I’ve been in a startlingly good mood recently, allowing me ample relaxation and peace of mind. The perfect mindset for gaming! Don’t get me wrong, here. Anger is always good motivation when pretending to shoot people, and a wistful, nostalgic mood might make a fantasy game all the more enrapturing, but I’ve never enjoyed a game more than when I’ve felt calm, cool, and collected.

In the spirit of happy gaming, I figured, what better way to revel than to write about a bunch of stuff that makes me gush with video game love? Scenes, moments, characters, and even some games themselves. There are some that make me remember why I turn to my console when I’m feeling a little blue. They just make me believe in gaming again.

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With all the negative press that the upcoming PSN title Fat Princess has been given (and for no good reason), we thought we’d go to the source and set some records straight. In this interview I talk to Chris Millar, from DarkStar Industries, on behalf of Girls Don’t Game. He was nice enough to provide us with some answers to some questions we had. If you think Fat Princess looks impossibly fun like we do, or if you’re one of those people who finds it offensive on all counts, read on anyway. You may surprised what you find.

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For me, video games occupy a space somewhere between total downtime and work. Since starting to blog about games I have found myself analyzing them with a thoroughness I used to keep for English literature class. Gender politics, social implications, reflections of the current zeitgeist… Games are a significant media, if a frequently downplayed one.

And yet, as this week’s Round Table points out:

There is a commonly held belief that videogames are not the equal of literature and film. One conservative acquaintance of mine on Facebook doesn’t even consider them on par with “public speech and music.” On the other hand, we have anti-video game activists claiming that video games have the power to train children to be emotionless assassins. Even within the video game community I’ve often heard the reaction, “they’re just video games.”

Well, I am here to say that video games can teach us, make us feel, make us cry, make us laugh. That they are easily the equal of film and books (as are music and public speech on occasion - I have a dream, anyone?)

It’s easy to point to how they teach us explicit lessons. There’s any number of DS games that purport to teach you how to cook, how to design clothes, how to get fit, how to remember things better, or just how to think more efficiently.

But what about the other lessons? The unconscious ones, the ones that slowly shape our world view, the ones that affect how we interact and talk and think and live?
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The Pokémon franchise is one that’s earned a bit of a negative image due to the way it was aggressively advertised. In short, it was forced down everyone’s throat and now some people can’t stand it anymore. Little kids loved it so parents bought it, which drove Nintendo to push it even more. The recommended age was lost in translation somewhere around the time the television series came out and Pokémon, like so many others before it, was branded as a kid’s game. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because kids really do seem to love their pikachu. The downside was that many people turned away from the series because their little nieces and nephews were all about catching them all.

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