I’m sober now. It’s not staying pink.

Still not the final redesign, but getting closer. Hope to finish tonight. Thanks for everyone’s comments.

Yep, I’m currently reworking the look of the blog. This is nowhere near what I have in mind in terms of the final look, but it’s at least tolerable until I get the design finished. Tips from competent designers are most welcome and paid for in beer and brownie points.

I love things that combine gaming with being a real girl, and Sadia says it best:

I thought “Hey I could get used to this video game thingy…” when suddenly… blank screen. Like BLZZZPT! Nothingness. He had yanked the cord or something. He rolls over onto me with a big grin and says (exasperated but affectionate stroking my hair), “Look, if I don’t get to DO you RIGHT freakin’ NOW, I will die.” Not terribly romantic I know, that was never his strong suit, but hey… we got through several “levels” if ya know what I mean.

I sense a whole new alternative language emerging. Been a while since I’ve killed a boss, if ya know what I mean.

Today, someone found my site by Googling “Miss Uncool”.

Nice to corner a market, no matter what it may be.

Dear Readers,

This is going to be a long post, but perhaps my most important one of the year.

I’ve been thinking for a while about changing the direction of my blog, but I have a little dilemma on how to approach it.

Here’s the issue.

Video games are at the margins of society right now, but I think this is just because it’s a medium in its infancy, something currently eyed with suspicion by the respectable, like rock and roll and movies were at their beginnings. Film has evolved to include so many genres, from Bruckheimer to Almodovar, via Bollywood, period romances and Winged Migration, so that most people, no matter what their demographic, find something to their liking, and everyone watches movies.

Well, games have everything movies have: a story, a score, a script, art direction, theme, actor performances, special effects, etc. But where movies stop, games go one big step further: they put you in the story. They make you the protagonist. They could potentially make you have to make Sophie’s choice, and deal with the consequences. We feel such empathy for movie characters from whom we are completely detached, imagine if we were involved. Imagine being the one who has to actually let Ilse go. Or run Hotel Rwanda.

The potential themes and settings are as diverse as they are in movies. The potential experience, however, far richer. Of course, games do not currently use any of their power to engage emotion. If they did, I truly believe they would reach everyone.

Put quite simply, I want to help them get there. I’ve been thinking a lot about what visionary game developers can do to push our medium forward, to reach this vision of the future. The goal is to mature the medium. And that happens by diversifying games, and getting more diverse people interested in them.

I have a lot to say about these issues, and I want to use my blog to talk about them to non-gamers, and get more diverse people thinking about them.

Now, the dilemma. I wonder whether I really want to refer game makers to my blog when discussing these issues with them, which may lead to people I work with consulting my archives and reading about personal things like my ovaries. The alternative is to take all this talk of games elsewhere, but the problem with that is that I intend to write about games for a non-gamer audience, which is most of my audience here. How many of those non-gamers would actually follow me onto my game blog?

Hm, now that I think of it, I’ll probably talk about it right here. After all, it’s no secret that I have ovaries.

But I’m not sure about the format yet. Is there a successful model of two blogs working on the same page? I’d ideally like a personal and a game blog to coexist in the same space. That way I avoid pissing off readers who aren’t interested in one or the other (by having it all in one blog), but I have a chance of getting non-gamers to read the game posts. Ideas?

(If you’ve made it this far, thank you and congratulations. You’ve beaten this post).

Last night at the blog meet, 25 (yes, I counted, 25) bloggers are standing at the window of the bar, watching a drug bust go down, cheering whenever anything new happens (like the K9 unit showing up).

André yells, “RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU’RE BLOGGING THIS!”, and 25 hands go up all at once.

My third article written for Yulzine has been published, and I’m happy to be in such lovely company.

It’s always a real brainsqueeze coming up with a post on an imposed topic, but I enjoy participating. Thanks to Patrick for coming up with this cool project and keeping it going.

Julie, our waitress at the blogger meetings, has indeed won the title of best waitress in Montreal (Mirror’s annual Best of Montreal). It helps to have bloggers in one’s corner!

Way to go Julie!

My contribution to the Yulzine project is now online.

Yulzine: two writers, two photographers, one Montreal-related topic, every four days. Our topic was “parks”, and it’s interesting that Pierre and I both decided to talk about the same one.

Thanks to Patrick for making this fun project a reality.