A lot of people have been giving Sony Online shit about their new RTS Lords Of EverQuest, but I'm glad somebody finally had the balls to make a medieval real-time strategy game. There's really no precedent for it, and I think this kind of initiative needs to be rewarded.

Genderplay: Successes and Failures in Character Designs for Videogames is a very interesting article over at GameGirl Advance.

I was searching the game faq's forums for Soul Calibur 2 tips. I was looking for Talim combos and junk when I saw a post called "any talim users out there in game world? " I clicked on it and this was the entirety of the post:

1. How many characters can I have?

As I mentioned a few days ago, we escaped Microsoft with nearly a hundred dollars in office supplies and copies of PSO. As I felt instinctively, the best and worst things about it are that it is still Phantasy Star Online.

I got on the Enemy Territory beta, thank God, but found out something really interesting.

Another great mail from a reader:

I figured instead of posting in this thread I would just answer this guys rant here. He appears to have totally misunderstood me.

A great quote from reader Wayne regarding American McGee.

Some of you might remember our tale from Sakuracon about our booth being next to that of Sweet Kitty. Well we all loaded up on Japanese candy that day and our supplies have finally run out. We made a special trip over there this afternoon in order to stock up again and while we were there we had some fun with their picture taking machine.

Yes, Sean Bulloch, it is also your birthday.

Let me take a moment to extend heartfelt birthday wishes to Alex Green and Mark Wadley.

Readers are writing in to tell me that Riverworld is a series of books. They are also telling me that the movie sucked ass. I guess I will have to go get the books and decide for myself. The next "New Jedi Order" book doesn't come out until April 29th so I have a couple weeks to read something new. Thanks for the heads up.

My take on McGee/McFarlane:

Safety Monkey has a friend named Wally, who I often refer to as Wallingford, or by his handle Xarion. They're friends to this day because of Meridian 59, which they played years ago, and he used to visit from Wisconsin from time to time. He has no accent to speak of, except when he says Cat, which comes out like "Kyat." In any event, he doesn't need to visit anymore because he lives here. This story is from when he didn't.

I think these guys have their thumb on the pulse of the gaming community. Also, the fishing community.