout: New Vegas, but even as I make the "right" choices along the way, I'm certainly not winning any of them.

So no, dad, sorry: I definitely didn't win.  But I'm pretty sure I haven't lost, either.

Busy Critic

Housekeeping info:

1.) Your Critic and her spouse, as many gamers do, have acquired a cat.  He is, naturally, the best cat in the whole wide world; doubly so as he is named Guybrush.

 Guybrush Ulysses Threepwood Cox, Mighty Pirate Cat.

2.) The PAX East 2011 schedule is out and ready.  I've been putting together my schedule, and if all goes well (i.e. if the lines aren't too long), I'll be at the following (as well as probably some others):

• Friday, 10:30: Jane McGonigal Keynote
• Friday, 3:30: What The Heck Is A Community Manager?
• Friday, 6:30: Game Design is Mind Control
• Saturday, 3:00: Females on Female Characters
• Saturday, 6:30: The "Other" Us: If We're All Gamers, Does Our Gender Matter?
• Sunday, 10:00: Girls' Meetup
• Sunday, 12:00: One of Us

I was pleased to find that in fact there is not a panel on gender issues in gaming; there are three!  As this is Your Critic's beat, I am most pleased and hope to come home with interesting insights.  Also with the live-blogging, and you can follow my Twitter feed.  Which, I am forced to admit, may be more along the lines of "I am by the Nintendo booth where are the rest of you?" than anything entertaining.

3.) Our year-long "Beyond the Girl Gamer" series is starting this week.  In that vein, there is a new site out there which has gotten a lot of attention in the last two days: The Mary Sue.  I'm not sure how I feel about it really, and I suppose it's too early for judgement.  I do think their "why this, why now" statement has a few ideas worth hearing, though:

We know the point at which you would be satisfied is to just be able to geek out with all geeks, of any gender, without feeling like your femininity is front and center for scrutiny.  To not feel like you have to work harder than guys to prove that you’re genuinely into geek culture. We want simple things, like to be able to visit a comic book store without feeling out of place.  To be able to buy a video game without getting the sense that the cashier thinks we’re buying it for someone else.

But mainly we just want to be able to pursue our hobbies with the other people who share them.  We want to play with the boys.

So there are two reasons why there should be more out there devoted specifically to the female geek.

Because even if we want to play with the boys, there is a value to having our own space.

 So there's that.  We'll see.  They seem to have good intentions at least.

4.) We haven't had an Open Thread in a while.  The last one was fun.  So: get to it, if you like!

P.S. The meditation on genre and adventure games is still coming.  It's long, convoluted, and problematic, and Your Critic has been required to do actual paid work at her day job lately.  When it's not 2100 words of ugly, it's coming here.