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The Crysis single-player demo is finally upon us, and with the game just weeks away we're finally starting to see what nearly two years of hype is leading up to.

I couldn't help but notice that with the release of Orange Box, critics have been going pretty easy on Half-Life 2: Episode 2. According to MetaCritic, it's averaging a 91%, which is pretty darn exceptional. But it's not the score that bugs me.

I finally got around to watching The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters at the local theater pub. The movie is a documentary about the efforts of a man named Steve Wiebe to break the decades-old world record on Donkey Kong. Seeing King of Kong was particularly meaningful for me because, in addition to being an avid videogame player, I have been extensively involved in competitive arcade gaming.

A recent article in the journal Computers in Human Behavior describes a study in which a group of college students chatted with a conversation bot (i.e., a computer program capable of engaging in a conversation). Even though the students knew they were talking to a computer, they actually showed general agreement in their perception of the bots personality traits (e.g., friendliness, thoughtfulness, neuroticism, etc.).

This fall is looking like it's going to be one of the best seasons for gaming since.... well, since ever. There are a lot of big sequels on their way as well as some hotly anticipated new IPs that have everyone talking. The demos for these games have begun trickling out, and I've gotten my hands on a number of them to get an idea of where my money is going to be spent this fall.

It seems that an increasing number of videogames these days are using one or more forms of operant conditioning, and in particular positive reinforcement. Although reward systems have long been a mainstay of the role-playing game genre, their use has been gradually spreading. Why might that be?

At one time or another, most of us have experienced some frustration with our PCs. Programs might seem to inexplicably freeze, crash, or simply perform poorly. How do we make Windows run as quickly and trouble-free as possible? How do we get the best performance from our games and other applications? Most importantly, how do we do all that without a Ph.D in computer science?

The September issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health unveils the results of a large research study on the effects of playing Re-Mission, a third-person shooter designed to help young cancer patients improve their knowledge of cancer and boost their confidence in managing the disease. Now that the results are in, how does Re-Mission fare?

This weekend was Vanillaware weekend for me, and you know what? These guys rock the 2D art, but wow... They don't craft the kind of gameplay I want to spend time with.

With all the recent debate about whether or not videogames should be consider (good or bad) art, would it not be of cultural significance and a sign of the times (no pun intended) if the venerable news institution declared that videogames was indeed worthy of being covered alongside the paintings by artist Willem de Kooning, the singing of soprano Natalie Dessay or comedic "genius" of Dane Cook in Good Luck Chuck?