Because of E3 and E3-related activities, I have had little time to tend to my Animal Crossing town for the last month. But thanks to the miracle of time travel, I thought, I'd be able to take up just exactly where I left off. My animal friends will awake from dreamless sleeps believing the date to be May 5th.

Unfortunately, I miscalculated; I had actually stopped playing around April 27th, perhpas even the 26th. When I opened my town I was crushed. All the flowers I'd painstakingly cultivated were gone. My black and purple tulips, my blue pansies, my pink roses and tulips, weeks of hard work and tender care blown away by April's cruel wind. In their place dozens of weeds sprouted.

I know I have written about this before, but this sort of punishment is too strong for a gamer. Nintendo, you're asking the gamer to love their town, to invest in it, to take care of it; and so we do, but when we stray we're punished for our love. Feelings of loss , frustration, and then - an inevitable hardening of the heart follow.

With my black tulip gone, the town I was once so proud of seems deserted. Why should I stick around?

MacKenzie Wark, professor at the New School and author of A Hacker Manifesto (in book form here), has launched a new project called GAM3R 7H30RY which is at once notes for a future book as well as a unique platform for discussion and contribution.

I haven't had much chance to poke around myself, but the interface is simple and elegant and its goal is intriguing: open an author's draft for inspection, critique, comment... I don't know that I would have the courage to do that!