Sorry for the gap in updates, but it’s been an absolutely busy time. Let’s catch up on earnestness, pizza, things like this.

E3 has come and gone, and I wrote responses to Microsoft’s and Sony’s press conferences, respectively. As if there were really much room for interpretation.

I was relieved not to be attending E3 in person. Related: My GDC microtalk on the incredible communication gap games marketing has with all rational things recently came online (the other microtalks are excellent).

Mostly, though, I spent that week at the lovely EToo event in London, helping a bit here and there with the live presentations and hanging out with developers. It was excellent and I hope they do it again next year.

I wrote this New Inquiry article about how important I think the de-prioritization of ‘fun’ is currently. This freaks a lot of people out, as if a new priority for game creation — communication, provocation, the creation of empathy — supplants or somehow does not permit other priorities.

Games for Change is an annual conference about using games to create social good that I attend every year, and this year I gave one of the keynotes. In it I talked about how the games that changed me, taught me something or caused me to experience empathy for someone else’s experience were made as communication or self-expression, not as “serious” or “teaching” games.

The main point I hoped to make was that a new approach to games for social good might be helpful — what if, instead of nonprofits funding “serious games” about poverty, intolerance, mental health, they instead focused on providing low-cost and accessible tools to those affected by those issues and let them make their own games?

As I said, it strikes me that a lot of credit and coverage has been given to individual game creators doing work on under-represented themes — and yet those creators do that important work for no money and at times at cost to themselves. If nonprofits and academia are looking to commission and fund change games, I think this is an important place for them to start looking first, rather than commissioning well-intentioned “serious games studios” who in most cases will never interact with people affected by the issues they want to make games about.

There is some nice coverage of my talk on Polygon; I think, though, Samit interpreted and quoted me through the lens of some of the issues we discussed at Different Games — not that it’s not part of the same discussion, but I did want to clarify that what I hoped to get across in this case is slightly wider than simply democratizing creation to build diversity. I also talked a lot about Depression Quest and Cart Life and ways educators could empower students through tools.

I am also sometimes wondering about “queer games scene” as a general phrase in media outlets– anyone else? Individual games, or empathy-oriented games, aren’t limited to talking about identity, and I feel weird about identity being viewed as a “scene.” It still feels to me like segmenting some voices into a place separate from others, and seems to suggest what their games should be about. I dunno.

I recently played David Goldfarb’s Letters from my Father and am still thinking about it. Same goes for Lydia Neon’s Player 2, a game about processing forgiveness (or it was for me; it might be something different for you).

I got to cover some of the other Games for Change keynotes, too. My favorite was Ian Bogost’s suggestion of “earnest, not serious” games (and not just because it enforced the point of my own talk!) It was good, and provoked no end of Twitter jokes about Ernest games. Jesse Schell talked about sheep, goats and learning, and Robin Hunicke shared a little of the work Funomena has been doing in the classroom.

Shifting gears, I am in the Atlantic with a lavish tribute to my love affair with the Domino’s Pizza Brand. I’m also in Thought Catalog’s latest ebook, a collection of essays themed around HBO’s Girls.

I am sorry the latest (last!) Game of Thrones recap is so badly delayed, but as you see, schedule’s been mad. I go back to London tonight — a five-day trip to America is just the right length to give you jet lag coming and going. Feh.

What do I think of the Xbox One’s big one-eighty? Not much: The company’s console reveal was clearly pressured by Sony’s timing, this decision is clearly pressured by Sony’s spiritual victory. I’m not interested in a brand with such a muddled (when not terrible) vision whether it has one or another policy on used games.