"Divorce is for when you want to cut something off so you don't need to worry about it anymore." -ChiliDragon, while we watched the scene in "Wedding Crashers" where the two dudes mediate a divorce Now I know, intellectually, that what my dear Chili meant by this is that divorce should be a clean start rather than something dragged out for years on end as the two sides quibble over who should get what in the settlement, but I am terrified nevertheless.

A couple of weeks back I put up part one of my Ten Commandments of Blogging. I got a pretty good amount of positive feedback and requests for the second half. So here it is. While the first half of my Ten Commandments were dedicated to listing things that you, as a blogger, should try and avoid doing. This segment is dedicated to things that a person should try and do in order to build their readership.

As always, constructive feedback is welcome and appreciated. People leaving non-constructive feedback will be referred to Kratos, from the God of War games, for corrective action. Since he recently got absolutely shafted by Gamespot for Action/Adventure game of the year honors, he's in a foul mood. Best not anger him. Give traffic in order to get traffic To some people this is going to come across as a bit of a no-brainer, but it is worth including anyways. If you read the blogs of other people and add comments, then other people are more likely to do the same back. It isn't a given. Your own blog still has to have good substance to it. However, by acknowledging the great writing of other people you will, more often than not, have the favor returned.

As a bonus, every comment that you leave on other peoples' blog will be read by their entire readership. So if you leave entertaining, thoughtful, zany, etc. comments on other peoples' blogs then you increase the odds that part of their readership will also become part of your readership! I started tracking GabuEx, for example, after reading his insightful comments in a blog of mine about Japanese RPGs. To a lot of people this will still seem a bit counterintuitive. If you link to a good blog post that someone else put up, then aren't you then directing people away from your blog? In the short term the answer is yes. In the long term though, people will appreciate it and return the favor. Not only that, the people who came to your blog still ended up reading something really good and will remember that you pointed them in the direction of the quality read in the first place. Blogging is all about having something of substance for people to enjoy. It can be something funny, serious or somewhere in-between, but a blog without content is a blog that isn't being read. This brings me to my next point. Update your blog on a regular basis We have to be careful here, as this advice can be often misconstrued. Your updates have to be high quality. Updating just for the sake of putting a new blog post up without making certain that the new blog is worthwhile in other peoples' minds will actually make you lose traffic. Why is that you ask? Because every time you put a throwaway blog up that someone spends their valuable time reading, it leaves them with a bad taste in their mouth and the feeling that you just wasted their time. This in turn will cause them to be less likely to click on your topic title in the future. By adding a new blog post just for the sake of getting something new up, you've actually cost yourself future readership. That aside though, if you update your blog frequently with high quality content, then people will get in the habit of reading you. I want to stress that. People are creatures of habit. If checking to see if you have a new blog up, and if you do clicking on it to go read, becomes a part of someone's daily routine then you'll have gained a new reader that will stay with you through the thin times when you suffer from writer's block. Ultimately, continuing to write and put out fresh, interesting material requires a serious commitment from you. Building and keeping a readership isn't something that can be done half-*****. (More on this later) Have a personality, not just an opinion What I mean by this is that merely having an opinion on a particular subject often isn't enough to have people care about your opinion. You have to take it one step further and present your opinions in a way that entertains people. Put simply, blogging differs from writing a research paper. You can have all the best arguments and facts supporting your opinion in the world, but people have short attention spans. You've got to make them want to keep reading. You've also got to get them to come back and to do that you need to be memorable. So, what sort of personality should you have? Are you the funny guy? The weird guy? The grouchy guy? Maybe you are the boobs guy? Well, that's up to you. Ideally it should be your own personality to the greatest extent possible. People pick up on phonies better than you think. But whatever you choose, your personality should make people consider you to be a real person. I can throw out a few examples of this. Arcadius and SYdoggXxX, two of my readers, are PC fanatics. They love pretending that they are more PC fanboyish than they actually are. They are among a handful of people I think about whenever I am blogging or thinking about a PC related issue. I've come to value their opinions on PC related things. Nor are they alone in my mind. I can think of a half-dozen or so other people who immediately come to mind when I think about various subject matters. For example, when I think about strategy games and military matters, I often think of raven28256. People should feel like they know you, even if they really don't. That may sound a bit Machiavellian to some people, but really it isn't. Blogging is, in a way, selling "you". By writing a blog you are making a bold statement that your opinion is worth reading and should be valued by complete strangers. The only way people will come to agree with you is if they read long enough to start to value what you have to say. To do that, you need to be entertaining enough to hold their attention. Don't go overboard here. A good online personality can't replace solid writing. It is the gravy on the turkey, not the turkey itself. Pick topics that aren't done to death A while back, Bozanimal did a great three part blog on Bathroom Etiquette. It was hilarious and stands out in my mind after all this time because it was a unique topic. It wasn't a done to death debate on which was the better game between Rainbow Six: Vegas and Gears of War. I've been a regular reader of Boz's stuff ever since. Part of standing out is seeing things that would make for good discussion topics that everyone else isn't already talking about. I'm not saying you need to do this all the time. There is, after all, nothing wrong with debating the merits of one game against another. It is a perfectly valid thing to blog about. But on the other hand, picking the road less travelled once in a while – getting off of the beaten path – can both impress people and make them remember you. When you think about it, this makes a certain amount of sense. No matter how much a person may love Halo 3, reading about it starts to get old when you've read 150 blog posts about the game already. Stick with it over the long haul This is related to updating your blog frequently. Building up a readership takes time. It may be a while until you've got enough of a presence to have people coming to look at your stuff on a regular basis. It will also take longer for some people than it will for others. Let's face it, some people are just naturally gifted in this area. So if you churn out a blog post a week for four weeks, find that you only have seven people tracking you, and then just give up then you'll start from scratch when you pick it back up again six months later. You'll lose momentum. Think of Newton's Laws of Physics: An object in motion will stay in motion. An object at rest will stay at rest. Blogging is the same way. If you have momentum, then it is far easier to keep things going than it is to start all over again from scratch. Or if you prefer blogging is like sex. One night stands are fun, but ultimately if you want to be important in someone's life you have to be in it for the long haul. (Heh. Did any of my regular readers really think I was going to write some 1500 words without a single sexual metaphor? Shame on you all!) And that's it! I hope everyone enjoyed my Ten Commandments of Blogging. Keep in mind that these are just general guidelines. Hopefully they were helpful but if they weren't, then at the very least keep following the last commandment: stick with it!

Hey folks, This is just a quick blog post to let everyone know that the potty mouthed ChiliDragon has gone and gotten herself suspended. (OUCH! She just hit me too! I was just teasing dear!) But in all seriousness, she objected strongly to Super Mario Galaxy winning Game of the Year award. Having read her blog, I can't say I agree with the suspension since it WAS in a blog post and her crimes were pretty darn minor. Fortunately, it is only a day long suspension since she's never really been in trouble with the site before so she'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, she'd love to have the 6 comments that her blog got PM'd to her inbox since they were also deleted. And last, but not least, I still have my RPG of the Year Award blog open for discussion and comments. Please feel free to continue to visit, read, and respond. I really would love to continue seeing what people think.

Author's Note: My part 2's of both the Ten Commandments of Blogging and the Japanese RPGs are Dead blogs are coming. I saw a crime committed today on Gamespot and had to correct it. Introduction Recently, Gamespot proved, yet again, that they have been seriously lacking in taste when it comes to role playing games ever since Greg Kasavin left the site when they awarded Persona 3 the genre award for best RPG of the year. Now, I don't want to get too snarky about this peculiar choice, which went against roughly 97% of the voting population of the site, but this year's choice of Persona 3 as the best rpg of the year is really only useful for one thing: separating those who know and love rpg titles from those who need to remove their heads from their glory holes. For those of us who, like me, eat, breathe and make sweet animal love to rpg titles, there were only two acceptable choices for the top honors in the RPG field in this, another dry year overall for the genre. (Links to my personal reviews included.) 1. Mass Effect 2. The Witcher Now, I have nothing against Persona 3. I have played the game extensively, written a detailed review of the game and referenced it in several previous blog posts like this one. However, Persona 3 is a niche game. Specifically, it is a niche game that only those who absolutely adore and treasure all things Japanese and Anime could possibly love unconditionally. For others, like me, it evokes mixed feelings. We love the game for the attention to detail and great characters, but hate it for the many shortcomings mentioned in my review. A game that inspires mixed feelings in the mainstream lovers of its genre cannot be the best representative of its genre. It just can't. The voting of the Gamespot public reflects this. 97% chose a different game as their top choice, and there were only five choices to choose from. Now, I don't necessarily agree that the game that gets the most votes should automatically get the award for best rpg, but 3% is a pretty low vote total. So, which is the better game between The Witcher and Mass Effect? Frankly, this is like trying to choose between whose breasts you'd most like to cuddle up against: Lindsey Lohan's or Jessica Alba's. There isn't really a wrong answer, but merely debating between the two is good, clean fun. So, without further ado, let the debate begin! Storyline Both of the two games have seriously deep and thought provoking storylines. Both storylines unfold rather slowly due in large part to just how many side quests are available to do. In general, Mass Effect's story is told better due to its superior voice acting, dialog and facial expressions. On the other hand, The Witcher allows for a far greater feeling that you have true free will behind your actions. Its magnificent use of flashbacks to show the unintended consequences of your actions in previous chapters really makes the player feel like each choice they make during the missions they undertake can have huge, rippling effects. I'm going to call this one a tie. Character Development The central characters in Mass Effect, like most characters in Bioware games, show a great deal of attention to detail. Once again, due to the amazing voice acting and dialog, the characters that you interact with, even the side characters, seem alive and personable. However, the main characters don't really talk much during the game compared to previous Bioware efforts like Knights of the Old Republic and their opinion of you doesn't change based on your choices during the game. Frankly, they feel, dare I say it, a bit on the shallow side? The Witcher took a slightly different route. Rather than giving the characters you encounter very fixed personalities, it gives them certain baseline characteristics and then allows for your moral choices in the game to impact how they end up acting later on. Did you choose to side with Yaevinn over Siegfried in the conflict between the nonhumans and the Order of the Flaming Rose? Siegfried changes a lot later on in the game because of that decision. On the other hand, when it comes to facial expressions, body motions and side characters, Mass Effect ends this category with the slightest of edges.



Setting and Atmosphere This is another challenging category to render a verdict on. How do you choose between the incredibly detailed and well-thought out galaxy that Mass Effect offers up and the grimy, mature feeling cesspool that The Witcher gives? The two games took nearly opposite approaches for their setting. Mass Effect's setting is gigantic, allowing the players near-Oblivion like freedom to go anywhere they want to. On the other hand, the galaxy was largely empty outside of the main planets and had, again, a shallow sort of feeling. On the other hand, The Witcher confined its players almost exclusively to a couple of places while giving hints of a much larger world that they weren't going to get to explore in this game. All the while, it showed you via books, storyline and characters you interacted with during the game your impact upon that larger world.

Put simply, one game gave you a high orbit look at everything, whereas the other decided to really flesh out a smaller setting and get you right into the muck and gore. When you get right down to it, I can still feel the grime on me from playing The Witcher and the overall feeling that the setting for that game had a lot more meat on its bones whereas Mass Effect may have bitten off just a bit more than it could chew with its galaxy, gives The Witcher an edge in this category. Annoyance Characters ***MAY CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS*** Let's face it, sometimes less is more when it comes to characters in books, games, or movies. Everyone remembers Star Wars: The Phantom Menace more for the fact that Jar Jar Binks and a child Anakin Skywalker were both incredibly annoying than anything else. So which game, ultimately, could have benefited with a couple of extra edits here and there? Alvin, the gifted boy "source" child in The Witcher was certainly a pain. He never stayed in one place for long. The entire storyline hinted at how important he was, and the ending hinted he may have been even more important still, but ultimately, he was all promise and no delivery. We never really get to find out, for certain, what was going on with him. Unfortunately, he wasn't even really the most annoying character in the game. That dubious honor belonged to Shani's grandmother, a senile old bat who threw you out of Shani's house roughly 78% of the time you went to try and visit Shani. Given the incredibly long loading times for The Witcher prior to the new 1.2 patch, she was remarkably annoying. On the other hand, a certain human ambassador in Mass Effect deserved more than a single punch in the jaw for being a pain in my backside the entire game in Mass Effect. We're not even going to mention how annoying the citadel council was either. Still, all-in-all, at least the ambassador and the council in Mass Effect were centrally important to the overall story. Neither Alvin nor Shani's grandmother ended up qualifying for The Witcher. Maybe Alvin will with the sequel, but for right now a distinct edge goes to Mass Effect on this one for having fewer characters that should have been left out entirely. Technical Issues Technical issues are almost par for the course with the RPG genre. Given that the games are almost always larger, more detailed, and more complex to code for than any other genre, a certain amount of technical annoyances is to be expected and both games delivered on those expectations. Long and frequent load times? Check for both. Frequent texture popping? Check for Mass Effect. Broken and or glitchy quests? Mild check for The Witcher. No check for Mass Effect since most of its quests were shooting galleries. However, right now The Witcher takes this category for no other reason than the game has had several patches put out since its release that have substantially improved the overall experience. Loading time issues in particular saw vast improvements with the 1.2 patch. Innovation Both games delivered some innovation here with noticeable changes to the usual combat gameplay in rpgs. Mass Effect's method of merging shooter gameplay with an rpg was the more risky innovation whereas The Witcher's method of adding rhythm based attacking to the usual swordplay hack-fest was also a step forward. Ultimately though, the biggest innovation that either game put forward wasn't in regards to the most fun method for killing the bad guys. The biggest innovation either put forward was to ignore the censors and go for more mature themes. Both games got M ratings and neither seemed particularly interested in even trying for a T rating that would allow their games to be sold to wider audiences. Whether it was swearing, distinctly gray moral choices, or gratuitous sex scenes, both games seemed bound and determined to give big middle fingers to "The Man".

All things being equal, Mass Effect's gameplay innovations were a bit more extensive whereas The Witcher's attempts to introduce the novel concept that some people have sex without love being involved was long overdue. I'm calling this category a tie and giving both games a big, sloppy Jim kiss for actually bringing some mature content to video gaming without being childishly over-the-top about it. Side Quests If you don't know which game is going to be taking this category then it is only because you haven't been paying attention to anything I've written in this blog. Mass Effect's side quests were more or less all the same. The Witcher's side quests had its fair share of "go kill a bunch of things and bring back proof of your success" but they also had a fair amount of other, more interesting, activities. And boobs. Let us not forget that The Witcher, at least the uncensored European edition, offers us much more in the way of boobs than Mass Effect does. I don't know how my female readers feel about this, but it's a big plus in my book that my character in The Witcher is actually a realistic enough guy to not only enjoy casual sex, but to put saving the kingdom on hold for an hour or two in order to go and pursue this. Big edge goes to The Witcher. Main Character Customization At a glance, this seems to be a category that Mass Effect would take with ease if for no other reason than because it lets you play as either male or female, choose a background, and choose what your character looks like. However, digging down further below the surface, The Witcher also gives a great deal of latitude to choosing how your character acts by the number of moral choices the game gives you and the "blank slate" approach to your character's memories and personality. Since your character has amnesia, you get to "discover" who he currently is throughout the game like The Nameless One from Planescape: Torment. However, Mass Effect also gives a wider range of character abilities and archetypes to play than The Witcher does, with its many and varied abilities. While The Witcher does a better job of making you feel the consequences of your moral choices through the flashback sequences, the variety of gameplay that Mass Effect presents gives it the edge here. Villains ***MINOR PLOT SPOILERS ALLUDED TO HEREIN*** Neither game did particularly well here. In both games, the villains were of the "manipulate things behind the scenes" type. This works out great for books because then authors can focus extensively on the effects of what the unseen villain is doing. It doesn't work out as well for games, which tend to require a firmer hand for the players to battle and grow to hate. Without giving too much away, both games also had villains who, ultimately, thought they were doing the right thing overall. When all is said and done though, one villain was much more responsible for his own actions than the other. This makes him the better, more mature, villain in the end. Whereas one game effectively transitioned all responsibility for the bad guy's actions through the tried and true "it wasn't really their fault" approach, the other game firmly accepted that some people just are evil and twisted. For having the guts and maturity to allow for the fact that some people choose to do evil things of their own free will, The Witcher takes this category. Graphics and Audio It should be acknowledged that I played The Witcher on a top-end gaming computer with all settings maxed out. Others who played the game on a lesser machine will have a different experience than I did. This is a tough category to judge because of how uneven the experience was in Mass Effect on this. When at its best, in conversations or on some of the main worlds of the game, this game was better than The Witcher visually. Unfortunately, at its worst, like when you were exploring many of the innumerable side worlds that all looked more or less alike, it trailed The Witcher's consistent experience. Where Mass Effect really shined was in the body movements and facial expressions that made everything feel so very real. Ultimately, graphics wise these games were very close to being equal. The fact that Mass Effect's beautiful parts topped The Witcher is downgraded due to The Witcher's overall consistently great offerings. It wasn't as good as Mass Effect at its best, but it was far better than Mass Effect at its worst. This brings us to sound. Mass Effect had better voice acting and some truly inspiring music during a few key scenes. The Witcher had some good sound effects and decent, if uneven, voice acting. Overall though, Mass Effect has a big edge where audio is concerned which is enough to take this category. Well, right now these two games are tied four categories apiece. So how am I going to choose between them? I guess ultimately, when judging games, it comes down to a subjective value call in situations like this. Where do we place the greater emphasis? Ultimately, I think for me the tiebreakers were in two areas. The first tiebreaker is what we originally expected out of the game in the first place. The second tiebreaker was overall value. With Mass Effect we all expected truly incredible, amazing things. We got much of what we wanted, but not everything. The game fell short in a number of places. It isn't entirely fair because our expectations were so high in the first place, and the game still ended up being something truly special, but overall it did fall flat in just a couple of places here and there. The Witcher came out of nowhere. Few people expected it to be as great as it ended up being. It had that hard to define "something" that marks all truly special games. You can't put your finger on it. You can clearly see its shortcomings in a number of areas, but you love it anyway. For that reason, and for the fact that at roughly $10 less to experience the greatness The Witcher is a better overall value. My RPG of the Year Award goes to The Witcher by the slightest of edges. Edit: To give you an idea of how close it is between these two games. It's about a half hour after I posted this and I'm already having second thoughts and considering going back towards Mass Effect.

Well, it has been a busy holiday season for me and I haven't yet cranked out the second part of my Ten Commandments blog post. I always forget the Golden Rule of Two Part Blog Posts: The first blog post is the equivalent of a young man rubbing out the "easy one" in the bathroom with a dirty magazine before sex. It happens quickly and easily and makes the following experience last a lot longer. The second part blog post is like trying to arouse an 80 year old man. First off, the 80 year old man has to remember what he was going to do in the first place. And second, he needs to be able to summon forth the energy to make it happen. But fear not! I have 11 days without work scheduled to begin shortly. I expect to crank out both the second part of my Ten Commandments and the second part of my Japanese RPGs Are Dead blog during that time frame. If I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I've noticed that I currently have no shortage of candidates for another Stupidest Person in the World blog. (Nor shall I ever if history is any indication.) In the meantime, since Yeah Write has cranked out some blogs of exceptional quality dealing with spiritual issues, I thought I'd join the party. Without further ado, below is an example of how one man found Jesus, and Guitar Hero 3, in a local Best Buy store. Now I know I have PAJ89's attention. I spoke the magic words for him. (Guitar Hero) Click here for gaming Nerdvana Or you can Click here if you want a lessor example of what the Best Buy guy probably saw.

I thought about a number of different topics for my landmark 100th blog post. First, I was going to do a rundown of the top contenders for Game of the Year and then select my choice. (Hint: It starts with "Mass" and ends with "Effect".) I decided that was overdone and boring. Who really cares what my choice for Game of the Year is?



My second thought was to do a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style blog that would have my readers in the role of an assassin named "Al'Seq'uel de Casheeny", patterned after Assassin's Creed, only you are out to murder the CNET CEO in retaliation for Jeff Gerstmann getting fired. It would be three parts but the second two parts wouldn't be announced until everyone had read through the entirety of the first part. (Take THAT Ubisoft! Damned scam artists...)



Then I realized that not only was that a hell of a lot more work than I wanted to put in, but it would probably get me banned permanently from the site. (Not a desirable outcome.) Er...now would be a good time to mention that this is a two-part blog post, so if you aren't willing to hang with me for two whole blog posts, you can stop reading now and get 100% of your money back. My third choice was to do a "Blog about nothing", patterned after the old "Seinfeld" TV show, where I would write about absolutely nothing of importance but do it in a witty, entertaining way. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that there are, literally, thousands of blogs out in the webspace that attempt this. The landfills of the Internet are filled with the remains of blog writers who thought they were wittier and more entertaining than they actually are. And that's when the topic for this blog post hit me: I would write a blog about how to start a blog, build a readership, and actually get your hard work read and commented upon. With that in mind, here are ten suggestions to help you create a blog and gain a readership. Five of these suggestions will be things you should do, and five will be things you should try and avoid.

As you read, keep in mind these suggestions are intended to help you get readers beyond just your friends and family, who probably won't care if you break each and every one of these suggestions. Other people will. 1. Don't make the mistake of thinking everyone else finds you as fascinating as you find yourself. (A.K.A. "You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.") If I had to come up with a single "Golden Rule of Blogging" this would be the one I would choose. The number one mistake that I see beginning bloggers make is to make the mistake of thinking that other people find you as fascinating as you find yourself to be. Put another way, try and remember that if people wanted to view a bunch of self-centered people writing about themselves then they'd go visit Live Journal.

Sure it is your blog and you can write about whatever the hell you want, but just like there is no law saying you can't have ninety percent of your written content be dedicated to what's happening in your day-to-day life, there is also no law saying that anyone other than your mother have to actually read what you write. Pick topics and write about things other than you personally. They can and should include your perspective on the topics you pick, but you shouldn't be the topic constantly. Writing a blog about you personally once in a while is fine. It humanizes you and helps people identify with your perspective. Do it too often though and people will slowly stop reading. After all, while you may by proud that you finally made it to "Level 20: Metal Slime" on Gamespot or wrote your 1000th forum post, chances are nobody else cares. 2. Don't forget that people judge you online based on your grammar and spelling. It is a sad but true fact that if you use bad grammar, sloppy punctuation, and terrible spelling online then intelligent people are going to look down on you. If you want to be taken seriously, then you have to put in enough effort to look and sound intelligent. It doesn't matter how correct your opinion might be if you communicate it by writing at the same level as a ten year old. Once again, it is your blog and you can sound like a moronic gorilla if you want to. However, if you want people to take what you write seriously then you have to actually look intelligent. Think of each blog you write like it is a job interview except instead of one person sitting across the table listening to you, it is a thousand people. Just like you wouldn't go to a job interview looking like a flood victim, don't write a blog that looks like your cat walked back and forth across your keyboard while you were typing it. 3. Don't overuse smilies. :) This relates to point number 2 up above. Think of smilies as a crutch to convey the emotional feeling that you are trying to get across. Good writing doesn't require them. If your thoughts are clear and well written, then you don't need the smilies to get the desired emotional connection communicated. It just comes through based on how you word what you are trying to say. Excessive use of smilies will make people question your intellectual "heft" so to speak. After all, when was the last time you saw a professionally written game review that was filled with smilies?

4. Don't take things personally. This one may seem obvious to some readers but it deserves mentioning. If someone disagrees with something that you write, then don't take it personally. If you can't help it and you do take their disagreement personally, then you should hold off on replying to them until you're calmed down.

If you write a blog about how magnificent Oblivion was and how much it deserved to win Gamespot's Game of the Year for 2006 in place of Gears of War and someone disagrees with you, let them have their opinion. You may consider them painfully misguided and guilty of some sort of congenital stupidity or the victim of questionable parentage, but if you actually say all of these things then you're probably going to lose a reader. (Did you notice how I didn't need to use a smiley to convey the fact that I'm joking?) Instead of attacking the person, attack the arguments. Explain the faults of Gears of War or the virtues of Oblivion. Point out the objective, non-emotional criteria that makes one a superior game than the other. Also remember that sometimes you won't get to agreement and you'll just have to agree to let the other person be wrong. This advice also applies to other things. If people aren't coming to read your blog, the very worst thing you can do is to write a blog complaining about how nobody reads your blogs. This is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, nobody cares that your blog isn't getting the attention it deserves. Second, unless somebody is a buddy of yours (in which case they are probably already reading your blog) then a blog devoted to how mean people are for not reading you isn't going to go over very well. Third, you've broken the Golden Rule of Blogging that I laid out as my very first suggestion. 5. Don't overuse formatting. This one has the same logic behind it as smilies. Good writing will not require excessive amounts of formatting to convey the emotional feel of what you are trying to communicate. Formatting is like using swear words. Excessive use of either robs it of its power. Just like if you say a swear word in every sentence you use then your swearing will lose its shock value and potency, if you constantly are using italics, bold font, large font, underlined font, different colored font or a number of other formatting tricks then when you really want to drive something home, the formatting choice you use won't have enough "macho" to get your intended thrust through. Think of formatting like your writing equivalent of your big finishing move if you were a professional wrestler. If you attempt your finishing move without the proper buildup, then the crowd won't get all excited when you go for it and your opponent will counter it. Let's see here, what other analogies can I use? Well, I haven't used a sexual metaphor in a while. If you go for the formatting too quickly it is like "finishing" too quickly during sex. It won't be nearly as impressive as it is if you pull it out when you really need to. Well, that's it for Part 1. Coming "whenever I feel like it" for Part 2 are my five suggestions for things that you should do when blogging to increase your page views and readership.

Well, it took me a bit longer than I thought it would to actually sit down and review these two games, but I've finally done so. Enjoy. I'm still playing Mass Effect of course, but I'm now taking suggestions of other games to play before my new gaming PC gets here and I can start enjoying The Witcher and Crysis.

Apparently the apocalypse occurred while I was downstairs playing Mass Effect. I refer of course to the recent firing of Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot. (Link not required. Anyone who isn't aware of this probably has been living in a cave the last couple of days without internet access. I think 95% of my tracked blogs are on this subject right now.) Quick summation: Jeff wrote a negative review about the new Eidos game Kane and Lynch. Eidos, a major advertiser at this site, allegedly whined about the review to CNET, which owns Gamespot. Gamespot then fired Jeff. This prompted the second coming of the anti-Christ. No review Gamespot ever writes in the future can be taken seriously because apparently good reviews can be bullied or bought. The site itself is doomed. A boycott is in order and people should give serious consideration into leaving altogether. Whew. Deep breaths everyone. It is time to take a step or two back and put a little perspective into this situation. That Jeff got absolutely screwed is beyond a doubt. That Gamespot's credibility has taken a hit is without question. That this is the worst thing that ever happened in the gaming industry and we should all be ready to take up arms against The Man is being just a touch too dramatic. Let's review for a moment a few things we all know: 1. Each and every review is an opinion. Granted, some opinions are extremely BAD opinions, but they are just one person's opinion. 2. Gamespot also includes a link beside each and every game that they review called "Critics Score" that lists what 25-30 other review sites rated any given game and averages the score across all major review sites. 3. Gamespot also gives a link to "Player Reviews" that tallies all the ratings that everyone who has bothered to rate the game has given it so far. 4. Ahem. (Perspective please?) 5. Jeff Gerstmann is a 10 year veteran of this industry. He's going to find a new job at IGN, 1UP or wherever. 6. Gamespot gives away nearly all their services for free to those who don't want to pay, something supported by ad revenue 7. Jim has never paid this site a single dime and has gotten countless hours of enjoyment by coming here. Does any of this make what was done right? Of course not! What was done is filthy and unprecedentedly disgusting. CNET, Gamespot and Eidos should all be ashamed of themselves. Does any of it change how we approach our buying decisions? Not really. I don't know about the rest of you, but I get my input on whether or not to buy a game from multiple different sources. I read Gamespot's review, sure, but I also read reviews from other sites. I read the reviews of the peoples blogs whom I track. Blogs, I hasten to add, are hosted here on Gamespot's space and paid for by Gamespot's advertisement revenue. I play demos that I download. I read forum posts. What happened was despicable, but it is also, in the big scheme of things, a very minor thing to get this up in arms about. If you want to be furious about something, pick an issue from the list down below. 1. The fact that George W. Bush and the, up until a year ago, Republican controlled Congress have spent A MINIMUM of $3500 out of the pocket of every man, woman, and child in the United States fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, because they're flaming incompetent. (Non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimate 2. That the United States is now a country that officially endorses torture. (Amnesty International) 3. That nearly 50 million U.S. citizens don't have health insurance. (National Coalition on Healthcare) 4. That Bush vetoed a bill that would have added health care for 10 million children, because it cost $35 billion dollars...as compared to the 1.2 trillion already spent on Iraq and Afghanistan to date. (SCHIP Veto is not overturned. 5. The income gap between the rich and poor is the largest it has been in the United States since 1928. (Registration required or Registration Not Required) 6. That the minimum documented level of civilian casualties in Iraq is 77,573. That's documented. Actually verified and counted. (Iraq Body Count with some estimates putting it A little higher) 7. That soldier casualties both by the U.S. led coalition and the Iraqi army also remain Pretty damned high 8. That the entire world has said that genocide is occurring in Sudan, and nobody's lifted a finger to stop it. United Human Rights I could go on and on. My point is that everyone who has all this energy to complain about this relatively, in the big scheme of things, minor injustice might want to take a step back and get some perspective. I applaud passion. In fact, I always find it inspiring. That being said, I think that there are more important things to get passionate, and active, about. This blog post, and all the research that went along with it, took roughly a half hour to put together. Spend some of that time and passion on something of larger importance. Pick an issue, any issue, and take the time to become educated on it. Read all sides of an issue and keep an open mind. If you're pro-life, then spend a week learning everything you can about why people who are pro-choice think you're a nutcase. If you're for gay rights, then take a day or two and research the arguments for why other people are against gay rights. Take the time to challenge your beliefs and learn why others believe differently.

If this is a glitch, it is a bad one. If it is intentional (doubtful but anything is possible I guess) then it is worse. Here are the stats on Mass Effect views right now from this page:

Rank: 2 of 42,783 down 1 Rank on Xbox 360: 2 of 630

Player Reviews: Review it » 250

Tracking: Add to My Games » 23,729

Wish Lists: 14,784

Now Playing 2,022 So why isn't it showing up on the "Most Popular" list on either the main page here or the 360 only "Most Popular" list here? The game is currently, according to the Mass Effect link I gave up above, the number two most viewed game on the site behind Ninja Gaiden 2. Yet, it is nowhere to be found in the Most Popular lists on either overall or 360 only. I first noticed this yesterday when the game was ranked number one overall but not showing on either of those pages. I figured it would be corrected but it hasn't been. Hmm./

When I was around ten years old, an older friend of mine (he was two years older) offered to ride bikes with me up to "this really cool place" that he had found. After some wheedling, and consultations between our two parental groups, we eventually got permission to do so. The place that we ended up going to was called the Video Game Trading Post and it is one of the few life changing places that I've ever gone to. Generally, when people think of life changing places you think of things like the Empire State Building, the Tower of London or the Vatican. You don't think of a dingy little shop tucked into a little shopping district within biking distance. But really, I've been to all three of the places that I mentioned above and none of them really ever had the sort of profound effect on me that the dingy little shop in the middle of nowhere had. The Video Game Trading Post was run by a guy named John. John was back then, and remains today, a bit on the eccentric side. The first time I visited his shop, he had one display case full of gaming paraphernalia (mostly NES stuff) and his dirty little pig in his store. But he had this really cool idea. Anyone who wanted to could come into his shop, play any game he wanted, and trade in their old games for new ones. He rated each game either A, B or C. An "A" game was a top shelf title. A "C" game was your typical generic piece of crap. For $5, you could trade any game you wanted for a game of the same rating. Alternatively, you could trade two games of the same type (say two B games) and get a new game completely free. To make sure that everyone felt that they got a game that they liked, he had consoles setup in his shop and you could put in and try out the games you were interested in. To make doubly sure, he even let you come back into the store and return the game you got the next day if for some reason you weren't satisfied. (This last thing he usually only applied to repeat customers that he knew well enough to know wouldn't abuse the generosity.) I spent an ungodly, and probably unhealthy, amount of time at that store over the next few years. As the years passed, his store expanded. Eventually he was dealing in all manner of games ranging from original NES to PS3 titles. Consoles, games, accessories. He stocked it all. He would beat any price you'd find elsewhere if you gave him the chance to. He also always knew what the games to try out where. Before the age of the internet came along, the best I could do was go into his store, tell him what genre I was looking for, and nine times out of ten he'd pick me a winner. When I hit my college years, I lapsed on video gaming for a while except for the occasional PC game like Fallout 2. I had so much other stuff going on. A couple of years ago, I stopped into the store again. Even though I hadn't seen him in about seven years and hardly recognized him since he looked so different, John still recognized me as "Jimmy", the kid he'd let hang out at his store and play all his video games. I told him that I hadn't done much gaming since I'd been busy with college and out of the state for a few of my college years. He welcomed me back and, when I told him I'd just gotten a new PS2 slim console, helped me pick out some new games. Before I left, he gave me a memory card for free just to welcome me back.

Chili and I started going back again frequently, and the old magic returned. He always had something new for me to play and always at a better price that I could find it elsewhere. I didn't really need to trade in my old games like I used to since I make a lot more money than I did when I was a kid and when I was a teenager, but I wasn't opposed to buying used games at damned good prices. I backfilled the PS2 library that I had missed during college nicely, and even got a good start on an Xbox one. Alas, good times don't last forever. In September, the Video Game Trading Post closed down for good due to bankruptcy issues. Since then I've tried, and failed, to find a place quite like it. There is an "A1 Video Game Exchange" (which always sounded like a barbeque sauce or something) on the same street. I tried going in there with the ChiliDragon to find a new game about a month and a half ago.



The first thing we noticed was the lack of anything resembling a friendly greeting, or any greeting at all for that matter, when we walked in. At the Post, we always got a greeting immediately, no matter what. It wasn't that we demanded immediate help. No, we were more than capable of browsing on our own. It was the fact that it was always nice to have our existence acknowledged. The young woman "working" at the A1 store couldn't even be bothered to look up from her computer screen. (She was in the middle of a Yahoo chat from what I could tell from glancing over her shoulder as I circled around her to look at the games behind her.)



Well, the selection at A1 was incredible. They had tons of games everywhere. They had tons of everything really, except warmth or good prices. There was no consoles setup for us to try games out on. No paintings of famous characters like Samus and Link on the wall. The place was just cold. We left without buying anything. The clerk never looked up. Not once. It has been two months now without the Trading Post, and I miss it more than I ever thought that I could miss a store. Sure it wasn't the best run business in the world. (It DID fail after all.) But it wasn't just about being a business. Visiting the Post was like walking in and chatting with a peer, or one of the fine folks who comment on my blogs. I always felt a sense of belonging at the Post that comes from being around kindred spirits. Back when I was younger, before video games entered the mainstream, feeling that with regards to video gaming was a precious thing. So this blog is a tribute to the Video Game Trading Post, and to all the happiness and warmth that it brought to the local video gaming community over the last couple of decades. One final thing before I sign off on this blog. Those of you who have been hanging around my blog for a while know that Max Payne 2 is my favorite shooter game of all time. Here's what John from the Tradiing Post took off of his wall and gave to me before he closed his shop down for good, and what is now hanging on the wall of one of my rooms. For a sense of scale, it is larger than my 61" Samsung HDTV.