Gamers Unite (No, I mean go hang out with your friends)

Ok so you have a PS3 Slim, Xbox, and PC, How many of your games allow you to actually utilize that dusty second controller in the corner of the cabinet (I don't mean as a backup when your controller dies because you played for 8 hours strait)? You know what I mean, multi player.

Recently my wife procured some loot for a present, Skyrim. If you haven't played it, I'm sorry. Its an awesome product of fantastical dragon slaying, magicka casting and sword swinging fun. It's probably the closest people in our time can come to living in the middle ages without having the short lifespan (as long as you save early enough) and sickness and ailments that would have come from our real world middle ages. And it has dragons!

Here's the rub, if you have someone play this game for any amount of time past the intro hour, you quickly see they take a helper into dungeons. While you are twiddling your thumbs (because who can read a book with that game on as a distraction) you think, how hard could it have been to add a controller to the game and let someone play that second character?

Here is what I'm asking you to do, pick up and look at the back of your games and see if they are multiplayer. Do some quick math. How often do you come back to that game, Skyrim is fun for other people to watch what you are going to do next. (Like using your dragon voice on the annoying preacher in Whiterun or loosing consciousness and shooting everyone in whiterun in the knee with arrows.) But how many of you return to your games after the first few weeks of play?

The thing I remember about my first console, that I helped pay for, My siblings and I saved and saved; we accumulated butter buckets of coins and went in together to purchase a Sega Genesis. Sega had Sonic and Tails and other multiplayer games that would allow us to bond, and we would play for hours after school when we were allowed to.

Growing up a gamer was no different. I played RISK and Scrabble with my pals after work or on weekends. We would play D&D and eventually, after the DM killed off the entire group, we would retire to StarCraft. I recall some of the best times hanging out with my friends yelling "Your bases are belong to us!" (Often my bases were out first, even though I had a backup plan to swing back and bite them later).

My wife and I started our young relationship playing Baldur's Gate on the PS2, we would play for hours, and when we finally put the game down it was probably because we had class or work to get to, but then WoW came along and sorta allowed us to play with friends, until for one reason or another they all went to different servers. Now WoW is growing long in the tooth and less and less interesting... we are looking for some fun games to play together that don't involve setting up a calendar for 10 or 25 people.

I don't really remember many of the one player games I own, I don't play them. I don't get as much out of games without the social interaction with a friend or family member. I mean sure, I love having a single driver race in Motorstorm now and then, to satiate my need to drive like a bat out of hell. But all in all, most of my time in game is on something with other players.

Here is my point, if you have a game you really love to play *cough* Skyrim *cough*, let someone else play it for a while. Just sit and watch them. When they are really into it and you are itching for the controller to help them, sit down and write a nice letter to the developer. Ask them to make the next iteration Multiplayer capable. Thanks Gamers, remember they make the games because we buy them, if we tell them what we want to buy, hopefully they will listen.

Photographs

There is something to be said about holding the final print in your hand.

I recently got a iPhone controlled helicopter for a present. My wife, who is every bit the gadget freak I am, got a digital picture frame. She loved it because we are both photographers, but she wanted the helicopter too. So the thing is still in a box (the digital frame) because neither of us has the time to sit at the one computer we have and comb through 8 years worth of images. Sure we take pictures but we rarely have (MAKE) time to edit and post process.

We shoot everything in RAW, since we had our first camera with RAW. We were combining HDR images old school like in PS Before it was all the rage. We have some pretty good stuff in there, but like the pile of negatives from our photo classes, they never see the light of the luminescent display.

I'll get to my point. I came to work today to see a print (of my wife and I at the company Christmas party) sitting on the break room table. I thought, "We don't really have too many of these with both of us." It was an awesome gesture from the wonderful folks in the parent company to print these out and send them to our office. It's always a picture of her because I'm behind the camera or a picture of me because she's composing. But unless we set up a tripod and stage something we don't often see candid shots of ourselves.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you snap a picture of your friends, family or co-workers that you think they might like. Print it out and give them a copy. You might get one on your desk or in the mail one day in return.