There’s also some personal changes, if you haven’t heard, I’m going to be a father.  Last week I got to see my kid for the first time, swimming away like some sea monkey – though he looked completely human.  And yes, it has my prominent nose.  It truly was amazing to just sit there and watch this little life moving around, and to know that somehow I created that.  

Another thing I’ve always felt I help create was Evil Avatar.com.  Or at least, the way it stands today I helped create it.  That all came crashing down as of yesterday as I announced my departure from the site.  With the aforementioned fatherhood and the success of Co-Optimus I knew I wouldn’t be able to devote my time to both sites.  There were other issues involved with this decision, and this caused a handful of other staff members to leave as well; my departure as sort of a spring board.  With that they created a new site called ColonyOfGamers.  I promised and have helped to get it off the ground, as I felt it was something of my responsiblity.  What I didn’t expect was such a huge following so quickly as a couple hundred members joined the site in only a few hours.  Not only that but more staff from EvAv seemed to follow.   

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next, and it feels weird to not be “part of EvilAvatar.com.”  I put so much time and money and effort into that site to see it literally all be wiped away in an instant breaks my heart.  But I guess that sort of explains part of the reason for leaving, as much as I thought I had control, I never really did.

That’s right, Evil Avatar Radio hosted by Philip “Kefkataran” Kollar is no more. No more late Friday nights in the chatroom listening to Phil and Amanda talk about Draygons and Horse Carcass. Phil is moving sidways and taking on more responsibilities at 1UP.

Fear not Evil Avatarians! Our newest Red and host of In-Game Chat, Scott “Psykoboy2” Benton has picked up the reins of said horse carcass and rode it, and the Evil Avatar Radio name, to Monday nights.

So what ever shall we do on Fridays? Us gamers SURELY can’t go OUT. We definitely can’t be social in public. So instead I bring to you, EvAv Arcade Fridays!

What is it? Every Friday night starting at 10PM Eastern we’ll be playing some specific games over Xbox Live and Playstation Network with the Evil Avatar Community.

So this week we’ll have 4 games lined up to play:
Bomberman Live (XBLA)
Carcassone(XBLA)
Spyglass Board Games (XBLA)
Calling All Cars (PSN)

I’ll be keeping the chatroom up, so if you need to try to get in a game, be sure to head over there and ask around. I encourage people to use it, or even just hang out on Friday organzing ANY kind of gaming activity.

All this AND a surprise twist ending! Don’t miss the fun!

All I can say is…thank fucking god.

Updates as they become available.

Update 7/27/2007 @ 8:11AM EST: Our hosting provider is being a bitch as usual. We still aren’t up. It looks like we are finally going to jump ship to another provider.

As you may or may not know I’ll be attending the brand new E3 Business and Media Summit this year representing Evil Avatar.com. The ironic thing of this is the exclusive nature of the event this year, being invite only. While in the past the staff at EvAv.com had a bitch of a time getting official access.

The first event of the show will be Microsoft’s Press Conference on Tuesday July 10th. I just confirmed my registration for the event, and they decided to ask some odd questions. Confirming involved telling them my favorite game, favorite achievement, favorite band and my gamer zone. Odd. But the bottom line is I’m going.

Next up is Nintendo’s Press conference on Wednesday morning. The big 3 Press Conferences are Invite only (like the event) so I’ve been trying to gain access. Nintendo responded with a “We’ll do our best, but won’t know until closer to E3″. Um…ok…gee thanks.

And then last of the big 3 is Sony. Sony. Dear Sony. What the fuck are you doing? I’ve sent out no less than 5 Emails to 4 different people without even the courtesy of a fucking response. Either they don’t have their shit together, or they just don’t give to shits about EvilAvatar.com. Ah well.

The good news this years is James Young aka Fitbabits from EvAv will be coming as well. This should help us provide better coverage. I’m looking forward to finally meeting him, hell we’ve been working together for over 3 years now.

More as it becomes available…

But let’s not forget we always said UT3 was coming to PC. Part of what makes the Unreal Tournament games great is the amazing variety and quality of user-created content. Sony gave us every indication from the start that their network would be an open system and that they would welcome mods and user-created content whereas I’m sure you know Xbox Live is a closed system. We have been working with Microsoft for a while to try to get the ability to support user-created content on the 360. We now have a pretty good indication that we’ll be able to do most of what we want to do in that area so we’ve decided to bring the game to that platform.

Sounds like good news to me. My guess is once Live Anywhere gets going, there will be a nice pathway from PC Level Editors/Mods to the XBox 360. I’m also going to venture out on a limb and say Mods will only be available for Gold members. The rumors are abound that with the spring update we’ll be seeing a dedicated XNA section in which members of the Creator’s Club can upload their project. Who knows, you might even see a game from this little penguin.

Hit the link above or to the left!