However, today, I’d like to discuss a form of gaming that has not appeared, to my knowledge, on this site: pen and paper roleplaying. The genre that contains Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, Shadowrun, and countless others. The pursuit that, arguably, gave birth to the roleplaying videogame genre.

Yep, I’m going there.

Unlike some of my other nerdily-skewed pursuits, tabletop roleplaying games remain very popular, with D&D (the most successful of the bunch) the source of over $1 billion in sales for Wizards of the Coast. And while they still occupy the domain of the ultra-nerdy, weekly pen and paper sessions are becoming more the domain of the urban hipster-geek rather than the archetypal basement-dwelling set.

While participating in many of the chronicles and stories my friends assembled, I’ve never been successful in running a game of my own. Sure, there were false starts here and there, but never something for which I was sufficiently prepared, never something into which my players could sink their teeth. Scheming for a spell on a game based on FASA and Microsoft’s Crimson Skies, my plans fell to the wayside, with boxes of aircraft miniatures left to collect dust.

Until recently.

Like any creative pursuit, inspiration for my game struck without warning, as I rode the 545 from Redmond back to my home in Seattle. Idly pondering the venerable Boeing B-17 (the aircraft my grandfather flew in the second World War), I began to imagine if the same plane had been developed in the Crimson Skies universe. Inspiration struck. I had to act fast — experience warned that failing to write then and there would cause me to lose the spark. As the bus rolled along, mired with traffic on the floating bridge, the setting for the game unfolded ahead of me – plot, characters, missions and adventures all channeled through my pen and into my notebook for later perusal and refinement.

The stage was set. Now, I had to draw my wayward players back into the fold.

I didn’t really want an Xbox 360 at first. Or at least, that’s the story I used to tell myself.

I’m one of the idiots who actually made a point of tuning in to MTV’s sophomoric unveiling of Microsoft’s sophomore console in the fall of 2004, and the embarrassing spectacle left a pretty sour taste in my mouth. And to be clear, at that point my Xbox was my primary gaming machine. I kept my Gamecube and PlayStation 2 at the ready for the few wonderful games that were still trickling in (GTA: San Andreas, Resident Evil 4 and Shadow of the Colossus…what a great period for gaming) but with Halo 2 burning up the University Housing intranet, nothing in my dorm room got more play than my Xbox.*

But with a weak launch lineup and a massive price tag, the Xbox 360 didn’t sway me right away. No surprises there. I held off until 2003 to get an original Xbox, after all. But the Xbox 360? No thanks – I’ll stick to my standard-def consoles for now.

That was my mandate, and it served me well. Then it was late 2006, and my buddy Dan invited me over to play Gears of War.

The next day, I bought an Xbox 360.

I think it’s easy to forget just how transformative Gears of War was for this console generation. So many of its core components – third-person cover-based combat, visceral camera effects, co-operative gameplay where positioning is paramount – are now seen in almost every major blockbuster game.

More than anything, the experience of playing felt genuine in a way no other game had. Characters moved with an uncanny sense of weight, guns sounded raw and real, and chainsaw kills delivered a disgusting-yet-intoxicating sense of victory that I’d never experienced before. It felt like I was playing a game from the future.

I played through Gears of War cooperatively more times than I can count. It was the ultimate buddy-game, with satisfying combat, tight pacing and brilliantly composed combat sequences. And the story was pitch-perfect, with a rag-tag group of gruff, oversized space marines bickering and talking shit while fighting against impossible odds. It’s summer blockbuster popcorn fare as translated deftly to the interactive space.

Gears of War 2 didn’t impress me like the first game did, although it did manage to deliver a solid experience start-to-finish. But for whatever reason I was beyond excited to finally play the third chapter in the series. And it really didn’t disappoint.

I played through it entirely in co-op, as Epic intended. And honestly? It was just fantastic. There’s not much more to be said. If you like Gears of War, this is the best game in the series.

I was surprised just how sad I was when I reached the end. Gears of War isn’t a game with a story to tug at the heartstrings or anything, but I felt a sense of loss I couldn’t really explain at the time. Since then, I think I’ve figured it out:

This was the first true next-generation game – the first game to make me a believer in the next major stage in game design – and seeing it come to a close is a little sobering. Sure, Epic is bound to make a new game in the Gears universe sooner or later, but I can’t help but feel like this is something of a swan song for the Xbox 360, even if the next console hasn’t yet been announced. I’m sure great things are on the horizon, but as far as games go, finishing Gears of War 3 felt very much like I was finishing a major chapter in gaming.

We don’t hand out review scores at Silicon Sasquatch, but given how brilliant a job Epic has done in concluding the Gears of War series, I’m going to skirt around tradition and award Gears of War 3 a record-breaking ten out of ten shitloads.

Well done, Epic. Thanks for pushing the status quo so far ahead and for building something truly great.

*Including me.

Welcome to the Japanese countryside! There are video games here, you just have to squint really hard to find them.

Whenever I’ve moved, one of the last things to get packed up has been my gaming console. Of course, my console has also often been the first thing unpacked once I’ve gotten moved in. Funny how that works. But this time, after moving to Japan in early August, all I’ve played since are iPhone games – until last weekend, I hadn’t picked up a real controller since arriving in the land of Nintendo and Sony.

What the hell happened? Well, a perfect storm of things for me, at least.

First: I didn’t want to bring my Xbox 360 with me to Japan. It’s old, is bound to break (again), and is region-locked. Most importantly, though, I would either have to pack it into my slim luggage allowance or ship it over separately, and neither are worth the trouble. Sometimes you have to be an adult and bring clothing, especially when there’s little chance to buy new threads. Okay, I did bring my Nintendo DS, but it’s now gathering Japanese dust instead of gathering American dust. I’ve got the itch to play games; what to do?

But I can wait. Maybe. I’ve gone two months without playing a game – and longer without playing anything new, frankly – and can afford to wait because real life and the gaming release schedule have allowed me to. I’m too busy getting out of the house and visiting my new friends to spend too much time playing games at the moment, which is good, because there haven’t been a ton of AAA titles coming out this summer. I bemoaned the lack of a year-round release schedule earlier in the year, but I’m quite glad for the break at the moment.

Soon the weather will turn nasty and, as a friend here in Japan said, people will begin to “hide under their kotatsu.” Unlike the U.S., most places in Japan aren’t centrally heated and have very poor insulation, which means you wear lots of sweaters indoors and a kotatsu, a table with a heated blanket. In short, people don’t want to head out and be social; perfect time to catch up on video games, then!

Postscript to the story? Last weekend was my birthday. With enough money and free time on the weekend to go buy a PS3, I broke down and picked one up — a 320 gb model, which now sits happily next to my TV and wireless router. It’s now set up to stream media from my computer, access my U.S. Netflix account, and make use of the Silicon Sasquatch staff PSN share. And I bought a pretty kick-ass game to go along with the system, too, one that I’m excited to write about soon.

After the long break, it’s good to be back.

I still don’t get Catherine. Even after a few solid hours spent learning the ropes of Atlus’ bizarre hodgepodge puzzle and dating-sim gameplay (think Q*Bert meets Tokimeki Memorial), I’m still unsure if this is a game I like. I’m compelled to keep playing, though, and that’s a success as far as I’m concerned.

But it’s not the puzzle-game aspects that have me hooked. The block-moving, tower-climbing action sequences that define the “game” part of Catherine are perfectly fine — controls are tight, difficulty ramps up at a good clip, pacing is appropriate — but to me, they’re just filler. The real fun of Catherine comes from the story that unfolds as you delve deeper into protagonist Vincent’s sordid love life. The choices you make through him are surprisingly revealing — not about Vincent, of course, but about you and everyone else who plays.

The first feature that stood out to me was the inclusion of a “would you rather?” minigame at the pinnacle of each climbing sequence. You’ll enter what resembles a church confessional and be presented with a question related to relationships and ethics, such as “Is marriage where life begins or where life ends?” It’s a loaded question, and the game is intentionally ambiguous about who the player is supposed to answer for: Am I speaking for the Vincent I intend to play, or am I personally casting my vote? Once you’ve made your choice, you’ll be able to see a pie-chart breakdown of how all other players voted. It’s reminiscent of L.A. Noire’s inclusion of social support features for its tricky interview sequences, where you can narrow down your choices by seeing how other players chose to answer and make your decision based on that. In this case, it’s a fun way to see how people feel about some relevant and sometimes-controversial questions we all face in life. But thanks to the anonymity we’re given through Catherine and the assumption that, well, it’s only a game, I’ve already seen some pretty interesting statistics.

When not climbing tower after tower, you’ll spend a lot of time in Catherine at your favorite bar, The Stray Sheep. In perhaps the most accurate depiction of the dive-bar experience yet conceived in a game, you’ll divide your time up between your bored-looking friends, the various other regulars, the lone arcade machine and — of course — your cell phone.

There’s a clever mechanic in the game where you’ll receive a text from somebody and have to compose a response. You’ll be able to cycle through options for each sentence until you’ve got a message that best expresses what you want to say. Maybe this is the sort of malady that only affects neurotic writers, but I found this design mechanic simultaneously brilliant and unnervingly similar to my own life. I’ll agonize over a text before sending it: Is the phrasing okay? Too many words? Is “love” too strong a word to use when asked if I’d like to go get some pizza? Catherine brilliantly captures this unique problem of modern communication. That’s not to say the impact of your choices seems all that revolutionary; as far as I can tell, Vincent’s actions only affect a binary good-or-evil morality meter, which just seems outdated to me in an era when we have the resources and technology to build games where the player’s choices can stray into ethical gray areas.

So far, the majority of those texts have been coming from Katherine, Vincent’s doting, long-time girlfriend. She’s not-so-subtly pushing for Vincent to face up to his fleeting mortality — dude’s in his thirties, after all — and settle down with her. And why wouldn’t he want to? They seem to get along fine, and she’s pretty, and…y’know. She’s that archetypal desirable-yet-undesired female.

The object of Vincent’s desire — or maybe lust would be more accurate — is Catherine. Katherine with a C. Which is to say that she’s exactly like Katherine except for those ways that she’s a polar opposite. Catherine is a decade younger than Vincent, flirtatious, bubbly and fun-loving. I’m only maybe a quarter through the game at this point, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say she represents the fleeting temptations of youth. Katherine is the stolid, career-oriented rock in Vincent’s world, and Catherine is a youthful, spirited force of change.

It’s a dichotomy anyone can relate to once they’ve hit a certain age. At least, I know it resonates pretty deeply with me. I picked up and moved far away from the life I’d always had a few months ago, and ever since then I’ve been considering the what-ifs of that life I could have kept living. I’m currently leaning more towards the “responsible adult” end of the spectrum, with an engaging full-time job and this notion of a career-focused life starting to bubble up. But when I think about the pseudo-bohemian lifestyle I could have had in Portland, I have to wonder: What would I be like if I’d stayed?

• Aaron’s working and living his life in Portland. I’m not sure what he’s been up to, actually, which bums me out.
• Doug’s leaving to go teach in Japan in a matter of days.
• Tyler’s back home in the States for a brief visit, but he’ll also be going back to Japan.
• Spencer is, presumably, doing the Seattle thing.
• My work and social lives are both great, but when combined, they’re all-consuming.

That’s all well and good. I’d argue that we’re all in better places right now than we were a year or two ago, and ultimately, that’s probably what matters most.

There’s just one problem: I miss this blog like hell.

For me and Aaron, and for Doug too, this site symbolized our post-collegiate aspirations. The story’s old-hat by now and way too commonplace in our generation to have any significance to a third party, but you can imagine our situation: we were all broke, depressed and — more often than not — stuck living in our parents’ proverbial basements. (Very few houses have basements these days.) Like kids, we wanted to pretend that we could fulfill our dreams. It’s probably not coincidental that those dreams revolved around a product whose core appeal is escapism.

If I were a pessimist, I’d say we had been incredibly naïve over the last few years. But that’s not true. We’ve gained so much from building a product together, from the countless meetings and hundreds of hours spent writing and editing, from both the close calls and the landmark achievements.

As a person grows older, they realize that wisdom can be defined as an increased awareness of how little a person is capable of knowing. We had high hopes for this blog — dreams of wish-fulfillment, of self-made success, of a career founded in idealism and passion.

Looking back on what we’ve done with this blog in less than three years, I’m shocked at just how big an accomplishment it is. If we hadn’t had Silicon Sasquatch, Aaron and I would have probably just kept playing World of Warcraft. We wouldn’t have learned nearly as much about entrepreneurship, journalistic integrity and creative problem-solving. Without our self-imposed editing standards, we’d be a lot more attached to our writing, and the writing we’d produce would be so much shittier. We wouldn’t have a real, tangible, hard-copy book with our names on it. We wouldn’t be published authors. I can confidently say that I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for the hard work we all put in on this project.

So why am I writing this? Why here, and why now?

I feel like I just came home after decades abroad and discovered some old, forgotten car caked in dust and cobwebs in a dank garage. It used to be something, and what it used to be still resonates with me today. And I bet if I learned to appreciate that, I’d find the direction and willpower to fix it up and make it better than ever.

So, guys — what do you think?

It’d have to be different this time around. We’d have to embrace some big changes and accept that we won’t be able to do things the old way. But when I think about what this blog represents for me, and all the hope that it inspired in me through some of the roughest years of my life — I mean, come on.

Why the fuck not?

Iron Man 2 was one of the top-grossing movies of the 2010 summer blockbuster season. If it's good for movies, why can't it work for games?

It’s just past Memorial Day weekend in the United States, the traditional harbinger of summertime. In recent years, it’s also brought in the beginning of the summer movie season, where studios push their big-budget releases and all sorts of associated goods and tie-ins. You can’t swing a major tent-pole movie without hitting Movie:  The Action Figure, Movie: The Fast-Food Deal, Movie: The Sports Advertising Tie-In, and, yes, Movie: The Video Game. It’s marketing gone mad, sure, but it creates a ton of money for all involved.

However, it begs the question: where’s the summer blockbuster period for gaming? If it’s proved such a big hit with movie crowds, why not with gamers?

It’s an interesting thought.

Game companies have spread releases out more evenly throughout the calendar in recent years. Just last year, Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption proved that a hit can come at any time of the year, and they’re hardly the only examples. Microsoft has run a Summer of Arcade program publicizing Xbox Live Arcade for the last few years. And in the United States, there have regularly been a pair of major summertime releases in the form of EA Sports’ two football games, NCAA Football and Madden NFL, which come out in July and August, respectively.

There may not be an actual NFL season this fall, but EA Sports' annual Madden NFL series always sells well in August.

But let’s turn the question on its head. Gaming has its own blockbuster period: the holiday season. Much how film producers try to crowd big summertime weekends with blockbuster flicks, so do game companies center around the “Black Friday” day-after-Thanksgiving shop-a-palooza. And just as some companies have bent the definition of “summer blockbuster” to include movies released in mid April (Iron Man 2 itself, our cover image, was released in early May 2010), so does the holiday gaming crunch now spread from mid-September until the so-called “Second Christmas” in early January.

If gaming does have its own blockbuster period, why does it need the summertime? The easiest arguments involve free time: beyond kids, teens and college-aged adults being out of school, it’s also a time when adults traditionally take more time off (presumably to spend time with their children). God abhors a vacuum, as the turn of phrase goes, so naturally gaming should play a part. And as the games industry grows year on year that should be reflected by more of the marquee games coming out during the summertime. Right?

Well, again, some are. Plus, the way the industry’s hype-cycle works, there needs to be some buffer time between gaming’s biggest annual show (E3) and when those games are advertised and go on sale (the fall and early winter). Unlike when, say, Apple announces something new and it hits stores a week later, gaming doesn’t work that way; game companies don’t control the entire retail channel, for one (Apple does with its stores for the hardware and its App Stores for software), and the last time somebody tried to launch a surprise like that right at E3 it became the Sega Saturn. So, in many ways, the status quo works.

BioShock was definitely a great game, but would it have captured gamers' attention as well had it launched in the late-fall games blitz?

That doesn’t mean the present model is perfect, though. Many games would be well-served to delay their release until the following spring or to push up a release to the summer to avoid getting lost in the holiday trample. Games like GTA IV, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Gran Turismo, BioShock and more have proved you can be successful avoiding the holiday period. But the mindset of gaming — that it’s an industry equitable to toys and board games, only able to be pushed and sold as presents for the month of December — needs to change, and soon. Moving away from the “TOO MANY GAMES” holiday crush gives gamers a choice, and helps otherwise ordinary games some breathing room away from the AAA games that dominate. Would BioShock have gotten as much press if it had been released the same week as Call of Duty and Halo? Maybe; it’s a great game. But it damn well dominated August, when it had none of the competition. Gamers get time to play these games, and the games get more of the spotlight.

Gaming might not need its own summer blockbuster period, but it can certainly stand for more summer releases.

Monkey and Trip traverse the feral, post-apocalyptic United States in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

A good game tells the story of a lone protagonist, an archetypal hero the player relates to and guides toward success. Thanks to the immersive nature of video games, an experience doesn’t need to be perfectly refined to draw the player in. After all, many player characters are essentially faceless empty shells — digital vessels just waiting for the player to dump a few dozen hours and countless arbitrary achievements into.

And that’s fine; a good game is a good game. But it’s not a great game.

A great game channels something deeper, elusive, and much more delicate than simply bringing a handful of characters to life. Anybody can make a game about a person or even multiple people, but a game that empowers the player to give life to meaningful relationships between its characters — that’s the biggest creative risk you can take. That’s the mark of greatness.

The Prince of Persia and Elika navigate a beautiful landscape in one of the best games of this console generation that you never played (you monster)

The Prince and Elika; Manny and Meche; Frank and The Maw; Ico and Yorda; Gordon and Alyx; Drake and Elena. They might not seem like much on the surface, but spend a few hours in their shoes and you’ll understand just how potent a believable and meaningful relationship between characters in a game can be.

It’s that emphasis on the relationship between two well-defined characters that drew me to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Ninja Theory’s well-received but commercially unsuccessful action-adventure game from last year. The interplay between Monkey and Trip — two surprisingly nuanced and very well-acted leads — was obvious from the game’s first minutes, and it carried me through the occasional frustrating combat sequence and handful of repetitive boss fights.

Things got serious. The characters face the reality of their post-apocalyptic world. They see the final remnants of society crumble. They’re made to feel powerless as they’re relentlessly pursued by a faceless enemy. And halfway through the game, it seems as though everything is lost. It was undoubtedly a risky scene to produce: If the animation and acting didn’t make Monkey and Trip’s bond believable, the game would have fallen head-first into the bottom recesses of the uncanny valley, leaving the remainder of the game to feel like a ham-fisted joke of a story, buoyed along by two plasticine leads.

But it worked. Monkey and Trip’s camaraderie grew in a tenuous, uncertain, and inconsistent way, and it was eminently believable. To me, the player, it felt real, and that made all the difference. I didn’t care if Enslaved wasn’t the most competent platformer, and I didn’t mind that the combat system was little more than adequate. I was playing for the characters’ sake, and thanks to Alex Garland’s expert script, I felt rewarded.

And then, like a fart wafting into a pristine forest, Pigsy waddled onto the scene.

Swine.

Pigsy is the third wheel that shows up after about six hours — just in time to fuck up a perfectly good game. Pigsy doesn’t give a damn about the lush, overgrown landscapes or the tiny facial cues that build intrigue between Trip and Monkey. Pigsy exists only to disrupt something nice, and it’s a job he performs with aplomb.

He is unpleasant to look at. A thin mustache and bizarre helmet barely mask a grotesque face. A stained undershirt girds his obese frame, and an oversized belt buckle in the shape of two red lips adorns his pelvis. It’s never explained why Pigsy and Trip’s father were good friends because there’s absolutely no way that would ever happen, ever.

Pigsy is a mess on his own, but the real damage comes from how he derails the mood of the game wholesale in the game’s final act. He’s inexplicably jealous of Trip’s affection for Monkey, and most of his contributions to conversations consist of lewd jokes and vague death threats directed at Monkey.

There’s a lesson to be learned here: Not every game needs comic relief in the form of an unnecessary additional character. There was so much potential in the earlier stages of the game for Monkey and Trip to develop a relationship that was complex, unpredictable, and more real than almost any other game to date. But Pigsy’s inclusion is unnecessary and damaging to the game’s otherwise compelling narrative.

I was left hoping for more of Monkey and Trip after I finished the game, but after a brief epilogue, all that remains is a self-contained downloadable add-on. Monkey and Trip don’t appear in it, but Pigsy’s back — in fact, he’s the star. Based on the description, it sounds like he’s trying to build a robot for sex, apparently.

Good luck with that, Pigsy.

But one question that has never faced gamers before will be an issue when looking at upgrading from one console to the next this go-around: What is going to happen to all the content I have on my current system?

This is the digital era. I have 85 gb of content stored to my Xbox 360′s hard drive and, while much of that is game installs, the rest is made up of the “arcade” games available on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN, downloadable add-on content for games, and digital downloads of full retail games. Some of the downloaded games also have their own DLC, which strikes me as a real through-the-looking-glass sort of moment.

Full copies of games you'd otherwise purchase at retail are available both on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. What happens with the next generation of systems, though?

These are games I’ve bought and, in the case of the digital versions of games also sold at retail, are indistinguishable from hard copies. Yet I’m worried. I’m worried that these games could be completely worthless or, at the least, feature-handicapped in the future should Microsoft (or Sony for PSN) decide to flip a switch and shut off some servers. In the case of the Xbox 360, though the detachable hard drive means it’s possible to take your content on the go, you can only make use of DLC and full versions of games if they’re authenticated by Xbox Live; if I want to take my hard drive to a friend’s and make use of my Rock Band library, their 360 must be plugged in.

The authentication and access to games isn’t just a worry in cases like that, but for more practical reasons as well. The 360 has proven itself to be a bit fragile; my current 360 is my fifth, and I’m hardly an edge case. If you suffer a Red Ring of Death or any other kind of 360-killing malady, you have to migrate your account from the old console to the new one’s serial number. While it’s an annoyance during the 360′s life span, what happens in another five years? If your old NES or Genesis or even PlayStation 2 died, you just buy a new one; the games were kept within a physical medium and plug right in without a problem. But what happens in five or 10 years when my 360 inevitably dies again and I have to track down a replacement? Will Xbox Live still allow me to do what it does now in 2011?

While content on the current console is a question, what about taking content on to the next generation? Though few games had DLC on the original Xbox, you could previously download it on the 360; now, though, since the original Xbox’s Xbox Live servers have gone offline, it’s left you high and dry. While I doubt people will want to buy new content, even for Xbox 360 games in the far-flung future, what about retrieving what you’ve already purchased? Plus, as established, content delivery digitally is a much bigger deal this generation; that will be important to keep in mind, but it’s still Microsoft or Sony’s ball to take and go home with.

I’ll admit it’s all speculation and worry at this point, but admit it: a best-case scenario where everything still works, like in PC gaming, is probably a pipe dream. This is the point where I shake my fists at PC gamers sitting up in the cloud on Steam at this moment. But this is an issue that will be wider than gaming within the next 10 years; seeing the gaming industry’s reaction is going to be fascinating and, potentially, vital to digital rights beyond our favorite little corner of the entertainment world.

When I started the Retrospective Overdrive program, it was to break up tedium and see how things have changed. I wanted to go a good period of time without just doing what I’ve done the past few years — nothing but playing Pro Evo Soccer.

But, why? It’s just a game; hell, it’s just a sports game, and I’m sure many who read the site look down on us who kick and throw balls virtually as if we’re some sort of cro-magnon anomaly, cavemen who have miraculously found fire and Xbox Live. It keeps coming back to style, though, for me. Very few other games have allowed me to express creativity as well as Konami’s Pro Evo/Winning Eleven series and, in particular, Pro Evo Soccer 2010.

Freshman year of college I picked up a PlayStation 2 after seeing how white-hot Gran Turismo 4 looked. Of course, I’d also heard about how good Konami’s soccer games were and since that wasn’t great on the Xbox, I bought it. I wasn’t a newcomer to soccer games — strong addictions to FIFA 2004 and 2005 prove otherwise — but Winning Eleven 8 was a good replacement, if a bit ugly at times.

This is where the addiction started in earnest: Winning Eleven 9 ('05-'06 season).

Winning Eleven 9, though, damn near killed me. I had to put my PS2 in the closet during finals because of that nonsense. And a couple years later, well after its sell-by date, WE9 kept me company when my first Xbox 360 succumbed to the inevitable, shuffled off this mortal coil and was sent to Texas to get fixed. WE9 doesn’t have a time-played tracker but I’d guess I put at least 150 hours into that damn thing, probably more. A few up-and-down years later, PES 2010 promised to be good, and FIFA was underwhelming, so the decision was simple. I’ve since put over 200 hours into PES 2010 in 15 months.

This again begs the question, “Why?”

The ball is round, the game is simple, but provides a clean canvas for you to express yourself — so long as you don’t use your hands. What both WE9 and PES 2010 allowed me to do is play a sport with the sort of creativity you see in real life but that is not found in any other sports video games. Basketball and soccer are a bit unique in that creativity, freedom and expression are viable offensive strategies. Football is all about execution, baseball is just one gigantic fucking spreadsheet by now, and hockey is too chaotic and compact with few moments of zen. But basketball and soccer both can be moments of sports art — and its particularly effective in the latter. Soccer inspires effusiveness and poetry, as seen both in the brilliant blog The Run of Play and even in match recaps. American sports are often quantitative, discussing who did how much of what; soccer is entirely qualitative.

Until I became a PES junkie, what I didn’t realize is that FIFA lacked that spark. Playing FIFA is like playing foosball, there’s one good route to take and you can spin the handles around to good effect. PES is more like chess. Attacking and creating a goal in PES is a multiple-choice question with no wrong answer, so long as the ball goes in the back of the net; the “right” way may vary by situation, but it’s in your hands. Want to fire in crosses from the wing? Go ahead. Want to have intricate passing through the middle, leading to a shot? Have at it. Fast or slow, wide or narrow, the choice is yours. The biggest cliche in sports gaming is that “it looks like the real thing,” and while FIFA may look like it in still screenshots, it’s a different story in motion.

This is all the biggest factor behind why I keep playing the game: most every match feels like a new challenge, and when you’re playing other teams that are good, you really have to account for the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses to capitalize on your own. For me, it’s methodical yet utterly addictive. I think I have about 20 goal highlights from PES 2010 saved, and no two are alike. It’s the journey, not the destination, that matters.

Add in other sports game and video game tropes, like players waxing and waning in skills as the years go on and new stars rising, and the variables multiply. As those factors change, so too does your lineup; as somebody who follows soccer I can attest that, in this way, art imitates life. Now that I’ve put so much time into this series of games, I’m not worried about the physics or controls; I understand those implicitly. When I play sports with my friends, I learn what they like to do and where they like to go; in the same way that playing sports with friends presents certain stable factors, playing PES for me is comfort and freedom within a ruleset. I know how the ball bounces, but it’s up to me to capitalize.

In that way, PES is like playing sports in real life — rewarding practice, persistence, and presenting subtle twists with every game.

Microsoft's Video Kinect feature allows Kinect owners to communicate on a much more personal level than voice or text chat previously allowed, but it's removed from the actual gaming experience

We’re well past the five-year mark on the current generation of game consoles, and with details of an imminent Wii successor starting to percolate, now is the time to consider what the next generation of hardware will entail.

Traditionally, competing game console manufacturers have fought clear-cut battles over hardware, software, and add-ons. But with this last generation, things changed: Nintendo rose to the front of the pack by tapping into latent audiences, and Microsoft and Sony have fought hard to win exclusive games and add-on content and to develop competing online infrastructures. The shape of the market has changed dramatically with games on new platforms like Zynga’s Facebook-based FarmVille and Rovio’s Angry Birds, arguably the single most-successful phone-based game ever made.

There’s no question that the next console war will be won by whoever is able to connect to and engage with the most people, but nobody seems to be discussing how that’s going to happen. And that’s what led to this article.

From my point of view, there are three major paradigm shifts that occurred during this most recent console generation:

1. Alternative control methods (Wii Remote, Kinect, PlayStation Move, music game controllers, etc.)
2. High-definition video
3. Robust and integrated networks for interaction and content distribution

The biggest challenge facing the next generation of consoles isn’t how to up the ante on the audiovisual front, although that’ll be critical to Microsoft and Sony in particular. In fact, a good barometer for when we’ll see a PlayStation 4 is once it’s possible to build a system capable of pumping out 1080p graphics at 60 frames per second in 3D, with all the anti-aliasing, shaders and other visual mysticism we’re used to, for under $600. But Sony’s already touting the PlayStation 3 as a capable 3D gaming machine, and many current first- and third-party games support 3D televisions.

It’s also unlikely that the next round of consoles will introduce any groundbreaking new interfaces. Kinect and PlayStation Move are here to stay for the next generation, as is Nintendo’s suite of motion controllers. We’ll undoubtedly see some improvements, but I expect they’ll be evolutionary — think high-definition Kinect video chat, updated Move controllers, and so on. Those improvements will be well-received by consumers, but they’re merely evolutionary, not disruptive.

The next consoles need to deliver a major game-changer in how we interact with our entertainment, and I think the only logical conclusion is that it’s going to be social.

This mockup of the Wii successor is just one of many asinine Photoshopped concepts already being pumped out onto the Web. Not pictured: Social presence, friendly interaction, taste

Yeah, I know, I know: Mr. Facebook is about to proselytize up a storm about how social networking will change the world. But hear me out on this.

Games are as inherently social an activity as anything else. People have found common ground and bonded over games for millennia: Chess players enjoy the thrill of both face-to-face competition and long-distance matches by mail, sports fans unite to support their favorite teams, and videogamers have swapped strategies, shared stories of their exploits and competed fervently both in-person and online for decades. Even single-player games are social experiences for the same reason books and movies are: shared narratives inevitably lead to interpretation and discussion.

What we have at this point is the infrastructure and install base to keep gamers connected to their friends and families. There’s a Wii in virtually every younger household in the country, including the White House, and families have overwhelmingly taken to the fun, accessible play in broadly appealing games like Wii Sports, Rock Band and Just Dance. Xbox and PlayStation fans have spent years building a virtual persona with an avatar and what I’d call a digital legacy: trophies, achievements, peer-reviewed gaming performance and behavior, virtual goods, and so on. Our gaming identities have become an extension of our real selves.

Everyone’s a gamer, and everyone always has been. The problem lies in the label “gamer.” We think of gamers as socially maladjusted and lethargic, unwilling or unable to contribute to society in a meaningful way. In reality, gamers are often some of the most intellectually stimulated and curious people alive.

For example, consider the person who plays World of Warcraft for two hours in the evening instead of watching a couple hours of television. Both are leisure activities, but the gamer is ostracized as being weird or disconnected. However, I see the gamer as seeking intellectual stimulation and community, and there’s nothing lazy or antisocial about that. Television is uninvolved and one-directional; gaming is interactive, engaging and reciprocal. Vilifying gaming is not unlike discouraging intellectualism.

With tens of millions engaged on a daily basis in games on Facebook, on phone-powered applications and on home consoles, there’s no question that more people are engaged in gameplay than ever before. But there are currently only rudimentary, skeletal systems for engaging with friends in games. Aside from friends lists and matchmaking systems, most of the games we play are almost indistinguishable from solitary experiences. We can hear and occasionally see the people we play videogames with, but most of the feedback we get comes from in-game actions through avatars, which are not very expressive.

What’s missing is being able to share these experiences genuinely with our friends with as little interruption and arbitration as possible. What’s missing is the human element.

Nothing will ever replace the value of sharing a game with a friend sitting next to you, but there’s a clear potential in leveraging the infrastructure that already links our consoles to an even greater degree. What if your Kinect or PlayStation Eye enabled picture-in-picture video chat during games? Or if you could assist a friend with a particularly difficult sequence in a game by watching a live feed of their game — or, to take it even further, by directly being able to take control? What would happen if faster processors and more robust broadband networks were used to break down the barriers and wait times and to reduce the latency and obfuscation of present-day online communication?

These are all just possibilities, but they all point to the real question of the next generation: What if our digital gaming experiences were as gratifying and meaningful as our real-world ones?

More and more, people are turning to social networks to express themselves on a daily basis. Facebook has more than 500 million active users, Twitter has a worldwide reach, and sites like Quora, Formspring and Tumblr are growing exponentially. No matter how you look at it, it’s clear that people want to represent themselves in a social space. And with digital infrastructure expanding and growing more robust and accessible, the time is right for game consoles to allow people to express themselves — their real selves — and to share real, meaningful experiences with the people they care about.

And what’s more social than playing a game together?