Up late talking games & writing? You're...

Games: My good friend and fellow GameCritics staffer Brandon Bales (he of the Lonely Gamer fame) has just come out with a solo video project, and it's pretty fantastic. Click HERE to see Brandon interview Kellee Santiago of THATGAMECOMPANY (fl0w, Flower) and tune in next week for part two. This is State of Play, and it's great, great stuff.


Games: My other good friend Andrew Groen (@ScienceGroen on Twitter) has just put out one of the most valuable games-related articles I've ever read -- how much money do reviewers and games writers actually make?

If you're thinking about a full-time career playing games and getting paid to write about it, definitely take the time to read this piece over at GamesRadar and see if the reality lives up to your expectations. My hat is off to Andrew for doing this piece… everybody I know has asked this question at one time or another, and very rarely have I ever heard a definite answer.


Games: So I've formally bailed on Skyrim. However, after my initial post about being tired of it after fifteen hours, I was inundated with comments from people on Twitter and elsewhere regarding my lack of enthusiasm for it.



How can this possibly be boring? Yet... It is.

 There were two big themes that kept popping up from fans of the game. The first was that I was "doing it wrong" by spending time on quests and not spending more time wandering through the landscape, discovering things as I went.

The second point people made was that I "needed to see XYZ quest”, meaning that the good stuff was elsewhere and I had been putting time into parts of the game that weren’t very good.

To both of these comments, I pose the following question: if I spent fifteen hours doing it wrong and completing bad quests, why is it so hard to find the good stuff?

For a game that's ostensibly about doing things the way that you want to, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that the way I want to do things is the wrong way. I'm also a little surprised at how much of a pass the game seems to get for having a lot of quests which are less-than-thrilling.


I'm not bringing this up just to rag on Skyrim -- it's not my cup of tea and I accept that, and I also accept that there are loads and loads of people out there who think it's pretty fantastic. That's fine, and I genuinely have no problem with that. However, I do think it's interesting that so many people were so eager to explain to me why I wasn't enjoying the game. After all, isn't it Bethesda’s job to craft a product which is well-made and appealing? Shouldn't a great game be fun and engaging without someone there to explain the "proper" way to appreciate it?

If starting the game and playing it as it's presented to me means that I'm doing it wrong, then I think that points out a fundamental flaw in Skyrim’s design rather than a problem with how I'm approaching the game as a player.

Just something to think about.


Misc: To round it out tonight, I just wanted to say that even though yesterday was Thanksgiving, I thought I would take another moment here to recognize all the great things that I have in my life.

Like anybody else, I think it would be great to have a pile of money or a house ten times bigger than where I live now... all that stuff. But, you know... not really.


I've got the best wife a man could ever hope to have, I've got two little boys that I'm proud of, and I've got a job that keeps my family warm, dry and fed.

Even more than that, I've got a car, a TV, I play games almost every day. I have three grocery stores less than three minutes away, I take hot showers whenever I feel like it, and I've always got clean clothes to wear.

As if that wasn't enough, I have fresh water to drink, I don't live in a war zone, and none of my family members are dying from a disease that could be cured with one vaccine.

I'm definitely no stranger to hard times -- not at all -- but I do recognize that even when things really aren't going my way, the situation can always be infinitely worse. I may not be the richest guy on my block and I don't foresee any tropical vacations coming up soon, but I absolutely recognize the value in the things that I do have, and those things are not only enough, but they are deeply, deeply appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, happy belated Thanksgiving to you, and I hope that you've got things in your life that you are thankful for as well.