"We need a healer," says Scott. His voice is mostly clear, with just the hint of digital edge on it, as if he's been chewing on pixels for an hour. Depending on your point of view, he has.

I scan the Looking For Group menu on the left of my screen, looking at names. Nobby. Gudhealr. Puffypuff. The thought that I'm going to spend a couple of hours overcoming online challenges with players who can’t properly use a random name generator fills me with a particular sense of dread. I briefly flash back to pre-school, remembering the kids who tried to jam their Transformers into G.I. Joe jeeps.

I get a message from Nickrunner. "I got heals. Invite." He's a paladin and lacks the communication skills I typically look for in a person - politeness, complete sentences - but it's late and I want to run the damn instance.

/invite Nickrunner.

I get uncomfortable anytime the mainstream media examines gaming culture. It's tied to the shame that lies at the heart of being a nerd. For example, I can't really enjoy Dungeons & Dragons if I can't be a little ashamed of it, and that probably stems from how I embrace the outsider status I pretend to have. It's okay for me to feel like an outsider, as long as others don't force that upon me.

Seeing The King of Kong, then, was a strange experience. Not only is director Seth Gordon exploring the world of competitive gaming, he's also examining the number one aspect of gaming that gives the mainstream a massive case of the wiggins: how seriously the community can take this kind of competition for such low stakes. Gordon's film puts the road to a world record high score in perspective, but also shows us the bright spots of competing, and how inspiring a competitor can be in the face of, in this case, ridiculous adversity.

At a table of a very nice and very empty hotel restaurant in Chicago on Saturday night, my brother Scott and I are arguing, in that "angry, but we'll be over it soon" way only brothers can pull off. The topic is Take-Two Interactive's decision to change the name of Irrational Studios, developers of the impending BioShock, to fit the 2K Games brand. 2K Boston and 2K Australia is what we should now use to refer to the critically-acclaimed and fan-beloved developer behind Freedom Force, SWAT 4, and System Shock 2. The very notion has got my brother livid.

His argument is as follows: Take-Two bought Irrational one year ago, and has largely left them alone. Now, just as BioShock is going to release, Take-Two's label 2K Games is going to claim all the credit for the title when it takes off like a fat kid running for the ice cream truck, and Irrational will be denied the recognition they so very much deserve. It's a sleazy business move, one that effectively kills off Irrational as we know it, and executives at Take-Two should be thrown into deep, dark holes, from which they will never escape.

Most of this is true. But I'm just not that upset about it.

There are no words to describe the 2007 San Diego Comic Con. Big just doesn't work, and neither does immense or gargantuan. Pictures hardly do it justice, the herds of geeks and nerds looking miniscule in simple digital photographs, but they come close. The only true way to understand the scope of this four-day pinnacle of popular culture is to stand in the middle of the crowds, surrounded on all sides by super-heroes, Final Fantasy characters, and lots and lots of Jedi, and allow yourself to be overwhelmed by it. At any moment, these cosplayers could snap and overthrow the city government, declaring what was once a beautiful California city as a new safe haven for fanboys and girls, a nation unto itself. No force on this earth could stop them. Not even deodorant.

Sierra got a lot of things right with their Xbox Live Arcade version of the classic board game, Carcassonne. It's simple enough to bring newcomers in, but has enough depth to bring experts and enthusiasts back for more. The clincher, though, is its webcam support. Taking a social game and adding the ability to see your friends is just one more step towards eliminating the boundaries that normally divide us on the Internet. I'm not just playing a game against imaginary people stuck inside my 360. They have faces to go with their names and voices. Seeing people on my friends list actually laugh makes them much less abstract.

Anyone who doesn't have a camera on his or her Xbox is missing out. Webcams and the games that use them are really next-generation, far more than the sound and fury of high definition graphics.

Mitch Gitelman is not a happy camper.

The lead Shadowrun developer has been making the rounds on the podcast circuit, discussing in great detail why he feels his game is getting the short end of the stick. Gitelman lays a lot of the blame on the press, claiming that reviewers are being too harsh on his game and holding the title up to unfair standards. On the Official Xbox Magazine podcast this past Monday he points to middle-of-the-road review scores as keeping people from realizing that this title is an instant classic. Game reviews are broken, he claims, and it's screwing over developers who want to take risks. Ballsy stuff, especially coming from a guy who isn't hiding the fact that he wants to sell more copies of his game.

Thing is, Mitch has a point.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Jamie Cheng, CEO of Klei Entertainment, and the man behind the indie puzzle game, Eets. Originally released on the PC, the game was released on Xbox Live Arcade on April 25th as Eets: Chowdown, complete with 120 levels and a brand new multiplayer mode. Jamie had a lot to say about where the weird ideas behind the game came from, working with a tiny development team, and how they made the transition from PC to console controls.

The lights dim as the drummer starts the count. The crowd collectively holds their breath, waiting for the first note to pound their eardrums. The kick drum kicks, the cymbals ring, the bass player starts his line. Each piece falls into place, the separate parts becoming whole, until there's only one missing ingredient. And right at that crucial moment is when I come in and screw everything up.

The notes I want to make soar over the crowd come crashing down instead, producing the second ugliest sound possible, followed by the first; the crowd's groans and boos. My heart drops through the stage.

I can sense Rachael shaking her head from the couch behind me. Her boyfriend sounds momentarily disappointed. "Start it over!"

The motions are too practiced, too swift. Bring up the menu, down to restart, green button. At some point, I'm going to run out of mulligans.

"This would be a lot easier if I had some help." I say to my crowd -- the ones on the couch, not the polygons on the screen -- but they just laugh. They're here to be entertained, and interactivity is not on the menu.

It's been a long day and an even longer week. Nine grueling hours under life-sapping florescent lights, listening to dumb customers figuring out which mouse button to click by process of elimination, and dumber coworkers prattling on about current events and reality TV. An hour spent on a crowded bus moving down the congested highway at speeds that make snails look impatient, sitting next to a large woman in purple spandex whose cell phone conversation is so important that everyone on the bus must hear her side of the story. Five minutes spent searching for the keys, thirty seconds fumbling with the lock, and you're on the couch with my feet on the coffee table and your purpose clear: it's time to play a game.

But even as you stare at the stack of unopened and unplayed games by the television, you have no idea what to play.

No one ever imagined that two web comic creators would ever invade a Seattle suburb and throw a party for almost 20,000 of their closest friends. The idea at face value is just silly. And yet, for the third year in a row, Gabe and Tycho have done just that. As promised, here's part two of Gamers With Job's coverage of PAX06.