Once again, I've climbed up from the MySQL pit of despair into a working system. Once again, I've had to completely re-do the theming and graphics of the site. Can anything be easy?

Someday I'd like to do an upgrade that is simply an upgrade rather than a complete crash and rebuild. But that is not my lot.

If you have noticed that the forums for RPGGateway are down, along with RPGHerald news and the other sites in our grouping, that is because they have experienced a rather severe corrupting of the database. The data is toasted and we are trying to get it back.

We're taking this opportunity to move the sites to a more powerful server, upgrade the software, and make a few improvements. But we are not there yet.

In June, legions of RPG fans were annoyed with EA's decision to hide the RPG-greatness of Mass Effect beneath a draconian and unappetizing layer of restrictive DRM. Although the reactions to Mass Effect's DRM were resoundingly negative, the game sold well enough that it did not scare EA away from using the same tactics again with Spore -- just as they said they would last May.

By ROSS MARTIN - Fairfax Media | Saturday, 13 September 2008

Video games are typically a male domain - made by males for other males and about male heroes.

There are a few exceptions, like Lara Croft of Tomb Raider fame and Zelda, who has evolved over the years from a damsel in distress to a heroine in her own right. But these pixel princesses were designed by males, generally for the entertainment of other male games.

For every Zelda there are a hundred Marios, just like for every girl gamer there are a hundred guys.

GamerchiX Unite!

By: Kelly Adams
GiN Editorials Correspondent

I'm 33 years old, married for 12 years, and a female gamer. As a woman, I put up with the occasional idiot male in public, but they are rare. As a female gamer, I've put up with the idiot males since I first went onto Xbox Live with my own screen name. It seems to never end. Thankfully good guys are out there but the bad ones are really starting to ruin the experience of matchmaking on Live. Allow me to walk you through what a female gamer is subjected to. You may hear one of the following comments:

June 23, 2008 (Bozeman, MT) -- Dark Matter Studios, producer of the well-received fantasy rpg Epic Role Playing, has released its latest offering, the Atlas of Eslin. Weighing in at over 300 pages, the Atlas contains eight continents' worth of diverse cultures, compelling story hooks and varied professions.

A companion to the Epic RPG Game Manual, the Atlas is designed to be used by GMs and players as a complete and ready-to-play campaign world or as a modular salad bar of ideas for homebrew settings.

by Geek Woman of WomenGamers.com

Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online doesn't have the sharpest looking graphics or the most interesting missions you'll ever play. What they are going for with this title is as casual interest MMO. With the millions of fans of the movie IP and the millions of DVD's sold it was a pretty sure thing for Disney to poop out this game and expect to make a bundle. Even with its offered free-to-play mode, you can be sure that there is revenue coming in or they wouldn't have made a business model like this one.

Look & Feel:

Tricia Helfer has about two months to work on her speech, because she's the latest in the keynote lineup for NVIDIA's visual computing conference in San Jose in late August. And, being a hot former-supermodel-turned-actress and all, she had better come up with something good or I expect all the geeks fanboys industry luminaries in attendance will say, in unision, "NOT NEWS," and get up and leave or something. Happens to me all the time, and I'm stunning.

With one of the summer's most anticipated blockbusters - the return of Indiana Jones- due in theaters in less than three weeks, you'd expect producer Steven Spielberg to be all about movies right now.

But here he is, enthusiastically chatting up another subject dear to his heart: video games, in particular a cute puzzler called Boom Blox. It's Spielberg's first creation in a collaboration with Electronic Arts, and it's in stores today for Nintendo's Wii.