Dereliction of Duty 4: Modern Slideware

Yeah okay I'm back.

Right now my patented TypePad List Of Posts is littered with the half-formed abortia of various points I had wanted to get across between now and whenever it was I finished Portal and Call of Duty 4, and started playing Assassin's Creed. It was kind of a watershed moment for me, frankly. But apparently I was too euphoric to complete whole sentences and hit the Publish button.

But inevitably, my brief honeymoon with the beanstalk-like Stack Of Games Next To The 360 came crashing to a close at the same time as the Christmas holidays. I had started my time-off giddy, or maybe actually just dizzy, from the announcement that FarCry 2's release date would be pushed from the March end of fiscal Q4 to... sometime I'm not allowed to talk about publicly yet (but soon).

The end of holidays also brought with it the sickening - maybe even self-loathing - realization that I had made sweet singing fuhbleep-all by way of progress on my talk for GDC. Presenting at GDC is one of those rituals that, by virtue of the stress-junkie personalities that populate the game industry, has been inflated into a mammoth and solemn responsibility not to be taken lightly, or even reasonbly, but as some kind of professional scourging ordeal. Like Rat Month at VMI, except with fewer uncomfortable Confederate military connotations.