And now, some rambling.

I don't mind admitting to a bit of a journalistic man-crush on Jeff Green. I'm a dork, I know that, and I have no trouble with that fact. I had a subscription to Computer Gaming World and Games For Windows for about five years, coming over from PC Gamer. I thought CGW had the best features in Tom Vs. Bruce and Scorched Earth, later Greenspeak, and the best editors in Jeff Green, Darren Gladstone, Sean Molloy, Shawn Elliott, and Ryan Scott. Not long after the GFW transition I discovered GFW Radio, the weekly podcast, and I listened to it weekly.

I remember firing an email off to my then-girlfriend, now-wife when they announced that the magazine was closing. I was heartbroken. Honestly -- I looked forward to getting GFW in the mail each month, and I read it cover to cover. After listening to the podcast for so long, I was to the point where I could recognize each writer's style without hitting the byline (except for Ryan, since his reviews were more than 45 minutes of silence and two "What the hell?" sentences). Losing that magazine, that actual physical product, was very depressing. I was not surprised to see Jeff leave for EA, Shawn for 2K Boston, and Sean for Blizzard very quickly. 1up's great purge got rid of Ryan, thus completing the removal of all five editors, with Darren having left some months prior.

I'm listening to the old GFW Radios and reading the old magazines lately, and there's a bittersweet quality to it. It's as great as it ever was, but it's looking back at a time that won't exist again. But that's not so much about GFW as it is about me.

The year that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out, I got one of the first-run printings, with the gold cartridge and the t-shirt and everything. But it was a Christmas present, and the game came out in September, so I couldn't play it until Christmas. In my family, we opened our presents on Christmas morning, but we could do two on Christmas Eve. My mother knew which present I wanted to get that night, as I'd been going nuts about it for weeks, so she wrapped everything in those shirt-size boxes and padded them with tissue paper. I selected my first present and got a sweater, I think, I can't recall, it wasn't important. Now that I had a box, the experiment could begin. I went back into my room and got WCW/NWO World Tour out of my N64, grabbed the game box for it, and came back into the living room. I put it in the shirt box, packed tissue paper around it, and began a careful process of lifting my presents, judging weight, listening for the sound shaking it made, gauging the differences when they were moved, and so on. This took about ten minutes before I was satisfied with my decision, and I opened the present to find Ocarina of Time. My mother thought I was nuts. I played the game until three in the morning.

In 1997, the summer after my freshman year, I spent the night at a friend's house, though that would have implied sleep at some point. Instead, Joey and I played his brand new PC game for about 40 straight hours, Heroes of Might and Magic III. He played as the Order, or whoever it was that had the naga and the genies and the titans, with Fafnir as his hero. I was Sandro of the necromancers. I went out and bought it the next day, and played it more than any other turn-based strategy game I've ever had. Later, in the same game, my neighbor and I sat down with pencil, paper, calculator, and pause button to thoroughly analyze Ruby Weapon and how to beat it, in the days before GameFAQs.

After I got Final Fantasy VII, I played it obsessively, including the first week without saving because I didn't have a memory card or access to a car for that week in the summer. Staunton didn't have any video game stores, and I'd have to wait for the weekend to go to Harrisonburg. I played all the way through Midgar with no way to save, knowing that any game over would be the end of DAYS of work. The battle with Rufus at the top of the Shin-Ra building was the most stressful battle in a game I think I've ever had.

In my senior year of high school, I played a six-man game of Heroes of Might and Magic II in the physics room during lunch for three months. I played as the necromancers, and would chase people around the map with my 1500-skeleton, 65-bone dragon army chanting "Bonedragonbonedragonbonedragon" in a low voice. Billy and I would trash talk each other all day, leading up to our actual matches.

The first time I played through Planescape: Torment, I got to the Sensate HQ and went up to the spheres, where you find out how one of the Nameless One's incarnations -really- felt about Deionarra. I was staring at a 13-inch screen reading words scrolling by, gripped tighter than any movie ever had me.

In northern Virginia, my roommate Nute and I would play through multiple seasons of Madden 2003 in a single sitting, choosing two divisional opponents, playing each other twice, and simming the rest of the games. I beat him more often than not through judicious use of the quick slant right into his free safety, or "hospital ball." This would take ten hours.

After moving to Kansas City, I spent most every Sunday playing Starcraft with Nathan, starting at 10 AM and stopping sometime after 10 PM. We even set up a test one day to see what would win, 200 psi of Zerglings or Zealots. We grabbed the BGH map, built up our bases with multiple hatcheries/nexuses (nexii?), and let it run for thirty minutes while we played Soul Calibur, then spent 45 minutes carefully arranging them to attack. Then we ran THE SAME TEST with them fully upgraded. Zerglings won each time.

Somewhere along the way, though, I lost something. I don't know if it came out of my interest in the industry, reading all the behind-the-scenes info and learning more about the process. I don't know if I just became more critical as I got older. I don't know if I subconsciously have started to want more "mature" things as I've gotten older, but I doubt that one. I don't know if it's me or if it's the games, but I don't enjoy it like I used to.

I find more things that break World of Warcraft for me, the homogenizing of the classes, the removal of the fun flavor of the professions, the things that don't make it so perfectly balanced all the time. I hardly noticed the lore in the Storm Peaks, which is absolutely not how I want to play the game -- I'd been saving that zone for last on purpose. I'm one of those nerds griping about the portrayal of Illidan, Kael'thas, and Arthas.

I've gotten more games that have fallen flat for me in the last year than I think I ever have before. Lost Odyssey, Persona 4, Empire: Total War, NFL Head Coach 2009, Madden 2009, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights 2, Warhammer 40K: Soulstorm... I have Universe At War, Bioshock, Final Fantasy IV, Daxter, and Dominions 3 that I've never played. Somewhere along the way I lost that silly, stupid joy that I used to have, that let me play the same game for hours and hours and hours. Every now and then I find a gem that rekindles it briefly, like The World Ends With You or Valkyria Chronicles, but it's fleeting, and then I'm back to being stuck, drifting from game to game, trying to recapture the feelings of my youth.

Listening to the old podcasts, reading the old magazines, they remind me of when I approached this hobby with that same passion, that same zeal. Now I know that I won't read another new GFW, or experience another new podcast with Jeff, Sean, Shawn, and Ryan. And I wonder if I'm going to get that same feeling back with gaming, or have I somehow ruined it for myself by breaking down the wall separating developer and gamer.