For the most part, I think videogaming is in a very healthy place, commercially and creatively. It's easy to find stuff to gripe about -- in fact, I could argue that it's my job -- but as a guy who's been deeply into videogames for 20 years, I'm thrilled with the state of the industry.

So if I were pressed to come up with one issue that I find most troubling -- the #1 Worst Thing about Videogaming, if you will -- it would be the way we exclude women. And I'm not just saying that because I really wanted to find some excuse to use that picture up there. I'm saying that because I think it's an important obstacle to videogames growing up. We need to stop reducing women to sidekicks, damsels in distress, or just breasts. We make too few games that reach beyond our boyhood fantasies. And when we do, we partition women into their own separate category. Many women look at us and shake their heads and go about doing whatever they were doing. They see us for the silly boys we so often are. Although it's getting a lot better, it's still a big problem with a lot of room for improvement.

But that's why I consider the NPD Group's recent report really encouraging. According to Gamespot:

The industry-tracking group revealed new figures that show 28 percent of all console video gamers are female in 2009, up from 23 percent last year. NPD attributed the five-point rise to the Nintendo Wii, which it believes has attracted a large number of new female gamers.

You go, girls. Because the next step after more women playing games is more women talking about games, followed by more women writing about games, finally followed by more women making games.