Marion manages to avoid work for another week.

It sure is great to write a column the way you like. There is no fear of editors censoring you or complaining that your column is, “anecdotes about you getting drunk and fighting people who make you angry.”

Yes, lots of freedom to write about whatever I want to and nothing I really want to write about. Of course, there’s always the added benefit of not having to your editor pitch his horrible ideas for awful books. I think the last manuscript Tito was working on was an inspirational book on inspirational ghetto weddings called: Pimp my Bride.

I kind of miss that guy actually.

So yea, for the last six months or so I was living high on the hog off Escapist money. Now I sleep on my girlfriend’s sofa in Southern California. Since I have no money, and have completed Red Dead Redemption, it’s time to find a job.

Of course it’s that is easier said than done. Telling people that you’re a writer in Los Angeles is like telling people on earth that you’re human: no one cares. I guess that’s because everyone in LA seems to be something – a guy with an acoustic guitar is a singer/songwriter, if he has a car that goes over 90 he’s an illegal street racer and if he took a creative writing course in college he’s a writer.

Funny story about that guy;  he told me he might have a lead on a job and that I should come over to his house and listen to some of his original compositions, talk about writing and watch Iron Man.  His apartment smelled like socks, he couldn’t actually play the guitar, his short story was just about his fantasy of him kissing Robert Downey Jr. and Iron Man turned out to be the gay porno of the same name. I was beginning to see what my dad meant when he warned me, “Los Angeles is a haven for slackers and homos.”

After my first “job” interview, I went back to looking in the safest place I knew: The Internet. There, at least as long as I was reasonably paranoid, I wouldn’t fall victim to perverts or con artists. The only problem with the internet is that when you’re living with three other people sharing one computer, getting on the internet can be a challenge.

The computer was located in an upstairs room that Jessica had dubbed “the study.” The study, however, was really just an old bathroom that had been renovated with some bookshelves and pictures of Jesus. The computer sat where I imagined a sink once was and the chair was probably in the place that the toilet had once stood. Most telling was an ancient toilet paper holder that was still attached to the wall, the screws stripped where someone had obviously had a very hard time of removing it.

The computer room/repurposed toilet was nearly always occupied. Jessica ran a small business in Second Life where she sold something. She obviously did quite well for herself, but the whole business aspect required a great deal of attention – six to eight hours a day depending on the traffic her store got. Around 4pm She took a break to let her son Zack and surf porn while he pretended to research his book reports on Wikipedia. Zack made sure to finish before his grandpa got home which usually left the computer open until dinner. That could be anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour. After dinner, Grandpa then spent two hours playing some Korean poker game. I intoned from the arguing in Spanish that he wasn’t really supposed to be, but he did anyway. Jessica spent the rest of the night playing Second Life, and I sat on the couch that had become my semi-permanent home.

This gave me plenty of face time with Rockstar’s new cowboy game and watch Hot Tub Time Machine, but not so much time to look for a job. I supposed I could have cut into Zack’s “study time.” Truth be told, I was having a good time relaxing after my dad nearly shot me, so I didn’t force the issue. Besides, I had a lot of other things to do. There was sex, daily showers, Red Dead Redemption, eating, sleeping and more Red Dead Redemption.

On Wednesday, I did get a few hours on the computer to write and look for jobs in LA.  I looked through some local classifieds, failed to find anything and went back to the couch where I remained for two more days.

Friday I made the mistake of watching the news. I saw footage of pelicans covered in oil and was depressed and strangely hungry for some KFC chicken. The only thing in the fridge was tuna. Let me ask you, if it’s chicken of the sea, then where are the drumsticks?

That was also the day I finished a sandwich and Red Dead Redemption. I really do want some chicken though, I guess it’s time to get a job.

Marion Cox is an out of work freelance game journalist which in LA means he’s qualified to grow a beard, shop at Anerican Apparel and listen to anything recommended on pitchfork. You can follow him on twitter, or read this column here every weekend.

Since arriving in LA I had done the following things: performed an erotic sock puppet show for money, been harassed by airport security and had smoked weed with a 13-year-old whose mother had invited me there to have sex. We were mid-mission of GTA 4 when the boy’s mom, Jessica, came home with her father in tow.

I had seen postage-stamp sized pictures of her from her Skype profile, but had no idea if the information was accurate. What year had the photo been taken? Was it photoshopped? After all, I’d been on the other side of some profile picture duplicity at least once before. But Jessica was quite stunning but I couldn’t help staring at her boobs, until her father interjected.

He was a short man, no taller than his daughter, with craggy features that were the same color and texture as the foothills that surrounded the house. He eyed me with what I felt was suspicion – did he know that we’d been smoking weed in his living room just an hour ago? Could they smell it? Shit; why was I so fucking paranoid?

“Marion?” he questioned in a delightful Mexican accent which made me instantly feel more comfortable. Actually, my name was seemed pretty masculine in Spanish.

“Yes, Marion,” I stood while badly parroting his accent still feeling pretty awesome about how cool my name sounded in Spanish.

He offered his hand across the couch palm downward. Was I supposed to kiss his ring or curtsy? I looked at Jessica whose expression told me nothing about what was supposed to happen next. I took the hand and tried to shake it in a manly fashion. His grip tightened and he pulled me at an awkward angle over the couch into a half hug with me kneeling on the couch while the family looked on.

“Marion!” he repeated laughing joyously like an old friend, or a father reunited with his son for the first time in years. I remained locked in the hug long past what was considered appropriate for men before he released me with his eyes now watery from joyous weeping. Jesus, was I that high?

“Marion,” he said again.

“Yes, Marion,” I felt like Jane teaching Tarzan English.

Jessica was laughing at me, or the helpless look on my face. She spoke to him in Spanish waving at him to release my hand.

“You, hungry?” Jessica asked, “There’s some tuna in the fridge and bread in the cupboard above the sink.”

Zack and I made sandwiches while Jessica and her father talked in the living room. I tried to listen in but couldn’t understand a word, except I think I heard someone say “nachos” once.  I turned my attention to Zack who was asking me about Red Dead Redemption. I told him it looked like Grand Theft Horsey, which might be fun if it was released in 2008 back when people still cared about Rockstar.

We returned to the living room where I spent the next two hours being interrogated about my life by Jessica’s father whose name I learned was Esteban. He would ask a question to Jessica who would in turn translate it into English. I would answer in English and she would turn back to her father and say it again in Spanish. The process took a great deal of time and before I knew it, it was time to eat again.

We had a traditional Mexican dinner of sausage pizza and coke then sat in silence as we digested the greasy contents of our stomachs. Zack went out to ride his bike in the setting pink sun that was slowly descending behind the foothills. Dad went upstairs, Jessica told me he was addicted to online poker but only played on the Sabbath.

Jessica popped a game into the Xbox, I watched her bend over thinking about how good she looked for having a 13-year-old son. She reached behind the console and fished around for something. She looked behind her — I was clearly staring at her butt.

“You play Blazblue?” Sitting back on her haunches, she threw the controller into my lap.

Did I play Blazblue? No.

“Sure,” I lied.

She sat down on the couch next to me. I watched the Xbox logo pop up on the screen. I felt her adjust herself on the couch closer to me. My first challenge was to pick a character. Amongst the preteen girls with parasols and the spiky-haired effeminate boys, I found just one character that was acceptably masculine. Despite his porn name, Iron Tager was the only character that didn’t make me question whether I had too much back hair.

We played a round and I lost badly.

“I thought you played this before?”

“Well I watched a clip of it on YouTube.”

She was sitting closer to me now, and I became aware that our hips touched.

She unpaused the game mid-pummel and my metal beefcake went flying across the screen. I collected my thoughts as I recovered and moved in pushing buttons at random, my character flailing wildly.

“You suck dick.” It threw me off-guard that such a sweet looking woman could be so foul.

“Fuck you!” was my highly original retort.

But to Jessica my retort meant only that she could unleash all of the nasty profanity she’d learned from god knows where. She insulted the size of my penis, attacked my ability to play videogames, and then began to swear in Spanish.

I came to two conclusions: first, I needed ask Zack what “chilito” meant, and secondly I wasn’t going to win in a fair fight.

As she juggled my character in the air with some chain-combo I smacked the controller out of her hand causing it to fall to the floor. My character recovered before she had time to pick the controller up – I destroyed her.

She paused the game and punched me in the shoulder hard (I still have a bruise). I ignored her and unpaused the game hoping to get another round of ego-boosting win. She paused the game again and glared at me.

“You’re dead.” She said flatly before launching herself across the couch at me. I tried to unpause and do some major damage but she reached me first and wrapped her arm around my neck in a sleeper hold. I dropped the controller and attempted to tickle her off me. In a backwards turn of events the characters stood idly while their players wrestled on the couch. The wrestling soon became kissing, then groping.

Soon Blazblue’s music became the soundtrack to our makeout session and if Zack hadn’t come home right then this column would probably read a little bit like some kid’s attempt at erotic fiction.

Jessica got me a blanket and went upstairs for a shower and to sleep. I liked the couch, it was right in front of the TV and she had The Last Man on Earth on DVD. I fell asleep to Vincent Price having a discussion with vampire zombies about communism.

At around 2am Jessica returned for a rematch, and no we didn’t play Blazblue.

Marion Cox is an expert on seducing your mother with fighting games. You can follow him on twitter or visit him here ever weekend.

I arrived at LAX with a maxed out credit card and a bag full of socks. I had traveled to there to meet a 31-year-old English major I’d fallen in love with over Xbox Live. She had invited me to visit – maybe invited isn’t the right word.

We’d spent the last 2 weeks on Xbox Live playing Crackdown, Borderlands and most recently: Gay Tony. The night I made my mind up to visit her, we were playing robbers and were losing badly. Jessica, who I believe swears more than me, shouted “Fuck me, the cops have rocket launchers.”

“I would if you weren’t a couple thousand miles away,” I said jokingly.

“You could if you would get your pussy ass off the couch and buy a plane ticket dummy.”

A cacophony of laughter erupted from my team. “Daaaaamn son,” taunted one of the miscreants who had helped us rob the bank.

That was too much; I’d been called out on Xbox Live. I knew what I was going to do, I had languished on the couch too long, it was time to say goodbye to dad, and buy a ticket.

I maxed out my credit card on a plane ticket and packed a bag. Nothing mattered; I was headed to Southern California to get laid, and turn my miserably lazy life around. In retrospect, perhaps I should have been slightly less hasty.

That’s because, it wasn’t until I arrived in LA that I realized I didn’t have any money or clothing. I could always call collect from a payphone, but was harder than it seemed. When did they remove all the payphones from LA? I tried to barter some socks to use someone’s mobile. Eventually a guy let me use his if I would stop frightening his children with my erotic sock puppet show.

I called the number that Jessica had given me, I was a little nervous about calling her so early on a Sunday. The phone rang for about a minute; and the dad was growing impatient, put up my finger to indicate that I needed a few more moments.

He kept staring at me as if I would run off at any moment with his phone. I smiled at him to reassure him I wasn’t a criminal, at least in California. After another 10 rings or so, someone picked up the phone.

“Yes?” The voice of a boy, or a woman with a husky voice answered the phone.

“Jessica?”

Silence for a few seconds, I worried I had come all the way to LA to wind up alone and penniless in LA. I asked again, and as if finally waking up the voice shouted, “¡Eh! Mami!”

I pretended that the Spanish didn’t mean what I thought it meant. What did I know? My Spanish was limited to things I picked up from Speedy Gonzalez and a couple episodes of the last season of Weeds. I tried not to ponder the implications as I heard footsteps coming down a staircase.

“Yes?”

“Jessica? It’s Marion, I’m at LAX.”

“Really? Lol!”

I lied, “Yea, and my bags with my stuff got lost on the flight.”

She explained that I’d have to take a bus from the Airport to Arleta and Van Nuys, walk a block to her house on Woodale. I countered by telling her that I had no money. She told me she was sending her son. up. That confirmed that I had indeed understood Spanish — I must have a natural talent for language.

I sat outside the airport and waited for the bus. I contemplated the nutritional value of my socks. No breakfast on the redeye flight, and the stewardess refused to give me any more peanuts, saying it was people like me who were putting airlines out of business. I think she wanted to say “fat.”

I guess it was about an hour later when a security guard shook me awake. He told me that there was a good soup kitchen a ways from the airport. I thanked him for the information, and I might have taken him up on it had I not been waiting for a kid to take me to meet his mom who had promised me sex over the internet. Plus I was sleepy, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

“Hey,” a small brown hand shook my shoulder waking me. “You Marion?” a diminutive voice asked.

I groggily swatted the hand, believing that it belonged to a smaller, browner security guard.

“Huh?” I examined my antagonist.

“Marion, right?” The kid was no older than 13. He wore a short sleeved white shirt with a brown tie. Some sadist, perhaps Jessica, had parted his hair in a most unnatural fashion. I already felt sorry for him.

“Yea, you Zack?” I asked but already knew the answer, “What do they have you dressed up like a Mormon for?”

Zack explained that Sunday dad took them to church and that if we hurried we wouldn’t be late. I suggested, in that case, we take our time and maybe stop by the Cinnabon and pick up some of those awesome frosted cupcakes.

Zack didn’t have much money so we loitered awhile at the bus stop. I helped him to invent a good excuse why were late, then Zach asked, “How do you become a game reviewer?”

“Blowjobs,” I joked. He seemed confused, so I added used a word I’d heard my old editor use many times. “Congruence too.”

“What’s that?”

I looked at him, I was surprised; here was a teenager who didn’t know what a blowjob was. I, of course, had learned what one was when my older sister explained why I was gay for having a GI Joe named Snowjob .

“Well when a woman loves a man, or a man really wants a job…” he cut me off.

“Jessica said I need to go to school if I want to be a game reviewer.”

I snorted, “You could learn as much from an RSS feed about games as you could in school.”

He looked up at me with his soft brown eyes drinking in my bullshit wisdom. I felt bad for potentially turning him off to education. But it was only potential damage, so I locked the guilt away in the same place I keep my irrational fear of rabbits. (Their eyes are freaky as hell man!)

The bus came and Zack interrogated me about my meeting with Cliffy B all the way to his house. He wanted to know if he was awesome in real life, I told him the truth: I didn’t know. The two tabs of acid I’d taken before E3 had left me at his booth unable to do anything but stare at the octopus growing out of his spiky hair.

It was about 11am when we reached the house. Zach made me a sandwich and asked if I wanted to play Xbox with him. Jessica and dad were still out. We started up the Xbox with GTA4 still in it. Not but 24 hours ago I’d been on the other end of the connection, propositioning its owner.

Zack tapped my arm, and held out a roach, he exhaled a cloud of Marijuana smoke. Still stunned by my existential revelation that I was now holding Jessica’s controller I took the joint from her son and inhaled without a second thought.

I counted to ten and spoke while exhaling, “Fuck, that’s pretty good.”

“Yea, it’s my mom’s, don’t tell her, k?”

I nodded and took another puff. Today was going to be a good day in LA.

Marion Cox is the world’s foremost authority on getting high and with your 13-year-old son. You can follow him on twitter or visit him here every weekend.

“

Another one rides the bus. This time the thorn in Marion Cox’s side is a World of Warcraft obsessive who just happened to choose the seat next to him. The intruder then interrupts his carefully planned drinking game to steal his booze and assault him with alien lingo.

The threat of sobriety hangs over Cox like a pendulum, edging ever closer with a razor-sharp edge.

Will he snap and take rightful vengeance? Will the slow grind of screaming children and sweaty miscreants break down the walls of sanity between the world?

There’s only one way to find out. Reliable Source, for all your public transport horror needs.

“He told them he was looking for the promised land known as,” he paused dramatically. “Oregon.”

Join Marion’s family cannibalism at this week’s Reliable Source.

Check out Logan Westbrook’s review of Dragon age here.

The real issue here is the continued perception of games and gaming culture as a club for boys. Women are the outsiders with only a few games catering to women most of which are Wii games aimed at losing weight, based around being housewives, or ponies and kittens. This narrows the audience for games and disadvantages developers and community alike. Developers get less revenue and women are left in the cold because they feel like they’ve stumbled upon a male world. A successful means of raising interest in a game is to fill it with gratuitous T&A for the boys. While some may welcome it, most heterosexual women don’t.

As women move into the production and consumption of gaming media there will be an increase in the number of games which have options tailored to women, including characters designed to make them fluster

So how do you make a male Lara Croft, or Mr Laurie Croft? It’s difficult as very little research has gone into finding what sort of bodies women find attractive. What has been done points away from the muscle-bound-hunk archetype and towards physiques which are slim and faces which are more feminine in appearance.

Once you have your Laurie Croft you need to produce a game. Doing so is not without risks for the developers and publishers. There is the possible backlash from the more obnoxious side of the gaming community, well known for their outspoken opposition to anything which doesn’t suit them. Other things, like a smaller consumer base may cause publishers to limit the risk associated with niche markets. Even if these games are eventually produced, there’s a cultural stigma which makes it far less acceptable for a woman to buy games with sexy characters than it is for men. Perhaps less so amongst the current audience of female gamers but still the stigma remains.

More emotionally and mentally appealing characters would be a better starting point than a Mr Laurie Croft in tight jeans and an unbuttoned shirt, but they are far more difficult to create and sell.

The change that will appease women is more than skin deep: it will be a cultural shift. It’s the most difficult kind of shift because it means changing the attitude of very determined people and marginalizing those people who fight against equality in games. These changes mean that there will be less violence and boobs but will reach a broader audience. This ultimately means a more stable industry, and games with broader appeal. Idealistic as it may be it is important that these things be slowly put into practice. I look forward to performing “acts of lust” on a booth-hunk someday.

You can view the stories by clicking here.
Please be sure to comment if you like it, or even if you don’t. Feedback is what keeps me going.

You can follow the jump for a more in-depth discussion of the articles.

Next Xbox More Durable, Made From Paper

I wrote this with the death of my 360 in mind, but about half-way through it all became about writing a fake background story on origami folding ninja children. It was fun regardless of how much of the message was lost in the imagery.

Sony Creates Reality TV Show, The Tester
Sony is really making this show: SERIOUSLY. Even game gameindustry.biz put quotations around the word ‘dream job.’  The joke is that QA testers are paid 9 dollars an hour to replay the same game over and over again while taking notes and trying to get stuck in geometry. Nothing about that sounds like a dream to me. I suppose it must have it’s appeal to obsessive-compulsives.

Vatican Priest Pitches Religious MMO

Based off a real world event where a Russian Orthodox priest pitched a religious MMO. This is the first piece I’ve written where I actually really needed to reference the bible; luckily there is no shortage of comedy in The Bible. Gosh, I do hope my mom isn’t reading this, she’d be very disappointed with me not taking bizarre tribal laws of the ancient Jews seriously.

Tim Langdell Resigns from IDGA to Pursue Interpretive Dance

He really did quit, right before they kicked him out. He wrote a long letter explaining why he was leaving. It was boring, so I stopped reading half way through and started wondering, “What exactly would he do if he could no longer trademark troll?” The answer of course is interpretive dance. I really like the picture for this one; I imagine Tim Langdell in a leotard dancing in that line, c’mon you must admit that it’s a pretty funny image.

Sniper at Bungie Fools Police

A last second addition to my stories. As a joke it works, if only a little. As a point about scared idiots calling the police every time they see an Arabian kid with a squirt-gun I think it works very well.

Dubbed of the Dead!

The team that brought you de-rez has a new project dubbed:  Dubbed Theater. I remember doing  something like this to the movie Godzilla with my friends back in the day. Great childish fun that ended in dick jokes.

Give the hard working folks over at Mercury Vision a Check it out, by clicking here!

I thought I’d start again here with some older Op/Ed pieces I wrote and later add to this collection.

Next gen slogans: http://itsnothingserious.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/next-gen-slogans-what-do-they-mean/

EA’s Reputation: http://itsnothingserious.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/oped-ea-less-turdy-than-ever/