It seems that the thing to do at the end of each year on sites like this is to write a series of wrap-ups. Game of The Year, retrospective reports, trends analysis. People also like to make predictions for the impending new year. I really do disdain things like holidays and imposing tradition, and while I honestly have very little sentiment for New Years, I do think it’s appropriate to acknowledge what has happened as long as the world insists on operating cyclically.

But I won’t. In fact, I tried to just now. I got half a dozen items into a list before I scrapped it. Deciding what’s universally important isn’t for me. I’m not sure who it’s for; the real enthusiast press doesn’t do a good job of it either. Much of what they say is very hype-driven, lazy and predictable. I won’t do that, though that may be what people really want.

I’m going to go finish riding the planet around a star now.

As I’m sure you’ve been conditioned to know, Spore was released this last Sunday, September 7th. I really wanted to play it on release day. Normally I don’t worry about this too much unless it is a game that I am especially excited for. If I recall correctly, the last game that I was determined to play on release day was The Orange Box in 2007. I downloaded it through Steam at midnight as soon as it became available. It was incredibly convenient and it made me happy to be a Steam customer. Things are not always this easy, however, especially when it comes to games published by Electronic Arts.

My experience in obtaining Spore inspired the message of this post. EA: I want to buy your games. Please make it easier on me.
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If you know anything about me, you know that gaming is my passion. I love this medium. I love this artform. I love this industry. I feel fortunate to be alive during a time of such innovation in the melding of visual and interactive entertainment. But for the last few weeks, ever since the beginning and ending of E3 and its aftermath, I’ve been worried about the state of certain facets of our industry — namely, our gaming press.

I have been wanting to write a post addressing certain issues for quite some time, but I could never collect my thoughts well enough to put together a case to present. So during this year’s E3 I made a point of listening to responses from both the gaming community and the gaming press via forums, comments, blogs, and podcasts.

It is apparent to me that the press is not happy about where E3 stands as an event. I haven’t been able to discern whether or not if, overall, they are dissatisfied as games journalists or simply as gamers, but I am not sure that it matters. I don’t know that they have much reason to be upset either way.
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Welcome to the new iteration of Bearly Commentary. You may have noticed that I have not updated the comic version of this feature in some time. This happened for several reasons.

I was never entirely happy with the way the comic ended up being formatted. It was an experiment to begin with and I felt that it worked, for the most part, at first. However, it became apparent after not long that the space limit for text that I had arbitrarily set for myself was proving to be too restricting for all that I found myself wanting to say on a given subject. Being humorous in every edition wasn’t my intention and I felt that I had shoe-horned myself into that. Rather than let it get out of control I decided to come up with a new way of doing this.

I have grown attached to the panda as well as the name of the feature, so they will be staying, but I will be using them in blog posts as opposed to regularly in a comic. The comic itself will, I think, not appear anymore in its current form. Instead, I may adapt it later on down the line to supplement the blog posts. No guarantees, though.

This post has simply been to update you on what’s going on. I will have a real edition of Bearly Commentary for you in the near future.