You may not know it, but ennui is something you've probably experienced at least once in your life, but have you ever experienced it as a gamer?

Ennui is boredom. The dictionary defines it as a "feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest." As gamers, we've all probably gotten bored with a game... but rare is the occasion when we've grown bored of actually playing games or of doing something game related.

For instance, ennui sets in for online gamers when they realize that everything they do inside the game doesn't actually have any appreciable impact on the world around them. For console fans, it's probably come across in the form of frustration, or simply the sudden inability to care about what happens to Link, or to your Gamerscore, or to your plans for another ultimately awesome installment of Ponies and Kittens homebrew. Well, either boredom or despair, but they tend to be the same thing in this sense.

In either case, the feeling of WANTING to play seems to disappear out the window for most of us, and it's a shame, because there's something missing in our play that we don't completely understand. It's not the purpose, because the purpose behind play is always there. It certainly isn't the feeling of satisfaction of downing a boss with a well-timed Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku- Shouryuken- Hadouken combo.

In fact, no matter what reason you have for stopping, or whatever feelings you've got inside over your current pasttime, let me tell you something very important: it's okay.

Yep. The world (of Warcraft) will keep running without you, and the games you love, the guilds you cherish, and the respect you pick up from the homebrew community will remain intact even if you're not there for a little while. The important thing about games, which we sometimes forget in this day and age of trying to make games more mainstream and worthwhile, is that the worth of a game and the pasttimes we love come from the fun we derive from it.

Our suggestion: do something you haven't done yet. Your pasttime will welcome you with open arms, and you can tell us what else you've been up to. In the meantime, tell us about your stories of gaming ennui. We certainly would like to know how you got past your period of gaming ennui.

 

Instead of talking about death and destruction and the callousness and emptiness of some sad human souls, let's focus on something bright and cheery for news today. Something even better than Ponies and Kittens: customer service done right!

Saska recounts the story of her three-month old Wii, which, as is customary in these types of stories, wasn't working properly. Luckily for her, she was able to get in contact with Nintendo's customer service rep, who not only did some quick thinking about Saska location to the CSR's position, but also offered to fix their broken console in thirty minutes if she could come up to their offices in Washington, D.C. It gets even better:

In those 25 minutes, they'd transferred all of my Miis, friends, and saved games from the old console to a new one. She logged on to make sure my 500 points transferred to the shopping channel. She sent me out with a $0.00 invoice showing a warranty replacement of my Wii and a reset of the warranty clock, meaning the Wii I took home has 15 months of coverage from today, even though I bought my original one almost 3 months ago.

It seems unbelievable, but the pictures we're showing here are of the actual place she went to with her son, complete with demo stations and a sweet Ninty display. In any case, definitely read the link. It's a great story that speaks of stellar customer service and a motherly opinion on a monolithic gaming company.

  

Lemmings is a fifteen-year old franchise that has seen numerous incarnations through the years. While the gameplay mechanics have always managed to keep gamers hooked, I was one of those who was turned off by the premise. All I knew about the game was the player's job: to keep the lemmings from dying by whatever means necessary, and that didn't really sound like fun.

I guess working for QJ has its surprises then, as they wanted my impressions on the demo of Team 17's PS3 version of the game. When I politely declined the offer at first, the words, "Do you want me to fire you?" brought out that instinctual response to live, a trait lemmings sorely needed. And so, here we are with an outsider's view into the world of rodent saving. Funny thing is, it's actually kind of fun.

No lemmings were actually harmed in the making of this article. Except for the ones in the Full Article.

Hardcore, baby.

If there's one thing that's more hardcore than single-handedly taking down a mob with machine guns or Xtreme racing, it's gotta be this game.

What's it about? Ponies and kittens.

HardHat has released version 1.0 of Ponies and Kittens, and it feels like one part platformer, and another part Lemmings. As his readme tells us,

You are a pink pony, who is charged with the magical task to find kittens and pair them up. It won't be easy, you need to run and jump from platform to platform, pushing crates and hay bales into position, and taking elevators to reach the highest heights.

Seriously though, it's not exactly Grand Theft Auto and it certainly isn't Pong but it's quirky and cute, in its own way. It's as if you took a good program and decided to poke fun at the entire genre it was based on as an afterthought. Anyway, according to HardHat himself the game "is based on a random comment by Zezu on the IRC channel #pspdev that custom firmwares should include "dogs - no ponies and kitties." It was also made for an open source contest, so the code itself is under the revised BSD license and you can probably tweak it to not show ponies and kittens.

Of course, then we'd have to joke about you not being man enough for Ponies and Kittens. Enjoy!

Download: [Ponies and Kittens v1.0]