Double point blog today that I assume will probably be ridiculed to no end. I'm going to touch on two things that most of the destructoid community can't stand: Fraternities and Madden.

I'm still green to the community but I don't get it at all. Was there a meeting held behind closed doors at E3 that everyone just agreed to hate Fraternities, Halo, Sports Games and other FPS games not named CounterStrike? Are people really stuck into that kind of stereotypical lock and load mentality that they really can't try someone else's shoes for a session?

I could relate a ton of stories at my college fraternity house about gaming life. Things like us pooling our money together to get a Cube, four controllers and a copy of SSMB on the day it came out. Or how our school senate pushed for a campus gaming league to promote new social activities? Or wasting a slow saturday afternoon setting up an eight person live Madden fantasy draft for fun? Maybe it was the time that four of us became obsessed with Final Fantasy Tactics challenges for the better part of a semester? Games are the rule, not the exception, with almost every college student.

Games aren't played with the amount of collars you have popped on your shirt or with the 12 pack of natty you just shotguned. Games are playing with the controller and your mind and as much as the "hardcore" community would like the think themselves as the penultimate in gaming culture, there isn't much difference between them at the guy wearing his letters. It shouldn't be a crime to get excited for a sports game just as it shouldn't be wrong to get excited for the umpteenth million release (or in this case RE-release) of a Final Fantasy game. Give me a fucking break if you really think its that different.

Ive been a card-carrying member of both subcultures for a long time and seeing the stereotypes thrown around both are just plain ignorant. If someone likes a game series and it isn't your particular brand of Whiskey, shut the fuck up right there and don't bother speaking for an hour until you can come up with something that makes you seem like you have half a brain.

Madden comes out Tuesday. It sure does, by george. There's also a demo up on the marketplace. Checked it out yet? Have you already bitched about it somewhere without playing it? Good chance that many of us already have. Go ahead and bitch about EA not fixing slider bugs from year to year or finding something else completely new to mess up. Ride EA for all their worth because they certainly deserve every bit of criticism that can be blogged about for a year. Guys! Don't put them bats down yet, there's still some life in that old horse!

I'm still excited for it though. Even though the game sometimes has all the charm of a bathroom at a truckstop, I still smile over some of the fun that I know is coming. I've got a group of friends heading over Tuesday afternoon and we are firing up the grill, filling the coolers and we are going to play some simulated football!