Why?

Who am I and what makes me think I have anything to say worth blogging?

I'm a philosopher, a teacher, and a gamer - in no particular order (but certainly not chronological).

Psychoanalytic question: What are you avoiding by focusing your attention on writing this blog?

Vague existential answer: My death, but of course that's not unique to me.

Overly practical answer: My dissertation.

Yes, I'm a graduate student. I'm 30.5 years old, and I should be finishing my dissertation. I've been a gamer my whole life, became a philosopher in high school, and a teacher/professional philosopher after college. My formal training is in ethics but by the time I was suppose to formulate dissertation ideas I had developed a love for all things technological and internet-y. So I came up with a thesis about virtue theory and the internet, one which grows more outdated every moment that I spend not writing it. But one of the necessary consequences of writing a dissertation is that you will lose all interest in the subject matter. Quickly.

I can't deny my drive to play games. For the longest time I couldn't validate it within the academic world. I proposed a course exploring ethics (excuse me, "normative theory" :cough:) through World of Warcraft, but it got vetoed ("Ethics and war?" "Excuse me ma'am, it's WarCRAFT, World of Warcraft" "Pah! You're no Allen Buchanan, kid!"). I assumed I was doomed, like most people, to live two separate lives, personal and professional and never the twain shall meet.

But a spot of light. In March of 2008 PS3Fanboy.com put out a call for columnists. Columnists about anything related to games. Hrm, I can relate philosophy to games. In fact I have more than a few friends that like to discuss games intellectually. Let me throw my hat in and see what happens. Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a weekly column that will be read by the gaming masses! Go out there and drop some knowledge on 'em!

Preparing to write these columns changed my life. Not in the near-death experience kind of way, more like in the changing the light bulb kind of way. You still use the same wattage because it's comfortable and familiar, but the spark goes out and you have to fumble around with minimal lighting for a while before you get off your lazy ass and down to the hardware/drug/grocery store and get a new bulb on the cheap. That kind of change.

I started look around the web to find things similar to what I wanted to do, something to provide guidance. Boy did I discover a world I had been missing. It started (and always, always ends for me) with Michael Abbott and the Brainy Gamer blog. Here's an academic doing it right. Doing it beautifully. And I'll be damned if there aren't dozens of others doing equally wondrous things (I'm sure once I get the whole "blogroll" thing figured out you'll have the origins of my RSS feed vomited on the side of the page). I lurked. I posted. Mostly I desired to be a part of it. I want play alongside the Vintage Game Club! I want to participate in the Round Table!

But I'm writing for PS3Fanboy. And I'm supposed to be writing my dissertation. And most of all (and this is the real clincher) - I HATE writing! Yea, I know, I chose the wrong profession. Been knowing that for damn near a decade.

Still, deadlines make me productive (even if I'm a savant when it comes to finding ways around them) and I like having written even if I don't like writing (in much the same way I think it would be cool to have been shot, though not so much the actual getting shot part). I've still got the PS3Fanboy gig, though that whole "weekly" thing seems to have gone out the window (sorry, Andrew). I've learned a lot from it, a lot about the culture of the internet which I'd written abstractly on but not experienced first hand, a lot about how to relate to non-academics. And a hell of a lot about the world of PlayStation.

I also learned a lot about limitation and what I can't do at PS3Fanboy. Because I'm now so entrenched in the world of "intelligent gaming" blogs I can't help but want to take things to a high level, but I have to keep them accessible. That's good training for teachers. But there are still limits to what I can do in a 1000 word column at PS3Fanboy. Not to mention that it has to be at least somewhat relevant to the PlayStation brand.

Should I start a blog? Hell no! What part of "I HATE writing" was unclear? I can't even manage to garrote myself into doing my weekly fanboy posts (not to mention the D-word). If I'm going to write more stuff to put in a gaming blog, shouldn't I just save it up for that?

Probably.

What about all the stuff you'd love to say about Jason Rohrer's magnificent games?

Tough.

Damn you (bless you!) Corvus Elrod!! (Am I the only one who thinks he simply must look like Hugo Weaving whenever I see his name?) This month's Round Table really tugged at my aorta. But how can I participate in the Round Table and talk about the video game de-adaptation of my very favorite book (The Brothers Karamazov) if I don't have a blog?

You can't. So start a blog, dummy.

So I did. Maybe I can finally get into this whole writing thing. Maybe enough to even finish the dissertation. Hell I've got the post for the Round Table half written already. Not to mention this post and the outline of a second one explaining my "statement of purpose".

Or maybe you've mistakenly ran across this in a cobweb strewn corner of the web in 2018 and somehow read all the way to the bottom only to realize that this blog never had more than this one post but damn was that author prescient as to his own shortcomings.

Know thyself. Indeed.