He hath set water and fire before thee: stretch forth thy hand to which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil, that which he shall choose shall be given him.- Sirach Chapter 15

There is nothing so damning to the human spirit as free will. No murder so heinous as one with forethought, planning and cold execution. When choice is consciously made, the most petty of actions become greater than the sum of their results. We raise our glass to men defending their homes from invaders. We would damn them without their justifications, their lack of choice because they were just protecting their families. In games we rely on the ends justifying means that would make the cruelest of dictators cringe.

This being the day Grand Theft Auto IV slips into gaming consoles all over the world, we’re going to be faced with questions of morality again. Not just from the media or concerned parents, but more importantly - ourselves.

It’s getting awful lonely out here. With the demise of Games For Windows magazine and the uncertain question of how their editorial voice will hold a beachhead against the churning swells of click counters and ad mongers, there aren’t many safe harbors left for our freelancers. As Gamers With Jobs plugs along, Julian Murdoch and Lara Crigger have both seen the passing of three magazines that featured a lot of their best work. Great articles - the kind of writing that didn’t join the water striders skimming across the surface, but dove deep and wrestled giant squids.

Over and over, industry publishers are passing along the same message. Your time has come, the sea levels are rising and your little island has little left to offer passing ships. We hear Cat Fancy is hiring.

After chewing my nails over the question of whether or not videogames are a positive force in my life for so long, I was taken aback by the simple answer offered by my Buddhism teacher. Not just because the most pressing question I had in that moment was handled easily in those four words, but that she offered them with a verbal flip of the hand, like I'd just asked if picking flowers was OK. Venerable Robina didn't mince words, and she didn't seem too impressed with my personal quandary.

We had a pretty good run last year. Bold predictions were made and many came to pass as foretold. Sure, some of my predictions may seem to have been wrong, but if you read them again the deeper meanings will be revealed. This year will be special, I've brought friends and we've all imbibed a special tonic that spreads wide the legs of the mind "… to the future!

Something was bothering me yesterday as I trolled Metacritic for PSP game scores, trying to refresh my memory on what's actually worth buying for the system. I have the infinite wisdom of the GWJ community to draw from, but even our collective memory may fail under the strain of nearly two years worth of games. With this is mind, the oft derided aggregate sites we disdain for reducing the quality of a game to a mere number serves a valuable function. If I want to know if Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops is good, I can punch it in and see that most reviewers seem to like it. No spoilers, no outright bias or flaming, just a raw number denoting quality so I can feel safe making the order.

What bothered me was that these scores were missing something. Our input. Not one aggregate site includes the Gamers With Jobs perspective on games because we don't score them. I'm starting to wonder if we should.

Years ago, the rough English translation of an article written in a Russian game magazine crossed my desk. The author was Oleg Michaelovich Hazhinsky, and the article was about happiness and the art of gaming. I always meant to clean up parts of it so that everyone could enjoy this simple wisdom. After my efforts to contact the author failed, the file collected dust on my hard-drive for years until I stumbled upon it again recently. I figure something written in Russian over five years ago by someone whose name doesn't even show up in Google is fairly safe at this point, so I went ahead and cleaned it up for your edification. I've omitted about half the article and re-worked it completely for our North American sensibilities. Enjoy.

The same pirates who unleashed Tiger Woods 2008 on the illegal torrent scene before the game hit shelves have failed to do the same for one of the strongest contenders for 2007 game of the year. After over a week to hammer away at the copy protection, the PC version of Bioshock has yet to be cracked. The reasons why have stirred up old controversies and revealed what may be the beginning of the end for casual online piracy.

While we're mostly preoccupied with either supporting or refuting claims that video games create real-life violence, the underlying fear is rarely addressed by either the gaming media or politicians. The argument that games cause terrible acts of homicide implies that movies, music, or even other people can have the same power over anyone. Because "anyone" includes the person making the argument, they lash out at the most obvious examples of this in an attempt to project it outside themselves. Getting mired in the minutia of cause and effect keeps us in a constant cycle of fear and blame. It's an utter waste of time.

Nothing you see has any meaning, save for what you give it. A cup, for example, does not contain some inherent "cupness" that defines it. We remember filling it with orange juice in the morning. We remember drinking from it while we read the paper. We remember holding it in our hands, washing it. If you take what we call a cup and break it into its component parts, and break those parts into their parts, you will not find a molecule that is pure "cup." It follows then, there is no inherent "cupness" that defines the shape. We see our past experiences, and so we pour meaning into possessions, often making them desirable.

Millions of people have discovered a new way to fuel desire, turning their attention to the most intangible objects in the world. Virtual items. Zeros and Ones. Things that cannot hide their lack of inherent existence behind our usual senses like touch or smell. We know that the sword with the impressive strength modifier doesn't exist in any meaningful way, but we buy into the fantasy with the most precious currency we have: our time.

After referencing my last batch of bold predictions a couple weeks ago, I was both praised for my amazing foresight and derided for making obvious predictions that anyone could have called. Well guess what boys and girls? You didn't and I did. That makes me the bold knight, galloping into the future and you the scared little squire, hiding behind a rock and making catcalls. Maybe this year some of you heckling from the cheap seats will step up and make your own predictions. We'll see who gets to wear the funny hat when the dust clears on 2007. My first prediction? It will be me.