Upon first brush, there’s not too much to grasp on to with Draw Something. The title of the game is essentially its elevator pitch: You are presented with three words, then you pick one, and then have a blank canvas on your smartphone/tablet/whatever to, well, draw something. You use your finger to draw some stuff on the screen, which ten times out of nine comes out as some sub-MS Paint-worthy scribble. The person you’re playing with then guesses what you just drew. Then, they draw something. You watch this happen, all in real time. And on a certain level, that’s it. Pictionary for the digital age. But why do we play Draw Something so obsessively, like an alcoholic returning to the bar for just one more round, and then another? Perhaps there is something downright pedestrian about Draw Something. Then again, that might be the point.

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The British company Punchdrunk's production is ostensibly the story of "Macbeth," though mixed with Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rebecca" and told in the form of an interactive maze that owes more to video games -- New York magazine compared the experience with "puzzle-horror first-person video games like BioShock" -- than Shakespeare.

Audiences form groups and are given "Eyes Wide Shut"-style masks as they enter the lounge area, which serves as the show's waiting room. They are told they aren't allowed to speak until they return to the lounge and also not to bother the actors -- but nothing else is off-limits. Then you are let loose in the hotel, where every room is decorated like a spread from "Nightmare Homes Monthly," and run into the "characters" (easy to spot because they aren't wearing masks). They perform their wordless scenes as they race from room to room. Sometimes they dance. Sometimes they fight (also a form of dancing, with some super-intense choreography). In one room, you might find a weeping woman looking at a photograph while packing a suitcase. In the basement, there's a dinner party where guests are either having a blood orgy or doing a sweeping waltz, depending when you arrive.

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This was 1979. My mother had been home from the hospital for a few months, and my sister, brother and I were just coming to understand her. Our "new" Mom.

The new version of my mother was a changeling. At 38 years old, she had suffered, and barely survived, a ruptured brain aneurysm. The head injury caused her to be mostly paralyzed on her left side. Her brain became scrambled. She limped around the house, couldn't tell time and didn't know the day of the week. Often, she'd make inappropriate remarks, swearing at the slightest provocation or making some lewd joke in front of friends. At times, she scared me.

"Ethan!" she'd yell from her lair. "Help me get up!" She might be half-dressed in her bed, or on the toilet, or on the floor, or in the bathtub.

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In two weeks, nerds will descend en mass to California, and in preparation, the producers of Comic-Con have posted the schedule of events for the kickoff day on July 21. (Technically there is a preview night, but who is counting?)

If you're still feeling overwhelmed, we've prepared a brief guide of the day's must-sees, as well as what programs to avoid.

Definitely catch: "Game of Thrones" panel

Author George R.R. Martin moderates a panel featuring series executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss as well as cast members Emilia Clarke, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington and Jason Momoa.

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While my first reaction was to send that idea to Yikers Island for a life sentence, Berger's bold vision grew on me. Think of how many jokes there are to be made here! Lord Licorice bellowing from the Cupcake Commons, "NONE SHALL PASS ... UNTIL THEY PICK A PURPLE CARD FROM THE TOP OF THE PILE!" And that's just from the top of my head! I could think of so many more jokes by the time the film actually came out.

So anyone who thought Berger was going to try to backpedal from that grandiose claim was badly mistaken. If anything, the writer wants audiences to know how committed he is to doing a J.R.R. Tolkien thing for the Hasbro game. Also, how committed he is to candy:

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Plus, I am not one of those Candy Land purists who believe that Gramma Nutt has to live exactly 15 paces away from the Molasses Swamp or that Princess Lolly can't hang out with Queen Frostine. We can suspend our disbelief on this one! Gumdrop Mountain can be set literally anywhere, and Mr. Mint  can be played by anyone from Russell Brand to Shia LaBeouf. Using our imaginations is fun!

But it does worry me when the movie's creators seem to be reaching a bit. After all, what's funny about the Candy Land game is it essentially has no plot, so I was imagining a Jumanji type of scenario here, with maybe some adorable children meeting their favorite characters.

But according to the film's writer, "Kung Fu Panda" co-scribe Glenn Berger, "Candy Land" is aiming for a much darker vision:

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Farmville basically works like an old-style Sims game: plow the land, get some coins for your avatar (or vice versa), trade them in for little gifts to make your pretend person happier, and forget what a soul-sucking existence you have while staring at a tiny screen. Oh! But in FarmVille you get to sync up your world with those of your friends, which explains all those annoying Facebook requests you get for the game.

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This shouldn't surprise anyone who pays close attention to Scrabble news, as last year the whole concept of the game went down the crapper when Mattel's Scrabble announced that players would now be able to use proper nouns.  Oh, and according to the powers that be, there is no "hard and fast" rule over what constitutes a "name." So what's stopping me from saying "AAUEEET" (I always get the vowels) is my future son's name, just so I can get the bingo on a triple word score? Absolutely nothing. The game is basically anarchy now.

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Now, when was the last time you heard about one of these games existing on Facebook?

Probably never, which is what makes "America 2049" such a compelling experience: one that combines elements of RPGs (role-playing games) with ARGs (alternate-reality games). Oh, and the game also stars a slew of celebrities like Harold Perrineau ("Lost"), Victor Garber ("Alias"), Cherry Jones ("24"), Anthony Rapp ("Rent") and Margaret Cho. The trailer invites you to look at a world not that far in the future, where civil liberties and social justice just aren't in the lexicon. "America 2049" explains that you are a special agent working for the Council on American Heritage, with a mission to capture a Ugandan terrorist Ken Asaba (Perrineau) who has recently escaped from an internment camp and may be a carrier for a deadly disease.

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But wanting to be a cooler, beer-drinking, girl-bedding kind of guy, I stopped playing D&D when I went to college. There was shame in them thar imaginary hills. So I shelved that yearning for fantasy heroics, which looked so weak and antisocial. I told myself, You don't need D&D anymore.

Boy, was I wrong.

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In an attention-getting new campaign for EA's soon-to-be-released action horror sequel,  you can get a little taste of the visuals of the game itself, but the real salesmanship comes in the form of the horrified faces of a succession of middle-aged women. The promise? "Your mom is gonna hate it." Freaking out the 'rents -- it's been the driving force of so many decisions in your life already, so why not this?

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"WoW," as it is known, is not for moms, especially ones who think computer-based games are only slightly less harmful than crack cocaine. It is not necessarily for people with jobs or old houses or novels-in-progress. Playing can suck up entire afternoons. At the end of a session, all I have to show for my time is a shoulder twisted by keyboarding and a virtual knapsack filled with ruined leather scraps (you can loot and skin your prey), copper coins and frayed pants, depending on my adventures.

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The correct response: "What is the computer IBM developed to become a 'Jeopardy!' whiz?"

Watson, which IBM claims as a profound advance in artificial intelligence, edged out game-show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Thursday in its first public test, a short practice round ahead of a million-dollar tournament that will be televised next month.

Later, the human contestants made jokes about the "Terminator" movies and robots from the future. Indeed, four questions into the round you had to wonder if the rise of the machines was already upon us -- in a trivial sense at least.

Watson tore through a category about female archaeologists, repeatedly activating a mechanical button before either Ken Jennings or Brad Rutter could buzz in, then nailing the questions: "What is Jericho?" "What is Crete?"

Its gentle male voice even scored a laugh when it said, "Let's finish 'Chicks Dig Me.'"

Jennings, who won a record 74 consecutive "Jeopardy!" games in 2004-05, then salvaged the category, winning $1,000 by identifying the prehistoric human skeleton Dorothy Garrod found in Israel: "What is Neanderthal?"

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It couldn't hit a buzzer.

But that's been fixed, and on Thursday the hardware and software system named Watson was to play a practice round against Ken Jennings, who won a record 74 consecutive "Jeopardy!" games in 2004-05, and Brad Rutter, who won a record of nearly $3.3 million in prize money.

"'Jeopardy!' felt that in order for the game to be as fair as possible, just as a human has to physically hit a buzzer, the system also would have to do that," IBM spokeswoman Jennifer McTighe said. "Now Watson has its own real buzzer."

The practice round was to be played on a stage at an IBM research center in Yorktown Heights, 38 miles north of Manhattan and across the country from the game show's home in Culver City, Calif. A real contest among the three, to be televised Feb. 14-16, also will be played at IBM, but the date hasn't been made public.

The winner of the televised match will be awarded $1 million. Second place gets $300,000, third place $200,000. IBM, which has headquarters in Armonk, said it would give its winnings to charity while Jennings and Rutter would give away half theirs.

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"Have you found anyone special yet?"

I smiled defensively and informed her that I hadn't. Not yet, anyway.

"So you haven't caught the eye of anyone at all?" Her playful, teasing tones did little to conceal a telltale note of pity. When this woman was my age, she already had 2.5 children.

I was tempted to tell her the complete and unabridged history of my romantic disappointments. All of the it-was-fun-but-I'm-not-really-readies and the almost-but-not-quites and the you're-really-great-can-we-still-be-friends and especially the I'm-in-love-with-someone-elses. I've had every plotline except the one I always dreamed I'd have. Wriggling away from concerned relatives at gatherings had become fairly easy to me, but nearing that milestone birthday, I could not escape my own mounting, internal panic. My friends were getting engaged, getting married, getting pregnant. I was sitting at home, eating Mini-Wheats for dinner (again) and streaming episodes of "Jersey Shore" on YouTube.

In journalism, typing -30- at the end of a piece means that it is over.

-30-

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Blue aliens and glittery vampires are apparently no match for a first-person shooter with a zombie mode. 

Set during the height of the Cold War, "Black Ops" recently drew fire from Cuba for a mission in which the player attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. This has apparently not made much of a dent in sales -- even outside of North America. According to Joystiq, "Black Ops" grossed more during its U.K. launch last week than the country's entire entertainment software market made over the past couple of weeks ... combined. That makes last week the highest grossing week for entertainment software in the history of the United Kingdom.

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I shrugged. "I don't know. Until it's time to do something else."

"What? That's criminal!" My friend made a face. You know the face: the I'm-a-better-mom-than-you-are face. "I let my boys have an hour a day on the computer. Tops. Then I kick 'em outside."

"Well," I said, and then stopped. What else was there to say? "You're a better parent than I am?" "Your kids probably have bigger muscles?"

I've been a mother for 22 years now. With three boys and two girls in our household, I've been doing battle with screens for almost that long. I still get exhausted remembering how hard I fought to keep our two oldest sons off the computer. Every time I made a rule, they'd find a loophole. Like the time I told them they couldn't have screen time between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekends, and discovered -- weeks later --  they were setting their alarms for 5 a.m. to ensure that they'd get their four hours of "World of Warcraft" in before breakfast.

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A father has much to teach his son in the ways of geekitude, but this was one decision I knew I had to let him make on his own. Still, I was proud. Eli had never been to a convention of any kind before, much less an assembly of 30,000 avid gamers, worshipers at the altar of Blizzard gaming company's unholy trinity: "World of Warcraft," "Starcraft" and "Diablo." But he knew without being told that his choice of T-shirt for such an august occasion was no trifling matter.

When the tribes gather for an event like BlizzCon, only the most precious of garments will suffice -- no matter how faded and worn from countless washings. Standing in line a few hours later in front of the Anaheim Convention Center -- just around the corner from Disneyland -- I thrilled to a living gallery of ironic, geeky, black humor-inflected T-shirt art. And I suspected that countless attendees had been wrestling that morning with the exact same quandary as my son.

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Since then I haven't kept my own farm animals, but I've grown food on and off in one manner or another for well over a decade. My first bona fide vegetable garden was sown with great purpose and harvested with equal passion. Its footprint, well exceeding that of my small home, was ambitious even for an experienced gardener. After a childhood of raising, caring for and eating farm animals, the craft of producing my own food was deep in my blood.

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But Blizzard hasn't forgotten that I used to review games. I'm still on its list. Yesterday, a FedEx package with "Starcraft II" nestled inside arrived at my home, an unexpected birthday present for a man who just turned 48. And I find myself sorely tested.

I want to play this game. I spent many happy hours with the original "Starcraft" -- one of the most successful computer games of all time, selling more than 11 million copies since its 1998 release. I was equally proficient playing as a Terran, or the robotic Protoss, or the insect-derived Zerg. I have always been a sucker for well-executed real-time strategy games, especially when they incorporate strong storylines. As a devoted science fiction geek, I was also more comfortable negotiating interstellar warfare than the latest and greatest dungeon.

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