I flew to the Serious Games Summit DC straight from our Videogames with an Agenda opening in London. As I was stumbling through the Reagan airport after my transatlantic, I remember noticing a very young couple waiting past security, near the escalators. These kids looked barely old enough to be my undergraduate students. They were eerily, perfectly beautiful, she with a long brunette mane and a little too much eye makeup; he with chiseled, square features. I remember them because she was standing behind him as he sat in his wheelchair, missing his right leg from the knee down. She rested her arm across the shoulder of his navy t-shirt, which had emblazoned on it: USMC.

Kuma\War has just announced a new segment of their ongoing "ripped from the headlines" newsgame platform, Stories from the Front. It's something like Omaha Beach meets American Idol. Have a read:

More disturbingly, Kuma seems to have built this into some kind of Maxim Magazine cross promotion. You know, that's the mens rag that features suggesting pictures of pretty women like the one near the escalator.

My brother-in-law recently joined the Marines. We hope to get to see him at Thanksgiving, in between his combat training sessions. No telling if he'll be visiting at Christmastime, or already on a cargo plane to a place like Fallujah. Somehow I'd rather he had played the Kuma\War mission where he would have to steer his wheelchair around the busy terminal of Reagan airport, manage the ongoing phantom pain in his missing leg, and count the other casualties that our Reality Games don't.