While I am still trying to adjust to the fact that the formidable BBC coverage of the Formula One circus is now taken over in parts by Sky TV in the UK, I have started my 2-year ritual again, ever since Codemasters had the chance to return the F1 racing game formula to the PC, to play the video game alongside the Formula 1 season.

As I mentioned in an earlier FUSE post (and probably in an older blog posts), playing the video game enhances the TV experience and vice versa. You learn the track, you learn the break points, you learn something about the difficulties the real drivers might have, although - of course - a video game is unable to let you experience G-Forces & SPEED; the two most fundamental and important things of racing. But that is why it is a video game & you are still alive, after crashing against a wall? Or - like in Dirt2 or Dirt3 - flying through the air?

I am terrible at these games, but cannot give up on trying to play them as sim-like as I can. No 'green lines' on my tracks. No Break Assist. No ABR. etc, etc. I have a hard time finishing a single lap, but enjoy the possibility to let me improve on my own. Not hand-holding me. Giving me the ability to use DRS and KERS in F1 2011. Imagining, I am rolling on Pirelli tires. I am even listening to the original radio comments and F1 podcasts from the training sessions and qualifying of the same day while playing.

F1 2011 is a technically redifined version of F1 2010 which already was a very great (and award-winning) game. All I try, mostly, is to race against my own time - not doing the career mode, neither playing online - ever. One day, I might start it. Odd thing from a marketing point IMHO is the title of the game. Although it was released not that long ago it is called F1 2011 - but we are now in the F1 2012 season. I am curious, how many more people would buy this game if the 2011 would be adjusted to 2012. Never mind.

Over 20 hours in, I still need to finish the game, but everyone around me is complaining about the ending & I am not part of this conversation! It must be scandalous (NO SPOILERS PLZ!). Although some gameplay things are refined, others are a step back compared to ME1&2! And then there's me, getting easily tired of pew pew pew - I hate mindless repetitive FPS shooting. If you have a social life (outside the Internet!), you're working and/or studying for school, the amount of hours you can put in playing video games are rather limited. Especially, if you play them recreational - for fun (I know! Dude!) - and not because you feel a Call of Duty to finish them.

Since Gamespot also is not participating in the worldwide Internet strike vs SOPA today, I can as well go online and write my impressions on the Rich-Gallup-but-not-anymore-Rich-Gallup video game demo which hit the web yesterday. My impressions are from the PC Version of the game. It runs fine, though there are some minor glitches you will maybe come across. Some sound files missing, some texture glitches (NVIDIA card), the flute the women in the tavern is playing is invisible (or, she is just playing AIR FLUTE - who knows, right?). In battles, there are moments when the game is freezing before you see the strike animation - might be a temporary driver thing - no biggie. Otherwise the technology is fine - up to modern standards, with nice effects. On a PC you always have to tell yourself, this is a cross-platform game, so it cannot compete with the likes of a Witcher 2. The art style is maybe not everyone's cup of ale. I like it a lot. It reminds me strikingly of the paintings of the legendary Brothers Hildebrandt, who are well known to the Fantasy fans of the 1970s and 80s. We marveled starring at the work they did for the early Lord of the Rings calenders, when there was no Peter Jackson, but only them - Greg & Tim - and some guy from Brooklyn, NY called Frank Frazetta. People back then have been reading books, like paperback-editions. They bought all the Fantasy and Science Fiction books that were released every single month (another Terry Brooks "Something" of Shannara, another Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction ...); we sniffed the aroma of the Ballantine books and others. We didn't have Internet - isn't that obvious? Ah, glorious times! The world is very, v e r y colorful - almost as if armies of dwarfs or gnomes ran around this Faelands and splashed their buckets of paint all over the place for the last six years of game development? But I love it, because it is well crafted and well composed. You can see, somebody with art knowledge made sure that the foreground and background layers always had the right color temperature and the colors you see are balanced. The world looks still like your grandfathers idea of a acid Fantasy Island - what, Ken Rolston? I didn't mention you, or did I? The game mechanics of Kingdoms of "Donuts" remind me early on of the Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver PC versions, which was shocking for a second or two, because the game is 10 years old and the mechanics felt too familiar. But this neuro-flashback did not last long. The tutorial level gives you all the step-by-step input you need to learn the basic mechanics of the game. So far nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary. I was playing the first couple minutes while still waiting for the "amazing, revolutionary combat system" I felt to have been promised. But a couple minutes later, you are introduced to the extended fight mechanics and seeing the tutorial videos within your option interface, you can see how combos will play a role later on. The fighting is sophisticated as promised. Story: to me, it makes all the difference, if I want to keep playing a RPG game or not. Good RPG games give you an addictive dose of fight-loot-fight-loot rhythm. You don't necessarily need a good story or convincing world. Whoever played the monochrome ULTIMA, or Wizardry ... or any early video game for that matter, made all the stories up for him-/herself in their heads anyway? But this game is introducing it's lore in a convincing way, without overwhelming me or boring me by repeating the same things again and again - which the NPCs do, but in a tolerable way. I get to learn about the factions, about the overall conflict, bit by bit. And I meet again with some very familiar themes, I know from The Elder Scrolls games: Roman Legions and Catholic Monasteries. Again, Ken Rolston - what's up with that? Are YOU the sole mastermind behind this? Is this your revenge for having to learn Latin at school, like me? I do know, the story was written by R.A. Salvatore (just like I know, the art was not made by the Brothers Hildebrandt, but by Todd McFarlane, who btw, admits stealing from the great Frazetta ... and other sources - but that's how all artists work. Especially in video games and fantasy there is NO SINGLE concept artist who has not had his Frank Frazetta years behind him (or her). I know, I quote myself a lot. Sorry. Back to the story. The characters seem to be as colorful as the landscape. The voice acting in this game is excellent! It helps a lot to keep you immersed (katching! - I used a reviewer fail-word). From the very first characters you meet, you just have to obey their demands. These are clearly theatrically trained professional actors, who make a living by making you listen to them. The Victorian English and Scottish accents give the characters another layer of depth (take notes, indie game apprentice!). Also the excellent music, especially French Horns are very formidable for story exposition. On this one, you just have to trust me - an old opera & Richard Wagner fan. After all those decades of dealing with elves and dwarfs, I had a Fantasy fatigue until very recently. But if it is presented like this, I am on board again. After the cave you finished the first part of the tutorial and see the wonders of an unpolluted world - it's called FANTASY for a reason (oh, and - ok, forget the corpses), you are out in the open and you have 45 minutes to play and do quests. The game allows you extra time when you pause or speak to a NPC. I found myself enjoying the flow of exploring, conversations, combat. At times I was reminded of the charm that bewitched me, when I played the first Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. [Small game play tip: the water nearby is not only looking good, it is quite refreshing - you might want to take a swim and look around]. If you are online and logged in to your EA account, you get to keep some unlocked items from your demo playthrough. If you accept to participate in some root-kit level packet-trafficking ("share your data with our nice folks at EA"), you get even more things, you can use later on in the full version of the game. Throughout the demo you are introduced further to game play elements like Alchemy, Crafting, (socket-items!!), etc, etc ... all promising elements of a fully fledged RPG. Not to stretch this blog post any further - the demo does everything to make you want to buy and play the full game. I don't know, why I had to write this down. I don't know neither, why I suddenly think of Bioware and Dragon Age 2. It is almost unfair. They made one sucky game after all those successful years, and yet, it is all I can think of. Forget it.

I just watched a livestream from the LinuxCon in Vancouver, two panels with prominent Linux developers and advocates, incl. Linus Torvalds, who invented Linux during a couple weeks in the summer of - yes - 1991. Since GDC Europe and Gamescom is going on in Cologne, Germany, it is maybe a good moment to contemplate on the Linux Operating System AND video games (never mind that it is past 3:00 AM in my timezone). According to Wikipedia the net market share of the three most prominent operating systems is like this: Windows OS (all versions) 87.66% Mac OS 5.59% Linux Kernel based 0.91% Linux Version Overall this alone tells the whole story, why there is no Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim or Battlefield 3 coming out on PC. Funny enough, Linux - despite these numbers above - is quite contrary the biggest success story of all Operating Systems (yes, dear Apple fan, do believe me, despite your love for Steve Jobs and shiny things). Today, Linux Kernel are running in the military, controlling missle-defense systems, running aviation control systems, stock markets, research simulations, clinical software, in operating rooms, insurance companies, banks, production lines in factories, scientific research centers... all over the world. Linux runs on High Performance Clusters (most of the Top500 Supercomputers) all the way down to vending machines, and even washing machines. So, why did it never took off on YOUR PC at home? Why did it never succeed on the average gamers desktop? After all, GNU/Linux Operating Systems are FREE! It doesn't cost you a cent (unless you decide to buy it in a box. Even than it is way cheaper than any Microsoft Windows OS). The reasons why it never made it in your home are probably manifold. But most likely it is because a) you did not know about it. b) after you heard about it, nobody you know, knew about it, which made you skeptical? c) even if you dared to finally get one and install it, after the installation (if it wasn't already too complicated) you did not know what to do and how to do what on the desktop. d) there were no drivers for your hardware e) the graphics card would not run in 3D hardware acceleration mode f) you could not play your most beloved games on it. Enough to say "no thanks". And so the story goes. I don't blame anyone. I remember what a pain in the a.rse it was to install proprietary graphic drivers in the early days (when the hardware vendors FINALLY decided to support Linux and made drivers available beyond the SDL/Mesa surrogates). Or how complicated it could get configuring the XConfig file to run the X-Server. Or the trouble to compile a Kernel all by yourself. STILL, if Linux would have been a success on the desktop - a BIG IF, I know - video games would be now FAR more advanced technology wise than they are on Windows. Yes, this is a bold statement and you may call me biased or crazy. The thing that saved Microsoft was DirectX, created by Craig Eisler, Alex St. John, and Eric Engstrom. It convinced game developers to finally switch from MS DOS to Windows, giving game developers a framework to program their games on the Windows platform, thanks to the collection of DirectX API's. This was in late 1995. It shipped with Windows 95. GNU/Linux at that point was still in it's infancy ... and could never catch up on the PC. If you happen to run PC Games natively on Linux (Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena) you might find that the game 'scales' better, even though the frame rate is not higher. The X-Window system is a bottleneck on Linux. Equally DirectX has become a bottleneck on the Windows side. Both Operating System suffer from bad drivers and hardware related issues. Yet, I still think, if the combined power of the free open source community and the superb elite of game programmers would have found "projects" to work on together, we would be probably 15-20 years ahead of what we have now in PC gaming. DirectX 11 is nice. It has nice features, but there is still way too much legacy and bloated code in Windows Vista and Windows 7, game programmers have to deal with. Now this "window" for advancements in PC Gaming technology & software architecture development is rather closing. The Intel-based x86-chip architecture is not a target platform of (first) choice anymore - despite the upcoming Rage & BF3. Mobile devices - less powerful - but with different challenges, and browser based games (JavaScript, WebGL) are taking all the time of game developers, besides the consoles. No, the PC is NOT dead, but its chance to shine has past. Sales are shrinking. Tablets (less powerful) are rising. PC Gaming will still be with us for quite a while, but don't expect major leaps in technology, since Microsoft is not known to get rid of the old code-base and start from scratch. That was something they wanted to do with Vista (remember Ray Ozzie coming to Microsoft?) ... and failed. Commercial, big budget games on Linux PCs are still going to be exotic and rare (heck! maybe triple-A titles are going to die altogether on PC?!) But the development of Android will flourish and Google OS will have it's chance too. The innovation will come from 'weaker' hardware and creep into more and more powerful devices in your pocket and - eventually - your living room. Maybe even before XBOX720 and PS4 will ship? And of course, there are PLENTY of great educational(!), puzzly and entertaining games, you can play on your Linux PC today. I am not even counting Cedega/Wine, or all the emulators (Amiga, SinclairZX, C64, etc) you can run for your legally purchased ROMs, of course.

When the honeymoon is over and the blood rush of the early days of a fresh love affair is slowing down, you start to look at your new boy- or girlfriend in a different way. You start to find out things about them that increasingly annoy you. You start to find things about them you would never tolerate in another person if it wasn't for the aforementioned affair you are having. But with every day it gets more and more annoying, even to the point, when you start to wait for these moments, when you are *p.ssed* off. I follow certain video game journalists, as they are called, for over a decade now. They don't know me. We never met. They know nothing about me - or about the other 10.000 of people who follow their writing, podcasting, video-reviewing. I, on the other hand, have learned a lot about them over the years. What video games they like, what type of food, what music they prefer, etc etc... And it STILL get's to me sometimes when I hear or read some of their opinions. Not because 'they are wrong' or 'I am right' - nothing of that nature. It is just very disappointing to hear them say the same dumb things again and again - not evolving, not trying to understand about the specific topic or learn something in the wake of working in the press and dealing with their subject - sometimes even for 2 decades or more. Just one classic example of many, many more: If 'video game journalists' would at least attend a crash-course in graphics programming, so they would for the first time understand and know to distinguish between 'video game graphics' and 'video game graphics art' - or learn the basic vocabulary at least (Wikipedia is not commonly blocked in offices, AFAIK). Equally, there is this lazy thinking and living in the bubble, which keeps them repeating the same mistakes again and again, unchallenged by their peers. They start to play with their lack of knowledge. They become defensive and repeat the same phrases again and again. Their long experience turns into this lazytown comfort zone, knowing whatever they say or do - it will be judged, applauded, attacked ... they have turned into showmen, amusing their audiences. They don't need to try hard or be good at what they do, because in the great scheme of things - it does not matter. There is always a big enough audience to make them feel good about themselves. When you start having 10.000 Twitter followers, and every tweet you make is answered by a warm shower of 'yeah Dude' and 'awesome' etc.. you get your attention fix. Does not matter, that you turned into a dull and du*mb hack. Nobody is perfect. Nobody can be. Everybody has a right to his/her own opinion. What I see more clearly now, with the years passing by, is how some people just refuse to accept that they are getting older, I guess. They live within their own frame - the way they were when they still were 16 or 20 years old. No progress. No evolution. Accompanied by the minions of 'fans', of 'yes-men'. Your girlfriend doesn't have to make you want her anymore. You are already with her. At some point he/she turns lazy, turns 'fat' ... you see what I am getting at? I am staying vague here, not naming names, not going into details, which would make for a much more compelling 'blog-post'. Let's just say, I am getting tired of certain girlfriends. In the end, they really haven't been my 'girlfriends' to begin with - they are just noise from the virtual world. So why do I feel a bit sad and bitter?

I live in Germany for a couple decades now. Let me tell you how it is here as a warning: No freedom of speech No freedom of press After the Nazi-Regime and World War I and II the Allies did no see it fit for Germany to be a 'grown up' nation and many years later, after Germany regained it's full independence, they still keep the laws handy to oppress basic rights Americans - even in California - still have. The media has endless restrictions, what they may and may not do. The video game industry is bound to rigid rules. Gears of War, God of War, Duke Nukem, Quake, Doom, even the 1st original Half Life are "verboten" (banned and or censored!). There is no freedom of speech or right to express what you think. The discussion in the society - and what California is up to now - follows two distinct lines of thought: DO WE WANT TO LIVE IN A SOCIETY CREATED BY ADULTS FOR ADULTS vs. DO WE WANT TO LIVE IN A SOCIETY THAT IS CREATED "KID-FRIENDLY" IN ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE It used to be a "men's world" - you join the club when you are 18 (or 21). Before that, your parents are responsible for what you may or may not do! Or what you may watch on TV, or what video games you may play at home. This was the rule in most countries with a legal system - and still is today. Of course, the extreme measures in Germany or Australia (again, only as a warning example) did not prevent school shootings, or child abuse, or the uprising of xenophobic Neo-Nazis in Germany's case, or child poverty, etc... The society has not become "safe" for children - yet the law is tailored around this fantasy and hypocrisy. Without the liberal and tolerant US society as a role model for the rest of the world - with all it's flaws - THE INTERNET WOULD NOT EXIST TODAY?! Freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of making video games - as silly, stupid and violent as they may be - is a sign of a healthy society, were adults are allowed to create and purchase whatever they want. If you lose this, you will become an oppressed society with a bunch more pressing issues than unemployment, health-care costs, poverty and debt - or parents, who are overwhelmed by a fast paced world, right now.

Dirt 2 - F1 2010 Stuck in Codemasters awesomeness. This is awkward. I don't speak or write English very well. It is the 4th language, of a couple more, I manage to fail in. But I have to write about this, to get it off my chest. And I feel compelled to do it in public. Two of my main rules in life I just broke: 1. Don't write about yourself 2. Don't 'publish' it. Cockpit view - what else is there? I am stuck in Dirt 2. I am stuck in an early part of the game. To be completely honest - I am stuck in the 3rd race. You start the game on a London track. It introduces you to what is coming. You then can choose between the Baja race which is a Dirt race on sand with a truck, or you can go to the Rally Race in Croatia - the legacy of Collin McRae. And that's where I am. I feel the anticipation, when I am in my trailer, the three dimensional *lobby* from where I can chose different game options (Multiplayer, Leaderboards, Race). I see the World map with the different location and race options. I see the red Rally emblem down there in the Meditereanean, South Europe. I chose *Hardcore* and *Damage: on*, not because I am a 'hardcore gamer' - just because I want the purity of a real challenge. I want to be good in this game, because this game 'lets' me. It gives me the feeling that I can become better, that I can improve. I want to race, like it's for real. Like it means something. Watching the Rally racers occasionally on a Sport TV channel, the insanity of real drivers, driving in real cars at insane speeds on a narrow track towards a wall or a rock, towards unknown turns, that only appear first as a promise through the voice of your co-driver. "40 pin left bumb". The trust a real driver must have to execute on such a promise, on the illusion of a thing to happen. Apocalyptic by it's very nature. The promise of the coming. You take the turn in blind faith... and there it is. So I adjust the settings again and again, start the race - again and again. Trying to get the perfect line, holding the wheel steady, breaking at the very last moment, powersliding like every inch counts, every millisecond counts... and I fail at some point during the 2 minutes the race takes. At some point my concentration weakens or I freeze - trying too hard. And then, I start all over again. One more try. F1 2010 Bridgestone tires - no KERS, no DRS, no *PIRELLI* yet And then there is this other game: F1 Formula 1 2010 by Codemasters Birmingham - the first 'real' F1 game in many years for PC. I haven't played any F1 racing game since the legendaryGeoff Crammond games- and even 'back in the days, I didn't really play racing games (nor any other games on PC nor any consoles). I mostly played the free demos and that was that. Yet, I liked to watch Formula One from early on. I watched Niki Lauda, Ayrton Senna without being a real racing fan. Over the years I made myself commit to becoming a regular F1 TV audience member. I would sit on a Saturday and Sunday (unless friends/family demanded my presence) and watch the races. Becoming familiar with the drivers, the companies, the sponsors, the locations. Still, I don't know nothing about Formula 1 really...until I started playing this game.During racing week I fire up this game and choose the track the real F1 circus is visiting that week. I play alongside the real Formula 1 season. But instead playing the Career Mode in the game, or Multiplayer, I just enter the Free Trial mode and race alone - against my own time. It usually all goes very bad. I cannot finish ONE single round without bumping into something or sliding off the track, invalidating my turn = the timer stops and I have to start from the beginning or finish the turn and go over the start/finish line to restart and try again. This can be fun the first time, the second maybe, the third - if you are really into it. It can get pretty tough after that, when you try again and again and fail to finish a single turn. Yet, this game is rewarding. It seems mysterious and hard to explain to someone who does not play video games, but chasing the time, trying to be 'better' at the game, trying to 'beat it', or - equally - going for the 'perfect score' - all these behavioral patterns, the psychological traps we let ourselves fall into (with a little help by the game developers and designers) - work remarkably well on our psyche? We 'want' to get better at playing the game. We want to accomplish the given task at hand. And the good games allow you to become better. They reward you not by cheating, so you can 'win' in the last second, or adjust to your bad play and let you shoot better (as Cliff Bleszinski did admit at his GCD 2011 talk about God of War 2). The really good games give you a chance to learn, to adopt, to improve.I usually hate ALL games that have repetitive gameplay. Everytime I see a "Action Game", FPS, RPG - or any game really - wants me to be like a Pavlovian dog, I resist the idea and stop playing. conditioning isn't my forte. I don't play to 'catch them all', I don't play for bragging rights, trophies or Achievement Points. I see the psycho-traps and game mechanics behind it. I see the game developers intention and I do what every reasonable and half-witted human should do: I stop. Random and repetitive is not why I 'install' games on my PC. But then there is a game like this. I surrender to this kind of game, that does the same thing. Why? I went so far to buy a Gamepad for PC so I can have analog control for my driving games. I am not going so far to buy a racing wheel, but who knows? Everytime I see a 3-monitor setup and somebody sitting in a F1-car chassis I say to myself: "I can build something like this easily". It's gonna be expensive, but it's possible - there must be a Make-magazine issue explaining how to build a hydraulic DirectInput chair. This weekend it's the Grand Prix of Europe in Valencia. A tough last corner coming in with high speed. It's almost impossible to drive the last turn with wets, if you are a rookie like me (all assists off). Still I have to try it one more time. So, if you please excuse me... (...oh, and I am really sorry for wasting your time. Who the hell reads such things anyways? :)

The logistics of GS E3 coverage, year after year, is not only very expensive, but really BIG. The amount of cables, hard disc drives, switches, routers, cameras, batteries; and equally thelive streaming, data shovelling, uploads, downloads and general traffic during the E3 ...is gigantic.

A couple years ago the ONLY place to follow E3 online was ... Gamespot.com. True, you had some other websites (most of them smaller, or it was Yahoo! etc..) but when Gamespot started live webcasts from the floor, there was NO other place video game fans wanted to be.

AND YET, many video game publishers and their Marketing & PR handlers STILL treated video game websites like some Charles Dickens characters: dirty little children, who probably also steal. The access for online-only media was restricted, as far as I know the old stories.

You had your BIG video game print magazines, you had your mainstream media national newspapers and TV, who were most welcome and even International Press courted in private sessions behind closed doors. Not the online only outlets. Around that time, when Gamespot & others were trying to convince the publishers, that these websites had a wider spread and more audiences (before Google Analytics) Gamespot seemed to took their fate in their own hands and decided to do something: they covered E3 by doing a live show from the floor*.

At that time, Gamespot - to my rather poor recollection - broke record after record for a video game website. Most visitors, most clicks, most hits, most video streams. They teamed up with Akamai to keep up with the traffic from all over the world. Gamespot had a loyal fanbase and did the 'social media' thingy long before it became a thing called Twitter. Gamespot's success made publishers and competitors react. Covering E3 via live-streams became 'a thing'. Giving access to online-only media is now nothing special. It was a process, but big publishers recognized the value in giving enthusiast online press and even amateur bloggers access to their (still highly controlled) marketing messages. They learned, that their fans want access. They know it so well, that they started to skip the middle-man and are trying to bond with their customers directly (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs) - but there still is a value in having 'Partners' covering their games.

Just like print magazines, E3 lost it's importance for the mainstream public over the years, but not for retailers or media. Game companies learned to control their message and trickle information throughout the year. The build up for E3 is going on a month before the show (media events). E3 is still the most important event - despite the rise of other events (GamesCom in Europe is now bigger in size). The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) making E3 a big size public media event again after the Dark Year in 2007 (and the big publishers doing their bid), was the right choice. It needs to be visible to mainstream America. It needs to be a more public event. The success of GamesCom in Cologne proves the value of a mixed event (part business partners/media - part public/fans).

So, let's enjoy another crazy year from the best place you can get during E3: not from the floor of theLos Angeles Convention Center, but rather... fromyour home - avoiding the noise, the waiting lines, the endless floors, the bad food, bad demo environment, no-access behind-closed-doors stuff -following all the news and updates instantly when they are 'unlocked' and watching the live video stream from this very website? (with an additional post-mortem daily recap in the evening by the drinking Renegades from GB)

*I never worked for CNET nor Gamespot. I don't know how things really happened and why. I am just recollecting elements from my memory. If I am factually wrong, feel free to correct me or call me out.

Life after Gerstmann - an ethical Perspective

All I know is this: If it is true that Jeff Gerstmann came to work and found out that morning that he was fired, this is scandalous in itself. Unless Mr. Gerstmann is guilty of unethical behavior, you cannot, you CANNOT treat your editorial director, who also was a major part in building this brand called GS, in this despicable way. If there were differences between the CNET management and Mr. Gerstmann, there are other ways to communicate with each other.

The lesson to be learned for the rest of the editorial staff and the guys/gals who work behind the cameras/desks at GS, is simple.

Ask yourself: "Do I want to work in a place like this, that fires people like Jeff in the way they did?"

If you don't - you quit.

Life can be that simple.

If you want to continue betraying yourself, pretending nothing 'bad' has happened, you are entitled to do so. It is YOU who has to look at yourself in the mirror every morning, before going to work at CNET.

If you are patient and have some time: there-s an interesting Gamasutra Podcast with theMacArthur Foundation Panel, 'Do Videogames Help Kids Learn?' - The panelists include Sasha Barab of Indiana University, who demos his latest project, Quest Atlantis, which uses an immersive online world to teach environmental impact and science to junior high school students. Nichole Pinkard, Director of Technology at the University of Chicago also shares her experience creating an innovative digital media after school program for Chicago's Center for Urban School improvement. And David Williamson Shaffer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of How Computer Games Help Children Learn, discusses his latest research on games and learning.

http://www.gdcradio.net/