Reading Greg Costikyan's recent weblog post on the Independent Game Developers conference was interesting. Of course, the game industry has been heading that way for years, but Costikiyan does such a good job of laying it all out on the screen. I have completed, by my current estimates, over three-hundred-and-fifty video games, and I think it's obvious that things have deteriorated greatly from the slightly-older days and the much-older days. The only damn games that I'll play anymore are: anything from Nintendo (even their missteps, like Super Mario Sunshine, are so much fun that I play through them several times), and once in a blue moon something else. Recent somethings else: ToeJam & Earl III (the game I bought an Xbox for, I keep telling people, as if it mattered), Neverwinter Nights (plug-plug for my module, which I assure you, is still being worked on, just slowly!), Serious Sam (which is notable not for doing anything new but for doing it the old way extremely well), and Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 (Among the hardest-yet-fairest games I've ever seen, and hopelessly addicting. I will get to Master Mode someday...!)

But I'm ashamed to admit that my favorite part of the whole article was reading "The Computer is your Friend" again. Man that brought back memories. Good on ya, Mister C. (That is, Costikyan, not The Computer.)