1) What is your age? 26, gaming since the mid 80's.

2) Is your association with pc-games rather positive or negative? In other words, would you consider yourself to be a pc-game enthusiast or a non-gamer? Primarily a PC gamer, though my attitude towards the industry is somewhat neutral. A lack of creativity, and the sequel driven industry is disappointing and the quality of user interfaces in games has declined an almost incomprehensible amount in the last 10yrs or so with the advent of console ports that were never designed with the mouse as a primary intercae component. Such basis GUI elemnts as drop down menus is now pretty much extinct in games. Nevertheless, the open ended easily patched and modded state of PC games the decades worth of quality gaming material and the thriving indy gaming scene mean there is a lot available on the PC that will never be able to be appreciated on consoles.

3) If you play games, what type of game genre do you prefer? PC Centric>RPG, Adventure, turn based strategy, Sports Management sims. Consoles>Platformers, Arcade ****sports games.


4) Name 6 adjectives that come into your mind when you think of computer games? Stagnant, Open, Accessible, Copycat, Piracy, Depth.

Explanation for my adjectives:

Stagnant-The industry as a whole as seen very little progress, or sustained development. It's all bigger, and more of the same.

Open- Games themselves are open, easily modded and altered and typically have far more in-game options then console variants do. The internet ensures multiplayer options are simply and easily added with no extra expense from the consumers perspective.

Accessible-With such a sheer variety over so many years there is quality material out there for anyone, with any budget on any PC. Even a 10yr old PC with a budget of $0.00 as years worth of surprisingly good abandonware game, and freeware indy released. A 20yr old PC can cheaply purchase and play a game like Exile and get a better RPG experience then modern triple AAA games like Oblivion.

Copycat-Very little that's new and innovative, we get more of the same thrust upon us with regularity. If any game does successfully bring out something different then every single game copies it. The absolute ton of WWII type shooters with similar names, all RPG's ultimately being first person action adventure games with character advancement ever since Morrowind, with no variation from that routine.

Piracy-Massive, and impossible to prevent. Pirated games easily available to anyone anywhere in the world on the internet. Cracks available immediately upon release that actually make playing games more convenient if you do crack it then go through the myriad anti-piracy schemes. When any game is available on or occasionally even before the release date, and anyone can get at them with ease and it's near impossible to catch the distributors and downloaders...the sheer profit lost probably vastly exceeds legitimate purchasers.

Depth-PC's will ultimately always be more powerful then consoles, with plenty of memory and huge hard drives. As consoles are ultimely derived from computer hardware (albeit not necessarily mainstream hardware that would be put into a PC), this will always be a fact. Leading to more potential on the PC side, and the interface will mean far more flexibility.

Even something as basic as PC Sports Management sims are incredibly difficult to adequately put out a console experience to match what PC gamers saw in the late 90's.

You don't have to, BGII + TOB expansion stands on it's own pretty well. It'll be a mild benefit if you know the storyline, and the very start of the game may be a bit confusing if you haven't played it but it's more then capable of being played individually.

The biggest downside would probably be missing out on all the NPC's references and "in jokes" about the previous game, it's nothing essential and the base storyline is almost entirely unaffected by any lack of knowledge of the original.

If at all possible I would recommend playing the BG I first though, it's an absolutely stellar game but if you go back to it after playing BGII you'll miss out on a lot of the enjoyment because there is always the overaching experience of how dramatically superior BG II turned out to be, which tends to pale the experience somewhat.

With a game with such a strong storyline, and so many throughly enoyable NPC's with what is still probably an unparalleled amount of depth to them you'll miss out on the emotional attacgment to what happens to Imoen in BG II, and she'll probably come across as a fringe character. The Jaheira/Khalid revelation early in BG II will seem meaningless to you as well.

All said- the base story line stands on it's own easily. But there is so much else, that I strongly recommend playing BG I first.

Stellar games, and easily far far superior to anything that's come out in the last half decade or so for RPG's.

If you eniy BG I/II look for the IceWind Dale series... same engine, same gametype but without quite depth BG offered. Great games nonetheless.
Planescape Torment is a somewhat similar gametype as well, and one of the incredibly rare games that can stand up to BG II in quality if you can manage to hunt down an old copy.

He's long since dead, but I vaguely recall him trying Duck Hunt for the NES once.
I don't think playing one game one time really counts as being a gamer however, so no.

Neither of my parents ever played games. One of my three sisters played (and I think she still does on the rare occasion) however. Primarily older NES/SNES action games and platformers, I know she still has her old Vectrex as well for those that recall early 80's consoles.

Exile: Escape From the Pit released Jan, 95... so 12.5yrs. Prior to that was Rygar, released in July, 87... slightly more then 20 yrs ago.

Newest game I'm playing would be Jade Empire (PC version) released in Feb, 07.

The original Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad for the PC was absolutely ideal, the best gamepad I've ever used.
Second to that would likely be the SNES controller.

Not sure I've had any gamepads that I've truly loved since the advent of analog gamepads.
Among current consoles... I suppose the XBox360's gamepad is probably the best of them it's adequately comfortable and easy enough to use and reasonably flexible for different genres. Not a huge fan of the placement of the d-pad and left analog stick and the face buttons aren't as responsibe to rapid presses as I'd hope but it's better then most.

On the PC I generally use Nyko's AirFlo, an odd choice perhaps but I haven't found anything better. Only major complaint with it is the trigger buttons are a bit noisy and have relatively poor response to them.

Anything not yet released that would appear to potentially offer a significant change in gaming that currently available products that it would compete with cannot easily match.

If it's already available for purchase by the average consumer, then it is by definition most assuredly "current" generation.