I never got into any of the previous Elder Scrolls games. I could never get past the graphics which as Tycho likes to say “has kept me from enjoying a great many things.” I just always thought the characters looked ridiculous and the world felt so bland. I was able to get a copy of Skyrim for the Xbox a bit early though and so I decided to give this one a shot.

It had fully been my intention to hold out on Modern Warfare 3, but if Robert drops a copy on my desk in an effort to catalyze the ancient ritual I'm not going to tell him no. We have enough people that we could very easily play nothing but Private games forever. And that's more or less what we do.

As I’ve said before Stephen Silver has been one of the biggest influences on my work. I am a huge fan of his stuff and I’ve learned a lot over the years by studying his work. He approached me a few months ago about a new App he was working on and he asked me if I’d like to be a part of it. Obviously I did and I wanted to share the result with you guys.

I just wanted to post this one more time before the auction ends. You have two days left to bid if you are interested:

With Skyrim only a couple days away, and your evenings likely engaged in some kind of military or paramilitary conflict around the (digital) globe, you might not have had the opportunity to prepare yourself mentally for the rigors of an entire simulated life in Tamriel. Fear not. We are, as ever, your servants.

As another data point in a growing set correlated with the fact of my advanced age, "modding" once meant creating your own game. Now modding almost invariably means actively ruining games for other people, which was once called griefing. See? Old.

Back in 2007 Blizzard gave away a really cool bronze statue to all their employees. It was a smaller version of the massive Orc on a Wolf statue that graces their courtyard. These are really beautiful pieces and very rare obviously. Well one employee actually donated his statue to Child's Play and it ended up going into our live auction. I actually bid on it from the stage and ended up winning it. In fact we did a comic strip about it right after the dinner.

I mentioned Simon Parkin's "savage" and "carnivorous" Uncharted 3 review in my last post, and having several hours of the game now under my belt, I suspect it is only a kind of tactical diplomacy that kept it at eight of ten. This will be the installment where the shine comes off for many people, but for me, the inverse is true: I am wondering if the game is entirely comprised of shine.

Our newest limited edition Laser Cell is now available in the PA store. This particular one features the Lookouts and you might remember it as the cover to the PAX East guide last year. In fact is was requests at PAX that made us decide to turn it into a cell.

Any preorders received before 11/20/11 will be signed by everybody here, just like last time around. t Here's one of the bonus episodes, which is something like a Fourth Panel that didn't result in a strip. It's my associate and I trying to figure out how to be better at our other job, which is "attempting to producing psychologically whole beings."

The Child’s Play 2011 season officially started yesterday! We kicked things off this year with an incredible new website design that should make keeping up with all the different CP events much easier thanks to a new calendar. We’ve also got a brand new map that his been updated with more hospitals for 2011.

I think I was probably content to let another Sonic game pass over me and through me, until I saw a video review at GameTrailers that used words like "Best" and "Game" and "in Decades," all in rapid succession.

Having been harrowed by various modes of Halloween Party exposure, a strip like this was almost a certainty.

The brand new Penny Arcade card game is now available in our store. This is a deck building game along the lines of Dominion or Ascension that uses characters and art from all 12 years of Penny Arcade history. I’ve had a chance to play it quite a bit now and honestly I think it’s the best game of that genre that I have tried. It was created by Cryptozoic, the same guys behind the WoW TCG and the equally awesome card game Food Fight.

Everybody is screwing around with Fitocracy at the office it seems like, or the beta of it, which Gabriel managed to wheedle an invitation for. It's a social/gamification engine designed to incentivize physical activity. As I've suggested many times, I'm deeply invested in the idea that I exist discretely from "the husk." I am often deeply uncomfortable with the ineluctable fact of my body. That will either sound crazy to you, or it will sound like something you might think yourself in the secret vaults of your own mind. Making time to move this thing around and get to know it has made consciousness far more bearable.

We did it again! We made Dungeons and Dragons into a stage show at the last PAX, which you can see here. Many thanks to Wizards of the Coast, particularly our DM Chris Perkins, who is seen here in rare form. And also to Paul and Storm, who agreed to troubadour the event. Troubadour may not entirely be a verb. In any case, you can purchase the songs they troubadoured from the store.