About Media, News, Drinking

Almost the first thing I did after getting back from vacation was picking up Rock Band 2. It's a really good version 2.0 of Rock Band, adding the ability to play in a band online, drum fill training, and, of course, tons of new songs. It's going to be a new staple of gameplay.

Mercenaries 2 is also still loveable. I'm just starting to realize that performing insane stunts along with shooting up bad guys, stealing helicopters in mid-air, driving motorcycles with tank treads, and calling in precision bomb drops are the stuff over imaginative 12-year-old boys (and some girls!) dream of.

I listen to a lot of gaming podcasts from 1up and IGN, getting the real scoop on the industry and what gaming media thinks of games and developers. The thoughts that they have developed about gaming have a lot of personality and insight. It's not like traditional subject matter in news is skewed or judged. You know your getting a person's opinion, kind of like movie reviews, but the podcasts are free formed, recorded after work hours and usually might involved some kind of drinking. You know it's guys sitting around with friends talking about what they love most. They've written their reviews for their websites and magazines and now they get to sit around and relax, joke around, and have a two-hour water cooler conversation.

I wonder how other media could benefit from this kind of outlet; listening to the NBC News anchors talk politics around a bottle of bourbon on your iPod, Jonathan Stewart and Stephen Colbert at a cafe discussing Hurricane Ike over coffee or even Harrisonburg's own DNR reporters having a pizza around a microphone after hours. What would they talk about? How would their personality change or confirm their look on their news stories?