I won’t be updating with serious content this week because the holiday frenzy is here. House cleaning, turkey cooking, plus three or four things that need to be written.

But expect a late reflection on another book on my shelf by Friday. And maybe some thoughts on system requirements.

When I saw Gamespot had screens of a new game called Myth War, I got my hopes up that it would be a revival or spin-off of the great Bungie fantasy wargame. Sadly, no. It’s just another fantasy MMO. Wake me when they set an MMO in Moghul India.

This VGResource editorial on how many gamers only use reviews as hooks to validate their own opinions, preconceptions or wishes has only one real surprise. Apparently there is a Wikipedia entry on Gamespot’s Jeff Gerstmann. And people care enough to vandalize it.

If you missed City Life the first time around, there is a new “World” edition coming out in a couple of months.

Nine days till Rise of the Witch King.

Check out the latest Gaming Round Table, on the subject of “grammar” in games. I’ll have more to say about this once a certain review of mine is posted, since it will make more sense with some context.

Still looking for a guest blogger for November. Any volunteers would be appreciated.

Wired’s Lore Sjoberg has taken the time to dissect online game forums. (Spotted at Broken Toys.) The real payoff is in the opening paragraph.

If you play an online game that you enjoy, there’s one surefire way to spoil the experience: read the forums on the official site. There you will find a vast underworld of lost souls keening their misery onto your screen. A game you thought was entertaining, well-balanced and attractive will be torn apart before your very eyes and pronounced lacking in every conceivable way.

Many game forums fit this mold, not just MMOs. Have you read the Neverwinter Nights 2 forums? One of the best reviewed RPGs of the year is being raked over the coals. Not that some of the complaints aren’t legit, but I actually had one die-hard NWN1 fan say to me “They ruined my favorite game” even though, as far as I could tell, the original NWN is safe and sound.

Game forum communities can be broken into two categories. First is the complaint box, which Sjoberg captures quite well. Even if the requests are phrased politely, the forum is usually an endless series of wishes or desires, whether it be in the name of accuracy, balance or perversion. There are constant pleas for patches, along with greybeards tut-tutting that no one needed patches back in the old days.

Second is the echo chamber, wherein the forum’s sole purpose is to stroke the ego of the developer. The echo chamber is most common in niche games and is typified by frequent developer interaction with the community. Contrary voices get shouted down and bad reviews are discredited as evidence of feeblemindedness. As a company gets more established, the echo chamber might morph into a complaint box as the developers get away from what made their original game so cool.

Whatever form it takes, it is becoming increasingly important for game developers to have someone in charge of community relations.

Then, of course, you have magazine forums, gaming website forums, general gaming forums, specialist genre forums, each with their own particular dysfunction.

Back in the old days, we had to talk about games with our friends and the only ones who knew if we liked them or not were those same friends. Or maybe some wingnut on the local BBS. Word of mouth is faster than ever and it gets hard to isolate yourself from the chatter. Gametab tells me what people are talking about, Gamerankings gives me a snapshot of collective wisdom and game forums insist that the smallest thing is in fact a game-breaking bug. I love my internet, especially since so few of my adult friends are serious gamers now.

But the hype machine has its costs, and I think Internet forums are part of the cost. After being told by everyone I know that World of Warcraft is, in fact, the greatest game they’ve ever played, I know that my experience can not live up to that. And, as immersed as I am in game culture, I won’t be able to escape thinking about the debates on class balance and DKPs and DPS and whatever else.

I’m not completely sold on the idea of gaming addiction, but gaming obsession is certainly out there. Some people become too close to their games. I didn’t think the South Park World of Warcraft episode was all that funny, but couldn’t help noticing that the boys started as role-players enjoying how cool the scenery was. “I’m a dwarf!”, etc. The more they got invested in the mechanics of the game, the less it sounded like a game. It was all crafting, keybinding, buffing, etc.

I think part of why I never get really good at many games (besides the fact that I have to seriously play five or six new ones every month) is that I prefer to stay in that early zone.

In case you’re not tired of talking or reading about this yet, this month’s Escapist Magazine is all about games journalism. It has the expected bit on how blogs will/will not save the world and a round table that, naturally, goes round and round.

I will isolate two quotes though.

From Simon Carless of Gamasutra and GameSetWatch: “But it’s the excessive and twisted introspection that is doing us harm. Let’s just write good copy, instead of picking at why we aren’t.”

From video game critic David Thomas: “I’m more or less a print guy, but I can smell death all around me.”

Oh, and Kyle Orland says you are ten years too late to make a really successful fan site. Sorry, guys.

Some lists are less important than others. And Gamesradar’s list of Gaming’s Greatest Moments is useless to me because I’m not quite sure what a gaming moment is. Does a cutscene or intro movie count as a gaming moment? Apparently, because many (if not most) of the 101 moments are cinematics of one form or another. There is also an overwhelming number of action type games here, many dependent on the story being told for the moment to be meaningful. There is a Homeworld moment near the bottom of the list, though.

And, since I don’t play many of those games, the list has dozens of moments I am only vaguely familiar with.

Strategy games have great moments, but since so many of them play out differently for everyone, you don’t necessarily have the shared experience of finishing Tomb Raider or Shadows of the Colossus or Baldur’s Gate.

Take one of my great gaming moments. Multiplayer game of Sid Meier’s Gettysburg against my friend, Kevin. He’s a little better than me at this game, but our battles are always hard fought. I always play bluecoats. In one game, my defense was faltering on the left so I redeployed from my right. Then he started a fresh assault on the new weaker right flank. Then reinforcements arrived, but they had a long way to go. If I hit his troops head on, these green troops would have cracked, so I force marched them through woods and hit Kevin in a devastating rear attack. His assault crumbled, and I held on for the win. The combination of time, tactics and hair’s breadth finish makes it a game that I remember really well.

Even if you’ve had similar moments, it’s difficult for you to picture my great game moment, isn’t it? The game might be shared, but the experience isn’t. Few genres can compete with strategy gaming for emergent story telling, but the problem with emergent story telling is that we all didn’t go through the same stuff together. Stories aren’t “Remember the time when…”, they are “Once upon a time…” – both good ways to start a story, but the emotional pull is quite different.

None of this bothers me. Strategy gamers understand the difference and that’s why you get a lot of After Action Reports on strategy gaming forums. It’s a chance to share the stories with an audience that knows your language even if they don’t know what your battlefield looked like or can’t quite picture your order of battle.

Feel free to fill the comment box with your own moments.

The first Medieval 2: Total War review is up at personal whipping boy Strategy Informer, and it’s glowing, naturally. It is a very descriptive review with only one major error (Princesses aren’t new, since they were in the first Medieval: Total War game. I’ll leave off any commentary on Mr. Priest’s writing.

My copy should arrive by the end of the week. Which means that the weekend will be completely consumed with sacking Constantinople over and over again.