NON-TOXIC GAMING

I don't personally celebrate Father's Day much. As a dad of five you might find that strange, but I lost my dad on a Father's Day years ago. It sort of took the magic of the day of its sails for me a bit. Working on that, but that's a personal hurdle for another time. On his gravestone is a quote that I've taken to heart (and am paraphrasing here): Wherever you go, leave a trail of friends and improvements. It's like one of those philosophical golden rules. No, not that  golden rule Jafar. The other one : " Do to others what you would want them to do to you." When I so eagerly joined NTG I had an ulterior motive: make the Internet a better place, especially for my three girls. These people know what they're doing and if they'll have me, I know I can help with that. Lara here, clearly sees the Internet as it is right now. From  @legallylara I'll be dating myself a bit, but I remember when the Internet barely was there. AO

The last weekend was an impressively busy and positively amazing one for me. Without going into personal details too much, it closed a project that was thirteen years in the making. With how immediate and 'now now now', 'buy buy buy', and 'go go go' (*cough* Warcraft dungeons, looking at  you) the Internet cynically is sometimes, it was reassuring to see seeds planted in 2004 online finally blossom and start me on a new path in my life. From Chroneco This all goes back to how you use the tools given though. Are you flinging Junkrat grenades at conversations, Lúcio healing auras, or Reinhardt's shield? I read a recent article that tried to blame the platform snapchat as the root of all evil for a horrific situation . I have very little understanding of snapchat, but I recognized it and my knee-jerk reaction was to respond on facebook to the relative with the "but not all..." arguement. I never posted my response. Why not? Because I

For considering myself a gamer, I was extremely late to the online realms of gaming in 'traditional' terms. World of Warcraft, for instance, came out in 2004. I wouldn't join it until late 2006. What was I doing before that? Well, Civilization games mostly; playing turns by email over at apolyton , Sims 2, or real life obligations. Apolyton probably best explains why I feel a draw towards the Nontoxic forums . Which reminds me, if you'd like to respond to a post here on the blog, that'd be a great place to go do it. Let's start some conversations! (I admit, I'm not a very subtle individual sometimes.) Aside from WoW, my next foray into trying online gaming was on my Xbox 360 (like I said, for some reason, late to the party.) I fired up Uno on a cool fall night, sat down, and expect to find other people who simply were out for a random match of the game in an evening. Boy was I ever wrong. The camera winked to life and I was confronted by a gr

I am a girl. I am a gamer. I am a gleefully, glorious goddess…oh wait, did I take the alliteration too far? I have been a gamer all my life, as I picked up my first controller in 1978, at the age of 5, to battle the mighty ball that you could not let pass your bar. Yes, I am describing Pong, and it was essentially ping pong in the electronic format. Now, it sounds rather boring and it makes me wonder how video games ever advanced, but it was just the beginning of video games and my gamer life. It was the “gateway game” that led to my somewhat obsessive addiction to newer games and consoles. In fact, I was so enthusiastic about gaming that I turned my grandmother and mom into gamers. Eventually my grandmother was fighting me for the controller so she could play Asteroids on Atari, and my mom would wrestle it away from her so she could get her fix of Missile Command and River Raid. Thus, gaming is fondly ingrained in my memories and it will always be a part of my fabric. Sometimes it f

It haunts us... Mocks us... Taunts us... Makes us question why we spent the money in the first place. It's our gaming backlog. Naturally, the first thing to come to mind is, geez, FF, that's a massive first world problem. I agree wholeheartedly. We are, generally speaking, our own worst enemies though, and it bugs me that I've 'wasted money' on games that I have yet to play. (Steam and humble bundles , I'm looking right at you.) My wife reassures me that I'll eventually  play them. Even if that eventually is when I retire in forty(?) years. Yes, this is the reason I've never sold a console system; I feel the shame strongly and don't want to lose the ability to play them someday . It's also why my launch PS3 is still connected to my TV since it can play PSone games. Time to fess up then. What is my oldest lame claim to shame? Final Fantasy VIII. I'll admit right now that I haven't played Final Fanta

Come my friend, it’s time to put on the nostalgia glasses and come back with me to an era when after school cartoons were a thing and the Internet was a movie dream shown by a young Matthew Broderick or Tron. If I didn’t manage to make it home in time for X-Men then Goof Troop, Duck Tales, and TailSpin kept me in good company as I did my homework (if I had any). When I first got wind of the Disney Afternoon Collection it went to the top of my wish list. I remember renting both DuckTales and Rescue Rangers growing up and beating them triumphantly. Due to how often I rented them my mom even got DuckTales for a birthday for me back in the day. Having beat it, my young mind went for an unopened exchange of Base Wars at Walmart instead. The collector me of today still cringes at that decision. (Though I’d love a Base Wars remake at this point actually, staying true to the original. Hey, they did it for NBA Jam.) Have I beaten them all again yet? No. I hung my Playstation Network tro