Going back to the office today, tissue box in one hand, fistful of various cold medications in the other. I should be pleasant to be around. I worked from home yesterday, but aside from that I’ve spent the last 3 days pretty much laying on the couch.

Haven’t played any Warhammer (or anything else on the PC). Did play quite a bit of Fable 2, and I watched a lot of old videos I still had on the PS3, including stuff like 1Up’s E3 coverage. Wow, had I ever pushed a lot of that out of my mind. Who else remembers the “You’re in the movies” demo during the Microsoft Press conference? If you don’t, check out this video starting about 3 minutes in:

In less amusing news, a bunch of bills came in, and I felt the sting of all the splurging I did the past month or two, what with the Warhammer CE, Rock Band 2, and a new RB guitar, Hinterlands, LittleBigPlanet, and some non-gaming extravagances. The reality is that its time to tighten my belt. I cut a lot of little things like knocking my Netflix membership down a couple of notches, gonna be more careful about grocery shopping, dumping some extra cable services and the like. All these little cuts add up.

But I realized that I simply cannot justify carrying two game subscriptions at once. It’s so easy to turn these things on and off that it makes more fiscal sense to alternate months. I’ve promised Angela that I’d play EQ2 with her when the new expansion comes out, which is I believe Nov. 20th. So I’ll be suspending my Warhammer Online account after this month runs out (I think on Nov. 18th). I hate to do it since I believe in the game and I’m sort of voting against it by doing this, not to mention all the asshat smug bloggers who’re taking such joy out of finding out that supporters of the game are leaving it.

But I still have almost two weeks to enjoy Warhammer and CoW, so if you read this JoBildo, don’t make me an alumni yet!! And I’m going to look at it this way; when I go back after a month or two of EQ2, the game will be even better than it is now. So that’s something to look forward to!

With E3 come and gone, I’ve been thinking (again) about problems with gaming journalism, the internet, and gamers, and how these three things come together to create a toxic brew when it comes to events like E3. Just to warn you, I don’t have any answers. I’m still trying to quantify the problem of why where’s so much negativity and downright meanness surrounding gaming on the internet.

Factor 1: There are many gaming news websites out there, and they all tend to have pretty much the same news. So what differentiates site A from site B is often who gets the scoop. So there’s a tremendous pressure on the bloggers and journos of these sites to get new release info first. If the PR department of a game developer won’t come clean, maybe some of the poor schlubs in the trenches will spill something. Leaks abound. Rumors profligate. By the time the actual event comes around, there’s a cloud of mis-information and unrealistic expectations just waiting to rain on everyone’s parade.

Factor 2: The gamers don’t just want word that a game is coming out. They demand gameplay. If a game is announced but the developer has no gameplay to show, the announcement is met with derision and scorn. In the meanwhile, the rumors have come to be accepted as fact in the weeks running up to the event. When they turn out not to be true (i.e. no Kid Icarus for the Nintendo Wii at this year’s E3), the gamers get disappointed and start bad mouthing the parent company.

Factor 3: The publishers end up between a rock and a hard place. If they make an announcement with no gameplay ready, the gamers jeer at them and talk about what a terrible showing the publisher had. If they make an announcement and show gameplay that is so early that it isn’t as good as it should be, the gamers immediately write the game off as “sucking” and that word of mouth spreads like mad. If the developers make no announcement at all, the gamers (and probably the shareholders!) get pissed because there’s nothing new on the way. Gamers won’t take in on faith that there are teams working hard on games that haven’t been announced.

So E3 begins in a whirlwind of hype and ends in disgruntlement. I’m reading on various sites now about what a disappointing E3 it was. And yet I watched G4’s coverage, and I’ve been reading a bunch of blogs, and downloading lots of footage, and there are a -ton- of great games coming our way. I know I’ll certainly have to make some hard decisions on which ones I buy and which ones I’ll have to pass on due to financial considerations. I won’t be able to afford all the games I’m interested in.

Like I said, I have no answers. I just think its a shame that gamers have such high expectations that they never seem to wind up happy after an event like this.