Hey kiddies.

I'm editing episode 46 of the podcast right now. As Slunks before him, ShenlongBo enjoyed himself healthily as he contributed to our immature and nonsensical banter. It's a good one - be sure to look out for it. It'll be posted by tomorrow morning. Shen'll be back, most definitely. As will Slunks.

Onto the future, though. For Episode 47, recording this Saturday, May 19th, we'll be discussing the phenomenon whereby videogame journalists leave to take jobs in the videogame industry proper - developing, publishing, et cetera. You've seen it happen here on Gamespot with the exodus of former Site Directors Greg Kasavin and Joe Fielder, and former associate editors Carrie Gouskos, Bob Colayco and Amer Ajami. Ziff Davis' 1up.com has seen Che Chou and Luke Smith join Microsoft, as well as Kraig Kujawa leaving EGM for Midway.

What does this mean? Does this mean anything? What does this say, if anything, about the state of videogame journalism? Is Luke Smith's idea that developers speaking directly to gamers, without the layers of PR and journalism in between, a sound one? Is game journalism really a layer, or is it necessary for honest reporting where developers can have the power to control the message?

We thought there would be no better way to discuss this than to have a bona fide game journalist in the conversation. Thankfully, Gamespot associate editor Alex Navarro graciously answered our request to help us out with this topic. If all goes well and the Tech Gods are all with us, this will go off without a hitch.

So, if you've got questions for Alex, please - as always - be sure to send them into mailbag [at] trigames [dot] net (or use the form here). You can send in your typical mailbag questions, but I have a request: try to also/instead send in a question pertaining to the topic itself too. We will not be debating the merits of cake versus pie. That's already been done elsewhere.

Oh, and be sure to check out the Gamespot Community's other podcasters. I will pre-emptively apologize for not knowing anyone else's, but I will throw a shout-out to Ryvvn and LeideN's Gameslaves Radio podcast and the brand-new Gamer's Lounge podcast, spearheaded by NeoJedi, juradai, ish, Darrogamer and Capin. (They have an interview with Big Huge Games' CEO Brian Reynolds!! If you've played Catan, now you'll get to hear the man behind the game.)