It’s been some time coming, but Girls Don’t Game is dead. I didn’t want to make this announcement so I delayed it for a long time. Honestly, part of me wanted to wait until I had a reincarnation–in this case, my new blog at Hellmode–before I did so I could end on a positive note.

Well the time has come. GDG has died, Hellmode has been born, and it’s been a wild ride. When I created GDG, it was my first attempt at an editorial blog. I said anything and everything. I told people why water levels sucked, why Left 4 Dead was going to be good, and why customization was such an important feature in this generation of games. Somehow people listened to me and the other girls I picked up along the way. Fellow bloggers, random strangers–generous benefactors listened, too. In the two years I ran GDG, I was interviewed for a couple of magazines, EA sent Suzie to their headquarters for free, and we got review copies of over a dozen games. For me, at twenty-years-old and new to the industry, this was a really big deal. It rocked my world.

Correction: you, whatever vestiges of readership is left, rocked my world. I have so much thanks for everyone who read this blog in the past and now. It was because you believed in us and our message that I believed, too.

I spent the past two and a half years working in the industry (partially thanks to this blog and the connections I formed), and I’ve learned a lot. Things happened, people changed. I’ve written a lot, I’ve changed a lot, and things just aren’t the same here. Somehow I can’t really look at GDG as a home anymore as such. It’ll always be in my heart, but it isn’t me; I no longer want to be identified by my gender in video gaming nor do I want to play off a name that puts a gender down anymore. Girls Don’t Game was my first experience in the industry, but not my last.

Hellmode.com is my new project, co-founded with a good friend of mine named Ian. You can find me there as Ashelia. It’ll be just as good writing and video gaming, though possibly not as catchy as GDG sounded abbreviated. At any rate, this is me signing off and closing this chapter of my life. I will probably keep the content around for all eternity, and may even re-establish this name as my personal blog someday, but that day is quite some time off. I am very busy.

Hope to see you at Hellmode, and stay in touch regardless,
Monique

As the DRM failboat continues to capsize at Ubisoft, and gamers find themselves unable to even log into the newly released Settlers 7 to verify the legitimacy of the game upon release, I have to wonder: are these launch problems just a poorly timed April Fool’s joke?

Well, it’s April 2nd now, and their support forum complaints are still piling up, so I guess not. It’s a shame because in general I enjoy strategy games and was interested in trying out series for the first time - but if it’s as broken as it sounds, this gamer isn’t planning on supporting Ubisoft’s stupid DRM choices with her money any time soon. And Settlers 7 looked damn good, too.

All of this just speaks of a larger issue at hand, too. It’s starting to become evident that gaming companies are grasping at straws for explanations for their lower sales and that piracy has become the new scapegoat. It all started with Crysis developers and higher-ups explaining a couple of years ago that its lackluster sales hinged fully on piracy; a surprising disregard for the inability of the majority of gamers to run the game on their systems without serious overhauls to their rigs. Funnily enough, there’s a lot of video game companies that are selling their titles fine and don’t seem too stuck on pigeonholing their problems into the piracy excuse. Unfortunately for the Settlers series, Ubisoft doesn’t seem to be one.

But let’s be honest here, I don’t think Valve needed to do anything special for Left 4 Dead 2, and I’m fairly certain Borderlands did well despite extremely relaxed DRM on Gearbox’s behalf. Man up or get out, Ubisoft - or at least stop ruining games before they’re even released.

It had been a while since I had felt like writing here, and then Borderlands came around. Hailed as Diablo 2 meets Fallout 3 and introduced as a success where Hellgate: London so blindly failed, Borderlands was last week’s big news release, and is by far the best game I’ve played in a while.

First off, let me do away with assumptions: Borderlands is really nothing more than a loot game. In fact, if you’ve played Diablo or Titan Quest, you know almost exactly what to expect from the genre. But what sets Borderlands radically apart from other such genre clones is that not only does it mimic Blizzard’s patented formula, it improves on it; your expectations are not only met, but raised substantially. Borderlands is more than just a game, it’s an experience, and it makes sure you;ll never look at these types of games the same way. Deviating from the mold, Gearbox developers intelligently chose to deviate from the medieval setting, throw in their own brand of humor, add a screen full of dynamic cell-shaded graphics, and finally a dash of seamless gameplay to create what is possibly 2009’s game of the year, bugs aside.

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The database is back to up to the wonderful Leslie. We’ve transferred servers and a new layout is coming eventually.

We’re alive, sort of.

The blame is solely me. I stopped writing and I stopped managing my other writers and now, somewhere, a tumbleweed blows by. There’s this thing with achievements, with Sartharion 3 Drakes (I’m officially “of the Nightfall” and a “Twilight Vanquisher,” with a rare mount to boot!), another thing with a full-time job in the video game industry (want a review copy of our latest game?), Left 4 Dead (Versus in CAL?), Fallout 3 (I haven’t even started it despite owning it), the holidays (I like turkey), college (compsci major)…

Well, you get the point. To top it off, my old PC fried and I built a new PC and I have next to nothing on this PC besides games.

Anyway, this is a quick heads up that things will change and regular posting will resume at some point. Apologies, hope you didn’t kick us off your RSS, and if you did, we’ll just re-earn our spot. I hope 2009 is treating you well and you’re as excited about the upcoming release of Resident Evil 5 as I am.

The Olympics are going on right now. Phelps is winning gold metals like there’s no tomorrow, China and the USA are duking it out on the uneven bars, and it’s all very intense to watch—but so is Flash versus Jaedong.

I’m talking about the Averatech-Intel Classic finals I stayed up until 4am to catch with some of my former guildmates last Saturday. For a forty thousand dollar prize, hundreds of Starcraft players climbed a ladder and the final rung gave way to two players: Flash (Terran) and Jaedong (Zerg).

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