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Cathy

If you don't recognize SVGL's new banner, get up to date! I'm more excited about Catherine than I've been about any other "well, I don't know too much about it but this seems awesome" title in some time, so I'm very psyched at the Catherine banner made for me by Cristopher Boyer.

Nice work, eh? Cristopher is Detroit's IGDA coordinator, and is CEO and co-founder of media development company Variant. His work involves helping nurture and support new game development, web and tech businesses in Michigan -- "It's all about the new economies here right now," he tells me. Good lookin' out, Cristopher, and thanks so much for the banner.

As always, past banners by me and by wonderful generous gift artists can be seen at the official Sexy Videogameland banner gallery!

A little while back, fellow Atlus fan Colette Bennett wrote at Gamasutra about why she's looking forward to the game so much and the kinds of themes and interactions she thinks have the potential to emerge. Check it out.

What I've done regarding Catherine is, uh. Despite having an embarrassment of riches in my "to play" pile, I have been diligently aiming to finish Persona 3 Portable, and when I encountered Vincent's little cameo in the game...

Okay. I don't know what's lamer. That I made a YTMND, that I am showing everyone, or that I keep loading it up so that I can laugh at the thing. That I made. Yeah. Well, here you go.

Music For Nerds

Because I'm big into music and always yakking about bands, I get a lot of people asking me about "nerdcore" bands and, like The Protomen or whatever. I always say I don't like them -- totally willing to admit I'm biased because I make my entire living in the world of video games, but I really dislike the idea that gamer fandom is something that needs to seep into every single pore of a person's waking life. Also I think they're just bad, but that's subjective.

Why should I make it, like, a personal mandate to browbeat gamers into being interested in things other than games? If games are all you like and you want to eat (McFarmville?), sleep, breathe and listen them every minute of your day, that's totally your business, isn't it? More power to you. Do what you love.

It's just that personally I think we can have a richer experience relating to interactive worlds when we have well-rounded lives -- and more importantly, we as consumers will ask for more nuanced, more genuinely social and more diverse game experiences when we are broader and more curious media consumers.

And whether or not it applies to me (protip: it does) I've always flinched at the idea that 'nerd' is a label we should all brag about, like we deserve to be segregated for our interests, like we must embrace this stereotype of being single-minded and socially inept just because we like this or that. We want people to get with the idea that games aren't particularly weird, that they belong in people's lives, right?

Anyway. As much as I am sassy and opinionated about most stuff, at the end of the day it's mostly a big put-on. I'd never tell someone in seriousness that they shouldn't enjoy something that's important to them. But this article on SomethingAwful basically encapsulates, in more depth than I've ever gone into, why I mostly don't really dig "gamer music."

Which makes the YouTube I've posted at the head of this post a little bit of a guilty pleasure, right? (The author of the SA piece told me on Twitter, though I can't find the Tweet now, that this tune is more forgivable because it is self-aware and not taking itself seriously).

In related news, you might all like (or become angry at) this Hosta song, 'No More Video Games', which I stumbled across today on Indie Rock Cafe's decent Summer 2010 mixtape. I came there looking for tracks by Sleep Good, a band from Austin, which is where I spent my entire past week (more on GDC Online later! I'm still catching up on sleep!)