If you like games and you get on the Internet, you’ve probably witnessed the recent shit storm surrounding BioWare employee Jennifer Hepler. Quick recap: in an interview from 2006 (talk about digging up the past), Ms. Hepler suggests that since many games allow you to skip story cut scenes, they should also allow people who really dig the story (and only the...

My roommate lives in a dull, colorless universe, and I’m making it my problem. No, let’s not talk about my roommate. But really, let’s. He’s as devout a videogame enthusiast as I am — hour for hour, he probably plays more than I do — and he’s been my best friend for 15 years. I saved his life once (short story: narrowly averted aquatic disaster), which...

It’s been over a week since MAGFest X ended. I am still recovering. It’s taken me until now just to go over it all in my head. Now that I’ve done that, I’m going to use this space to do the thing I’m probably not supposed to do after a convention: brag about people I’ve met. And, to take it a step further, let’s start by...

(I’m writing these words as the regrets strike me; please pardon whatever form they take.) I work Tuesdays through Saturdays, but most of employed America works Mondays through Fridays. Consequently, no one gives a shit about Mondays, and neither do I, save for the fact that people’s expectations of me are even lower than they are later in the week. Today, a...

Or, the power of homage. Back in the day, before everyone decided that intellectual property was a real thing, and writers/composers/artists liberally referenced one another as a method of giving credit and expounding, things were awesome. Now things are a little less awesome. Wait, no, that’s a stupid way to start this article. Let me try again. (Original...

When I was a junior in college, one of my journalism professors organized an entire lesson plan around the Pulitzer Board’s decision in 2004 to award no prize for feature writing. The submissions that year were so derivative and so dull, she said, that the Pulitzer people, rather than honor the best of a mediocre crop of stories, chose to make a statement about the...