It’s quite true, unfortunately. I stuffed my Switch full of rad shit to play, but then I ended up reading the Kill Team manual the whole way, dreaming of ways in which I could better serve our twisted Patriarch as five long hours evaporated. Shortly thereafter, I left the row and also left the Goddamn Switch in there, which burns us.

I have a lot of technology that can execute and subsequently display entertainment software, but there’s no device that has accomplished what the Switch has in my family. My teenager sulks with it. My daughter and I play cooperative games on it. When her friends come over, they take turns playing while everyone else strategizes or they collectively try, without success, to operate a restaurant. And it’s the normalizing anchor from home I take with me on the trips I take once a month in this season. I miss it more than I would miss an object. I just thought about it, and winced.

A lot of things happened at PAX Unplugged, and one of the things that happened was that it was Mike Fehlauer’s last official show with us.

Figuring out what this company wanted to be when it grew up was a monumental undertaking, and he was part of that. I mean, he’s just turning toward Child’s Play now and rocking it Dad Style, I’m sure I’ll see him all the time, but it just won’t be back to back with our swords out taking on all comers and it’s worth taking a moment to mark it.

The term we use for this is Boarding the White Ships. It’s a Tolkien thing; after the great tribulation of bearing the ring, and the accomplishment of great deeds, you leave on a ship to your earned rest. Among other things, Boarding the White Ships means you get to actually attend a PAX, without any of the weight associated with its manufacture. I asked him if he had a good time at PAX Unplugged, and he said yeah. He understands why so many people want to go to them, now.

(CW)TB out.