I used an ad blocker for awhile, and the fundamental truth is it made the internet better for me. Videos loaded faster. Concentrating on content was vastly simpler. I never had to hunt for an obtusely placed X when some unwanted slab of advertising scooted across my screen obscuring my view. To be honest, I really want to go back to using an ad blocker.

Ad-blocking isn’t really about money for readers. It’s about barriers. It’s about hassle and distraction and annoyance. Ads are designed to try and get your attention for at least part of the time you spend on a site. Ads are intentionally disruptive to the experience you are having, and because the technology exists to eliminate disruption, it’s no surprise that people chose to use that technology. It’s no different from any other medium: When a commercial comes on when I’m listening to a radio, what do I do? I check if another station is playing a song I like instead. If an ad comes on the TV, I get up and go to the bathroom. Is the fact that I choose not to consume those ads some breach of my responsibility as a viewer or listener? I think not.

Of course, ad-blocking is to websites and content makers what used games are to game publishers. It’s not really arguable that people are stealing the content — though I am willing to bet more than a few people might give it the old college try — but neither are they directing dollars to the content makers. Whatever benefit the reader/viewer gains, the content creator loses.

read more

In the fable "The Scorpion and the Frog," a scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is reluctant - surely, to deal with a scorpion will bring certain death. But the scorpion is adamant that this train of thought is nonsense - that if he stung the frog, they would both drown, and die. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog asks why the scorpion has condemned them both to death with its sting, only to be met with the obvious - "I am a scorpion."

Fiction demonstrates many concepts, but none so aptly as the fact that some characters are designed by nature to be purely evil and serve that purpose exclusively. To put it another way, some people are scorpions.

Dishonored is not a game about making easy, simple choices. Rather, reflective of real life, the game soon demonstrates that you are interacting with the fate of an entire metropolis. The stones you're throwing in its pool are going to rock someone's boat, regardless of how good your aim is.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

read more

Well, that certainly was a week, wasn't it? If you picked up SimCity last week, then odds are that you spent at least a part of the past seven days frowning angrily at your computer as it informed you that the $60 game you bought was unavailable to you. That's what I did on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then as things just seemed to get worse and worse, I did something that made my week so much better.

I switched to Tomb Raider.

I'll probably have more to say about Tomb Raider later in the week. I played it over four days in a furious whirlwind, SimCity forgotten while the reboot completely engrossed me. A solid nine or ten hour single player campaign that out-Uncharted Uncharted and found me genuinely invested in a character I'd never really connected with in the nineties. A game that just delivered over and over again, and left me in the last few minutes with genuine nerd chills as the payoff I had waited for was finally delivered.

This week ain't gonna be no slouch neither. All my attention will be firmly focused on Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. While I'm interested to see what the single player delivers, I have firm intentions turned toward getting soundly trounced in the multiplayer. I've been following the beta for a while now, watching the pros slap at one another occasionally in beta tournaments. I've seen the rise, fall and elmination of the Warhound (which was just a ridiculous unit). I have lusted at the thought of a having a spell as Protoss that could cover up enemy minerals, only to see that dream dashed against the rocks. I have watched the Swarm Host, and wept at the coming sadness it will bring me. I am ready. So, HotS -- as we StarCraft folk affectionately call it -- is my pick of the week.

If you are not prepared, however, there's always God of War: Ascension. It's not a game I've focused on closely, but God of War seems like a formula that would be difficult to ruin. Give me some swinging blades and giant god battles, and I'd probably be pretty happy. This is one I'll be watching to see what others think.

read more

Had you asked me in my mid-twenties whether I thought gaming would still be an integral part of my life when I turned the corner around forty, I have to admit that I would have said no. I think this probably says more about how little I understood at that age what being forty was going to feel like — in that as far as I can tell, I feel emotionally pretty much like I did in my twenties — than it does anything about how much I cared about gaming.

You have to understand, gaming still might have been a fad for me around age 25. I was a gamer during my childhood, but then for a variety of reasons I took a long hiatus from the pastime. During high school there were several years where I had neither a PC nor a console, and any games I did play found themselves along the fringes of my life. I might read the occasional PC Gamer or get in a game of Joe Montana Sports Talk Football at a friend’s house, but during a big chunk of what was arguably the golden age of PC gaming, I was fully invested in a social life that had no crossover and didn’t give video games much of a thought at all.

For five or six years, I left behind what I had perceived as a childish pursuit and a social albatross around my neck. Which is interesting because it’s only as I grew up and matured that I was comfortable letting video games back into my life. And even then, it was only slowly at first, and not really until 1997 or so that I would think to self-identify as a gamer.

So, rounding the corner of my mid-twenties, no — I figured this would all be over again in another handful of years. Color me surprised, now in the last two months of my thirties, that I am still an eager and insatiable gamer. I guess, should you ask me if I’ll still be playing when I’m 60, my answer will be a horrified, “Wait! I’m going to turn 60 someday?!”

Several hours later I might be calm enough again to say, yeah. I guess at this point I’ll probably still be gaming straight on into retirement.

read more

This week Sean Sands and Cory Banks are joined by The Escapist's Susan Arendt to talk Tomb Raider, reboots and more!

read more

There's a lot going on — too much, and not enough time. It's not an uncommon situation in my life, and it's the sort of situation that makes it difficult for me to play video games as often as I might like. It's also the sort of situation that makes certain games especially appealing.

A Game Of Dwarves is not a heavy game. It's pausable, able to be run in windowed mode, and often can be left running while you dip into another room to wash some dishes or stare down at your phone, convincing yourself that you're multitasking and getting some entertainment in while whittling down your mountains emails and other tasks.

But you aren't really thinking about those tasks. You're thinking about Sockbeard's progress in creating that new undermountain bead & breakfast.

read more

SimCity has been a hard beast to be excited about. As many are quick, and well within their rights to point out, EA's newest implementation of SimCity is a rose that comes with some sharp, metal thorns. Required internet connectivity at startup, smaller spaces to build, the promise of lots more stuff to buy in the long run, shared regions, save games on the cloud, and the inability to save, destroy and reload your city; this isn't your dad's SimCity.

All we need now is for nobody to be able to log in during the launch and I can practically write tomorrow's internet myself.

I've had my say on what I feel is the current inevitability of games with these kinds of "features" and I don't really have anything new to say about it. At this point, I've bought in so my time is pretty much just focused on wanting to play the game, which after watching several videos looks pretty good. So, SimCity goes down as my game of the week.

But, don't lose sight of Tomb Raider either, which has gotten some pretty good early buzz. A very different game than previous Tomb Raiders by all accounts, the origin story of Lara Croft portrays a very different person than the self-assured, hyper-confident, back-flipping heroine with her low-slung pistols and flowing pony tail. If the digital zen garden of SimCity doesn't do it for you, the Uncharted-style reboot of Tomb Raider may be a good choice.

Finally, in the annual first rite of spring, baseball returns to the console with MLB2k12 on most consoles and the latest version of The Show on PS3 and Vita.

read more

When is a minigame more than just a minigame?

I've been thinking about this as I recently picked up the new Sly Cooper game for the PS3, Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time. The core gameplay of sneaking around and pickpocketing people is still fun, make no mistake, but this is a series known for being minigame-heavy, sometimes to its detriment — so many and so oddly put-together that they can actually detract from gameplay, rather than function as the refreshing palate cleanser that they are intended to be.

Luckily, Sanzaru seems to have avoided the fate that previous Sly developer Sucker Punch fell into on occasion. I find myself playing through the game smiling a lot more than I have in quite a while. Surprisingly, this is due in no small part to the minigames. Why? Well, they are well-integrated into the story, and more importantly, they're plain fun.

read more

The one thing I can say with some confidence about the videogame industry as a whole is that it rarely, if ever, runs in reverse. While trends and fads may resurface from time to time, usually in the context of nostalgia, the industry at large never says things like, “You know what? 3.5-inch floppy discs really were the best medium. We should go back to using them.” Retailers never say, “Blech, consumers really hate us asking for pre-orders. Let’s go back to just stocking a bunch of extra copies of every game.” Publishers never say, “Let’s refocus our marketing strategies back to big, single-player PC games as our flagship titles.”

It’s a burn-the-ships kind of industry, which I think is both one of its great strengths and one of the reasons I find it so often frustrating. The big names in the business strike off for new lands, and when they go crashing haplessly into some pristine beach frontier, first thing they do is break out the torches and sink the boats so they can never go back.

It makes sense in some ways, because technology by its nature is as inexorable as water flowing downhill in its own forward progress. There’s a pretty good and obvious reason no one is ever going back to floppies. Constant movement and change, regardless of who the actual change benefits or hurts, is a cornerstone of the 'gamez biz'. For gamers, that change can be the hardest part of the whole thing to deal with.

There is a part of most gamers, I think, that probably remembers some moment in time, some year or console generation that was formative in the ideas we hold as iconic to games and the gaming business. And, the further away that moment in time is, the more likely that most of what defined that era is long gone, and never to come again.

This is why when gamers talk about companies rolling back initiatives like always-on DRM, microtransactions, DLC and many of the other modern nuisances in gaming, I have polite but firm doubts. I understand and support the decision to vote with your dollar, but realistically, the end result of that is not pressure on the industry to change, but a personal decision to limit your current-generational exposure.

read more

It's convention season again. Here in Seattle they're starting off with Emerald City Comicon. Pretty much every weekend between then and Labor Day, some place in this native land a large group of freaks and geeks are going to gather and celebrate whatever particular brand of geek/freakhood they practice. I'm a geek of the sort that attends conventions, and I help out at several. I have quite a bit of experience in nerd-herding.

We'll have GWJ-specific news and information here on the homepage as we get closer to some of the bigger goodjer draws, but there's a lot going on this summer. I have a few bits of general advice I'd like to toss out there for everyone heading off to one of these affairs.

Logistics:

• Bandwidth of all forms will be at a premium. We're geeks. We have a lot of tech. When you concentrate that many electronic devices in one place, whatever internet or phone service feeds the area is bound to be stomped down into the bedrock. The PAXes in particular are a giant bandwidth-sucking pile of PCs, game consoles, phones, laptops, tablets, and hand-helds of all descriptions — and that's before you even get to what the attendees bring. The carriers do the best they can, but there are only so many towers and only so much wire under the street. Be patient and think ahead. There will be times you can't get through. Download useful things to your device's local memory, and check into other sources like your hotel's wireless.
• Dressing for success here means planning for a long hike instead of a boardroom meeting. Rabbit's sartorial elegance aside, good shoes and a light backpack are in order to handle all the trekking up and down you're going to do in the course of a day.

read more

Here's a glimpse of what the next few weeks are like from a release perspective. Next week the Tomb Raider and SimCity reboots hit the shelves. The following week offers God of War: Ascension as well as StarCraft: Heart of the Swarm. Another week and Gears of War: Judgment and Lego City: Undercover arrive to entertain to say nothing of PAX East and the GWJ Conference Call 2nd annual live show with Jeff Green and Justin McElroy. Hooray for self promotion.

The week after as we likely all work through recovery from the PAX plague, March caps off with some game called BioShock Infinite before the release schedule finally loosens up again.

Of course, if I'm starting the week ahead talking about other weeks, then that probably means there's not much to talk about this week. While that's the case for me, I've learned enough to know that when I see a release by Atlus or a PS3 or 3DS game with a title like Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, I should probably at least give a quick glance to see if this is the sort of thing others are likely interested in. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that it is, particularly since Famitsu rated it quite highly on the heels of its Japanese release. So, let's call that our game of the week, just so I can blow ClockworkHouse's mind again. A 3DS JRPG is game of the week? What devilry is this?

As for me, this week I'll be brushing up on my StarCraft II, playing some Minecraft with my boys and waiting, ever so patiently, for the Spring gaming thaw.

read more

read more

In the interest of saving you any suspense, here’s where I land on the issue. If a full-price game provides 6 good hours of a dense, fun single player campaign, then I can be satisfied with that. In fact, in many cases I would prefer that to 15 hours where any substantial part of that time is spent slogging through extraneous “content” just for the sake of dragging out the time commitment.

This is not, like most of my notions, a universally held opinion. For some — perhaps even you — purchasing decisions can quickly reach defcon DealBreaker if the game in question doesn’t cross some volume of time. I understand this philosophy, even if I don’t necessarily subscribe. To pay sixty dollars for a game that’s over in a long afternoon, can feel a lot like paying two-hundred for fancy cuisine that’s half the size of your average portion at Chili’s. If you can only buy one game and that has to get you through the next two months, do you really want something that’s gone in less time than your average work day?

Probably not.

But, that’s not the same thing as saying the two-hundred dollar meal is necessarily a worse value or even over priced. In fact, if I remember that two-hundred dollar meal five years later, even though it was smaller, even though it didn’t leave me feeling as though I needed to be hauled from the restaurant on a forklift, it’s still to me the better experience. Six good hours is enough.

read more

This week donation drive supporter Gameguru joins Shawn, Julian and Elysium to talk future tech!

read more

This week should be a busy one for gaming, though more for the anticipated mid-week announcements than the big couple of games for the week. It was May of 2005, nearly eight years ago, that the PlayStation 3 was first announced to the public, which means at this point the PS3 is on track for a longer shelf-life than its venerable brother the PlayStation 2.

I want to believe that Sony is in a position to both learn from and act on the things it could have learned from this generation where it, to me at least, always felt like second best. But, Sony has never really struck me as a company quick to learn and adapt, so I approach whatever Wednesday's announcement will be with anticipation and trepidation. I want to walk away unable to contain my anticipation at the opportunity to drop some Benjamins down on next-gen, but I fear that what I will feel instead is frustrated at measures designed to improve DRM, reduce used-sales and force gamers into restrictive environments.

As far as games go this week, however, my pick of the litter is Crysis 3. I find myself in the mood for a science-fictiony action game, and though rarely deep Crysis does always seem to deliver a visual spectacle that is fun to play. The other option for the week is Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance which is a name that just starts off on two wrong feet with me.

read more

Doom was my first ultra-violent video game, as it was for many of my generation, but Doom wasn’t really about the violence. It was a horror story portrayed through an action lens, and looking back from our era of hyper-realistic military shooters, it was almost shockingly tame to have caused the stir it once did.

Really since the events in Connecticut last December, I’ve found myself thinking about violence far more than I ever have before. That’s not to say I’m connecting violent media to the events of that horrible day. I have no interest in the larger debate (if it can be called such a thing) about the influence of violent media on children — at least not from a legislative perspective.

But from a personal point of view, I am very cautious about exposing my children to most violent media, whether that be a television show, a video game, the nightly news or even a commercial. I don’t believe that, if they somehow get their hands on a Call of Duty, they will be predisposed somehow to commit some atrocity or lose their ability to empathize for others. No, the reason I make my choice — a choice I demand be left to my discretion as a parent — is that I simply want to let them live in their childhood world as long as they may. Someday they will be older, and it will be irresponsible of me to inhibit their understanding of a too-often unforgiving world, but my boys are still young and live in a world where magic is possible, where they feel safe in their own beds, and where someone cares enough to run interference between them and a world sometimes seemingly obsessed with tragedy and pain.

I make the personal choice about violence and exposure to violent content, one that does not impart an imperative on anyone else, because as I look back on the comparative innocence of Doom, I wish that I had lived longer in a world freer from horror and fury. You see, I believe that something precious is lost once you cross through the veil of a certain innocence to see what the world can really look like.

read more

"Daddy, what's that monster's name?"

"That's, uh, Mitey. He's a Mite. So Mitey the Mite, then."

"Oh. Daddy, what's that one's name?"

"That's Ken Griffey Jr., the Griffy."

"Oh. Is his name Griffy because he has wings?"

"… Sure. Let's go with that."

read more

First up, a note regarding our recently ended Call for Writers. I don't know if I just called really loudly or what, but you guys responded in a big way. As if that wasn't enough, a lot of you ended up writing some really good drafts. The reality is that it's going to take a while to read, sift, discuss and make some decisions. And, to be honest, we're probably not talking about having things done in the next week or so. It might just be a little bit longer than that.

This is obviously a good problem to have, but I wanted to provide you guys fair warning. My intention is to make sure I respond to every draft, and as much as possible I'd like to have something constructive to say, but I'm going to ask for your patience through that process.

As far as the week goes, while we don't have the wide wealth of exciting games for this set, we still have more than what we were seeing in January. I heard a recent criticism that Aliens: Colonial Marines looks too much like a traditional shooter which kind of misses the point of what made Aliens great. It's a concern I share, though I usually like what Gearbox does, particular with Borderlands -- I just try to forget that they ultimately got stuck with Duke Nukem -- so I'm skeptical but hopeful. After all, a chance to go back to LV-426 in the immediate aftermath of the movie Aliens is at the very least an intriguing proposition.

So, I'm giving Colonial Marines my nod as game of the week.

read more

read more

It all starts so innocently. Just one little tweet.

That tweet begets a website landing page. The website begets rumors and speculation. The rumors and speculation beget more rumors, which culminate in a press release containing precisely zero information. But then, just when all seems lost, a glimmer of hope: some leaked screenshots. Or perhaps "leaked" screenshots. The website updates with a counter. The counter ends in a press event at E3. Finally, an announcement! Logos! Pre-alpha runthroughs! Flashy music! High-profile guest stars! Energy! Free swag! And what we've all been waiting for ... a pre-order link!

The marketing engine begins to gear up in earnest. Banner ads appear in the wild. PR staff are sighted sneaking into Gamestop under cover of night and planting endcaps and shelf-talkers. Print ads and TV spots appear. The rumors and/or speculation reach a fever pitch. Developer interviews are scoured for subtext hidden between the print. Various fora explode with leaked reviews. "It will be great!" "No, it will be terrible, my buddy's cousin's boyfriend who works at Best Buy said so!" "I'm going to call in sick all week to play!"

Finally, Launch Day arrives. Fans line up outside the big box vendor of their choice at midnight waiting to get their hands on that which has been the object of their affection for so many months prior. And then … and then … what?

read more

(Caution: This article will contain spoilers for The Walking Dead by Telltale Games.)

I am a twenty-seven year old male standing in the foyer of the doctor’s office. I have been sick for several weeks, with snot and mucus pouring from every inconvenient slot or hole possible. I had made this doctor’s appointment myself and had made sure it worked with my health insurance.

Yet I stand paralyzed at the entrance, looking at the different desks and the other ill patients sitting in old, rickety chairs. They stare — at the crusty carpet, walls, even at me — with a grief-stricken grimace that looks like how I feel. I stand here and wonder what, for the life of me, I am supposed to do. What was it my parents always did when walking into a doctor’s office? I don’t know. I had always just found a corner and powered on my GameBoy or opened the pages of one of my books.

No one in my family saw it coming, but I have become a victim of the parent characters in Telltale’s The Walking Dead.

read more

It feels like it's been a while since we had a nice solid release week like this one. The next 8 weeks or so will see quite a few more large and interesting releases, so I hope your wallet had a nice rest and you made a dent into the pile, because things are about to change.

This week has a number of things worth attention, but likely the big game of the week from a mainstream perspective will be Dead Space 3. Dead Space is a series that could have been cookie-cutter and forgettable, but has developed its own aesthetic, following and legacy as a good, sometimes great, survival horror game. In the twilight of Resident Evil, which has become forgettable and disappointing in its old age, Dead Space has in many ways picked up that niche of the market. Though the games are very different in setting and lore, I think there are a lot of similarities in themes and presentation.

Also this week, Fire Emblem: Awakening on the 3DS, which actually is my pick for game of the week. This may be a surprise to some of you, but if you've been looking for a reason to dig out your 3DS for a while, near universal initial buzz says this is the game you've been waiting for. And, if you don't have a 3DS, this might be the game worth getting one for. A turn based, strategy RPG in the vein of great handheld games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Advance Wars, this seems like the kind of game where I could put aside my discomfort with JRPG stylings and embrace what really does look and sound like a phenomenal game.

And, if all that wasn't enough, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time also debuts on the PS3 this week. Sly has always felt like one of those series that maybe never quite stepped forward in the limelight the way it might have, but they have always proven to be quality platformers. I know virtually nothing about Thieves in Time, which seems almost criminal because it's probably a safe bet that it will be a decent game.

read more

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a Japanese RPG with a serious pedigree. Studio Ghibli, who has brought us classics such as "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro" worked with Level 5, who made the Dragon Quest and Professor Layton series, to bring us a new story, set in a whole new world. Both companies brought out their big guns for this project, and it shows in every pixel.

It's been a while since a game has grabbed me by the tripes like this, and I'm really happy. But I don't feel comfortable getting down into the nitty-gritty about the game proper right now. I've only just gotten all the grayed-out areas in the main menu unlocked, and 1/4 of the way through isn't enough to take all the game's mechanics out for a good spin. But here are a few things to go on with.

I'm of two minds about the whole experience so far:

- I'm blissfully happy with just about every aspect of it. It is great!
- I'm only about a quarter of the way through it. Aaaaauuuggghhhhh!

read more

It was early winter 2002 when Shawn Andrich, a guy I sort of knew pretty well through a website we had both worked on together, came to me with a remarkably bad idea.

“We should make our own gaming website,” said he.

Shawn was criminally young, probably 12 or so at the time. I couldn’t possibly say for sure. I was still in my twenties, which is to say I was 29, and as a result idealistic, easily influenced and prone to questionable decision making. Were he, brash and Canadian as he is, to come to me now in my wizened old age of 39 with such an idea, I would probably put a brass horn to my ear and say, “Eh, what’s that sonny?” It would look ridiculous.

However, as the adult in the conversation at the time, it was probably my responsibility to point out at that moment, as others would over the coming weeks, that creating a gaming website was a fool’s errand that almost certainly would lead to nothing more than headaches and a significant, probably lasting blow to our egos. After all, the last thing the world needed was another website about video games.

What I did say is, “That’s a great idea!” Or something similar. Probably there was some sarcasm and pointless pontification involved, but an affirmation was the relevant core of the response.

And thus was hatched a scheme that almost certainly would fail quietly and unobserved by anyone: to create a gaming website designed to appeal to mature gamers. Gamers with families and mortgages. Gamers who were interested in more than just guns, gore and girls. Gamers with some sense of sophistication and passion. Gamers, one might say, with jobs.

And yet, here we are exactly ten years later. Yup, exactly ten years. And two weeks. And two days. And probably a few hours later. Ok, what I’m saying is I missed our ten year anniversary. Let’s celebrate anyway.

read more

There are a lot of games coming out this week, the vast majority of which are downloadable, independent titles that I've frankly never heard of. Odds are pretty good that there are some real diamonds in the rough somewhere in this cavalcade of small developer efforts, but I couldn't possibly tell you what your eye should turn lustily toward at this point. Maybe someday people will say, "I remember where I was when Retrovirus or Dungeonland was released into this world," but for now I'm plainly and admittedly ignorant.

I'm still sifting through the most random of games for something to play until some of the big games of spring hit. And so between half-hearted bouts of Defense Grid's latest DLC and Minecraft, my thoughts are beginning to turn toward PAX East in late March. There's something about buying plane tickets for a big event that makes it feel 73% more real than it did before. The moment I have an itinerary I'm ready to pack my bags and get going.

So far what we know about our PAX schedule is that the GWJCC Live show will be Sunday, March 24th at 12:30pm in the Arachnid theater and we will be joined by Jeff Green and Justin McElroy. The GWJ Slap and Tickle will be on Friday evening (likely 7:30 pm) at the Seaport Hotel's Tamo bar. There will be a lot more official sounding announcements as we actually get closer to the event.

read more