No matter how networked our games and gamers will become with the ever-increasing popularity of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, every game will continue to be separate from each other – there will never be one all-powerful uber-game, no matter how hard WoW may try.

Each game contains – and is – its own separate universe.  There are ups and down, spectacular features as well as flaws.  Even similar games have their own identity.  Even clones of more popular titles…

You can’t take a step to the right in Halo 3 and then find yourself magically in Halo Wars.  Whereas human cities merge and mesh in ways that keep you from telling where one ends and the other begins, games are segmented.  Fractured.  Individuals.

Like humans.

When I was a mere blogger, I was in my own little world.  True, every word I wrote could be read by people across the Internet, but it never really felt that way, even if an occasional comment was left.  I had my deep, black background and my neon green text.  It was mine.  Occasionally, the outside world would peek its head in to let me know it was listening, but, in general, I felt left to my own devices, my own thoughts, and my own desires.

If there was a news story I wanted to comment on, I did.  If there was a funny video I found, I posted it.  When I wanted to delve into my vast backlog of classic games for a nostalgic moment, that was okay too.  Anything and everything was fair game.  I was my own world.

Now, things are different.  I am no longer an isolated incident, saying whatever I want with no regard for how the universe might react.  I am part of a bigger world – Gamer Limit.  With thousands upon thousands of readers, I have an audience.  It forces me to not only improve my writing, but also to write for them, no longer just for myself.  When I find an interesting news story, I can share it, but in a more informative manner.  No longer allowed are the meandering thoughts of a carefree wild alpaca.  Now, focus is required.

This isn’t a bad thing, just… different.  Better?  If I expect to get an eventual career in this field, then yes, it’s better.  If I want to write whatever I want with no regard for readership, my blog will never become anything more than a hobby.  I am my own world, but Gamer Limit is a spiral galaxy in which I have as much gravity as the next solar body.

Working as a cohesive unit, the galaxy will grow, absorbing lesser universes’ power as it expands to a greater mass with every published article.  Eventually, hopefully, I will be an inhabitable world supporting my own biospheres, life cycles, and food chains.  Until then, I am content to merely do my part, and watch the stars.

Words are symbolic.  They are nothing but the power we give them.

Unfortunately, they don’t mean the same thing to every person.  Words carry the weight of a person’s entire lifetime experience – their bias, their weight, their pleasures, their pains.

I hate seeing words tossed around with no mind paid to the effect they will have on the world around the speaker.

Advertising uses words to mislead.  It has taught people that the actual meaning of a word is inconsequential when compared to the effect it will have on the listener.  Words have become tools, but so rarely have they become tools for good.  Good intentions, perhaps.  But that is not the same thing.

Not every game is “innovative” despite that being the biggest adjective on the box.

Games that receive “5 out of 5″ from Maxim aren’t necessarily worthy of the honor of a perfect score.

Telling someone you love them and then immediately throwing them away proves that you don’t.

Games/movies/books/people all lie to achieve something.  Many just want you to buy them.

Lying is an exclusively selfish act.  Even lying in a futile attempt to be altruistic often hurts more than it helps.  “Protecting someone from the truth” is usually translated to merely “protecting yourself.”

Understandably, games are a business.  They need to sell product to stay in business and create more product.  Yes, budgetary constraints often hold a particular title back from achieving the creator’s original vision.  That doesn’t make it acceptable to ship an incomplete, terrible game.  You adjust.  You adapt.  Animals can do it.  Humans need to learn how.

When I trade my hard-earned money for something, I expect to get back an experience worth having.  I paid for it.  Why would I pay for a bad time when I can have so many of my own for free?  My wasted time is even more valuable than a few lost dollars.  There’s always more money to be made in the world.  Time can never be taken back.

Please, don’t mislead me.  If you’re going to break my heart and waste my time, just tell me upfront.  My life is too short and too precious to waste.

A lot of books aren’t worth reading.  They may not have even been worth writing.  The author may hate himself as much as, say, the developers of Darkest of Days should hate themselves for releasing such an atrocity upon the world.

A lot of people, sad to say, are not worth knowing.  They will suck the life from you and leave you a broken, hollow shell struggling to regain a steady footing in the world.

Words are symbolic.  They are nothing but the power we give them.

Maybe we give them too much sometimes.

*Warning: pretty gay post.  Contains man feelings.

I moved to Gamer Limit after months of do-it-yourself blogging on BlogSpot.  I was in a rough spot.  My girlfriend of three years had just left me and took all the cool movies.  I lived in a town that offered me nothing.  Without many friends, I worked a lot of hours (50-60/week) at two thankless, pointless, futureless jobs.

Wanting a change, I started a video game blog.  I advertised it to my facebook and MySpace friends, but I didn’t expect a huge following.  I did write in it nearly every day, however, and I put it on resumes when I applied for “real” jobs in the video game journalism industry.

I started following RSS feeds.  I commented on other game sites’ articles.  I’d say, “Hey, I wrote something about this on my blog, too!”  Then I’d plug myself, trying to gain some sort of readership.

At Gamer Limit, Colin got his blog system set up, and he asked me to move my blog over here.  I did.  And everyone here is great.  It’s weird.

We all have the same hobbies and interests.  We’re all geeks (but still remarkable sociable).  It’s easy to talk to everyone.  They listen to me, and I listen to them.

I just want to say thank you to the entire Gamer Limit community.  You make my life just that much better.  True, we do a lot of work and get nothing in return besides the occasional pat on the back (people actually read my stuff?!), or the occasional review copy of a new game… but it’s always worth it.

The best part: it’s never awkward when someone new shows up.  EVERYBODY is very welcoming and amiable.  Everyone has something new to add to the overarching conversation, and the extra life experience is always appreciated.

So here it is.

The Digital Pasture Thank You Page.

Colin: thanks for saving me, and reading my blog when you were probably supposed to be working.

Chris: for thinking I’m a good writer; we should play games someday when you’re not mailing out 50,000 PR emails.

Josh: for showing me the ropes when I first started; we need to play games too!  And not just HoN.  You’re just too good.

Jamie: for being my future video game bandmate, and fellow RPG nerd.

Grahame: for always bein’ around to say hi.

Paul: for being the British version of me.

Jazzman: for being so young and innocent.  Your game is gonna be great, I can tell already.

Jimmy: my new chat friend.  Life will get better again!

Dylan: my biggest fan, who has a HUGE man crush on me.

Shawn, Simon, James (both of ‘em), Jess, Jeff, Curtis, Martin, Chase, Chris #2, Chris #3 (I’ll let you fight out which is which) Alex, Andrew, everyone else (sorry if I missed you!): haven’t had much of a chance to get to know you, but don’t worry, I’m around.

And Steve Kelso: I miss you and your weird llama obsession.

And finally…

Jon: my best buddy from back in the day, thanks for the T-shirt!  I’m sure I’ll see you in Seattle someday.

Tricia: hope you still read this!  You used to be my only commenter.  How have you been?

Mom and Phil: you might not always know what I’m talking about, but you still read and believe in me!  Thanks a lot!

So that’s all for now.  Thanks for following, reading, commenting, and all you do.  It means a lot more to me than it probably should.

On Kevin Miller’s last blog post, there were some good points made.  There were a few, shall we say, tender morsels of thought-provoking dialogue.  Even the comments contained some relatable quotations, like Sean’s, “What I don’t love is the feeling that I’m wasting my play time when I play a game without tropies/achievements. I try to ignore the feeling but sometimes it is too much and I go whoring for awhile.”  And that’s what I’m going to write about here and now.

Did I lose you yet?  No?  Good.

Now that Gamer Limit is part of my life, it has become my achievement system.  When I read about an interesting news tidbit, I post it here to bring it to the attention of the GL-ers.  My buddies on the site, as well as any random game geek that stumbles upon my blog, may shine a new perspective on it or bring up some other points I had maybe not thought about.  When I play an obscure indie game like The Majesty of Colors,  I like to share it.  I write a blog post about it, I help other people broaden their gaming experiences a bit, and my personal time with the game has some validation.  I can look back on the things I’ve written years from now when I have become a world-famous and well-respected video game journalist, and I can keep track of my gaming life – my achievements.

Linked with my Xbox 360 gamer tag is my game history.  Tonight, if I hop on my dashboard, I can see that I still haven’t been able to complete a single difficulty level of Earth Defense Force 2017, and I can see my 1250 achievement points on Oblivion.  After spending 120 hours in Oblivion, it’s nice to see that I have something – anything – to show for it, even if it’s just a meaningless number on the Internet.  There wasn’t a leaderboard for me to top, and I didn’t get paid for it.  It was just free time that could have been spent more productively.

But it did give me life experience.  It did give me game experience.  To know what you like and don’t like in games, to know what is “good” and “bad” with game design, you need to play many hours of many different games.  You can’t play Call of Duty 4 and nothing else.  Yes, you may become a professional CoD-er, but you’ll also be a one-trick pony.  Game companies keep bringing out new games because the old ones are beaten, or get stale, or are simply ignored.

When I go back and play a SNES game, I would like to do it for pure enjoyment.  But that’s hard to do.  When I shut off my console, I haven’t gained anything or become more of a success.  I have merely wasted an afternoon on selfish recreation.  But when I come online and write about my retro-soaked afternoon delight, it becomes more than just a few wasted hours.  It becomes something I can share with the world through the semi-permanent joys of the world wide web.

And yes, Gamer Limit could be hacked, or the ‘Net could go down, or Australia could be hit with a nation-wide EMP, and all my work could vanish in a split-second.  But until then, we can share these game times with each other, and achieve communally.

I may not actually be “achieving” anything, but I’m doing it with all my friends.  In that way, it can be a life well lived.  Thanks, Gamer Limit, for giving my justification for my selfish gaming ways. 

I have been having (a lot of) girl problems lately.  Things are fine, then they’re not.  People act happy when they’re actually sad and alone on the inside.  I’m a 22-year-old child with a bright future.  The destination is clear, but it’s a long way off and there are no lights along the way to guide me.

When I pop in a game, I don’t have to worry about any of that.  When I’m on Gamer Limit checking out the latest news and features, I don’t have to fear for the future.  When I throw in some ambient music and crap out my latest daily blog post, I don’t have to think about the outside world.  For me, it’s not just games that are escapist – it’s the whole video game world and culture.

If you don’t like a particular game, there are a thousand others dying to take its place in your console.  They seem so… disposable.  But it’s nice to have options.  It’s soothing to feel that there are no absolutes, that the future is yours to mold, that you can play Donkey Kong Country instead of having to to play Battlefield 1943 with everyone else.  It’s reassuring to know that you can fire up your original Xbox and still find people playing Halo 2 online.  You can find servers still up and running for Quake III Arena on the Dreamcast, as well.  There are concretes in the game world: you will always lose in Street Fighter 4, you will eventually find someone much, much better than you at Call of Duty, and, no matter how hard you study and how often you play, you will probably never be “the one” in 1 vs. 100.  But we keep trying.

Games (the good ones, at least) have that accessible, always-there-for-you feeling.  They welcome you back after years apart with open arms.  They don’t judge you for playing the free Daggerfall download even though Morrowind sits neglected on your top shelf… even as you sit next to a still-sealed copy of Ninja Gaiden II that you just haven’t gotten around to yet.  They won’t condemn you for buying new games even when you have dozens of games in which the only achievement you’ve unlocked is “Complete the tutorial.”  They collect dust, and you horde them, and they understand.

About once every year, I play through Super Mario World again.  I know all the secrets and shortcuts, and I find all 96 exits within an hour or two.  Of course I could speed run through it in 11 minutes, but that’s really not the point.  The point is the familiarity.  Like old friends reuniting after a lifetime apart, it’s nice to know that some things never change.  Tubular is still controller-throwing worthy.  The Top Secret Area is still over-used by n00bs, small children, and girls.  It’s still funny to accidentally pick up the block you’re standing on, even if it means falling to your death.

Games will be our friends when no one else answers the phone.  We use them, scratch them, sell them, and lose them… and they are just happy to get our attention for a few fleeting hours on a random rainy afternoon.  Please don’t go, games.  Sometimes, you’re all we have tethering us to this crazy convoluted world.