New Videogame Consoles! Because…Why, Again?

Also available in black!

Like all members of my generation, I have a rather ambiguous relationship with videogames.

I believe in the medium. It’s a fascinating new art form, and certain games have been central to some of my fondest memories.

And yet, every few years, I look around and realize I haven’t really played a videogame in almost forever. And then I try to remind myself why I used to care.

Part of this is just a time issue. A truly great single-player game can take as much as 50 hours to complete, and every time I get through one, I look at my watch and realize that (a) it’s three a.m., and (b) I could have read five books in the same amount of time it took me to finish one game. And when you work full time and have kids, that sort of time is at a premium.

But I think there’s more to it than that. Namely, that the games companies haven’t given us a reason to get excited in a long, long time.

This is particularly striking now, as we’re currently in a moment where all three console manufacturers are making bids to be on top in the next hardware generation, and literally nobody I am aware of is at all excited about any of the three new consoles. 

A Lenten Meditation: Twitter Sucks Like an Old Hoover

This bird has ruined a thousand lives.

I still remember the first time I heard about Twitter. I was eating lunch with some coworkers in ’07, and one of them dropped the name of the then-new site.

“What the heck is Twitter?” I said, wiping mayonnaise from several orifices with my sleeve.

“You know those ‘status update’ thingies you can make on Facebook?” she said.

“Yeah…”

“Twitter is that. And nothing else.”

“That sounds…entirely useless.”