No, I'm not asking if they're sapient - though some have given me cause for concern - but rather sometimes I wonder, when they're drawing/painting/whatever-ing something for publication, if they actually think about the ramifications of what they're drawing, or just saying, "hey, this looks cool."

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I've ranted about previews before. In short, one of the things that the discerning reader should remember about any preview is that, in most cases, a site or magazine only gets a preview on the whim of the developer and/or their PR company.

Thus, write a bad preview - giving the game bad press before it's even released to stink on its own - and you're not going to see more previews.

And also thus I was quite amused when reading Games For Windows magazine recently.

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Lured over to Time magazine online by a story talking about mental health for Mets fans (I'm not a Mets fan, but I find the offer high-larry-ess) I saw another story entitled "A Surge in Cop Killings".

Another coincidence: While reading a gaming magazine this weekend, I read an interview with David Grossman, who has worked on games such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max. There was a line in there about how he has the same name as an anti-video game crusader known as Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.

I hadn't heard of him (or, if I had, I'd forgotten about him, probably thanks to Jack Thompson overload). Then I read that article.

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My eagerness for next week has me thinking back to a couple of weeks ago.

Next week is, of course, the release of Halo 3 on September 25. A couple of weeks ago was when I set out to buy myself a copy of Medal of Honor: Airborne on its release date.

Only...it wasn't really a release date.

And that, to me, is a perfect symbol of where the video game industry is lagging behind more established entertainment industries such as movies on DVD.

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