Unless you’ve been living under that proverbial rock often referred to, you know that Tuesday was the launch of Gears of War 3, the long awaited, much drooled after third installment of the exclusive Xbox series. Some of you also know I had the Epic edition pre-ordered from the day it was announced. Being a huge fan of the franchise I couldn’t pass up on the included swag. I simply love the story background of Gears of War and being able to own part of its fictional history was the clincher for me.
I was a bit late to the Game Stop where my pre-ordered treasure awaited. As I approached the clock showed 12:03 AM and cars were already streaming out of the parking lot. As I passed them I glanced into the open windows: gamers they were. I could tell this from the glow of the faces, the manic intensity of the eyes; they reminded me of excited dogs, heads leaning out from the car window, tongue lolling back from the wind, their ears pulled back and set on the prospect of the adventure hurtling towards them.
In the parking lot itself a few gamers remained, I suppose the calmer lot, chatting and comparing swag. One fellow named Steve was brandishing his Retro-Lancer. Dressed in fatigues and wearing his COG medallion proudly, he epitomized the excitement this game release has summoned among the Xbox gaming community.
Inside, the store was calm, the big rush over. I had unhindered access to the clerk and was soon on my way out the door with my large boxed Epic edition.
You are now probably expecting the usual “I got home opened it up and started playing!” passage. Well, that’s not what happened. You see I am what our younger readers would call in kindness an “older gamer” and more commonly an “old-geezer”. I more than doubled Steve with the Retro-Lancer in age. So, at my home at around 12:30 AM on a tuesday with two kids sleeping for school and no decent headphones to be had (kids and headphones do not long last), there was no way I was going to get away with cranking up the Xbox to the screams of chainsaws and blasting of explosives. Instead, I opened up the box and delicately took out the artifacts. The level of quality achieved by Epic in the production of these Epic editions are a new standard in the industry. The mix of story background material such as the Octus Award paperwork for Adam Fenix, to the solemnly posed Marcus Fenix figure results in a product that will be hard, nay, near impossible for a competing franchise to achieve.
The next morning I took my treasures into the office and set them up in the Place Of Honor. Top shelf (gasp, even above my Star Wars stuff!). I added in my signed John DiMaggio print and stood back to admire. I was giggly-happy, and I hadn’t even played the game yet. What game has ever done that? Easy, none. There is just so much to this, it’s more than a game and gears heads know this. This explains all of the tweeted body tattoos, the donning of fatigues by a young man to buy his dream game in the middle of the night, and the willingness of its fan base to go to extremes to support the franchise. I know its been said that the chainsaw lancer is the new lightsaber. I may not go that far, but sure as heck right now there is nothing closer.
in an honored place on my game shelf was a gift by one of my oldest friends. Together we spent countless hours in our youth playing the classic war games, from the venerable Tactics II to contemporary games like Ultimatum. The year 1986 was at the twilight of classical board war gaming and this copy of Terrible Swift Sword was the last boxed war game either of us purchased. That in itself gives it an emotional edge, being the last of its kind; but what made this even more special is that it was bought in Gettysburg. We were both Civil War buffs and his trip to Gettysburg while on leave with the U.S. army was one of those seminal moments for any student of the conflict. I knew he would be visiting the battlefield (by a written letter to me, yes handwritten; this was 1986 and email was unheard of), but when he came back with a copy of a game we had read about but never had seen a copy of (remember no internet either), well, I was ecstatic. At this point in our lives things were changing, I was in college, he had his military career, and the time we had to sit down to a lengthy board game was hard to come by. That scarcity of opportunity made the few times we were able to play even more special. 
Being students of the battle, we often discussed General 
If a well financed triple A fails to produce some people somewhere are losing a huge pile of dough. And we all know when that happens, bad things follow; developers are laid off, investors fade away, and design houses shutter. The business of triple A’s is becoming an exclusive club with fewer willing to risk the investment. Any industry that produces a huge return for a high level of risk will naturally look for ways to mitigate that risk. Every investor, be it an independent association, a big publisher, or some established individuals, will be looking for ways to make a new triple A less risky; less likely to blow up in their faces as the euphoria of profits rolling in turns into the sick gut-wrenching, slow-motion realization that getting out of the investment with their shirts intact is the best they can hope for.