The Carnival of Gamers

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Carnival of Gamers! Here you will find the best and brightest video game bloggers from around the world! Never before has such a group been assembled to bring to you the latest insights and observations from the gaming blogosphere. We’re a diverse group here, as you’ll see from the posts but we all have one thing in common — we are passionate about video games. So let’s get right to them —

The first submission award goes to Tea Leaves with a blistering piece on the state of video game reviews, taking just about everyone to task.

Bill from Dubious Quality was at E3 and saw some themes rise above the din that is the spectacle of E3. Great “macro” view of E3 and all the trimmings.

Everbody always roots for the underdog and Adam at render gaming thinks Nintendo has assumed the role of the underdog for this generation of consoles. And like everyone who’s ever rooted for the underdog, he wants Nintendo pull the upset.

Foton says he knows better than to read gaming message boards. He claims to be aware of the dangers. Problem is, he can’t help himself. Somewhere, someday, someone could post something relevant, interesting or amusing. So far, no luck. But he can dream, can’t he?

We’ve all felt that pang of shame when we tell someone who isn’t a gamer that we love to game. But should we? Troy at Portico doesn’t think so.

Corvus gives should get a standing ovation for the defense of PC Gaming and independent PC Gaming here. Bravo, Corvus. Bravo.

Guild Wars has enthralled me lately, but Ethic is right – the pathing and instancing both leave something to be desired.

Jason wasn’t impressed with the art of i-am-8-bit and it shows.

Aggro Me asks: why look for Queen Antonia when they’ve already got Queen Heather?

Electroplankton is an enigma to me and this piece from Thomas doesn’t really clear it up but makes for a great read. I don’t think Thomas is alone in hopthing that gaming goes in this direction.

Alex at Damned Machines looks at Video Game Magazines and finds them wanting in more ways than one.

Finster does some excellent research about the Xbox 360 and the PS3 and comes to some interesting conclusions.

I’ve got mixed feelings about selling virtual game items for real life cash but Cosmik has some pretty strong feelings about it. He makes some pretty convincing arguments.

I hope your sitting, because this is a long one from Krones. He takes John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, out behind the woodshed and does all manner of unspeakable things to him. I will admit that I laughed, cried, and felt bad for humanity while reading this entry.

Joseph has seen the future and the future is the PS3. Not only will it cook you dinner and do your laundry but it will also “age”, grow up and then, as a teenager, take your keys and crash the family sedan into the neighbor’s mail box. Then you’ll get a disc read error. How about that for the future?

Mike looks at the specs of the Xbox 360 and then waxes on the future of online play, and more specifically Microsoft’s Xbox Live. I’m still not convinced I want to get nickel and dimed to death but Microsoft does have some ambitious plans and I think this will be the future of gaming.

Is GTA an RPG? Simon would like it to be. Read what happens when he tries to role play Grand Theft Auto.

Vanhemlock wonders what The Business of Teamwork is all about. Rather humorous stuff.

If danking is wrong, The One Eyed Man doesn’t want to be right.

Newcomer Ninjack compares MMORPGs to the buffet line. And now I’m hungry.

Well that wraps up the first edition of the Carnival of Gamers. It has been a lot of fun reading these entries (some of them for the first time) and it has been great to see the support from gamers to see this succeed. I look forward to future Carnivals, and we’ll have the next one in two weeks – hosted by Thomas at Mile Zero on June 9th. If you’re available and willing to host a future Carnival of Gamers, let me know!

A big thanks to everyone who participated and made this happen. If you wanted to participate but didn’t have the time to submit this go-round, please don’t miss the 2nd edition. Let’s keep this going strong!

GG everybody.

Update: Honor of honors, we have been linked by the Shigeru Miyamoto of Bloggers, Instapundit. A super huge thanks to Glenn for the linkage. (Now I await the dreaded Instalanche!)

Welcome Instapundit readers, hopefully some of you, like me, are gamers and will find some new bloggers to add to your feed readers. These guys are excellent bloggers, enjoy!

Another Update: We’ve now also been linked on games.slashdot.org. Welcome games.slashdotters, hopefully you’ll take the time to read some of the blogs here. The initial reaction over there wasn’t the most positive but others have come to the defense of the bloggers and the Carnival (thanks, Josh). I took a stab at defending the carnival as well. Hopefully people will actually read some of these pieces before they make broad, sweeping assumptions about video game bloggers.

Update #3: Now we can add Kotaku and Digg to the growing list of Carnival referrers. Thanks to Brian and Mike for the links, this has really taken off (3.2k hits as of 2:30 pm EST). I am on my way out of town but I wanted to thank everyone again and wish everyone a nice Memorial Day weekend. I’ll check back in later for a recap.

Really late update: To be listed in The TTLB ÜberCarnival I needed to add a link. That should take care of it.