How are we doing though? No, really: how are we doing? Anyway. That's that. That's the fishing done. Here's another Digitiser2000 Friday Letters Page.
If you want a slice of this sweet cherry pie, please deposit your snide comments, opinions, and questions into my father's trousers: digitiser2000@gmail.com
When I was just a little boy, I asked my mother, what will I be? She said an old anxious weirdo who'll read teletext on the Internet on his phone while using the loo.
Son of Mystic Meg
As you recently wrote about your wild youth playing roleplaying games, I was wondering if you might enlighten us with regards to your experience of another species of game, namely the board game. Since they have also become somewhat normalised of late, I wondered if you had enjoyed any recently, or indeed in the distant past.
Chris who writes about boardgames
Man Bites Dog caused furious arguments on most evenings of my summer holiday last year. And we had fun with our custom version of Jenga, which became known as Das Schtack, and had to be played while speaking in a German accent.
As a kid it was the usual suspects over Christmas. Monopoly, Cluedo, Ker-Plunk. Though I loved games with a 3D component - Mouse Trap, Ghost Train, Slime Monster and Haunted House - but only because I could use them with my Star Wars figures.
Tell me now: what should I be playing?
I find myself at a bit of a quandary and it's all to do with the latest GTA Online cash grab 'Further Adventures in Finance and Felony'.
I'm a dad of three in my mid-thirties and have been playing GTA Online (as time allows) since it was released a few years ago. I've enjoyed playing the game and I have scraped by on the meagre earnings from the heists or the occasional story mission.
Yet I find myself at a complete loss with the extortionate prices of the new GTA Online DLC and feel that I am now unable to play a game I have paid cash for, expecting it to be 'a complete experience'. To participate in the latest series of missions, you need to purchase a minimum of $13,600,00 worth of properties and then fund each individual mission.
This amount of money takes several hours to earn through grinding missions or heists, meaning getting to the point where you can play this content is a dreary and boring affair.
Am I alone in feeling frustrated at being excluded from participating in content merely because the fact I have a job and kids means I can't grind the amount of virtual money? I wouldn't mind if there were servers I could play on where this content wasn't available, but it's forced on you at every opportunity.
Adam
I've just finished reading your excellent article "10 Things Every Eighties Gamer Remembers', and this bit in particular really struck a chord with me.
Exactly 13 years previously, on September 29th 1987, everyone, wherever they were, turned to the person nearest to them and remarked: "On this day 13 years hence, Sony shall release a smaller, redesigned version of its first home console, and it shall be called the PSOne. We must never forget this day."
Thanks to my dad's new camcorder we managed to get the whole thing on video as it happened in my household. I look and sound like a chain-smoking Barry White as I speak those sacred words, which is incredible considering that a) I'm not black and b) I wasn't even two years old at the time.
I'm forever grateful that dad just so happened to be filming with the camcorder at that exact moment and thus catch it all on tape. It did ruin the footage for the snuff film he was making, but swings and
roundabouts.
Anyway, thanks for the trip down memory-lane, Mr B.
Dr Dagless
I think Sega should revive console making, with a new machine, with backwards compatibility & call it the “Sega Multi Slot”
Mr D. Balls
Hi, my name is Trip Hazard and I’m the CEO of Bodacious Games. We produce some of the World’s most innovative, provocative and evocative gaming products on the market TODAY. (Apologies for block capsin’ you there, dude; I sometimes get a little over-excited on account of the Soya Frappuccino.)
Our games are developed for PCs, consoles, tablets, smartphones and a few models of Breville toaster. They’re ethically-sourced, SJW-proofed, 100% non-problematic, gender unspecific hope-narratives that are Crowdsourced, Kickstarted, Private and Publically funded by the Masses and your Missus.
They’re available on DVD, Blu-ray, Tassimo Pod, Download, Brownload and discretely and hygienically uploaded to your bed linen as you sleep.
I hope in the future to confirm the production of one of our latest efforts; moulded in our San Canteeno offices by our team of ashen, spindly code-vegans. We hope to break the mould, shift the paradigm, change the game and smash the patriarchy with our first person, third person, missing person, isometric, isotonic puzzle quest action adventure RPG walking simulator.
I shall keep you posted on this potentially exciting release.
Trip Hazard – CEO of Bodacious Games
I'm worried that Dark Souls 3 is driving me towards self harm. My problems started a few days ago when, after a particularly annoying setback, I hit myself in the face with a slipper. This has now progressed to punching my leg with a clenched fist while screaming silently.
What's even worse is my neighbour saw me doing this through the window while he was watering the plants in his garden. I can only assume he thinks I'm some kind of a crazy, although I avoid talking to him anyway so this might not be so bad.
Do you think I should stop playing Dark Souls, or should I instead just start again with a different character, perhaps going for a high dexterity build this time?
S. Hawke

I've got a new job as a male stripper. I've been hired to attend the Queen's 90th birthday party later today.
I plan to turn up dressed as a Coldstream Guard. I'm going to jump out in front of Her Maj', push Prince Phillip to his knees, straddle him, then whip off my bearskin and uniform, while shouting "How's this for a bare foreskin, your Majesty?!"
She'll probably give a knighthood when she sees "it".