Captain Forial's finger hovers over the communications circuit, withdraws. Then it flips out straight, like a retractable antenna, only to retreat again. Now she's holding her fist against her mouth. She would go through the cycle again, maybe, if the channel hadn't flared open, if a tiny version of her nemesis hadn't appeared.

Here's this week's peek at my sketchbook.

I'm given to exaggeration. Example: I once said that mice were "way, way smaller than voles," and got an earful from the Rodent Liberation Front, Friends of the Mouse and the Vole Association. But I am not exaggerating and am in fact being circumspect with my language when I suggest that redemption arcades are a spectacularly bad investment.

This is the last strip in this series, at least, I think it is; ol' Gribbz gets home tomorrow, and it may be that something has occurred to him in the intervening period. Judging from the response to it and other content in this vein (something my associate alluded to in an earlier post) we, uh... hm. It seems like there is a huge group of people that nobody is talking to about this stuff, and they really, really want to know it. Complicating matters is the fact that, in their situation, to ask the question is to fail! You're supposed to know it already, and if you don't, that's one more thing you've fucked up this afternoon. The only way for you to learn it is for someone else to volunteer it. Wheels are in motion.

I took two awesome games with me on our spring break trip to Oregon.

We're spending Spring Break down in Oregon right now so I just have a few doodles for you today.

Like the man said, he spent some time at an Honest To God PTA Meeting (H2GPTAM). He told them about a lot of stuff, stuff so rudimentary about our ways that you would be insulted if I tried to tell it to you. But that's where you have to start.

I would have thought Disney was behind the curve a little bit with Infinity, but that wasn't entirely true; a nice line, a novel feature set, and, um, access to the full battery of Disney's geosynchronous branding platform seems to have squared the circle. I would have dark words for the third entrant into such an arena if it weren't Lego. Disney's stable is pretty legendary, but the Lego side of the equation consists of every other notable brand. Disney isn't willing to go whole hog on the crossover stuff outside of a very specific quarantine zone, and that's going to be the Strength (or Might, if you're playing Pillars) of the Lego Dimensions play.

Last night I was a guest speaker during a PTA meeting at my son’s school. I spoke about video games, ratings and the importance of paying attention to what your kids are playing. I thought it went really well and I figured I’d break down my talk here in case anyone wanted to take some of my ideas and do something similar at their kid’s school.

The definitive "Mario Party Is A Shitshow" strip has already been written; indeed, it was written eight years ago. I know this because I wrote it, with my friend and associate Al-Gharib. But they keep making these things, which makes me think that someone must be playing them also. I mean, I can't one hundred percent prove that. But I bet it does happen. There are those who wring their hands at the "messages" games communicate to our greasy, unblinking larvae, and in this case they might be onto something.

Being a Destiny Problem, it doesn't overlap with my portion of the Great Diagram. I had seen it lamented, though, and heard of targeted salves applied by the developer, so I asked our resident Gabriel if logging in, joining a Strike, and then not playing Destiny was a common thing.

Automata is a project that we really love, and it’s something we've actually been pitching to folks in Hollywood for about five years now. Each time we put it out there we hear the same thing, which is “it’s too risky”, “it’s too expensive”, Not a big enough market”, “Robot films bomb at the box office” .

Here's some more stuff from my sketchbook:

I know that it would make Brian happy if I mentioned the first wave of our new, mug-oriented ventures. Other mugs coming soon! Don't drink anything until you've examined our full range.

I'm not mad at anyone I went to school with, but I don't ever want to go back there or see it or anything associated with it ever again. High School was essentially a series of tests that taught me how not to be. I don't think there's anything high schools can actually do to improve this state of affairs. Getting out was the prize for surviving it.