Sony. Sony Sony Sony Sony Sony. What happened? You’re making it increasingly difficult to defend you.

I want to start off by saying that I’m a big fan. In my life I’ve had two PSones, two PS2s, a PSP and a launch PS3. (That’s the one that was selling for $599.) Hell, I even have a PSP Go. I’ve been a loyal customer since I was 11 years old.

When your network went down last week, I was mildly inconvenienced, but not angry. Not having access to Hulu Plus or the PSN store was annoying, sure, and I was no longer able to play Mortal Kombat with my friends, but the service is free, so I didn’t complain. Now that you’ve opened up about why the service went down, I feel it’s, in fact, time to complain. And complain I shall.

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On Earth Day everyone is encouraged to work towards helping the environment. People can spend the day recycling, carpooling, or even switching out old light bulbs for environmentally friendly ones, among other things. The main focus of the day is to “go green” in hopes that you’ll stay green all year.

While the Earth Day events may seem like enough for some people, one group of gamers thinks they can do more. Gamers Go Green, a high school gaming team from Whitney M Young High School in Chicago, is partnering with Evil Controllers to host a Game Hour on April 23rd, the day after Earth Day. During this Game Hour, gamers are encouraged to shut off everything in their house and spend one hour with their friends and family playing a game.

I will be spending my hour playing a candlelit game of Monopoly with my wife. I’m hoping the lack of lighting will make cheating easier, because I’m tired of losing to her. She gloats in a Yoda voice every time she wins anything, and it drives me crazy.

Will you participate? What will you spend your hour doing?

More information can be found at the event’s FaceBook page.

While I’m not ready to plunk down the amount of cash needed for a next-generation console just yet, I do think about them from time to time. New console generations bring new features—some good, and some considerably less good.

After spending some time brainstorming what I want in my next console, I came up with this list:

Interface customization I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I could change the order of things on either the 360 dashboard or the PS3’s XMB. There are some features I use more than others, and some I never use at all. When the next-gen consoles roll out, I want to be able to move sections around to maximize efficiency when I’m not playing a game. I would also like to be able to hide or deactivate features I don’t use.

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While I was growing up, half of the gaming I did was on the family computer. My brothers and I used to share a computer with our parents, and getting to spend any time with it was always a cause for celebration. When it was my turn, I spent it playing games like StarCraft, Diablo 1 & 2, and Warcraft. There were probably some non-Blizzard games in there as well; I just can’t remember any off the top of my head. I used to look forward to my hour or so of PC gaming each week.

Eventually, we got older, and we each got our own computers. After spending countless hours grinding out cows together, we decided to make the leap to MMOs. We each bought a copy of Final Fantasy XI and our PC gaming jumped to the next level. I played all the time. Not to an obsessed level, but I was playing my new PC game a few nights a week. I was playing so much that my console games began to collect dust.

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Sundance Digiovanni is one of the founders of Major League Gaming. Since the league started in 2002, it has sponsored an average of five or six tournaments a year, with the scouting combines starting this year. Sundance says the combines are a way to help the amateurs out, and to help them relax when tournaments come around.

When asked what the purpose of Major League Gaming is, Sundance said, “When you are young, it is important to feel like you belong to a community. We have a wide spectrum of both players and fans, and thanks to the digital community, it is easier than ever for everyone to stay connected and play together.” He also said that every two years or so, he sees the community change as the current players age and new ones start emerging. This constant change helps keep things fresh. There is also a strong community of parents, some of whom refer to themselves as “Halo moms.”

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While most gamers play as a form of entertainment or relaxation, there are others who do it for a living. Professional gaming leagues have been around since the 1990s, giving gamers the chance to prove how good they really are on a national and even global level. When I say “professional,” I’m not talking about people who play a few hours of Call of Duty a month and tell their friends how great their kill/death ratio is. I’m talking about people who actually make money playing video games. They compete in tournaments and win prize money. Some teams are sponsored by big-name companies. Most professional teams even have coaches and matching shirts with their gamertags on the back.

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I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember. I’ve rescued princesses, slayed dragons, captured ghosts and saved worlds. I started my gaming life with a Sega Master System, and I’ve played almost every single console that’s come out since. The only one I missed was the Dreamcast.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “How can you judge a console you never even tried?” I’m not here to judge, my friends, I’m here to learn.

Dreamcast fans will fight tooth and nail to defend their console’s honor. They are the most loyal of fans. I admire that dedication, and I would like to find out from whence it comes.

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So back in 2007 when Mass Effect came out, I played a few hours of it and returned it to the store that day. I hated the combat and the game was just too talky for me.

Fast-forward to Dragon Age. Before this game was released, I wasn’t into games that required a lot of character interaction. I played Dragon Age while home after having an appendectomy, so all the talking didn’t bother me because I had a lot of time to kill. As I played, I found that I loved talking; I’d spend hours just conversing with NPCs and filling in whatever story blanks I could.

When Mass Effect 2 came out, my newfound love of “talkies” got me interested. After reading that the combat system had been improved, I decided to dive in. I loved it, and have beaten it twice already.

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So, at the beginning of the year, I was all set to fly to Las Vegas to attend the Consumer Electronics Show and cover the sights and sounds for Adrenaline Vault. My fiancée, Heather, and I decided to make it a mini-vacation. We had our plane tickets and lodging all ready to go. My appendix, however, had other plans.

On Jan. 3, three days before we were supposed to fly out to Vegas, I started to get a sharp pain in my abdomen. It started after I had eaten a mystery-meat lunch Heather had made, so I assumed it was just my stomach dying as it tried to digest the awful food. The pain increased sharply, but the Bears game was on. It was the last game of the season for them, so I fought through it.

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