Having just seen On The Spot Live at EA Los Angeles, I must say I am very impressed with the products EA will be putting out this holiday season. The show highlighted three of EA's holiday-season products: The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth (PC), Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault (PC) and GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (Xbox, PS2, GameCube). All three games looked stunning and were packed to the gills with some very impressive features. I wanted to buy those games the minute the show ended.

But then I remembered Need For Speed Underground. I remembered how psyched I got for the game. I remember counting the days till I could get my hands on a copy. I remember watching the previews from E3 2003, spellbound at the thought of an underground street racing game with EA's dollars behind it. And I remember how, a week after first playing the game, I was left with an empty feeling of lack of fulfilment inside, the game having been revealed to be a shallow, cheap racer wrapped in Hollywood production values.

Now I don't want the three games highlighted in the show. Because I know they can't possibly be half as good as their producers hyped them to be.

I know what you're thinking... 'Duh!' But the fact is, we consumers are very susceptible to marketing and promotional efforts, whether we know it or not. Companies like EA spend millions of dollars finding out exactly how to push our buttons in just the right ways to get us to buy the games. And in the videogame industry, EA is the undisputed king of hype. Why else would Madden outsell ESPN NFL year after year, even on years where ESPN is the better game?

So I got bit. They got me, hook, line and sinker. But as the realization dawned on me that I had been had, that NFSU was not the game I had been sold (if you get my meaning), I resolved never to be had by EA again.

Now I'll be Microsoft's *****. Halo 2, bring it on! 8)

I've always had a love-hate relationship with Japanese RPGs. I've always loved the rich storytelling, highly-produced visuals and sound and campy, doe-eyed characters. They've always had a quirky, playful quality that I've enjoyed very much...

... while watching others play.

I never played them myself. I never had the patience to. I always hated the random battles, turn-based fighting, complex item collection and character development and awful dialog. Oh, I've tried a couple of times. I remember anticipating Final Fantasy 7 as much as the next guy, picking it up and playing it religiously for a week. Then I dropped it like a hot potato and went back to Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. A year later, I tried again with Pokemon Red on Gameboy Color. Played it for another week, dropped it again and went back to Tetris.

Now I'm trying again. This time the game is Final Fantasy III on Super Nintendo, which I am playing via emulation on my Pocket PC. Should make a good diversion while waiting for the bus (or even riding on the bus). My friend (the same person who owns Onimusha 3) got me hooked on it last weekend, and I played it for a couple of hours on his PC (via emulation).

Maybe I'll actually stick with it this time. And that might lead to my taking an interest in newer JRPGs in the future. You never can tell.

For some reason, even though I don't like the game much, I always seem to keep going back to Need For Speed Underground. Last night I started my third profile for the game, and played the first few events. i've already completed Underground mode twice, the second time doing all the events on Hard mode and collecting all but one magazine covers.

So why do I keep going back to this game? I have no idea. When I think about it, the game is shallow and lacking in passion or substance. Compared to previous Need For Speed games, this one doesn't have much to recommend it. No replay mode. No visible or effective car damage. No cop presence. Graphics that are average... for a PS2. Not to put too fine a point on it, the game is mediocre at best.

But like that store in the mall you always stop in even though you know you have no business being there, NFSU has precisely the right style of seductive pizazz that EA is known for. The intro video - an over-produced stylized CG romp for the MTV generation is the hook. Then, Lil' Jon and Tha Eastside Boyz draw you through the menus. And then, once you start racing, the hollywood-style effects like motion blur, camera shake and whooshing sound effects combine to create a high like your favorite drug.

And, just like your favorite drug, the high never lasts, and you feel dirty afterwards. Bah.

Today it really hit home for me. The PlayStation 2 is old! It's just.... old!

I guess a bit of background is in order. I bought the PS2 (secondhand from a friend) about six or so months after it was released. I loved it, and bought several games for it. It replaced my aging Dreamcast as my console of choice.

That was before I moved to Cuba in the summer of 2001, leaving my PlayStation 2 behind. For two years I was without console gaming of any kind, then I bought an Xbox in the summer of 2003, and that's been my only console experience. Today my Xbox is packed with music, and I have six games - the totality of my console gaming experience for the past three years. Cuba will do that to you.

Anyway, one of my friends has a PS2. I met him last Spring, and I was aware he had one, but the games he had never really appealed to me (mostly JRPGs and fighting games). Well, over the summer he bought Onimusha 3, and today I went over to play it.

In a word, Ugh! After a great looking intro movie, the reality of PS2 graphics hit home. Horribly low-poly models and environments graced the screen, cavorting around, the joints painfully visible. Textures were drab, blurry. Lighting was flat and equally dull. Special effects looked kind of nice, but wound up feeling garish next to the otherwise-drab textures and environments.

One thing I didn't remember from my PS2 days was the Dual Shock controller. Holding it in my hands tonight, I couldn't believe I ever was able to play a game using it. It's just too damn small! Plus, the palm stalks are uncomfortable, the action buttons are too widely spaced out, and the shoulder buttons hurt my hands. I longed for the smooth trigger and molded hand grips of my Xbox controller S.

And then... saving the game on memory cards! Ugh! And the whole process of first checking to see if the memory card is there, then the interminable wait as it saves, (don't turn off the PS2 while it's saving!) then the confirmation. And the way it says "Saving to your MEMORY CARD (PS2)..." "Checking for your MEMORY CARD (PS2)"... "Your MEMORY CARD (PS2) is full, please empty some space on your MEMORY CARD (PS2)" etc... as if you didn't know it was a memory card and it went in your PS2...

Hard drives are so much more elegant.

After about 10 minutes of that torture, I simply couldn't play anymore. The bad graphics, the uncomfortable controller, the MEMORY CARD (PS2)... all just put me off. I handed the controller to a buddy and just sat, content to watch.

Yes folks.... the PS2 is old!

Who is Peter Jackson?
Who is J.K. Rowling?
Who is Calvin Broadus?

Easy questions, right? Unless you’ve been living under the proverbial rock, you should have at least heard of all three of those personalities (hint: you may know Calvin Broadus better by his showbiz name, Snoop Dogg.)

OK. Now try this on for size: Who is Leslie Benzies? Give up? Well, what if I told you that this person is the producer behind one of the most popular, biggest selling game franchises of this generation? Still stumped? I’ll let you stew on it for a moment.

 Today, videogames is a multi-billion dollar industry. Games cost several million dollars to make, and are commanding an increasingly large chunk of the entertainment dollars of 18-34 year olds. The evidence, both anecdotal and researched, is all around us. And it’s no surprise; videogames can and often do provide the most compelling, most visceral and most engrossing entertainment experiences of any modern entertainment medium. And as the technology gets better, the experiences only get richer, deeper and more enthralling.

 So why is it that, aside from a handful of standouts, the people who make videogames are virtual unknowns, even to the people who play them? Ask anyone who follows entertainment, and at the very least they’ll be able to tell you that Peter Jackson’s a moviemaker, J.K. Rowling is a writer and Snoop Dogg is a rapper/entertainer. But ask about Leslie Benzies, producer of the Grand Theft Auto games, and you’ll get a blank stare, even from many gamers who have played the games. And before you go saying ‘I knew that,’ here’s a follow up question: Is Leslie Benzies male or female? Chances are, you don't know. I didn't until I started researching for this article. I tried emailing Rockstar North to find out. Finally I just googled for his/her bio. And came up with no answer.

 I mean, for a hobby we love so much, we really don’t care much for the people who make this stuff, do we? Fans of other entertainment mediums celebrate their heroes. They idolize them. They make fansites, buy posters, watch, read or listen to every work they release, check the newspapers and the tabloids for any snippets of info. And their enthusiasm rubs off on the rest of us, causing us to find some measure of interest in celebrity lives. Why else do MTV shows like Cribs and punk’d continue to get ratings? In comparison, there are precious few fansites devoted to game makers. Shigeru Miyamoto, perhaps gaming’s best-loved designer, has only 320 fansites listed on Google. Will Wright, designer of the best-selling game in the world ever, has just 350 (mostly about The Sims). Yet Vin Diesel, an actor whose career, some say, has peaked, enjoys over 2200 fansites, and you’ll probably never see an MTV Cribs episode in John Carmack’s home.

 So why don’t game makers get any love? I think the biggest reason is that videogames are the only entertainment medium in which the entity associated with the production of a work is typically a company and not a person or a group of people. Look on any book cover: the author is named, often in larger type than is given to the title of the book. Look on any CD cover: the performer is named, often with an accompanying photograph. Look at any movie poster or DVD cover: the stars and the top-level production staff are always listed. Now look on any game cover: all you’ll see are the publisher and developer logos, with not a single human being credited with contributing to the game’s development. Sure, there are some exceptions, usually for marketing purposes or cashing in on a big-name designer… “Sid Meier’s Civilization”, “A game by Michel Ancel, creator of Rayman”, etc. but these are used for only a small handful of big-name designers.

 Another reason might be that making games doesn’t appear to be a glamorous or exciting thing to do. A performance – be it athletic, dramatic or musical – is an exciting thing to watch, and an even more exciting thing to participate in… that’s the whole point of performing arts: to excite both the performer and the viewer or listener. Staring at computer screens and poring over technical documents for 18 hours a day can hardly be considered exciting in comparison, can it? It comes off as being drudgery, and no-one wants to know about that. Most of us have enough drudgery in our lives.

 Some may claim that making a game is a collective effort, made by dozens – sometimes hundreds – of people, and that recognizing just a handful of people would be unfair to the rest of the team. I don’t buy that for a second, simply because the situation is similar in Hollywood. As in movies, most of the members of a game production team are simply bodies who do what they’re told, no more, no less. And as with movies, there is usually a small handful of people at the top whose collective vision defines what the game will be, and those people definitely deserve to have their names on the box, as far as I am concerned.

 Whatever the reason may be, we simply don’t show much love for the people who make the games we love. Maybe that’s a good thing; after all, fame has its drawbacks; intense media scrutiny and constantly having to deal with ‘hangers-on’ are just two of them. The problem is, on some level this can lead to a lack of appreciation of the games themselves. Movies and books are almost sacred in our society. We demand near-total silence in a movie theater; our eyes and ears stay glued to the action, and woe betides anyone who gives away major plot points. Great movie lines or music lyrics become part of the lexicon of our society. Yet many of us will repeatedly skip through cut-scenes in games, or play without sound or, horror of horrors, cheat to skip levels. I have a feeling that if we knew more about the people who made the game, we’d be less likely to play it in a way contrary to what the developers intended.

 Fortunately, it seems developers are taking some steps to get their names out there. Many games these days come with ‘behind-the-scenes’ and ‘making-of’ featurettes right on the disc. The internet has of course made developers more available to fans, with message boards and email playing a great part in that. Credits screens are now accessible from the main menu of many games, and some even include photos.

 But we shouldn’t be happy until Will Wright gets his own Cribs special. Only then can we truly say ‘Gaming has arrived’.

The hardest gaming task I ever completed was finishing Grand Theft Auto III. I still haven't finished Grand Theft Auto Vice City. I feel ashamed,