Over at Insult Swordfighting, Mitch Krpata has a thoughtful series of posts considering the labels that we give people who play video games.

It’s a great series in which he articulates some interesting characterizations of different types of game players based on various behaviours.

I’m clearly a Tourist with streaks of Completism and on the value scale I’ve become a Premium Player, but when I was paying for games I was more of a Wholesale Player.

This job does have its perks.

Anyhow, kudos to Krpata for an interesting thesis.

Publishing today at “CBC.ca“: is my feature on Little Big Planet, the new game from Sony for the PlayStation 3.

At first blush, the newly released Little Big Planet looks like a fairly typical platform videogame. Controlling a character named Sackboy, you run and jump through an obstacle-course environment. While Sackboy is a thoroughly charming critter, the real innovation here is the fact that players can modify the game’s levels and create their own. Blaine Kyllo looks at the recent trend of user-generated content in videogames.

Rock Band startled Guitar Hero last year when it gave players the opportunity to sing and play drums, not simply “strum” a guitar.

Guitar Hero gains back some ground this fall with World Tour, which gives players the power of music composition and recording. Rock Band 2, though, will provide a library of more than 500 songs by the end of the year.

In the latest edition of the Georgia Straight, my “Trigger Happy” column looks at the two games as well as some of the other music titles coming out this fall.

Music games are a big deal. In the past three years, the genre has become one of the best-selling categories for the video-game industry. Kai Huang, president and cofounder of Guitar Hero publisher RedOctane, which is a division of Activision Blizzard, told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview that the genre’s sales totalled US$250 million in 2006, and he expects them to top US$2 billion this year.

In this week’s Fast Forward Weekly is my latest “Joystuck” column. In this article I look at the latest iteration of Electronic Arts’ hockey game, NHL 09. I was at the launch of the game back in September, and interviewed Dion Phaneuf for the piece.

Dion Phaneuf scored his first goal of the 2008-09 hockey season on September 9, a month before the puck dropped on the NHL season.

Electric Playground’s Victor Lucas is having a good autumn. He got to travel to London, England to film a behind-the-scenes documentary for the video game Lego Batman – the Vancouver television host and producer is an admitted hardcore fan of the character – and has expanded his video game television programming.

EP Daily is an entertainment magazine – airing daily – and geared towards the genre fan. Comics, toys, superhero movies and television shows, and, of course, video games, are all part of the new domain.

Lucas and his gang of upstarts are the subject of this week’s “Trigger Happy” column in the Georgia Straight

With The Electric Playground, a TV show that dishes the latest news and reviews of geek culture, having moved from weekly to daily doses this summer, gamers, comic-book readers, and fans of Lost and Heroes have reason to celebrate.