When it launched last month, Demigod's multiplayer matchmaking was labeled as a temporary annoyance, a small hurdle to clear on your way to enjoying a brilliant take on strategy games. The common opinion was that the game was worth the short-term troubles everyone was experiencing. It’s not new for games, PC or console, to experience nagging issues in the early part of its post-release lifecycle. Bugs are just something an early-adopter learns to live with. Things will get better.

But that was a month ago. Things didn't get better. The matchmaking is as frustrating as it was at release, even after multiple beta patches, community-developed workarounds and a large amount of computer nerd voodoo. Demigod could be a great game if it ever worked right, but it doesn't. I'm finished with fussing over forwarded ports. I'm tired of arguing on Ventrilo about whether I should be using my WiFi or plugging in like it's 1993. I'm done rebooting my damn router. Enough is enough. I want my money back.

The problem is that I bought Demigod from Impulse, Stardock’s content delivery system, not some big-box store. I can’t just put everything back in the box as neatly as possible and take it to a customer service department. You can’t return bits and bytes, can you?

"We need to talk."

I walk into the apartment slowly, assessing the scene. The tone of the voice is serious, wary. Expecting a struggle. For just a moment, I consider turning on my heel and making my escape. It's still happy hour.

The moment passes. "Okay."

Bag down, jacket off, but I keep my shoes on. It's easier to make a dramatic exit when you don't have to tie your laces. I take stock of the situation: The dishwasher is running, the kitchen is clean. One lamp on beside the couch, music playing in the bedroom. But we're alone. Or as alone as one can be with the Internet.

"Sit down." Gesturing to a spot on the couch. The faces flicker, scramble, a pale-faced male in a Mastodon shirt one moment, a brunette with streaks in her hair the next. Like A Scanner Darkly. Each flash seems familiar for a brief moment, like a friend or someone whose thread topic made you chuckle during a long work day, then melt into a personality of a stranger, in an unsettling display of anonymity. You think you know them, but you probably don't.

"What's wrong?" I ask. "Did I do something wrong? Did I double-post?"

The images continue to blur and change, but they all look disapproving and a bit sad. "We're concerned. All you ever talk about is your iPhone and its silly little games. We think you're becoming an elitist — a … a digirati." The Internet says.

Without thinking, I reply. "Well, yeah."

"We are strong, no one can tell us we're wrong. / Searching our hearts for so long, both of us knowing..."
- Pat Benatar, "Love Is A Battlefield"

Our boat stops in front of a corroded, blood-red gate. The pilot, a West African military man with at least a full clip of ammo strapped to his hip, explains that Shawn and I need to exit this increasingly unsafe vessel, navigate our way through a mindless horde of infectious monsters (and two giant turrets), then flip two switches at the same time before we continue.

He does not offer to help.

We mantle up the side of the pier and take cover behind a couple of large crates, upon which sits ammunition for a handgun. Immediately the bickering begins.

It's not as crowded as I remember.

The arcades of my youth were claustrophobic spaces of beeps and boops, pitch black except for the glow of the monitors. Filled with that warm silicon smell you only get when you cram a room wall to wall with electronics running full speed for hours at a time. The aisles at GameWorks, in contrast, are wide enough for groups of small children racing to their parents or the zig-zag pattern one of my peers would follow after enjoying the bar's $5 margarita special.

Even the games are different, bigger, grouped around specific themes. One room on the second floor houses eight different varieties of rail-shooter, a constant symphony of gunfire and undead groans. The far wall on the first floor is dedicated to an immense Indy 500 simulation, complete with moving cars and a live, chronically bored announcer.

I am not here for those.

Cloistered behind a row of Japanese drum and keyboard simulators is the section I seek. Past ancient towers of fighting games yellowed from neglect, ignored by the rest of the patrons. There, two Street Fighter IV cabinets are shoved together with a row of stools behind them, occupied by a small group of average looking guys. Everyone stares intently at the screens in front of the two current combatants. The machine lets loose a digitized shout of "Hadouken!" and I follow their gaze.

Even as a kid, I should have known better. I stared at the box cover in the local video store, after prowling the isles like a shark hungry for Roy Scheider, and tried to parse the image with my sugar-addled mind. It said, "Bionic Commando," but he didn’t look bionic. His arm wasn’t a hook, just a friggin' arm with a fancypants bracelet on it. Maybe he could fly? Fire lasers out of his kneecaps? My young imagination dreamed of this supposed hero leaping from building to building with robotic leg muscles, crushing evil military grunts with each landing. If I'd had any sense, I would have put that plastic placeholder case back and rented River City Ransom again. But I'd probably just shotgunned a Big Gulp of Mt. Dew and adolescent bladders are not forgiving.

After an impatient bike ride home, I tried my best to get into the game. It was so much easier to be forgiving back then, to put up with silly concepts and plot points that required a leap of faith. I only remember one thing about the game that is now suddenly receiving overly-nostalgic praise for its brilliant gameplay: The crushing disappointment I felt when I realized that goofy bastard swinging across the box wasn't really bionic.

"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.