Alright so instead of me going on for an hour about something this week, I'm offering an opportunity to lose an hour of your time elsewhere. From time to time I like to expand my mind by watching (or listening actually) to Google Tech Talks which are basically academic (or sometimes not so much) lectures given by field experts to the people at Google. Google then takes these lectures and posts them to the web in the form of Google Tech Talks. They even have their own Youtube channel. I watched this video only a few days back and thought that some of you might find it interesting. Check it out here.

Here we have Bill Guschwan who recounts a “history” of video games from his own (mildly insane) perspective. Even though he's a bit eccentric, this guy's been through it all. He was instrumental in the launch of the PS1 in 1995, he worked for Apple in the Jobsless days, and he befriended Miyamoto who referred to him as the philosopher. I don't always agree with his perspective (whether philosophical or in terms of video game media) but I greatly enjoyed his recounting of events, especially when we talks about the substantial differences between him and Ken Kutaragi as the Playstation (Kutaragi's baby) was being launched. If you have an hour to put in on in the background, take a listen. And you are also free to do as I did when he just starts basically listing all of the philosophical schools he's aware of (which is completely irrelevant to the conversation) about 15 minutes from the end and just turn it off. And if you feel like it, post any ideas it inspires for you here and maybe we can get some good discussions going. Enjoy!

Sadly, not all of us are able to make the yearly trip to gaming's Mecca - E3.  But sometimes you gain more insight sitting in your cubicle pretending to work and watching keynote address than you can by rushing around a hectic show floor.  Well, at least that's what I like to tell myself.  So while Commodore and I are busy enacting our master plan to attend E3 2011, I'd like to share my thoughts on what I've seen from all the hoopla the Big 3 have put out in the aether over the past couple days.

And I've also noticed some of you have already got to talking about E3 presentations in our video game forum, so I encourage all of you to join in.  Hell, I can't think of a better time to use it!  And now, after seeing each major keynote as it happened, here are my initial impressions on the recently revealed gaming news.

I ran a 4E solo encounter against my party for the first time, and it sucked. The idea was basically to have them encounter a powerful draconic guardian to strike fear into their hearts and make them think carefully about using The Ways in the future. What are the Ways? I'll save that for another column.