Everything I needed to know, I learned in the 9th grade, in Geometry. I remember hating writing proofs that a particular kind of three-sided shape was, in fact, a triangle. Any two year old can look at it and tell you it's a triangle. There aren't even any tricky triangles: "Gotcha! It's not a triangle, it's a rhombus!"

For a long time I thought that every useful thing I learned from the class could be taught in under a week. It turns out that the class is not really about what you think it's about. It's not about shapes and rules and proofs - it's about discussing the obvious. We have to do this all our lives, with other people and with ourselves. It's not good enough to just state the obvious (let alone just assume that the obvious is...obvious), you have to be able to state the obvious convincingly.

"Why, Bill, should video game developers play video games?"

Because video game developers need to know what fun is as it pertains to video games.

In other news, the initial numbers we're getting from Gigex through Ubisoft on X1 downloads put live to shame. And before you ask, I'm not at liberty to say how many that is.