For the moment, for all the work we have ahead of us, I’m hopeful for the future.  Let’s not waste it.

God Hand killed my PS2.  Or, at the very least, it is suspect in killing it as it was the last thing I was playing before a distinct burning smell began eminating from my console.  Between this and the dread of my 360’s impending death, I’m pretty ambivalent about most of the upcoming releases in video games.  I find myself looking back more than looking forward, which pretty much dooms me to obscurity and discourse generally irrelevant to current trends in video games.  I want to talk about something of a “trend” at the moment.  Video game’s journalists.

A friend of mine confided in me about a video game she’s excited about.  That game being Saints Row 2.  Looking at all the recent reviews for the game, she finds herself frustrated about how the game doesn’t receive a score equal to Grand Theft Auto 4, considering all the things that went into Saints Row 2 that aren’t present in GTAIV.  I can’t speak on behalf of any of the features in Saints Row 2, I’ve yet to play it.  However, I do know that most of the discussion I have regarding GTAIV ends up being polarized, as I try to wrap my head around the appeal of dating men, as a man and appeal that plummets after one great bank heist.

If she wasn’t reading or following trends before, I guess this pretty much cements it for her.

I don’t want to mince words on a professional opinion.  It’s no secret that, more often than not, most reviewers don’t exactly dish out the most accurate of information.  Some genres are more suspect than others.  How does one impart the knowledge to the average consumer that unless they’re willing to invest in some competition, their investment in a fighting game will ultimately yield a cheap thrill, ultimately leading to that game never seeing a place in their console again? How do you explain the specifics of a shoot em up or some eccentric platformer?  What body of people look for the details of these games among those who just don’t know or care and the obssessed?

I’d suck at reviewing games, I’d be dying to tell some folks that their recent game purchase will eventually be left to gather dust in a selected storage area of their choosing, so they should probably just save their money for something else.  Reviewers speak to all consumers and the specifically the consumers who are not in the know and on the fence for the most part.  Yet “credibility” involves doing very much the opposite and speaking to your enthusiasts as well.  How much enthusiast talk is lost on folks who just want a cheap thrill?  Would I really care any more if those reviewers were just saying things I agreed with the entire time?  I used to think that’d be the case.  Now, I think it matters very little.  There’s always going to be a descrepency, and the reasons are things I just don’t care about.

While video games are hardly a life style choice for most (thankfully), I can’t help but feel some scorn for our journalistic contemporaries.  I don’t really relate with them.  Their free swag, their review copies, their NDAs, or their networked relationships.  Yeah, that’s the purple Haterade if you didn’t know.  MMMMmmmmm, bitch.  The most I can see them as is Consumer Relations for various companies.  Rarely do I find myself compelled to match tastes with them, most of the time I find myelf at odds with what they believe.  I remember reading the MTV Multiplayer Blog’s Vs Mode with N’Gai Croal and Stephen Totilo regarding Grand Theft Auto 4 and thinking to myself “Wow, people think this highly of the game?  Really?  This is the future of games to folks?”

These folks provide me my news, they let me know what cool swag I’m probably never gonna lay hands on, and for the most part they’re just providing me some entertainment while I wonder how else I’d be getting release dates and promo videos for the next video game I may or may not be interested in.  It’s like standing on the opposite ends of the same island.  It’s like we’re distant cousins: We can’t relate.  But I don’t think we have to.

I’m really not that much different from anyone else and video games.  Confrontational, always seeking that “difference” between my tastes and everyone else.  Not a way to relate with anyone at all, I must say.  But given this, I don’t want my tastes to just be a point of contention for our friends in the press.  We can demonize them all we want, but the fact of the matter is that video game “press” is just good advertising, through and through.  Do I particularly like the incessant ramblings of Kotaku or Game Trailers, talking about how Nintendo is a trendsetter and must have some kind of sway over all games?  Not really.  I wouldn’t even go so far as to say they have a point, I just know that those conversations are there for whoever cares.

I don’t.  But it’s good to be aware of them, in any case.  Who else is gonna interview the people I may never speak to in my life?

No doubt was the game artistic, but whoever told Jonathan Blow that the Japanese method of puzzling the shit out of the… uh, player, with vagarities in story telling, was not exactly a story writer.  I finished it, and I believe that Braid is about a guy who is terrible at relationships.  Maybe it’s telling the story of a guy who worked on the atom bomb, maybe it’s just a dude who can’t learn from his mistakes.  Maybe if I reverse everything I read in the epilogue it all makes sense.

Maybe I, too cannot “connect the dots.”  If there’s no point, if there’s no “right” answer, if it’s all vague… then you didn’t tell a story.  You conveyed ideas, certainly, but you owe it to your audience to either have a concrete message or stop wasting their time.  What happened in Braid?  Who is Tim?  What did he do?  I don’t know for certain, and in these times, I don’t think I care.  Really interesting platformer, mind you.

I’m finishing up Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol and I’m gonna go see Little Brother in concert on the 27th.  He’s playing at a small venue up in D.C.  I live in dreams too, folks.  But it’s time for a dose of “real.”

There’s a cadence in the military that is called while marching in place.  The NCO controlling the element asks “What do you do when you’re ‘marking time?’” The element, or the soldiers marching in formation, respond with “Dress and cover!  Dress and cover!” It might come as a bit of a stretch, but I’d be more than willing to say that some of us enthusiasts are at another point where we’re marching in place, going through the daily grind waiting for the escape of our choice to arrive in stores.  Or maybe just emerge.

Well, I think I’ve seen enough “emergence” of stuff that I’m gonna “dress and cover” with a little introspective on what I’ve seen in this year so far.

If there’s one thing I’d like to remember 2008 for, as far as video games are concerned, it’s that this is the year many player childhoods were reaffirmed and even celebrated.  I realize all the jokes that can come from our own mouths or fingers that appear on monitors to be read by fellow cynicists everywhere… but even with jabs taken at “constant sequels” and claims of developers “running out of ideas”, there’s too much we now know about playing video games to really let that kind of thinking slide as players.

A lot of us need to step up our game, and a lot of us have even been given a second chance to give incentive to that need.  At least when it comes to how we play.

A lot of us, myself included, never truly grasped certain things about video games until the wise came out with some flipmode level shit and told us how it was.  The huge explosion of competitive games as of late has caused a bit of conflict between players of different opinions regarding what is and isn’t good conduct.  What does and doesn’t constitute a winner.  As players, a lot of us (myself included) are still learning about what it was we were playing in the past.  And there’s no one video game that currently known or unknown developer has to solely adhere to to make a great video game.

That said, there’s no escaping any label of cynicism if you want to take the time to laugh or scoff during this year and turn a blind eye to the releases announced.  Especially given that it’s affirmation that the ideas we’ve seen as players might not be obsolete to the point of not coming back to have another go.

Of the many sequels and remakes we’re now seeing, I am most familiar with the body of work emerging from Capcom.  Honestly, given what I know now, I can’t say it really surprises me at this point.  For all their supposed flaws, claims I’ve even tried to throw at a wall repeatedly to try and make them stick, Capcom has impecable business sense.  Both in design and in selling their product.  They knew when to withdraw from the market of fighting games (though some might say they also knew when they might have made a critical error as well with Street Fighter 3), and with the announcement of Street Fighter IV and Tatsunoko vs Capcom, they apparently have a good mind about how to step back in.

You might say they’re the L.L. Cool J of video games.  Around since the 80s and they still know what it takes to be relevent in today’s market.

Speaking of “stepping back in”, Mega Man 9 and Bionic Commando Rearmed mark two older Capcom series getting another lease on life, and they also mark the possibility of many more emerging in the near future.  Bionic Commando Rearmed gives Mega Man: Powered Up! company among remakes with dynamic new features and astonishing quality.  Not alone in their ventures, Konami follows suit with the WiiWare release of Gradius Rebirth and there are even rumors of a new R-Type on the horizon.  Namco’s recently released Galaga remake only cements a market that’s celebrating the potential profit to be made in making the “old” new again.

As far as Mega Man 9 goes, the Mega Man Network really seized the moment with their Mega Man Reset videos.  The Mega Man Reset is, as far as I’ve seen, the most comprehensive, indepth, and interesting look at the series in preparation for the upcoming and long-awaited sequel.  No offense to Patrick Klepak on MTV’s blog, I had commented that I just wasn’t feeling his piece, and I guess it’s mostly because Mega Man Reset really nailed it with their retrospective on the series.  Rife with cool facts and insight that really covers the span and scope of the game’s history and progression.

There are just some things some of us can’t see by going back and re-playing.  You’ve gotta go deeper than just the video game itself.  I’ll admit that if I did it, I’d tell you that I thought the original Mega Man peaked at Mega Man 3.  I really can’t say that in good conscience after hearing what the guys at MMN had to say about Mega Man 5.

That’s what’s up.

If you find yourself quoting Robot Man (“I wish SOMETHING would happen!”) and feeling like Random in regard to new games, there’s definitely something for you in the upcoming months.  At least if your childhood involved trips to the arcade or hours in front of a Genesis or Super Nintendo.

“I can’t do it”

This is about many things. Perhaps why I feel games aren’t art… perhaps why I regard them the way I do.  Perhaps why I need therapy.  What ever the case may be: I’ve had a swell of ideas in my head for the longest time, and I need a release.  Release, in this case, means destroying something I value for the sake of some comfort.  As a human being, we all have that desire to be heard.  To be validated and appreciated, or at least acknowledged.  The cruelest thing you can do to someone is deny them their rights as a human being.  To deny them existence.

I play video games.  I have since I was a child.  They mean the world to me, even if I were to say otherwise.  Because video games were life to me.  When I found the world outside to be harsh, when I found the walls of my home to be hostile… I found a place to retreat into in video games.  I found solace and solitude and ideal in the struggle of another world, but never my own.

Until recently.

Things have changed.  I have changed.  I spent 5 years in the military, learning to love myself, learning to love others, learning to love people.  Learning to love.  I’m still learning.  I found something to fight for, and that something was myself.  I spent 15 months in the desert reflecting on what every action in my life had meant, how my life had culminated to near 12-14 hour stints watching a broken country slowly mend itself back together as I tried to to figure out a way to keep myself together.

I needed a battle, some objective to accomplish every day of the week, every week in the month, every month in the year.  I would gladly be told what to do, if it only meant knowing what I was here for.  If it meant having a purpose.  I thought during the middle of that deployment to Iraq, I’d learned to accept myself, learned to be honest, and learned to live a little.  But there’s one thing I keep putting off.  One thing I didn’t quite understand until recently.

I play video games.  I have since I was a child.  In good times and bad.  Especially in bad.  And through them and my own personal experiences, I sometimes saw a world that I regarded as cold and unaccepting.  One that hurt and had people that could only be dealt with.  I saw decisions as “right” or “wrong”, the complicated grays of those decisions were just the unfortunate parts of life.  Eventually, I learned that I could more easily make decisions in games, while in life the only time I’d make a decision was if it meant that further down the line future decisions would be made for me.

These ideas weren’t conscious, I realize now that they were subconscious.  Something of a reflex deep inside, present whenever I felt afraid or hurt.  You know what else was subconscious?  My need to play video games.  I can go without for a while, but eventually I come around.  Is it an addiction?  I don’t think the word nearly does the work it needs to to describe this feeling.  Passion?  Impedement?  I don’t think I can do the work required to describe this feeling I have about them.  I’m gonna try, though.

It dawned on me when I was going over a game called “Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X.”  Mega Man, as described to me on a forum, is about a robot who runs around in his underwear and shoots other robots.  I guess that’s the perception of my generation.  If I said I believed it, my passion and actions regarding the subject would ultimately betray me.

I recently watched the video bonus that comes with the game, “Day of Sigma.”  When I had originally played the game, I never really took the time to analyze it the way someone might analyze a book or a movie.  This is, afterall, a video game about a robot who runs around in his underwear and shoots other robots.  Whoever crafted the story for this game intended for it to be in the vein of other modern retellings of old favorites.  Something like Batman Begins or Iron Man: Extremis.

In the original Mega Man X storyline, Replica Androids or “Reploids” based on the main character “X”, start endangering the world first by “going crazy” and then to eventually rebelling against the purposes lined out for them by their creators.  Sometimes it was about a mysterious “virus”, other times it wasn’t so simple.  Eventually, it just became so convoluted that you really just can’t say anymore.

Mega Man X is about a robot who runs around in his underwear shooting other robots.

You’d just have to buy the damn games and hope they were good.  Which they usually were.  Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X doesn’t quite beat you over the head with the things it remedies, you have to squint really hard and possibly formulate a few things in your mind based on what you saw going on.  Ever had a literature class?  Never been to film theory myself, so I couldn’t fucking tell you, but “symbolism” might just possibly come into play here.  Let’s explain the important parts of the Maverick Hunter X reboot if you regard it as a “serious” retelling.

1. The character Dr. Cain goes from being a well-meaning archeologist in decent health, to a well-meaning archeologist who, at his current stage in life, is a sad old man on a respirator.  In both Maverick Hunter X and Mega Man X, he is the man who discovers the capsule left by Dr. Thomas Light containing Mega Man X and introduces him to the world.  In both versions, he is also the man who spearheads the mass reproduction of the technology X represents.

In either version of Mega Man X, it is never made clear what Dr. Light’s intentions for X were other than to “help mankind.”  In what way X would facilitate this, we may never know.  The timeline of Mega Man X assumes that the internet never took off, but Robotics on the other hand are what drive the human race forward.

And this brings us to the differences in storyline.  There’s a virus to explain away and create a black and white in the form of “Maverick” Reploids and the “heroes” known as “Maverick Hunters.”  X being the most powerful and the main Maverick Hunter.  However, X is not a reploid, X is the original.  When we find Dr. Cain in Maverick Hunter X he is, again, on a respirator and in poor health.  The leader of the “Maverick Hunters” is a robot designed by Dr. Cain known as “Sigma.”  The scene itself is one I played off without much regard because I felt it was “boring.”  Quite honestly, it is.  However, I never took note of what was shown in the scene until recently.

Dr. Cain, in his poor health, surrounds himself with what appear to be toys.  A lot of them resembling old robots.  This entire scene with him and Sigma cruxes on a discussion about X and his “potential.”  I don’t feel the storytelling here is particularly strong, mostly because nothing is ever made clear about exactly what the hell it is Dr. Cain sees in X.  He does mention that it could change the current relationship between, as he calls it, robots and humans.  But what could that mean?  What is it?

Sigma mentions that he has an inability to be decisive and worries too much, and Cain retorts with “That is the source of his greatest strength”, while telling Sigma that he doesn’t have that problem.  X was designed to be sentient and think for himself, and supposedly all reploids feature that ability as well.  However, X is the only one who seems to exhibit a question for his lot in life… on the surface.

As it turns out, Sigma has the same questions about his purpose in life.  He’s merely more decisive about what he does to answer the question.  Sigma, in both games, is blamed for the Maverick outbreaks.  However, while the original Mega Man X eventually blames Zero as the cause of the crazed robots, Maverick Hunter X provides a completely different scenario.  Sigma controls the supposedly “berserk” mechaniloids, worker robots, creating seemingly random acts of violence.  Why is this?  Could it be that creating sentient robots en mass to do the work of other robots is selfish?  Grossly irresponsible?  The act of a sad and lonely old man?

I’d say that in this version the blame for the current situation can be placed on Dr. Cain.  While Sigma’s actions are hardly heroic, the programming of reploids is said to be well ahead of current standards and that Dr. Light was ahead of his time regarding the design and intentions for X.  Dr. Cain sits on a respirator while Sigma plots and schemes, eventually convincing himself that X’s “potential” is the key to changing the world.

Many of Sigma’s speeches in game come off as ridiculous, and they are as I don’t feel that they benefit the game any as villainous banter and the overall aesthetic of the game.  But they serve a purpose in that they make sense regarding a robot who understands itself no more than the original it is designed off of.  Why think for yourself when you can make something else do it for you?  Sigma eventually makes his move by launching a volley of missiles at the unnamed city the Maverick Hunters have been defending through the course of the short.  As this happens, we see a shot of Dr. Cain, holding one of his robot toys (literally surrounded by dozens of them) as he is engulfed in the bright light of the explosion.  This sparks the events of Maverick Hunter X in a fashion much darker than that of the original game manual’s account of the events before the actual video game even commences.

Ultimately, Sigma is that “berserk” Maverick that is always talked about in the story of these video games, but the logic for his actions in Maverick Hunter X makes far more sense than the entire story of the original Mega Man X series.  Sigma is robot based on a faulty reproduction of a superior product: X.  Dr. Cain is a well-meaning, but ultimately selfish human being that doesn’t quite realize that X was an experiment and not a final product to be reproduced in a shoddy fashion.  How typical of a scientist.

How fun was that?  How did we get here?  Well, here’s my point.

Maverick Hunter X is a video game.  It is regarded with all the stigma and perceptions video games receive, at least those that I know of in the USA and on, laugh here with me, the internet.  Why would I waste time dissecting the plot of a game that is clearly about a blue robot running around in his underwear shooting other robots?  Is there something I see that others don’t or am I clearly projecting my own perceptions on top of something that doesn’t really exist?  Honest question, folks.

Why do our video game fans pick and choose when a game is artistic?  Why the fuck should I have to bow in the glory of Shadow of the Colossus while other games I like to play are just “good as games.”  Why the fuck should I care what others think in that regard?

What is the source of my passion and what should my motivation be for wanting to bother blogging about video games when this is clearly a manner in which my interests for them manifest?

Why do I question the validity of my actions?  Here’s the answer: I believe I don’t have any.  Video games are not art, it’s fans (including myself) are a self-destructive and poisonous breed who pick and choose when they wish to be represented.  Some are just poisonous, so are just picking and choosing… and some are both.  But ultimately, when we talk about the “progression” of the art form (HAH) known as video games, we’re talking about ignoring everything that has ever occured and mainly focusing on those “good bits”, whereas entire histories of other media have broad, sweeping coverage of where they’ve been, where they’re going, and what they’re gonna do because of it.

I wanted to write a piece about how Jet Grind Radio is the greatest Hip Hop themed game I’ve ever seen.  But there’s always this nagging voice in the back of my head that stops me.  Maybe it’s my “inner-hater”, aptly described at “Illdoctrine.com” as that tiny little voice in your head that’s always trying to keep a person down and stop them from creating.  But to be honest, and this is where I started earlier, I don’t believe that.  I believe that my perceptions of video games are an outlet for escape regarding my entire life.  The life of a human and their own personal perception of their worth, is validated through struggle and the results of that struggle.  And to be honest, I’m tired of spearheading a movement in which the only believer is myself.  I can talk about things I believe in to myself, all day.  That’s right, I’ve got water and air and food and place to do this hot shit… All.  Day.

But fuck that.  Mega Man isn’t seen as fine art or literature.  Neither are video games.  I don’t care what your argument, what special little shining example you have out there as to what could be the conclusive evidence that “VIDEO GAMES ARE VALID.”  Because they aren’t.  Because for every Shadow of the Colossus or GTAIV example you have, I have a long winded description about Mega Man X or Dangun Feveron or Mud Pies or Spy Hunter or Bubble Bobble to show you that will either make you feel guilty about possibly believing in the assumption that this is a fine, cultural statement about our times or will make you go “Wow, this motherfucker is thinking way too deeply into this shit.”

Video games are products, a subsection of things we do to kill time when we have nothing else better to do.  Money is the price of admission, but the difference here is that perception from believers and non-believers has that same strikingly similar resonance of complete and utter invalidation.  To the point where making something fun was never even an attempt.

Did that hurt?  I think it did, but it feels good to get that off my chest.

I love video games.  I play video games.  I have since I was a child.  But life is struggle, and the only thing you need to know is that I realize I need to spearhead the struggle for my own life rather than focus on this fixation with the struggles of others.

I’ve been in a lot of discussion lately as far as video games and writing are concerned.  I’m certainly opinionated about the medium, but I don’t think I have the writing talent or the ideas to really facilitate any sort of respectable publication on my own.  The truth is, this is all therapy in some shape or form.  And given that there aren’t many responses, it’s easy to tell whether or not my “work” really “speaks” to people.

It doesn’t.

While I thought that was initially my intention, I think that these few brief months have provided me with the kind of knowledge I had wanted to obtain from the outset of writing.  I learned that I have a ways to go as a writer.  I learned that I don’t quite have the focus.  I’ve also learned that I might not necessarily be writing about the things I truly should.  Perhaps my passion is compensation for something lacking in my life.  I need to recanoiter, catch and mold these ideas into my into something other than a blob of text on the screen that amounts to “Hey, this was an idea.”

I need to speak to people.  That or I need to do something else.

Video games and credibility are something I usually don’t think much of.  “I like great video games”, I tell myself.  There are a lot of games I swear I really enjoy, when in reality I just mean video games that I used to enjoy and now just think fondly of while I keep them forever at arm’s length from my person and game playing aparatus.  Sure, I’ll recommend them to anyone… while never playing them again.  Unfortunately, unlike books or movies or music, I find video games to be a different sort of investment.  Which is probably what causes this behavior of mine. I’ll try to pick up one of those games I used to be really fond of, in an attempt to try and relieve those glory days of old, and then I’ll find myself turning it off and allowing it to collect dust after I’ve thoroughly reminded myself why the magic is gone and only memories remain.

Maybe you might have more luck than I am with replaying these games:

Chrono Trigger - In light of news that we’ll be seeing the port of the title on the Nintendo DS this very year, I might actually find reason to play the game again… or, more likely than the former, regret the purchase!  The truth is, when I was a kid, I played Chrono Trigger to the near death of the cartridge’s battery.  It wasn’t even my copy, it was my older sister’s.  I spent my time doing things from trying to obtain every ending, to eventually investing my time into a level grind to “max out” the stats of all the characters.  One save file for the path where I kept Magus alive, the other for the one where I did not!

I’ll take “Things I now consider stupid” for 200, Alex.

Chrono Trigger, to me, used to be one of those perfect games.  Now it’s just an exception, though no less awesome in my eyes. I probably just played it to death, the fault of the game itself for being “that damn good.”  My criteria for a perfect game is that, overall, the game element that makes it so pleasant is transparent and easy to identify.  My good friend Aragorn once noted to me that the game did one thing well that most Role-Playing Games (Japanese) seemed to just not have the chops for: Pacing.

Atlus seems to have caught up in the recent years, so this statement is very much in question.  But it worked at the time, serious!

Plot-wise (hah), Chrono Trigger always had a curveball up its sleeve.  Save the princess?  Get arrested.  Discover way to possibly change the future?  Get annihilated in the process.  Helped save the Queen?  Annoying little snot of a boy gets your “Hero Status.”

There was always this desire to keep playing just to see what was next.  Without overanalyzing this (HI CHRONO SERIES FANS), the game had a great sense of adventure to it.  With New Game+, the ability to experiment or just stomp the crap out of bosses just never got old… I guess until I aged a few years.

I already know what the plot of Chrono Trigger is, how things turn out and such… everytime I pick up the game to relive the magic, I realize that the impact of the game’s story is still there.  Just that the magic of the game can’t facilitate reliving that impact.

I find myself forcing the act of going through the motions of leveling and advancing the plot and I soon find myself going “Ah, yes, that was why I liked it.  All done.”  I will probably be right in front of Guardia Castle by this point, talking to Marle disguised as Nadia.  I just can’t do it, because I’ve done it all already.

The game has nothing more to offer me than just that ocassional dose of Nostalgia.  If I need a dose of those few memorable tunes and scenes, to get that spine-tingling sensation that I got the very first time we booted up the game, I usually just facilitate this through a trip to YouTube or something.

How about that DS port, eh?

After my discharge from the military, I planned to go back to school.  I’ve pretty much been in the middle of trying to make that happen, and I’m in the middle of Virginia just doing all the things I never had the guts to attempt while in the Army.  My first car, my first apartment, and my first attempt at living on my own.  My brother has kindly been assisting me in the process, so I can’t say I’m doing it “on my own” or “by myself” in this regard.  More importantly, it’s really brought back some fond memories of my childhood.  Allowing me to revisit things from the past with a level of maturity and knowledge I didn’t have before.

My brother is a Hip-Hop head.  Hopefully that’s not a derogatory way of putting it.  While I’ve listened to a lot of the stuff he played while I was a kid, I was never able to have an appreciation or understanding of the elements of Hip-Hop he exposed me to during my youth.  Given that I never really took the time to understand what it was I was taking in, it’s been funny to listen to music from Eric B. and Rakim and think to myself “Wow, Hideki Naganuma really took a lot from these guys.”

This is gonna require some dedication and work, so I’m gonna do some homework, and cook something up for you folks.  See you soon.

Thanks to Aerno for this one. I think it’d be insulting to say this reminds me of Rez… because it does, but mostly because the use of on screen action and sound are the same for both Rez and this cool video. But I’d more say it’s indicative of the genre.  Definitely check the MySpace page, some serious talent on display here.

The methods I would employ to expressing my ideas are inclusive.  At least, that’s what I would like to achieve when discussing video games.  It’s usually never really the case at times and I would really like to change that.  I’d use David Sirlin as an example of a person who has great ideas and a wealth of knowledge that comes from playing a game for the sake of the game and nothing else, and can dispense that knowledge in a way that it can be respected and acknowledged.

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