I really, really love crowdfunding. Obviously, I speak as a creator who has run a couple of successful crowdfunding campaigns, but also as somebody who has backed things that I want to exist, which would otherwise not necessarily happen.

There's something incredibly democratic about crowdfunding, but something sort of quite beautiful and inherently optimistic too. Yes, there have been crowdfunding horror stories of creators buggering off with the money, but generally... it works for everyone.

What I love about it most, as someone who has worked in film and TV, is how creators are trusted to just do their thing.

That's what you invest in when you back someone through crowdfunding; you're investing in a person, or group of people, and giving them the confidence to deliver something that is true to them. It's an amazing, selfless gesture, and - as a creator - profoundly humbling.

It allows to exist stuff that is niche, that doesn't feel the need to pander to as broad a selection of people as possible; stuff that feels more personal, not just to the creator, but to the audience.

Years ago - and we're talking two decades here - I, like many, saw working in TV or film as some sort of Holy Grail. It's incredibly hard to get into the industry, very tough to stay in, and there are days when I'm exhausted, where I question whether the rewards are always worth the effort. Since the rise of crowdfunding I've come to realise how wanting to be accepted into that club can be quite ego-driven.

​There's an unquestionable degree of looking for validation, acceptance, and being able to go to people "Oh, I work in TV actually" - simply because our society has placed the media and entertainment industries on a sort of golden pedestal.

The CEO of Atari, Fred "Chesnais Hawkes Joke" Chesnais - yes, that is his real name - has confirmed that the company is "back in the hardware business."

No. None of us saw that coming.

"F. Chesnais ches what?"

"Wot?"

Atari teased/trolled the world last week with a short video which revealed nothing more than a cheeky glimpse at a wood-panelled, classic Atari-looking device, referred to as "Ataribox". 

What can this be? Nobody knows, as evidenced by multiple websites leading with the headline "Here's Everything We Know About The Ataribox!" - before pulling the rug out from beneath their curious readers with this revelation: "We know nothing - we just really need dem sweeeeeet clicks."

Surely, though, Atari wouldn't be stupid enough to launch a brand new console in this era of the PS4, Xbox One X and Switch? We must therefore conclude that Ataribox will be some sort of retro VCS device. Which is all well and good, but Atari already did a whole range of those: the Atari Flushbog (Flashback).

The fact is this... Atari 2600 games - if that is what they're doing... again - are terrible. All of them. It's not the fault of their creators, but a consequence of the era, the technology, and the fact that games were still finding their way. The Atari 2600, like a yam left out in the sun, has not aged so well.

Here are eight or nine supposedly classic Atari games, and a couple of crap ones, which prove this valuable and important point.

They're doing it!

Later this year, Nintendo is releasing a miniature Super NES filled with "20 + 1" games - including the never-before-released Star Fox 2! Of course, pre-orders are already sold out, which suggests that supply-and-demand may be as inexplicably frustrating as it was for the release of the NES Classic last year. But that's okay because, well... never mind, yeah?

If you were unfortunate enough to miss out on Super NES Classic pre-orders, you can "console" - ha ha ha - yourself with the next best thing: ten reminders of why the Super NES was best console.

In case you missed the news... Sega is planning to do this: squirt loads of its old games onto iOS and Android.

Every couple of weeks, Sega will dump a bunch of new-old games alongside those in its debut Sega Forever line-up: Sonic The Hedgehog, Altered Beast, Phantasy Star II, Comix Zone and Kid Chameleon. Though the first games are all Mega Drive titles, Sega is promising titles from across its entire history.... once it figures out how to escape The Red Bathroom (emulate the Saturn and Dreamcast).

Best of all: the games are free, providing you don't mind in-game ads. And if you do mind those, then you can waste your inheritance to play the games ad-free.

Regrettably, the launch has gone down about as well as a fragrant breeze at Stink Con 2017. Reports of bugs and weak emulation, a cloud save feature meaning the games can only be played while you've got a full phone signal or wifi, and the dreaded virtual controls being as achingly wrong as they always are, have marred what Sega clearly hopes will herald an upswing in its fortunes.

To be honest, having had a go on the games, they don't seem that buggy... but the controls are indeed off-puttingly vague. Also: in-game ads are enjoyed only by masochists with names like Ad Adsley and Adadad Addison-Adoodah.

However, having revealed earlier this year that it plans to revive some of its "major IPs", Sega Forever is essentially a test to see which of those IPs is most popular. Indeed; snuck into the games like a secret William are surveys designed for precisely that purpose. 

It's well intentioned, but to be honest it's hard not to feel a little disappointed in the initial line-up. Sonic has been knocking around on smartphones for years, Altered Beast is one of the worst games ever released for the Mega Drive, while Comix Zone and Kid Chameleon are far too fiddly to play on an iPhone. Only Phantasy Star II feels suited to touch screen larks. 

Sega has built controller support into the games.... but most mobile titles are played on the train, on the way to work, or in a subterranean abattoir, where - lest we forget - staying online is intermittent at best.

But! It's a reasonable start. It's easy to be snarky about how Sega has mismanaged its heritage in the last couple of decades, but I want Sega to come back. There are too many classic Sega games that deserve another lick of the berry, so here, for the sheer ruddy heck of it, I waft my hand over those initial Sega Forever games.

Pop... pop... pop music. Everybody's talking 'bout pop music... games! 

To me, pop stars always seem like awful people, apart from Adele who seems fairly normal even though she probably isn't. It's inevitable, I suppose. Being screamed at night after night by people who think you're a god would do funny things to anyone's brain.

I mean, every famous or semi-famous musician I've ever met - and upon reflection, I've met about three - has been a weird mix of arrogance and crippling insecurity. 

I once went to a party where the music was switched off so that some bloody woman and her boyfriend - who used to be in the band Reef - could get up and "jam". It wasn't so much an effort to entertain as it was an exercise in getting everyone to look at them. 

Next time I go to a party I know they're going to be at, I'm bringing a crow with me. When I'm confident that everyone is having a good time, I'm going to smash the sound system to pieces, tell them all to stop dancing and having their conversations and enjoying themselves, because my crow wants to spend two hours showing them how good it is at flapping its wings and making bird noises. 

Then I'm going to attach a length of twine to the bird's legs, and swing it hard into the faces of the Reef man and his girlfriend, and say: "THAT'S FOR RUINING MY EVENING ABOUT EIGHT YEARS AGO."

​Anyway. Here are 11 games inspired by top pop stars - the most important people in the world.

Here are two things I love: Star Wars and Disney.

For me, Disney buying LucasFilm was the best thing that could've happened to Star Wars at that point. There isn't a creative company on earth that works as hard at story, and protecting its properties, as Disney does.

You see it in their animated movies, in their Pixar films, in Marvel... even their theme parks; every ride, every land, in every Disney park, has a story. It might be subtle, but it's there. They really, really, really think about this stuff, and I love that there is at least one massive, corporate, entity on earth which - while still being run by fallible, vain, human beings like everything else - has that philosophy of storytelling and imagination at its core.

Yes, we can all scoff cynically at how much money is at stake, but there's an integrity there that you don't always see in big budget creative environments, where often everyone is really out for themselves.

Now you're seeing that Disney philosophy in Star Wars. to the point where, reportedly, director Gareth Edwards was removed late in the process of making Rogue One so that the higher-ups at Disney and Lucasfilm could micromanage the project into what they - collaboratively - felt it should be. 

Speaking as a writer who has been micromanaged by producers more than once, there's little that's more frustrating or creatively unfulfilling. Nonetheless, I begrudgingly admit that sometimes it makes for a better end project. Or, at least, one which might be more palatable and commercial, albeit at the expense of individual vision.

I don't think any of us really wanted to see another George Lucas Star Wars film, and yet, as time goes on, I've come to admire the Star Wars prequels more. 

Don't get me wrong: they're extremely bizarre, bad, movies, especially in light of what came before them. Nevertheless, part of me respects their purity - the way that they're exactly the films that George Lucas wanted to make. As artistic statements, they're very sincere. They're just not really summer blockbuster material. If he'd had someone else guiding the ship, they might've been better received.

Now, with the upcoming Han Solo movie, it seems that artistic vision has once again butted up against the Disney corporate brand-protecting, storytelling, machine.

Xbox One X. It's not a bad name, in the context that we already have an Xbox One S. It feels like it's part of the Xbox family. I'm not buying one of them, obviously. I mean, I remain happy with my bog-standard Xbox One, which gets switched on about once a year for the rare platform exclusive that I actually want to play.

I thought Microsoft had a pretty good E3, speaking broadly. The company's presentation - once you could tear your eyes away from Phil Spencer's pleather jacket and legs-akimbo stance - indicated unquestionably that there are plenty of good games coming to Xbox. 

Certain commentators have drawn attention to the lack of VR from Microsoft as being a bad thing - in part because there was a general consensus (despite any concrete evidence to suggest as such) that Project Scorpio/Xbox One X was designed to offer some sort of VR option.

​Personally, if I was in Microsoft's position, I wouldn't be pursuing VR either. The Xbox One has a much smaller installed user base than the PlayStation 4, and while PSVR has sold around a million units... those sales are, reportedly, slower than Sony would've liked. It would be too much of a risk.

Microsoft is also stating that it expects most new Xbox One owners to join the family via the cheaper Xbox One S, rather than the premium-priced X model. In short: they're trying to keep everybody happy, and offer Xboxes for both those who want top-end 4K graphics, and those working with a smaller budget.

​Except... I think that's a mistake, because - man alive! - Microsoft's messaging is all over the place here.

In a change to the regular Digitiser2000 programming... today we've a series of messages from our sponsors...

Hello, father. It has been a weird old E3, hasn't it?

Father's answer: "I don't know anything about that. When you get a chance, can you come over and fix my Kindle? All my books have gone and I can't connect it to the wifi."

Everyone keeps debating about who "won" E3, and nobody can seem to agree on anything, other than the fact that Ubisoft done a really good presentation.

Some felt that Microsoft - baring to the world both its legs and its new ultra-powerful Xbox One Eggs - were the winners... while others felt that the Xbox One Eggs is missing the point of gaming entirely.

Some fans claimed that Sony blew away the competition like a dirty Henry... while other commentators decried their showing as limp and complacent (not to be confused with Limp & Complacent - The Netherlands' premiere cabaret duo). 

Nintendo, as is now traditional, chose to save its announcements for an online presentation - which finally gave us a proper sense of what else is on the way for Switch. There weren't many surprises... beyond, perhaps, how utterly mental Super Mario Odyssey appears to be.

Click the links at the bottom for my take on the Sony and Microsoft's showings. On your way down there, why not pause to read a round-up of everything else that has earned my needlessly intense scrutiny over the past few days? You might actually learn something for once.

The big stuff at E3 yesterday really came from Ubisoft. That was certainly the noisiest, most buzz-filled, E3 conference thus far. I'll cover that as soon as I get a chance, because it was good.

But for now... onto Sony's presentation.

It kicked off last night - somewhat unexpectedly - with a performance by a group of Indian musicians, which led directly into the first game trailer of the night.

​There was a full 15 minutes of video footage before anyone from Sony appeared in "the flesh". When they did, it was Sony Interactive boss Shawn Layden, dressed in a nice suit, and standing in front of a big, blue whale (curtain). With no new hardware to show off, this year's E3 was "all about the games" bleated the mad man Layden, as he stomped and huffed like a wounded boar.

However, despite some actual Flames of Excitement marking the showcasing of a new Marvel Vs Capcom game, next to Microsoft's loud and glossy presentation, there's no denying that it all felt surprisingly subdued. Sony chose to just play trailers and a bit of gameplay footage, with only a second appearance from the mad man Layden to break things up. They didn't even unveil a new type of car, like Microsoft did for some reason.

Here's my take on what they done gone and showed.

So here's a thing. My potential highlight of E3 so far is a cheeky little game called The Last Night.

It has since been revealed that the lead developer has - or had - some sort of affiliation/sympathy with the Gamergate movement. Yes: just when you thought that they'd scurried away to support Trump... it transpires that Gamergate is still out there, still causing a stink, and its opponents are still kicking off whenever its name is mentioned.

Off the back of this revelation about The Last Night, Zoe Quinn - the independent developer and Gamergate flashpoint, whom I'm sure you don't need me to remind you about - has advocated boycotting it. And off the back of that, Notch - the hat-wearing idiot creator of Minecraft - decided to call her a "c*nt" on Twitter.

Now, the C-word is considered bad enough in the UK, but the American use of the word - in the way that it was seemingly applied in this instance (despite Notch not being American, and always wearing that stupid hat) - is several degrees more offensive.

 In short: it's not a very nice thing to say to anyone, least of all a woman.

It saddens me that Gamergate is still rumbling along. I watched - well, skimmed - one video off the back of this latest brouhaha, which had some godawful white male nerd bringing up everything that kicked it off years ago. Once again, it was as if he had been personally slighted by the alleged behaviour of Zoe Quinn, and simply hadn't been able to move on.

Zoe Quinn can be annoying. I understand that. I think she's made as many problems for herself as those she's had to deal with unfairly. But for Notch... the zillionaire grotesque creator of potentially the biggest game of the last ten years to wade into this and call her names? Well, that's just tragic. You've got to feel for him. All the money in the world hasn't done anything to fix his awful personality issues.

But what this brings up for me is this: can, and should, we enjoy games that are made by people whose views we don't agree with?

​Will I still be able to play and enjoy The Last Night?

So, E3 - the games industry's annual jamboree of new product roll-outs - is underway. It got properly going with psychotic levels of whooping at a slick, enthusiastic and highly rehearsed presentation from the kids at Microsoft.

The company's Phil "Frank" Spencer bestrode onto the glossy black E3 stage - slick with wet tar for reasons never adequately explained - to ludicrous levels of applause and excitement.

He was wearing a jacket which didn't look as if it fitted particularly well, and at one point was removed to be smeared around in the tar, before being flung into the begging face of a sweet young chap, who stood up on his chair and - with tears streaming down his pallid jowls - cried "Yes! Yes! Spency-boy chose me!".

To be fair, Spencer is a likeable enough fellow, and seemed genuinely embarrassed by the screaming and hollering, and chants of "U-S-A" and "Bring more tar!" - the latter of which I might only have imagined.

Obviously, the Xbox conference was mainly about Scorpio - the super-Xbox One that has been in the works for a while. And... Scorpio was, of course, a codename. It's going to be called Xbox One X - and when abbreviated to XOX it's like you're signing off a text message to your grandmother.

"New phone. Who dis? XOX"

I watched the entire presentation online so that you didn't have to. Here - for better or worse - are the things which prodded me most firmly in the sterny (sternum).