It’s an eternal battle – like the forces of good versus the forces of evil. Like Coke vs. Pepsi or King Kong vs. Godzilla. In one corner of the ring you have the people who think that story has no place in games and in the other you have the underdogs, people like me who think that videogames need story. (more…)

Today I heard some great news. An old friend and longtime struggling screenwriter was finally seeing something he had penned go before cameras. This isn’t some student film, either. It’s an honest-to-God production with real stars. I read the script when he was working on it and it was funny as hell. That was years ago, but Jeff never gave up. He hustled specs, worked side jobs, collaborated with producers and kept his head down and his keyboard warm until something finally clicked. Trying to make something happen in Hollywood is the epitome of the uphill battle. It’s like David fighting Goliath on a Crisco-slick mountainside. (more…)

Every day I wake up, fry some bacon and eggs and sit down in front of my iPad to read the news of the day. That means checking out my RSS feeds on Flipboard and taking the temperature of the gaming community on Twitter. Invariably people have their panties in a bunch about something. They’re mad that some game is coming out that’ll punish people who buy used games. They’re irate, for a multitude of reasons, that Jessica Chobot will be a character in Mass Effect 3. Every day it’s something different, another tempest in a teapot. And every day I roll my eyes and sigh. (more…)

I remember the precise moment I truly grasped the nature of my mortality. I was in my mid-twenties, in the midst of a seven-year bout with my undergraduate degree and in the middle of a shower. I don’t think it was a coincidence that I was naked when I came to the conclusion that there was no beatific bearded man in the sky who would be able to stop the light going from my eyes when my heart stopped and the blood, oxygen and electricity stopped moving around in my brain. Everything I’d learned in catechism and halfheartedly carried with me through my teens was untrue. Someday everything, at least for me, would end. My legs wobbled when the realization struck. I steadied myself with one hand against the tile. Eventually the water ran cold and I did what every human does every day of our fleeting lives. I got on with it. (more…)

A wind is rising. It is a wind blown by brain-damaged marketing flacks and unimaginative project managers. That stale wind carries a word with it, sprinkling that lame verb all over the box covers, posters and commercials for our favorite videogames, movies and TV shows. Today a hero will rise against this rising tide and attempt to get a rise out of readers about the rising use of this word. That hero is me. (more…)

I have this fantasy that someday they’ll be able to put my brain in a jar. That way, when my body dies, they can save my grey matter and put it in some kind of robot or clone body and I’ll be able to live forever. Alternately, I’m okay with them copying all the data on my brain and installing me onto a hard drive so I can live for eternity in a simulation where I’m rich, ripped and can shoot lasers out of my eyes.

The thing that terrifies me about either not-so-likely scenario is the possibility that my consciousness will fall into the wrong hands. I don’t believe in Satan, but I can imagine that being a caged brain in a zoo run by sadists or, even worse, incompetents, could be a lot like Hell. Lately, some videogames have reminded me of this special kind of purgatory and I plan to tell you about them. But first we have to talk about Natalie Wood’s last film and the time I ate too many pot brownies. (more…)

Believe it or not, there are still people on the planet for whom Pac-Man and videogames are synonymous. Their awareness of Mario is minimal, maybe begrudging. They might have heard of Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, but the surrounding controversies or sales records only register as cultural blips to them. Those games are names on a Christmas list to be checked off and forgotten. (more…)