I'm pretty sure people never fulfill their New Year's resolutions. They're projections of the person we aspire to be, and we're not that person. They're expressions of the want to want something we don't want. We want to want to exercise every day, but oh god we don't want to exercise today. Self-improvement is a quagmire. Changing is hard, and more to the point it's often simply daft. Surveying our lives from the vantage of the New Year's hangover, we tend to adopt the perspective of distant social planners, removed from the lived enjoyment of our vices and failings and so not appreciating how necessary and good they really are. From this far perspective, we might tell ourselves that there's no point in having a couple microbrews after work, and so we shouldn't do it -- a mistake of judgment we'd never make while actually in the grips of something cool and relaxing.

In that spirit, here are some resolutions about the kind of gamer I want to be -- not the one I am:

• Play socially, not anti-socially. A marathon session alone on my couch does nothing to level up my real-world friendships. Try to game with friends in person, or people I know online (not randoms). This has an added benefit: if I find myself compulsively playing something that is not actually worthy, a watching friend can intervene.


• Don't pursue optional goals in games unless they provide concrete value. It's not enough that the gameplay is enjoyable -- it has to be so good that I can't get enough of it playing only the main game, which should be rare.


• Don't play games where the only hook is accumulating in-game rewards. Be suspicious of games that have an especially rich variety of color-coded loot, skill trees, etc., because they are probably trying to trick me into playing more than I really enjoy. Gaming is not my job.


• Write more.

How about you folks? Are you happy with the shape of your gaming habits, or are there things you would change?

With everyone else off doing exciting things at PAX, those of us left behind will lift our glasses to those more fortunate than ourselves. Come join us as we drown our sorrows in hyperbole and vitriol!

When: Saturday, September 5th, 8PM EST!

Where: USTREAM!

How: Best bet is to make a USTREAM account, then you can participate in the chat!

What: We'll be doing live questions from the studio audience!

Why: Because we're not at PAX.

Look forward to seeing you all there! I promise to talk in exclamation points for the entire show!

After having said good-bye to Leipzig last year, I packed my bag to head to what was now known as 'gamescom'. Would I be able to survive an expo that has not a single capital letter? Would I be able to feel home without knowing how to find the best non-public toilets? Would I be able to explain to my friends from North-America why people from Cologne consider the yellow liquid known as 'Kölsch' beer, and why it's not representative of what Germany actually has to offer?

Neither did I die, nor did I explode. Kölsch, however, remains unexplainable. I did manage to check out number of games such as Rage, Brütal Legend, R.U.S.E., and New Super Mario Bros. We also got some information on CCP's Dust 514 and World of Darkness.

Rain-slick cobblestones at night, a dim streetlamp, and an anonymous man in drab brown sleeping standing up. I got too curious about the spark smoldering in that ash bin in the corner, and found myself facing the final boss of Chrono Trigger just hours into the game. I got crushed, and got ready for Game Over. But, instead, the view pulled out to the Day of Lavos. The monster burst from the Earth's crust. The sky burned, and 65 million years of human progress were annulled.

Finally a view of the planet, shaded in defeat. The message: "But . . . the future refused to change." Finally, game over.

This is just one of many endings built into Chrono Trigger. But it is different from the others because it dramatizes "Game Over" rather than "Mission Accomplished." Usually, Game Over immediately breaks the narrative dream of the game, interrupting what is otherwise presented as a continuous story and setting you back to an earlier point. Game Over is a discontinuity both in interaction and in presentation -- frozen controls, a darkened screen, the title. The game abruptly ceases to interpret itself as a story of an imaginary world.

Games have learned to give us a heady experience of power, freedom from restraint both physical and moral. I spent hours a day for weeks hijacking the tank in Grand Theft Auto 3 so that I could roll down the street crushing cars and people and shooting fire trucks with 10-inch shells. Mayhem plus impunity brews a strong potion. Being a badass is about drinking deeply, f*cking sh*t up and not caring about the rules. This is wonderful. But it is not everything.

Exultant amorality does not exhaust the range of the moral sense, and games should aspire to explore more of that range. The now-popular 'morality systems' promise to help us explore moral experiences, but that promise remains unfulfilled. These systems attempt to explore morality through choice and freedom. They often fail because they are poorly executed. But they also fail because they are conceptually limited.

The truth is, choice and freedom are overrated. By focusing on them, developers embrace a kind of vulgar liberalism, a notion that morality consists in choice and consequences and no more. Whatever its virtues as a political morality, this model fails to capture many dimensions of the human moral experience, like what the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. The richest moral experiences in games have been achieved without branching storylines or 'karma,' in titles like Shadow of the Colossus.

As the deadline for writing submissions passes, I can say without any sense of reservation or exaggeration that the response far exceeded expectations. But now that it's all over, I know many of you are anxious to know the results and I'm proud to announce that the winner is ...

... probably not even going to be decided upon until sometime next week.

This is all your own fault for sending in more than 100 funny, poignant, detailed, thoughtful and, at times, delightfully strange articles. Saturday alone we received more than 30 individual submissions, and with only one or two spots to be had there will be endless deliberation, consideration, parsing of text, hair pulling and back biting before we can even narrow it down to a field of, let's say, 10. I know it's going to seem about as authentic as Mexican food from Taco Bell when I say that the volume of talent was astounding, but hand-on-heart it's true. There's some really excellent work in here.

So, the methodology for coming up with a winner? We're going to look at a lot of things: mechanics, grammatical accuracy, originality, rhythm, quality of topic, voice, consistency, structure, logical flow. We're going to be looking for articles that seem like they would fit right up here on the front page. Some of it is intangible, much of it isn't. The truth is that we're going to have to turn down a lot of really talented writers, and I have to tell you that the thought of it ties knots in my stomach.

Which brings me to another point. I simply will not be able to provide individual feedback on articles. I know a lot of you would love to know why we did or didn't choose you and what you could have done better. With this much content populating my in-box, that is simply not in the cards.

So, as we end our submissions period and enter the intensive phase of review, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated. It was extremely gratifying to see so many people interested in writing about games and enthusiastic about what we are trying to do here. Until next time...

The 2009 Call for Writers is in full swing, and frankly the competition is fierce. We've had a significant response to our initial post, which you can find here, and I already somewhat fear the Herculean task of having to make hard decisions among a field of outstanding submissions. It is incredibly gratifying to realize how much talent exists not only within our community, but among the community of people interested in writing about video games.

I admit, I hesitated to laud the submissions too much for fear of running people off, but understand this Call for Writers is far from over. While both Julian and I have read and often re-read many articles, previews, reviews and op-eds that show substantial potential, we have firmly held off from even talking about any final decisions until the end of the submission period. While I am fairly confident that we will be making at least one offer, we see a new draft every day or so that makes a new and compelling case that stands the entire process on its head.

This is pretty much exactly what I'd hoped for.

With just over a week to go, I'm hoping that those of you who have been sitting on the fence will feel challenged to step up and send in a draft. Even if you don't get the slot, if you want to get into games writing there's only one way to do it: submit material. Please read the original post -- again, that can be found right here -- for instructions and get those submissions in. With E3 in the rearview mirror, it's hard to imagine that anyone would want for topics.

We will be contacting select individuals following the June 20 deadline, and at some point in the immediate future we hope to introduce one(?) new writer to the GWJ community.

Arguing about Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a lot like talking politics or religion. The two sides immediately polarize into their respective camps and begin lobbing angry comments at each other over blog-walls and forum moderators. For me, the usefulness of DRM isn't a polar decision. Information doesn't "want to be free", and limited-activations are an unreasonable limiation to force on consumers. I have a suspicion that the usefulness of Digital Rights lies somewhere in between those to viewpoints. I have a sense that there’s something of value to the perception of protection, even if that perception is flawed or outright incorrect.

While DRM solutions like those offered by Electronic Arts have been roundly criticized (and from all accounts, rightly so), it doesn’t follow that all DRM systems are created equal. The online activation methodology used by Steam in particular seems to be a measure that PC gamers can get behind. And still, it’s despised and spit on as a prelude to a “rental society” where we can no longer truly own anything. To the folks who would have us toss the baby with the proverbial bathwater, that see all DRM as a waste of time and a slap in the face of consumers: lighten up. To the free-love hippies that see no problem with pirated games as far as the eye can see: get a job. Seriously.

The middle ground between these two poles, the quietly successful business strategy powering Valve, is the Steam publishing service. It's DRM for the common man, and a service well worth defending.

As a rule, we at Gamerswithjobs avoid putting together any kind of intenal Game of the Year awards, primarily because the debate over the value and standards of such a thing would result in bloodshed, assault charges and the very likely ritual suicide of our own literary leporidae. Besides, it's far less interesting for us to make grand pronouncements from on high, and far more interesting to hear what a few hundred gamers we trust actually have to say on the matter.

This year's Game of the Year contest was a horse race with a true photo finish, and like that spunky sentaorial upstart Al Franken, I'd not be surprised to see Valve's lawyers demand a laborious recount to contest the result in favor of the close runner-up, Left 4 Dead. But, until that comes to pass, I will grudgingly validate these results, and congratulate the GWJ Community Game of the Year: Fallout 3!

While the Fallout 3 experience may not have fully captured me, it's not hard to see why this was a Game of the Year contender, with a massive play area and unlimited opportunities for exploration and strategic amputation. The Capitol Wastelands is a barren and harsh fronteir that you can get lost in for days at a time. Oozing with an oppressive atmosphere this is a gamespace that is at both eerily lonely and constantly threatening. Bethesda has recast the struggle for control between the militaristic Enclave and the last paragons of almost religious idealism, the Brotherhood of Steel, in the context of one man's quest for his father's mysterious disappearance, and the result echoes with post-apocalyptic familiarity.

Thanks, as always, go out to Sinatar, who does a habitually phenomenal job organizing the contest and tabulating the results. Our full Game of the Year results are posted below and ripped shamelessly from his post.

One Christmas gift, given more than two decades ago, changed my life. No joke, a single present under the tree forever tainted my choices that would follow. It was a NES, given the year they came out in the US and procured by a mother that still-won’t-let-me-forget that she drove to the next state over to get it. I don’t think I've saved the world by grinding levels in World of Warcraft or anything; I’m pretty we’d be soldiering on just fine if I was an accountant or a marine biologist instead of a games blogger. Just the same, it’s always amazed me that I can trace back most of the important touchstones in my life to a single grey NES box.

What’s even more interesting to me is how common that experience is for a lot of other gamers. A Gameboy, a Colecovision … they find their way into our hands almost accidentally, but have an enormous impact. Where would you be without the gift of gaming all those many years ago?