“Listen. You are not your Redemption, Cryptstalker, Bonescythe, Frostfire, Dreadnaught, Plagueheart, Faith or Dreamwalker. You are not your Thunderfury, your Ashkandi, or your Scepter of the False Prophet.”

Two years ago, when I quit Death & Taxes, I wrote a rant titled that. I was angry and childish. I felt like I’d spent over a year in one of World of Warcraft’s top guilds, and all I had to show for it was a Redemption Ring—and one of the best geared characters in the world.

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I don’t like console to PC ports of video games.

You’ve probably played one or two, maybe even lived to tell the tale. You probably dislike them, too. Recently, Resident Evil 4 had a port by Ubisoft that was so horrible players couldn’t even play the purchased game without downloading mouse hacks to straighten up the awkward aim and messy controls. I don’t know about you, but I like to be able to play the games I buy right out of the package after a short install—not after hours scouring the internet for fixes upon finding Ubisoft’s homepage link to the hot fix dead. I also like to be able to use my mouse when playing a game involving shooting in real time. Somehow, while transferring it from the Gamecube and PS2 to the computer, Ubisoft managed to completely deface one of the best games of this decade almost two years after its initial release.

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Left 4 Dead. I’ve been following it for over a year, and I can tell you it is going to be good. Great, even. Something about zombies and Valve generally speaks favorably in my mind. It’s a pairing as epic as Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet and Ophelia. There’s really nothing to complain about here–except for the delays.

Instead of talking about that, though, let’s talk about the game. The brains behind it, the blood it promises, and the Molotov cocktails it’s going to bring this November.

Let’s talk about why you should be talking about it now.

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It’s such a tease when games are scrapped as they near completion—kings and queens of delays and ill-fated cancellations. So many games are completely different than their alphas and betas; other games never even hit the shelf in one piece. There are a lot of regrets as a gamer when this happens, though who can say if it’s mourning the game or just our lack of control and input into the industry.

I can say, however, that if we had our way, we’d all have played Starcraft: Ghost four years ago and Parasite Eve 3 wouldn’t be released as a cellphone game.

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Girls Don’t Game has official forums now. And we’d like to see you there this weekend.

So come join us. Maybe you’re already registered, maybe you’re not. Say hi. Rant about a game. Talk about Iron Man. Throw up a banner on your Myspace. You know you want to. More importantly, you know we really want you to.

http://girlsdontgame.com/forums

Everyone knows that games and politics don’t mix. Politicians hate gamers, gamers hate politicians, and it’s an endlessly cyclic and mutual hatred. To the politicians, video games promote obscene sexuality and high violence. Meanwhile, according to gamers, politicians just need to get with the times.

To me, a political science college major and a gamer, both sides need to learn to get along–the sooner, the better. Somewhere along the line it became commonplace to ignore Washington if you had a controller in your hands, and somehow that has to change.

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