I feel like there has to be a voice for that position; mine will suffice for now, even if it is a fragmentary enunciation of my coordinate. Sorry; if I haven't written all weekend, my initial paragraphs come out like this. It's like a clearing of the throat.

I've mentioned something Warren Spector said at a PAX keynote many times - that art forms are either embraced by the mainstream, or they are annihilated. I don't think it's wrong, necessarily, but this is a phrase which creates the opposing battle lines and arrays them for war. Right? Everything isn't war, and the Internet is stupid, whenever it isn't being amazing. But it's mostly stupid, eternal recitations of the type of grudge we used to chisel into rocks.

I have said on more than one occasion that "gameplay" would mostly get in the way of Pokemon Go. A bluetooth device designed to help you grind blindly expresses a deep awareness of the product they have actually made, and my larvae cry out for it. But what Warren Spector's adage doesn't cover is that, for the lover of systems, the adherent, the acolyte of play, the dilution which necessarily accompanies that transition is a kind of annihilation. And whenever they say so, they get kicked in the teeth for being dead-enders, thralls to a dead god, when what's true is that they like what they like, and indeed, they liked it first. But there will always be a place for them, because Steam exists; there's always gonna be a game where you die and die and die until your accumulated bodies form a kind of bridge toward wisdom.

Hey! Child's Play has its summer update posted, and it's a doozy: Gamers Give Back Tour, grant applications, and more - including the date for this year's Child's Play Charity Dinner & Auction, on Thursday, December 8th. Check it out!

(CW)TB out.