Get to know the people that bring you all of the great content on GameSpot in a regular series of short and lighthearted gaming-related interviews.

Episode XII: Greg Mueller

Poor Greg. He sits all by himself in the corner of the office. He's so far away from everyone that I've gone entire days without seeing him. The desk next to him has been empty ever since Bob Colayco left GameSpot for the difficult job of trying to get people to buy World of Warcraft. (By the way Bob, all your old E3 badges are still hanging by your desk.) But it's not all bad news for Greg. Now that Greg Kasavin is gone, he gets to go by just his first name. No more being referred to as "Greg Mueller" all the time!

Sitting way off in a corner wasn't enough to keep Greg from answering my hard-hitting "Getting To Know" questions, though. He shares his strategy for reviewing bad games, talks about his early GameSpot career, and reminisces about playing old games with his sister.

Look for a new video (not "Getting To Know") next week, and then "Getting To Know" will return on March 2nd with Brian Ekberg. Thanks for watching!

Away Game is a periodic on-the-road feature, bringing you behind-the-scenes coverage of some of the world's biggest sporting events.

In Las Vegas, luck is like a free throw shot in the NBA: sometimes you've got it, and sometimes you don't. During the first day of the 2007 NBA All-Star Weekend, I saw a few people get lucky. Not in that way, you sick freaks. I'm talking about the second-best kind of lucky: going home with huge amounts of cash.

Take Marcus Smith, for example, the winner of EA Sports' NBA Live Challenge. Marcus, better known by his handle NBA Live Boss, battled his way through a grueling tournament to end up in Vegas this weekend, where he had to take on the best of the best in EA's NBA game. For Thursday's finals, his plan was simple: win three games in a row and he'd go home with $50,000. And that's just what he did, in commanding fashion.

Here, in a nutshell, was Boss' approach to winning the game: take Tracy McGrady inside and dunk the ball. Seriously, that was it. Of the more than 100 points Boss' Houston Rockets scored against his opponent's Cleveland Cavaliers, 100 percent of those were by T-Mac and the vast majority came from juking with McGrady until he got in the paint, and then dunking the ball. It looked like Kevin Garnett playing against a group of narcoleptic fifth graders.

At one point, Boss' opponent pulled within five points by triple-teaming McGrady and getting some lucky turnovers. But it didn't last for long. By the middle of the fourth quarter, the Rockets were up by 30, officials enacted the mercy rule, and that was all she wrote.

I don't think Boss' "all T-Mac all the time" strategy was a ringing endorsement for NBA Live's gameplay--I'll say again: 100+ points, all by McGrady, and all in the paint--but you can't argue with his strategy of finding something that works and leaning on it all day long. And now the guy is loose in Sin City with fifty large burning a hole in his pocket. That's the kind of luck I think we can all get behind.

I wasn't yet working for GameSpot when my girlfriend and I moved to the Bay Area last May, so as much as we both loved the idea of paying exorbitant rent and not being able to find parking, we passed on living in San Francisco and ended up in Mountain View, which is better known as the home of Google. Now that I'm working for GameSpot and our lease is up, we decided to move closer to San Fran so I could do something other than work, commute, and sleep. Last Saturday was moving day, and even though we paid people to pack and move everything, it somehow managed to be as painful as ever. Part of the "fun" of moving is trying to figure out what you do and don't need to take to your new place. My method of discerning what makes the cut is pretty simple: All of my stuff is awesome and most of my girlfriend's stuff is lame. She played along with the plan for awhile, but it was kind of difficult to chastise her for having too many shoes when I've got an unopened bottle of Tomb Raider wine from 2002. Yes, I've got a somewhat extensive video game collection.

Anyone who has ever collected anything, be it dolls or baseball cards has had to deal with the reality of their collection at some point or another. You can try and keep everything but eventually you're going to have to make some difficult decisions on what things are important to the collection. I have had to face this quandary twice in the last nine months. Last May I started with the easy stuff. I gathered up my various game-related pamphlets, flyers, and catalogs, and put them up on eBay. Then I turned my attention to the boxes in the garage that were filled with E3 paraphernalia. Five years of show newsletters, press kits, key chains, t-shirts, bumper stickers, (crappy) demos, pens, and other assorted trinkets got the eBay treatment. I didn't make much money on the auctions, but I like to think that my stuff found a good home in the back of someone's closet. Goodbye backpack from Sony's 2003 E3 party; I'll miss you. Don't worry Metal Gear binoculars; you're safe on the shelves. Fear not tennis ball can with a copy of Virtua Tennis for the PSP still sealed inside; you're not going anywhere. For some reason I had a bunch of broken NES-era peripherals. Those were donated to the trash can. I probably didn't throw as much away as I should have since "awesome" peripherals, such as my U-Force and no less than three NES light guns made the move to California.

Getting rid of so much stuff in May allowed me to delay some difficult decisions, but the February move brought them back to light. We're talking heavy stuff, like what to do with my collection of Electronic Gaming Monthly magazines. I already had a few years worth of EGM in 1999, but for some reason I hopped on eBay and bought about 75 back issues. It was a lot of fun flipping through them reminiscing about long-forgotten games and seeing coverage of systems like the Sega CD, Atari Jaguar, and 3DO. It's hard to believe, but there was some genuine optimism when those consoles were released. But as much as I don't want to part with the August 1993 issue with Aero the Acrobat on the cover, it does cost money to lug these things around and they do take up quite a bit of space. Yep, I kept them.

Thanks to the preponderance of game compilations and the success of downloadable classics it has become more difficult than ever to evaluate what parts of a video game collection are indispensable. Do I need Super Mario Bros. for the NES, Super Nintendo, and Game Boy Color when I can just buy the game for $5 on the Virtual Console? What about all these old sports games? You'd have to pry R.B.I. Baseball and Super Tecmo Bowl from my cold, dead hands, but it's hard to justify having 14 versions of Madden when I only play the latest one. It's a safe bet that I'm not going to bust out Madden 2005 so that I can play as the Bears and relive the Jonathan Quinn era. I even have a few games for systems that I don't even own, but you never know when a CD-I is going to appear on your doorstep, so it would be foolish to part with them.

There are plenty of systems that aren't seeing their games re-released, so it makes sense to hold on to them. Keeping the Dreamcast and its best games is a no-brainer, but when am I going to be so desperate for entertainment that I break out the Virtual Boy? And then there are systems that just aren't much fun to play anymore. Why do I own one Atari 2600, much less two of them? Some of my systems have never even been opened because they're worth so much more that way. I must have had visions of a future where I did nothing but sit around and count my money when I bought the killer trifecta of a Pikachu Nintendo 64, WonderSwan Color, and Pokemon Game Boy Color, and then stashed them away unopened. Somehow I doubt I'll be retiring early because of those savvy investments. I'll admit that there's almost no chance that a broken Atari 5200 is going to be the missing component of some supercomputer that solves all of the world's problems, but who am I to predict the future? I'm keeping it!

A few pieces of my collection take up a bit more space than the others, but If Ricky Schroder can have an arcade on Silver Spoons, then I'm certainly not going to part with my dual screen Play Choice 10 arcade cabinet, or the Jurassic Park pinball machine that I wanted so badly I opened a savings account that I dubbed the "pinball fund." Ignore the fact that I've dropped over $2,000 on it and it still doesn't work properly; one day it's going to bring joy to everyone that plays it.

I've always been quick to point out to my mom that it's ridiculous that she holds on to old mason jars, and I've never been shy about telling my dad he's crazy for saving our old Epson printer* that was hooked up to our Apple IIe. After all, I know how to cut things loose, and I'm never going to have a bunch of semi-useful, half-broken items cluttering my house. At least that's what I always thought. The two Game.com handhelds on the shelves say that I'm wrong.

* My dad's reason for keeping an ancient dot matrix printer: "What if I need to print something on 17-inch paper?"

As Entertainment Software Association president Doug Lowenstein said farewell to the gaming industry at his D.I.C.E. presentation last week, he admonished pretty much everyone involved with the industry. He slammed publishers who made violent games and then didn't go public to defend them. He slammed the gaming press for sloppy reporting and giving Jack Thompson too much coverage. And to make sure he didn't miss anyone, he slammed pretty much everyone in attendance at D.I.C.E. (and by implication, gamers at large) for not being more involved in the politics of gaming by joining the ESA's Video Game Voters Network.

On the first count, I agree with him. If Take-Two wants to make a fortune off Grand Theft Auto and rattle cages with controversial content, it should be willing to stand up and explain what possible artistic value their games have when overprotective and out-of-touch legislators come knocking. It shouldn't just make a mess and expect the ESA to deal with the entire cleanup.

As for the media, Lowenstein was half-right. Generally speaking, it is sloppy. It needs cleaning up. It needs more maturity. It needs people more willing to actually do the job right.

But in regards to Thompson, the gaming media could ignore the man entirely, and I'm convinced he'd still be plenty happy with the attention he received from the mainstream press, concerned parents, and legislators. Thompson constantly resurfaces in opposition to the industry and is taken seriously (at least for a time) by parent watchdog groups and politicians. That makes him a threat to the industry's interests, and as a result, that makes some of his actions newsworthy.

I'm also incredibly uncomfortable with a field of mature, thorough, competent reporters (like the sort Lowenstein implored us to become) coming to a mutual conclusion as to the newsworthiness of a story or an individual, and quietly imposing a group ban on coverage of Thompson. I'm doubly uncomfortable with it happening at the behest of the ESA, an organization we are supposed to cover impartially. Even if an agreed ban on coverage of Thompson would be effective (which I doubt), the collusion of media outlets in determining a subject's newsworthiness would set a filthy precedent.

Finally, there's the admonishment of people who sit on the sidelines and don't lend their voice to the industry. This is where I have a big problem with Lowenstein's speech. If you're inspired to do so, taking political action to defend the gaming industry is indeed admirable. But it's not mandatory.

I understand that it must have been frustrating for Lowenstein to see message boards light up with outraged comments from gamers every time a new state ponders gaming legislation, and then see that the outrage dies as soon as the poster's half-formed diatribe is submitted. But don't put me on a guilt trip for not signing on to the Video Game Voters Network, and don't tell me I'm a bad gamer for not forfeiting my own voice to whatever the ESA's grassroots political organization wants to do with it.

The ESA has a wealth of fine deeds in its history, and serves some absolutely crucial purposes in the industry. However, it isn't real big on transparency (see the cloudiness of an ESRB ratings process that gives Oblivion a T for Teen before launch and an M for Mature months later, why it spends money to influence online gambling laws), and it's not interested in the betterment of gaming; it's interested in the betterment of its publisher membership.

In many cases, the two goals are one and the same. Any sort of legal restriction on the sale of M-rated games would be bad for publishers' business, so the ESA comes down hard against it. So in the biggest picture, anything that's clearly catastrophic for gaming is likely to be really bad for publishers' profit, and you can count on the ESA to fight it tooth and nail.

However, there are a lot of gray areas in which the ESA's interests don't necessarily fall in line with yours or mine. Laws requiring retailers to post signs educating parents about the ESRB are a hassle for retailers given another requirement to follow, but if they don't directly affect the publishers' interests, the ESA takes a neutral on those matters.

And then there are the labor laws in California. The ESA said it spent over $100,000 over the course of three months just to get "interpretive guidance" from the state's labor department about overtime laws. Given the lawsuits sizeable California-based publishers like EA and Activision have faced over allegations of mandatory excessive overtime for their employees, the ESA likely isn't lobbying for these publishers' employees to get better treatment. Even if they aren't lobbying for specific laws, spending that much on interpretive guidance is like asking "So just how badly can we bend these suckers over a barrel before it becomes illegal?"

Yes, being politically active and letting legislators know how you as a gamer and a voter feel about restrictions on the medium is a great thing. Yes, gamers should be more active politically. Yes, the VGVN is one way to do that. However, if you're going to turn your voice over to a third party (and whether or not you should even do that is debatable), you may as well make it one that's looking out for your interests on the surface. If you're EA, Activision, Sony, or Microsoft, then yes, the ESA is definitely the group for you. But if you're just a gamer, look into the Entertainment Consumer's Association. If you're a developer, hit up the International Game Developers Association.

Whatever you decide to join, make sure they know what you want them to lobby for; otherwise you're just a name and an address that they'll use to get whatever they want done.

I'm not exactly what you called absent-minded but I do lose things every once in a while. Usually it's small-fry stuff--a book, a hat, stuff like that. When it comes to more important things though, I'm usually pretty obsessive. Wherever my backpack goes, five things go with it: cellphone, laptop, DS, iPod, and my PSP.

Rrecently, I went home to visit my folks and, due to various luggage issues with the return flight, I packed my PSP in another bag and managed to misplace it when I got back home and unpacked.

You know what's funny? I wasn't even that upset about it. Oh sure, it bugged me that I couldn't find it--but the feeling came more from personal frustration at my lack of consistency than actually missing the PSP. And, to me, that's a pretty telling statement about the device.

Do you think I would have felt the same way if I'd somehow misplaced my iPod or--perish the thought--my Nintendo DS. No, even though Age of Empires: The Age of Kings' Japanese campaign is driving me nuts, I would have torn my place apart looking for it, called everyone I know, and rubbed my wife's DS in the noses of my dogs so they could get the scent before sending them into the wilds of Oakland hoping they would track it down.

At the height of my frustration at the loss, I said to myself, "You know, you can always buy another PSP," before immediately following that thought up with, "Why the hell would I want to do that?" The only time I play my PSP is when I'm previewing a game for work. I don't have a big memory card to hold any movies or TV shows and, beyond a few jpegs of the Japanese subway system that came in handy during last year's Tokyo Game Show, there's nothing on the system that I care about.

Late last year, I got a chance to play Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, an addictive puzzle/RPG game that both Justin and I fell in love with straight away. I thought about Puzzle Quest a lot while my PSP was missing--thinking that I might miss out on what could be one of the first must-own PSP games. Then I remembered that Puzzle Quest is coming out on Nintendo DS too. If anything losing the PSP made the choice of which system to buy the game for that much easier.

So as I was shaving this morning my wife knocks on the bathroom door. I crack it open and she's holding my PSP case in her hand. "Where was it?" I asked.

"Under the bed," she said.

"Huh. Weird."

No celebration. No relief. Just one low-key mystery solved. Hell, I think I might get Puzzle Quest for DS anyway.

Low-key gaming industry convention ends with some high-stakes Texas Hold 'Em, high jinks, and high drama.

Millions of people fly into Las Vegas each year with the hopes of winning some green on the casino floor. Hundreds of thousands fly into Sin City for business conventions and the opportunity to do a little networking with like minds in their industries.

BioWare/Pandemic Studios doesn't see any reason why people can't do both at the same time. Closing out the D.I.C.E. Convention this year (a friendly golf tournament began things on Wednesday) was the D.I.C.E. Celebrity Poker Tournament, hosted by the studio that will release Mercenaries 2 and Mass Effect later this year.

Seating was done randomly, and each chair was accompanied by a BioWare/Pandemic-branded cup and a deck of oddly-shaped cards. As players sat down and waited for the game to begin, pleasantries and business cards were exchanged, accompanied with basic work-related ice-breaker-type questions.

The randomness of the seating provided a mixed bag of talent at each table. At my table alone was a representative from Sony who works with third-party developers, an executive producer from motion-capture specialists House of Moves based in Los Angeles, a gentleman working on the new AmbiEx technology at Phillips, D.I.C.E. presenter and Mind Candy CEO Michael Smith, and Randy Pitchford (pictured, above right with his favorite poker hand), president of Gearbox Software (Brothers in Arms, the upcoming Alien FPS).

Buy-in was $200 for each of the 65 players, and it was pretty easy to tell who knew the game and who didn't fairly quickly. Most of the laughs came early as contestants shook off nerves, and, aided by a few drinks, pushed all-in within the first few hands. As tables were consolidated and the field shrunk, players found themselves with a fresh new set of faces to play against--but pleasantries were replaced with table talk as most eyes were on the top prize.

I was fortunate enough to hold off a string of awful cards (I saw what seemed like an endless streak of 10-6 off-suit for a majority of the tournament) and survive to the top 20, but was ultimately beaten on a lucky draw on the river (isn't that how it always works out?), and finished in 18th, eight places out of the money.

As the final table was set, the crowd, including AIAS president Joseph Olin, gathered around to watch the remainders vie for better and better cash payouts. In the end, the winner was a D.I.C.E. staff member, who agreed to chop the pot 2:1 with second place (the player who busted me out) to avoid a marathon one-on-one gaming session. His take was a cool $4,500...not bad for a few hours of work.

The poker tournament summed up what D.I.C.E. was about--a laid-back meeting of industry peers that is equal parts business and fun. If all business got done this way, Mondays wouldn't be so harrowing. I've already started reading Doyle Brunson's Super System in anticipation of next year.

Left to right: Mercenaries' Mattias and Mass Effect's Commander Shepard look on, Michael Smith of Mind Cancy (center, grey top) and Scott Gagain of House of Moves (right, black jacket) lose money, the official payout list

Left to right: the winner's circle, a pink shirt and sunglasses were good enough to finish in the money, the final table draws a crowd.