"Don't let fun become an obsession" you say. Followed by: "Gaming is not a hobby, it's a state of mind, commit yourself u fukin noob"

Honey, in the nerd business, anything that consumes your interests thoroughly enough that you commit to it is an obsession. A passionate obsession, but an obsession all the same.

Dude! u made playing video game sounds like a big deal fool! Max Max Max...I've live my life without any video game and i am perfectly well(except the part where i want to play too) but anyway, this is an offical review from Feng Hsuan Chen... so go review mine too!

nice, it is deffinatly better than most of the crap you have written. Most of this stuff is true, and i know it is because, well you and i have discused this stuff.

nice, good, um, better.

A whole new world for me, and thank you for introducing me to it. I finally know what a nerd is, and what a great thing to be,and what a stupid label for such a great thing to be. It seems that video games and cyberspace are parsecs of a very real instead of virtual world; obviously from this article, it takes one helluva lot of skill and patience and talent to even stay in the game for two minutes. Not light weight stuff by any means. Dexterity and a whole new language of skills. Thanks for a great article.

"Those that bought the Dreamcast can tell that the controller layout of the Dreamcast controller is exactly the same as the XBOX controller."

Oh, you mean kinda like how Sony "mysteriously" all of the sudden has motion activated software in their controller? But NO WAY, Sony never does anything like that. Y'know, like stealing stuff from other people.

Notice how it's also mysteriously missing it's rumble now?

"The rumble wouldn't fit in the same space as they gyros ZOMGWTF!11" ...but yet the Wiimote still has rumble capabilities...I like how that Sony wasn't able to come up with their own rumble design and just had to steal it (and then got themselves sued! LAWLS).

Plus the PS3 is going to be SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. I'm a gamer, and probably more hardcore than most people, but there is no way in hell I am spending 600 dollars on a system that right now doesn't even look as good as the 360 and is using a format that might not even be around after the Blu-ray/HD-DVD war is decided.

How can you think that Sony has better developers? Sony OWN devlopers suck, and they just pay people tons of money for exclusives. I think it's funny how you think that the Playstation can't be destroyed, it just destroyed itself at E3 with the outrageous price point.

You're like every other doofus who thinks that Nintendo makes games just for kids and that adults can't enjoy Mario. Go, run to your PS3. When you get "Disc Read Error" two months after owning your system and can't find your recepit to get it replaced, I'll laugh. That's the worst thing about Sony - they treat their customers like crap.

Anyway, I don't like this part of your essay because you're obviously biased. If you're going to speak about the console wars, then speak objectively. Even though I hate Sony and their schemes and the fact that they screw thier customers, if I had written this you would have never known.

~Namir Swiftpaw

True, so true. You have a good outlook on the gaming world. I'm looking for some new really good games, so give me some tips if you would.

AMEN DAMN YOU BILL GATES! But Windows XP is still better than linux...oh well. I TOTALLY agree with this essay, as I am a semi-hardcore gamer myself. The reason that I'm not completely hardcore is b/c One: I have no cash, and Two: I dont have enough energy b/c my mom makes me wake up early. oh well, I really like this!

Thank you for your review. It made me smile. And I liked what you wrote. I don't play games that much, but when I do I'm a total gamer. I was browsing through your other entries and I came across the chat ones. My advice for those, to make it easier to read, is to set it up like a real IM session.

Well, there are a lot of things I should say about this piece. First of all, I disagree with a lot of it, merely because your perspective seems to be a bit shallow and jaded. Your writing style is decent, and your research was almost adequate, but there was one main issue with your story. I kept asking myself "What's the point? What is the author trying to say?" It appears to be a quickdraw breakdown of the gaming industry's history, but even then I feel somewhat cheated.

Your writing really needs focus. You have 10-15 seperate ideas sometimes in one paragraph, which all deserve their own thesis. In addition, your essay should be seperated into several different pieces. One on the Gamers Code and another on the history of the gaming industry. This is something to consider for essay writing. It isn't a specific step-by-step guide for writing, but it will help you develop your ideas so that the reader and the writer can follow them. If there's no focus, it's like reading a garbled bulleted list of contentions.

Also, be careful how and when you decide to use and define ambiguous terminology, such as geek, nerd, gamer, etc. You use these terms at several key points before you decide to define them, which isn't good for your reader.

Now comes the debate about facts. Did you know how popular the Atari was in the 70's? It was an amazing machine that a lot of gamers today are too young to remember. Gaming wasn't as unorthodox as you might think, infact it was quite popular. Be careful when you make that assumption. There's a reason Atari lasted so long as a company, and it wasn't because the Atari was frowned upon.

Lastly, the reason high end consoles are on the market today is to provide households with the dream game you were reffering to. This is in reference to "My online fantasy is to have a world of Halo 2 and you can do anything in this world" which is in Chapter 2. Realistic fantasy games like these require high end hardware, which will cost more money.

I suppose my conclusion would be to re-consider employment in the game development industry. Programmers are worked the hardest, usually getting little amounts of sleep during crunch times, but man is it worth it. I've been programming games for years now, and I've never regretted it.

EAGames and the like require their employees to stand up to a certain standard, but all developers aren't like EAGames. Even more so, all positions aren't treated the same as programming. Artists get a large break when it comes to crunch time, as do game designers. The time required for programming and debugging is simply greater than that of the demand on artists.

Overall this was a good piece and I enjoyed reading it, but I hope you reconsider your views.. It's kind of insulting as a game programmer (me), hearing this from a fellow gamer..reconsider your opinion of us, ok? We aren't all that bad :(

More coverage on the PS3/ XBOX360/ Wii Era! Or is that the next chapter?

And I know you don't think you're a good writer, Max. But really, you are - if you just put a little more emotion in your work (i.e. exclamation points and such), you'd be the next Stephen King! No lies, buddy.

I love your research put forth. But I do believe it was called "Sega Genesis." Oh well, but it was a good chapter. Did you know Final Fantasy started as a Nintendo 64 title? It's cool. I heard that on EP... But also, did you know that Sony and nintendo both had begun working on the Plystation together? Nintendo backed out of course. It's that one move that changed the world. I never owned a Dreamcast nor an XBOX. I have a PS2 and Gamecube. But it's nice reading this. I remember those old days. Super Nintendo rocked.

Peace, Love, Triangle!

Darket

i liked this chapter... but how come you didnt talk about this coming generation.

Very interesting. I would like to read more. Update soon, E.

It's so true... sniff.. ITS SO TRUE

*applause* well-done, and i have to agree with you, especially on the last point. my friend kassy is a dedicated gamer, but she was cut off from her games for about a month due to circumstances beyond her control, but then at a school lock-in, they had a Halo tournament. She was in there almost the whole night. we were quite frustrated with her. *sigh* but anyways, great job.