And to All a Good Night Tuesday, December 29, 2009 : 4:40 PM PST By: Chris

For the better part of my life, I've played video games. I've never tried to hide that fact for fear of embarassment. During second grade, my short stories were Castlevania fan fiction. In high school, my friends and I obsessed over the Dreamcast launch and the debut of the original Pokemon on GameBoy (the one that could only display 4 shades of yellow-green). I can't speak for today, but back then that was not the formula for popularity. And now at twenty-something I'm posting drawings of video game jokes on the internet. Given all that, the only time I ever feel a pang of shame associating myself with gaming is when I see how a significant portion of people act on Xbox Live. It feeds ammunition to those looking to demonize games. More importantly, it's just sad to see how much bigotry is out there and how eager people are to put it on display. To be clear, I'm not generalizing the entire Xbox Live membership; I've met many really great, friendly people on the service. It's just too bad that Xbox Live is simultaneously one of gaming's greatest innovations and largest blemishes.