Lookouts? Oh, yes.

Lookouts continues, and Gabriel keeps nailing it. Please don't tell him I said so.

If you are rocking it in an indie style, and what you are doing is truly badical, we want very much to hear from you.  Every year we offer up free floorspace for ten developers, and there's no reason your game can't be in there. 

Look out! It's the, um... Lookouts. Listen, I'm trying here.

One of many incredible memories from PAX East involved a processor giveaway. 

While we were at PAX East, a time which is at once incomprehensibly ancient and yet concurrent with the now, we suggested to attendees that we would set ourselves to the task of creating more Lookouts. It wasn't pure fiction, because I wanted it to be true. Does that count?

We'll have something set up soon that will automatically update you when this happens, but for now, we have a channel called PATV and there is a new episode of The 4th Panel based (partially) on the comic entitled "Purgatory."  

Is he actually listening to me when I say things?

I get mail every day asking us to weigh in on this Roger Ebert thing. It's really not worth getting worked up about in my opinion. Of course video games are art. They are nothing but art. They are art piled on top of more art.

There are many, many replies to Roger Ebert's reeking ejaculate, from measured Judo-inspired reversals of momentum to primal shrieks which communicate rage in a harrowing, proto-linguistic state.  Thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago chose to respond to him, which gave the whole thing a kind of symmetry, seeing as it was her TED speech that drove that wretched, ancient warlock into his original spasm.

The story in the new Splinter Cell is of the International Intrigue variety, and by the time events have reached their culmination, every serpentine bend of the quintuple cross has been revealed. It's very much a genre, with its own peculiar texture, and Conviction scrupulously charts a more personal course through those events - but there's still plenty of New World Order Shadow Conspiracy boogita-boogita to go around.

Splinter Cell: Conviction has virtues, and we may even get around to discussing them, but "incessant guard dialogue" is not among them. These people never shut their Goddamned mouths. Ever. Until you shoot them. The new game's emphasis on brutal murder has been decried in some corners, but players will appreciate the ability shut four of these douchebags up simultaneously.

I'm happy to announce that the application for the 2010 Penny Arcade Scholarship is now online. Every year we here at PA give away $10,000 to a student that we think will have a positive impact on the game industry. You can get all the details as well as check out some previous winners on the new PA Scholarship site.

I don't think I'll ever get back to Final Fantasy, now. Typically when I crush a game between my molars, making it a vessel for my rage, I eventually come to believe I have not served you to the utmost. It becomes something akin to exposure therapy, where placing myself close proximity to the hated thing results in a kind of psychological inoculation. Shortly thereafter, I tend to identify with my tormentor, "discovering" or manufacturing a series of "hidden virtues" which were previously "unvisible."

I've been asked before why we haven't "weighed in" on the Infinity Ward/Activision lawsuit, and the main reason (I would say) is that it is exceedingly difficult to tell what is true.