I’ve been so busy the last few months that the Carnival of Gamers and the Gaming Roundtable have come and gone without comment. This is hardly fair since both represent serious attempts to keep the gaming blog community together, encouraging sharing of material, insights and the usual linking to each others stuff. Plus, they allow regular readers to sample some new and exciting blogs.

In fact, I had almost forgotten about the Carnival altogether until Jonathan Arnold from Game Chair reminded me with a kind inquiry whether I had anything I wanted to contribute. I submitted my recent post on wargame AI and that’s what you’ll find at this month’s Carnival.

And I’m surrounded by some great stuff. Thomas at Mile Zero takes on Chris Crawford’s evolutionary approach to women gamers, Jason Preston at Flicker Gaming examines gaming in episodes, and there’s another dozen posts on top of that.

Not all are great, of course. This is a chance for even the weak or uninteresting to contribute. In many ways, I prefer the Round Table since there is a single topic for all to address – it can really push the writer to his or her best when the post must be focused on someone else’s question.

But I’m glad the Carnival is going strong and I hope I can contribute more regularly in the future. Thanks go out to Seth at Game Chair for organizing and compiling all the entries.