Things’ve been crazy since my trip to Toronto. I’d never been, and I absolutely loved it. What impressed me most was the fact that the art and tech community there seems to exist on a spectrum, with many people creating from multiple points of focus and collaboratively with other disciplines to interesting results — I found the worlds of play study, child development, hardware hackers, academia and game design often merged.

TIFF Nexus’ Women in Film, Games and New Media event was a huge success. The response to my keynote was overwhelmingly positive (I was TRENDING in Toronto on Twitter! Whoa!), and I hope to have some video or something online for you guys soon. If you’re an Edge subscriber, a column distilling some of the key points on which I spoke will appear in an upcoming issue. Meanwhile, at Gamasutra I wrote about the results of the Difference Engine Initiative, the local Hand Eye Society’s incubator which focuses on inviting and encouraging women to game development where they may not have considered it before. Amazing stuff I’d be pleased for you to check out.

As usual, I’ve been up to a whole bunch of other things; here’s an editorial I’ve done on signs of life in the maturing social games space. You can make fun of Facebook games all you want, but you can’t ignore them, because the lessons from the social space will start pollinating other platforms.

Across the Atlantic from me, veterans of the UK gaming space including Kuju’s Ian Baverstock and Jonathan Newth have formed a brand-new consultancy aimed at assisting game developers in navigating this rapidly-changing cross-platform environment. PopCap, which is unequivocally one of the coolest and smartest game companies there is, is ahead of the curve as it takes another step toward seamless multiplatform play for Bejeweled with an interesting new iOS decision. So yeah, get used to this stuff.

I’m excited that once again Gamasutra is doing its year-end top lists, counting down to our games of the year by rounding up the year’s most notable industry events; business trends, anticipated games of 2011, and top indie games of 2011.

I chip in with the year’s top five biggest controversies, as I’d know from controversy, natch. Our Mike Rose was kind enough to find a pic of Cole Phelps standing nonchalantly while destruction occurs behind his back. There’ll be more top lists, of course, so watch our space.

I wrote a tongue-in-cheek Thought Catalog piece about how Facebook is changing the way we talk about our romantic crush behavior. Sappy shit. I’m amazed at how many of the commenters are taking it seriously. Their relationships must be super unfun. Possibly they are replicants.

Is that it? Yeah, I think that’s it for now. Man, I hate this time of year. It puts all our brains through a pulper. Of course, Skyrim does that to me too, and yet it doesn’t seem to stop me playing it.

Oh yeah, I need to keep on top of recommending you guys music so that you stop asking me if I’ve ever heard of, I dunno, Wilco or something, and stop calling “indie” a genre. I’m just playin’, ladies, you know I love you. Besides, we’re all going to blow our brains out if we hear one more pop Christmas song cover right?

Today’s Good Song: The People’s Temple – Led as One (Si vis pacem, para bellum)