We are in that time of year which traditionally gives gamers a break. A break from the seemingly endless stream of high-profile, triple-A titles from the industry’s biggest publishers. Many use this time to catch up on their backlogs, like our friends over at SideQuesting. Others, whom I can only guess are younger gamers with a lot of free time on their hands, don’t really know what to play during this slow period. Maybe they use this time to get even better at [insert popular FPS here]?

It has given me a chance to take a step back and reflect on my habits as a gamer and how they relate to the industry as a whole. Video games have become increasingly disposable as entertainment. As soon as you finish one title (or more often than not, before you even get a chance to really dig into the game you just purchased), there are ten more waiting on the shelves vying for your hard earned cash.

Media coverage is all around us as citizens of the internet. The big gaming blogs generally can’t linger on any one title because they work in a medium that is only rewarded when things are kept fresh on their home page. That isn’t a dig at what they do, it is just the nature of the beast. Core gamers are more than happy to jump from game to game every week. I find this odd considering the cost of new games has been in the $35 to $60 range this entire console generation, and those price points are driven even higher with special editions.

One of our own Contributing Editors, Michelle, recently wrote an article for Pioneer Project with the title, “Play What You Feel Like“. Those five simple words really struck a chord with me personally.

What I love about video games has absolutely nothing to do with the next iteration of Popular Annual Franchise. Trying to play every high profile game, even for a single platform, is nearly impossible for your average gamer. I’ll leave that to the big outlets that get review copies of every game and have enough staff to adequately cover them.

Really, what I want out of my games are fun experiences. The kind of things that you excitedly told your friends about on the playground in elementary school. I have been fortunate enough to have that experience on occasion in my adult life while playing through Fallout 3 and New Vegas around the same time as a few of my co-workers, but it is increasingly rare.

It is one of the core reasons I started up my “Tales from the Backlog” series. There are so many great games that I’ve never had a chance to finish that I’m increasingly having trouble justifying new purchases.

The other side of the coin is that, as a gamer, there can be an incredible draw to be in on the new releases. Listening to gaming podcasts and reading my favorite blogs does start up that new game itch from time to time. But I have found the best way around that is to just be patient. These days, it doesn’t take long before that $60 game becomes a $40 game. I’m not talking about used sales either. There is a surprising trend with modern games of sudden and drastic price drops. I can only assume this is directly related to the disposability that has become synonymous with the industry.

This may sound like the rantings of a crotchety old man, but I bring it up because it makes me worry about the game industry as a whole. Video games are my favorite form of entertainment, and I want to see them improving and innovating throughout my lifetime. What I see more and more is a churning out of yearly franchises and quick cash-ins.

When a game is finished, it is more and more common to hear about studio closures and mass layoffs, even when a game ends up with long tail success. Anything below a review score of 8 or equivalent is seen as a failure, which is incredibly silly. Some of the games you hear people talk about for years aren’t perfect games. They are the ones that tried to do something different. How often do you hear anyone discuss a Madden game that isn’t the most currently released version?

It is sad to see this console generation treated as disposable by such a large segment of gamers. It makes me wonder; will kids playing games now remember the games of today as fondly as my generation does of the 8 and 16-bit eras? Are there going to be those as passionate about preserving the history of today’s games as say, the guys over at The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment?

I certainly hope so. I am sure for developers, disposability is the farthest thing from their minds when designing games. I can only imagine that this development is heartbreaking for them.

These 11 athletes are the best of the best. The pinnacle. The creme de la creme.

If there were such a thing as a video game athlete hall of fame, these guys would be the first ballot inductees. These are the athletes that are so good that when you face them, you  throw your controller and call your little brother a cheater.

So with a minimum of further ado here they are the top 11 Video Game Athletes.

11. Jango Fett – (Tony Hawk 4)

In the real world, 900 is pretty much the craziest vert trick anyone has ever pulled off.  With the use of his trusty jetpack, Jango could pull off a full 1800 degree spin before landing. That is double 900′s. Plus he has a cool helmet.

10. Brighter Red Light – (Mattel Football)

The Brighter Red Light didn’t even need teammates in this handheld classic. How many other athletes have the skills to go 1 on 5? Brighter Red Light is the ultimate North/South runner. He might not have a spin move or a stiff arm, but there is no way he is losing yards.

9. Quentin Sands – (Blitz the League)

Modeled after Lawrence Taylor, Quentin Sands played like the captain of the prison league football team. Whenever you play against him, at least one of your players was leaving the game with a broken leg (about 54 seconds in, don’t click if you’re squeamish.)

8. Jeremy Roenick – (NHLPA Hockey 93, NHL 94)

Besides having some sweet dance moves, Roenick was a beast on the ice. Incredibly fast and strong, Roenick was the go to guy if you wanted to get someone’s head to bleed.

7. Sunday Tiger Woods – (Tiger Woods series)

It doesn’t take too long for your created player to become a long ball driving, putting machine. In no time at all you surpass the stats for cover boy Tiger Woods. It is only on the last day of a tournament when you have to face Sunday Tiger Woods. Just like in real life, Tiger steps it up big time on the biggest stages. You better hope you have a big lead going into Sunday, because Sunday Tiger Woods will consistently hit the kind of shots they show on Sportcenter’s Top 10′s.

6. Randy Moss – (Madden series, NFL 2K series)

There is a noticeable panic whenever someone looks up and realizes that they left Randy Moss in single coverage streaking down the sideline. An inevitable “Oh $%&*!” escapes their lips as the QB releases the ball. My entire Madden 2001 offense was built on  the deep post to Moss. The ultimate big play receiver might only catch 3 balls in a game but all 3 would go for touchdowns.

5. Mario – (Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, Mario Hoops, etc.)

He might not be the fastest or the strongest, but no other athlete on this list comes close to matching Mario’s versatility. Never mind the physique, Mario has proven himself to be the greatest all around athlete. Mario can do just about anything; Basketball, Soccer, Baseball, Golf, Tennis and the freakin Olympics.

4. Michael Vick – (Madden 04)

Madden 05 and Madden 06 were in many ways a response to Michael Vick in Madden 04. The league had never seen a QB who could move like Vick, and the game struggled to keep up. If you wanted to stop Vick from running you had to focus your entire defense on him. At which point he would throw a long TD pass.

3. Detlef Schrempf - (In the Zone)

This series has faded into obscurity, and even back in the day In the Zone couldn’t compete with NBA Live or NBA Shootout. However, no other basketball player in any game comes close to matching the awesome power of Detlef. In real life Detlef was the third best player on his team, but in the game he is a basketball god. If Detlef is within half court distance, that shot is going in. I would score in the mid 100′s with Detlef every game. He would have something like 40 3-pointers a game. We had to ban him because it felt like cheating.

2. Bo Jackson – (Tecmo Bowl)

Picking the Raiders felt like cheating. Bo Jackson was simply too fast and too strong for the game to keep up. He would outrun everyone, and if you managed to lay a hand on him he would shrug it off and keep going.

1. Mike Tyson – (Mike Tyson’s Punchout)

In the 80′s there was no one on the planet scarier than Mike Tyson. There were other great fighters through the years, but none could match the sheer ferocity that Tyson seemed to exude. Ali or Frazier might beat the snot out of you but Tyson seemed like he wanted to kill you. It wasn’t a question of whether he was going to win the fight, it was a matter of how long would someone be able to last. Tyson was literally the last man on the planet you wanted to mess with.

Somehow, the digital version of Tyson was even more frightening. Few moments in video game history can match the first time you fight Tyson. By the end of the first 30 seconds you’ve been knocked down 3 times and you haven’t even dented his health bar. Most gamers throw their hands up at this point and walk away.

My friend Nate is (arguably) a grown man. When he defeated Mike Tyson he threw his hands up in the air, threw the controller down, and yelled at the T.V. Everyone in the room high fived like morons. Nate was so excited it took him a couple of days to come down from that high.

To this day he still swells with pride whenever you talk about it.

What makes a gamer hardcore?  What is the difference between a casual gamer and a hardcore gamer? These are the kind of questions that keep me up at night when I am not busy envisioning a T-Rex with Sharks for arms.

Ignoring my penchant for cryptozoology for a moment, it does seem like there is a lot of talk lately about the casual, core, and hardcore market. It seems as though every publisher and developer is worried about how to best appeal to each market. There are literally billions of dollars at stake.

But why would the rest of us care whether someone is a hardcore or a casual gamer? Shouldn’t we leave it to market researchers and corporate executives to worry about that kind of thing? If we are really gamers shouldn’t we be too busy playing games to worry about it?

Blame it on Nintendo or the success of the iPhone if you want, but these days publishers are realizing that there are fortunes to be made by making simple, easy to use games that cost pennies to develop. For some gamers, there seems to be disdain for these simple, easy to pick up and play games that the Casuals enjoy (as if there is some inherent nobility in understanding the intricacies of Obscure JRPG’s combat system). If you haven’t heard it for yourself, it is difficult to convey the sheer disgust that some gamers have for these casual games and the gamers that play them. As if your enjoyment of “Bejeweled” diminishes their love of “Devil Summoner 2.”

I realize that there is a difference between someone who spends 20 minutes a week playing “Peggle” on their iPhone and someone who spends 200 hours completing every sub-quest in “Dragon Quest VIII.” But what about the Madden gamer who has won the Super Bowl for 30 straight seasons in Franchise mode? Does that level of dedication merit the distinction of Hardcore? What games do you have to play to be a hardcore gamer?

How much time per week  does a gamer have to spend playing games to be considered hardcore? Does hardcore-eryness require a mastery of games or simply a love for them? Does someone who spends hours researching the Assassin’s Creed wikipedia page merit hardcore status? Is there an hourly quota someone has to hit per week? I think if someone has a passion for gaming, whatever the game might be, that person can call themselves a hardore gamer.

The other day at the store I work at, a customer was talking about BlazBlue. He was saying that people who buy it on Xbox 360 are stupid casuals and that the hardcore get it on PS3. Ignoring my own similar feelings towards the Xbox 360 D-pad, I wonder why do we get so caught up in this kind of thinking. We get trapped into us versus them; this exclusionary thinking separates us into our disparate camps. We define ourselves by who is not included in our group, the boundaries for who we are become based on who we are not.

We get too caught up in labels and trying to define things. Instead of just letting them exist on their own merits. I see this at so many levels of our lives from music to people, we have become obsessed with labels. “That guy is emo!” “She is a total goth.” “I can’t stand that band, they are too popular.” “That game is only for frat boys.”

This kind of thinking splinters people apart. We become defined not by who we are but what we associate ourselves with. There is a gigantic difference between judging a game based on its own merits and judging a game based on the people who play it. Would so many people disparage “Halo” if it hadn’t caught on with the college frat boy crowd?

If “Halo” sold half as many copies would it be a “better” game? Why is it that the more popular something becomes the more likely many of us are to condemn it. This permeates all aspects of our culture from books to films to video games.

Underground things are awesome and popular mainstream things are dumb. Tell your hip friends that you really enjoyed the latest episode of the Bachlorette or American Idol and see how they respond. If they admit they actually like them, they will feel guilty about their enjoyment as if there is something wrong with enjoying something that other people like. The same holds true for the Hardcore crowd. Admit that you enjoy Grand Theft Auto and Halo and they’ll scoff that  you only play “popular” games.

How can we get away from this kind of thinking? Is there any hope? What are your thoughts, gentle reader?

To better understand and appreciate the significance of this landmark achievement I need to give you a little history.

Dad has owned every single Madden since the original Super Nintendo. The only year he didn’t get Madden was the year they didn’t release it for Playstation 1 (so he bought NFL Gameday). That is over 15 years of video game football. Every year we play, and every year his superior running game and knowledge of actual football is enough to grind me into a very fine powder.

15 years of him dominating and crushing my feeble football skills.

Dad has been a lifelong football fan. Our family van is decked out Raider style in silver and black with skulls and everything. The first thing you see when you walk into our house is a poster celebrating Raider legends. In fact, if you cut him he actually bleeds Raider silver and black. To go along with this life long love of the Raiders is a passion for the game itself; he just loves football.

He has the NFL Sunday Ticket package so he can watch every single game on Sunday. He is currently in 4 different Fantasy Football Leagues. He has played or coached football for more years than I have been alive.

It is not just me that he crushes. His online record for Madden 2009 is something like 100 wins and 50 losses, which is even more impressive when you find out he only plays top tier opponents. He doesn’t pad his wins with easy pickings like a lot of online gamers. When I was growing up, he would challenge and defeat all of my friends, my little brother’s friends, my little sisters’ friends, and even people from church that mentioned they enjoyed Madden.

There have been flashes, brief moments where I think I can take him down. But every time he disabuses me of that notion. With 2001 I thought my Randy Moss post pattern was invincible, he taught me the beauty of a good pass rush. In 2004 when I thought the skills I had picked up online would carry me through, he taught me the hurry up offense and how it can disrupt a defense.

Every year Madden would come out and I would learn a little bit more about the game of football. I stopped picking my defense based on which play had the coolest name. No more Red Dog and Atomic Blitz. I actually began to learn the difference between a Nickel and Dime defense. For mobile Quarterbacks I learned to have one of my Linebackers Spy the QB. I figured out a Zone defense makes interceptions a little easier but leaves little holes in your defense. I made dozens of little improvements over the years.

On offense I stopped going for it on 4th down every time; no more 4th and 28 Hail Mary passes. I learned there were other offensive sets besides Shotgun. I even began to learn how an effective running game can eat up clock and set up Play Action passes and force the defense to put 8 in the box (more defensive players at the line of scrimmage) which frees up your receivers with one-on-one coverage.

It was all futile.

My record against Dad was something like 0-100.

For every stride I made, he had a counter. It was like every time I raised my game he had already raised his to a higher level. I was getting better, but I still wasn’t good enough to take him down. I could crush all of my friends, but the victories were hollow since I could not beat dad.

With the recent release of Madden 2010, I saw my opportunity. He had played 2009 so much that the little tweaks would bother him way more than they would bother me. While he would have to reprogram his brain I would just be playing the game. So like a T-Rex with sharks for arms I struck.

17 years of crushing victories were forgotten as I exploited mismatches in the secondary and pounded the ball on the ground with Ladainian Tomlinson (L.T.). It wasn’t flashy but it didn’t need to be. It was effective. As the game progressed I began to think I might have a shot at winning. His defense couldn’t stop L.T. and my tight end Antonio Gates always seemed to find the seam in the coverage.

On defense I felt like I was playing with 12 men. I was actually able to find just the right combination of blitzes that I made Adrien Peterson a non-factor. My defensive linemen even managed to get to the quarterback and force him out of the pocket enough to disrupt the passing game. He was constantly scrambling and reacting to me rather than forcing me to react to him.

I kept expecting some kind of miraculous comeback. I kept waiting for him to pull it out like he always had before, but as the time ticked off the clock I was still ahead on the scoreboard. He needed to recover an onside kick to even have a shot. Our teams lined up for the onside kick, my hands sweating and my mouth dry I watched as his kicker kicked off. The ball bounced once and then landed right in the hands of my player. As he was tackled the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding in escaped in an audible gasp.

As my offense trotted out to the field I frantically searched for the QB kneel play. There was no way I was going to relive “the Miracle at the Meadowlands.” I knelt down and the clock ran out.

I had won.

I had beat Dad.

At Madden.

He turned to me and smiled “Good game. Rematch?”

The Sega Dreamcast was the greatest system that never really had a chance. When most systems die after a year and a half, it is because they are terrible systems with horrendous game libraries (see 32x, Atari Jaguar). The Dreamcast had arguably the greatest first 18 months of any console in history. The unfortunate thing is those 18 months were all we got.

Why did the Dreamcast die?

The Dreamcast faced three nearly insurmountable obstacles, any one of which would have been enough to derail most systems. The first obstacle was EA. Still bitter about the failure of the Sega Saturn and unsure of the Dreamcast’s potential, EA, the largest publisher at the time, decided not to release games for the Dreamcast.

This meant that some of the biggest franchises, such as Madden and Live, were not going to appear on the Dreamcast. Sega and 2K Sports did an awesome job of filling this gap with amazing sport games, but for many people Madden is football. No Madden meant lots and lots of people sticking with their PS1 and waiting on PS2.

The second obstacle was the hype for the PS2. When the Dreamcast was released on 9/9/99 most people were playing Playstations. Sony was the undisputed leader with no one else even close. For a generation of gamers, Playstation meant video games. Sony was in such control that everyone was anticipating the launch of the PS2. In fact, the hype generated by Sony for the PS2 was enough to convince people that the next generation did not start until Sony released the PS2. This perception caused a lot of people to consider the Dreamcast as competition for the PS1 instead of the PS2. Sony convinced people that the Dreamcast was a toy, and the PS2 was the future.

People always say that everything always comes down to the games, but if you were to compare the first year of Playstation 2 games versus the games that were out on the Dreamcast, the PS2 library doesn’t even come close. The PS2 launch really only had 3 games: Madden 2001, Timesplitters, and SSX. Compare that to: Soul Calibur, Power Stone, NFL 2K, NBA 2K, Skies of Arcadia, and dozens of others. Even with a superior library, the Dreamcast was still demolished by the perception that Sony had created.

The final obstacle was Sega itself. After much success with the Sega Genesis, Sega managed to dilute their brand name by releasing way too many systems. At one point you could go to the store and purchase: a Nomad, a 32X, a Sega CD, a Genesis, a Game Gear, and a Sega Saturn. Having so many systems confused retailers and consumers. By the time Sega got it right with the Dreamcast it was too late. People no longer trusted Sega consoles. They had been burned too many times before. The Dreamcast could have dispensed Nacho cheese and free Beer and people would have wondered if they would need 7 expansions and attachments to play all the games for it.

Any one of these obstacles would have been enough to derail a system. The poor Dreamcast faced all three. Is it any wonder the Dreamcast died?