Gabriel wasn't able to get into SimCity last night to play, because the server wasn't working and single player games don't exist anymore, even if you are playing a private city and nobody can come in anyway. So I would remember it, because it was important, I said here in the post a long time ago that "EA games come with free misery." This is why I stopped being an annual purchaser of Tiger Woods games: because this company has a serious, serious problem with execution at launch. You would only fix it if it meant more sales. But it doesn't, because everybody already bought it. Well, except me.

See above.

I know Gabriel is enjoying himself in there, when they will allow him to. The fidelity, even zoomed way in, is apparently a source of delight because he's pretty delighted over there right now. Okay. Two things:

- I was on Pat Rothfuss' "Story Board" Geek & Sundry Google Hangout-ism, and it was so much fun that I said we should do it again. I hereby submit the nomenclature "Story Board: LUDO SQUAD" to encapsulate further meanderings in this vein. One of the guests was Colin McComb, who I didn't understand was the most important person in my life, but one look down his ouvre - he has an ouvre, people - was like reading an index of my actual bookshelf. He was nervous about the Kickstarter he was putting up today, the one for a sequel to Torment using Monte Cook's "Monty Cook's Numenera" By Monte Cook as a setting. It's gonne break a million today, maybe in about twelve hours. What a relief that must be. Now all he has to worry about is making a sequel to the most sophisticated and literary role-playing game of all time.

- I love Hawken, straight up. I saw the early videos, like everybody else, and was appropriately startled; it was enough to get me to install the game. The platter of this drive is littered with free to play experiments of all stripes, though, and being on there is no guarantee. It got its hooks in, though, because the shooter underneath there is (for all its Neo-Tokyo embroidery) rock solid. The patch that went up on the fifth shows the game to great advantage - if you have a nice nVidia card, the shit they've got going on in there with the particles is completely nutballs. Something else I appreciate is the "starter" mech you get is still my favorite one, which was nice of them. They could have made this a game where you get effed e'y day until you cough it up, that sort of thing is common. But they didn't.

(CW)TB out.