1. BOO... Jack Thompson , Dr. Phil attack videogames...
2. NOD...Joystiq responds rather eloquently
3. RnC...Insomniac adds paralyzed boy as game character
4. HUM... Adaptive music , defined and explored
5. RND...This sounds like a Mexican standoff to us

At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here earlier this month about the experience of briefly abandoning his Xbox 360 for the pleasures and pains of God of War II on the PlayStation 2. Today, he meditates on the compatibility of videogaming with his imminent fatherhood.

Two weeks of packing, moving and unpacking five years worth of belongings into a new apartment have left little time for me to sink into the couch for a night of virtual combat. In sitting down to write my latest dispatch from the (mostly) Xbox 360 front, my intent was to humorously detail the horrors of not being able to school legions of anonymous teenagers in multiplayer beatdowns. Instead, my two weeks of online abstinence have left me pensive--and admittedly, a bit apprehensive about my gaming future.

You see, in three weeks I'm due to become a father. That isolated fact gives me pause enough, but what have sometimes shaken me are the casual comments and jibes by friends, family and coworkers with children. If I make the mistake of mentioning some new band I've seen, finally getting a decent night's sleep, or--as was the case recently--that I was planning on a late night session to write about and play games, the response is, well, buddy, when the baby comes, you can pretty much forget about all of that.