On the other, they are so deep and immersive that unplugging from the virtual world of sorcery and steel can become the real challenge.

In this regard, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is both the best and worst of the series. Many of the activities in the game have been streamlined, so you no longer need to put in as much work to, say, mix up some potions or win a speech challenge. But the dungeons are so deep and your need to quest may become so great that playing Skyrim can become like a second job - one that you toil at well into the wee hours while the rest of your household slumbers and you sacrifice sleep for adventure and digital loot.

At this writing I'm about 135 hours in (which is where I checked out on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion!), and I've made a nice dent in the main story and side quests but still only somewhat scratched the surface of Skyrim. I'm still enjoying the game immensely, and I realized that sharing some of my hard-earned lessons could make it less frustrating and more rewarding for busy gamers.

Here are some tips to help Skyrim questers become successful faster, without resorting to cheats or exploits:

Get a house and companion. Very early in the game, you get the opportunity to buy a house in town and then furnish it. Do so as soon as you can afford it. You'll have unlimited storage (the cabinet just inside the front door has seemingly limitless capacity) and access to alchemy equipment (more on that in a bit).

Even better, your first partner in the game. Lydia, is "sworn to carry your burdens." Which means, she's basically your pack mule. But she's also a decent fighter who seems to favor heavy armor and two-handed weapons - which worked great for me, since I mostly use light armor and one-handed weapons paired with one of the several destruction spells at my disposal.

Just be careful to protect your companion, who likes to dive into battle with little or no provocation. If she says "I have a bad feeling about this," that's your cue that the dungeon baddies will probably get the better of her. Tell her to stay put safely away from any foes, and then go in and dispatch the big bads yourself. She should still be waiting for you to load her up with her share of the haul after the enemies are naught but stains on your sword or mace. If you do bring her along, be careful not to shoot anywhere near her when she's at her weakest and draw magical enemies away so their spells - aimed at you - don't inadvertantly finish her off. Left alone, she'll eventually regain her health and rejoin the battle.

I usually sell most of what I give my companion. She'll put on whatever she wants from what I make her carry, and I also let her keep arrows and haul around a pickaxe just in case there's some nice ore to mine along the way. I keep her load light at the start of a dungeon crawl so I don't have to pass up any heavy high-end loot.

If your companion dies, you'll need to reload. If he or she is just lost (and you haven’t said to wait somewhere), simply stay put or fast travel and your companion should catch up sooner or later.

Collect flora and make potions. Potion making is very simple - just taste ingredients to learn their first effect, and then start mixing and matching. Other effects will become known through trial and error until you have a bunch of useful recipes at your disposal. Two matching ingredients are all you need, unless you're trying for multiple effects. If a health potion develops a poisonous side effect (or vice versa), sell them - they're usually worth a lot, even if they're not very practical. There is a perk at the top of the Alchemy tree that lets you remove undesirable side effects, but you'll need to max out the skill first.

Carry a small array of key ingredients with you - most large dungeons have an alchemy rig about halfway through - and then store excess and heavy materials in the apothecary satchel in your most central home (I keep mine in Whiterun). Don't waste time on cooking food - you get such a small health boost from most dishes, and they weigh a bit more than potions. Since health respawns quickly in Skyrim, your best boosts during combat come from potions and restorative spells or scrolls.

Invest in stealth and archery. I traditionally play Elder Scroll games as a Khajit, who has built in stealth benefits. This time, I chose a Dark Elf to mix things up. I resisted the path of stealth for much longer than I should have. When you get to a certain level, you can be almost invisible in broad daylight even when moving. This is a great skill to have when paired with a distance attack that provides a weighty stealth damage bonus.

Speaking of which, archery may seem to be a weak skill in a game where enemies rush in and can quickly overpower you. But it can be immensely valuable for thinning the herd from a distance and weakening powerful foes before they get into melee range. When facing a truly overwhelming adversary (this happened to me for the first time near the end of the mage college quest line), you should hide, take potshots, and then save into a NEW SLOT whenever you do a significant amount of damage. You'll want a new slot just in case you get backed into a losing battle that you can't seem to escape - that way, you can load back to a time before you were trapped.

Keep an eye out for enchanted items that provide archery bonuses and wear them whenever you're on the hunt to maximize damage.

Work the merchants. Merchants replenish their supply of gold about every 2-3 days, so check back often. They'll hang on to any extra cash you leave them, but this is wasted since you could run them down to zero and then they'll get back their typical balance (and possibly add some new or replenished items) for your next visit.

Another great benefit of taking up archery: Arrows weigh nothing, so you can carry as many as you can find or buy without worrying about the burden. I'll purchase as many high-end glass and elven arrows as I can get from merchants in the game, using the excess gold to sell them all of the heavy armor and weapons that I don't need in exchange for the money I just gave them.

Hang on to weapons that serve you well. Sell or store those that don't. I have a cabinet full of items I might want to enchant later in the game, but honestly I haven't had the time or need. (Likewise, I don't bother with filling soul gems since there are more than enough preloaded ones in the game.) I'm still using a mace that does frost damage that I found during the first few hours of gameplay paired with a destruction spell (usually flame) in my other hand. I keep a special dragon-damaging blade handy in case any of the flying beasts drop in unexpectedly, as they frequently do. Those two weapons and my trusty bow are all I need to carry.

Entertain yourself during the load screens. Sure, you could check Twitter or play a mobile game while Skyrim is loading, but did you know that the load screens are interactive? I stumbled on this after about 80 hours of play. Use the thumbsticks on the console versions (there may be some keys that do the same thing on PC) to rotate and zoom the character and item models on display. Some of them are very cool when viewed from different angles.

Have your own favorite tips or techniques? Share 'em with the busy gamer community!

The Hunger Games as a shooter.

Impossible, you say? Yeah, that was my second thought. But the longer I've dwelled on it, the more I've come to embrace the concept.

Let's explore the idea a bit and see whether you think it could work.

First, you may have to rethink videogames from pure entertainment to art. Yeah, I don't really care what Roger Ebert says. He's been a movie guy far too long. I've been both a film buff and a game fanatic for most of my life. And games often (though not always) rise above commerce and conflict to enter the art space.

Art, in my mind, seeks to challenge, to influence. It may change someone's mind, or at least alter his or her outlook. It can cause a strong and sudden burst of emotion. It can awaken new ideas and even make you a better person.

The Hunger Games videogame would need to do this, and do it well. Otherwise, it would glamorize what the source material sought to vilify: a society that accepts violence against its children for political ends. The book was an allegory for war and the draft system that wrecked the author's father Haymitch-style (and many other families whose children did not make it out of the battle arena) to help the government control its constituents.

In my mind, the game would need to mostly do away with backstory. We would NOT have to pass through a training tutorial with Katniss hunting squirrels in the woods outside District 12. She would NOT return to the Hob and make trades using a complex speech challenge engine. There would be NOT be a dramatic moment in the town square where the names are drawn (except, perhaps, as an intro element for each arena battle or in touching flashback upon a tribute's demise - but more on that later).

If you played it out beat for beat, Suzanne Collins' remarkable novel would feel insanely cramped if it were crammed into the interactive gaming space. It would either become a cut scene-fest or a role-playing game that abruptly transitions from one storyline to another as we're whisked away to the Capitol and then forced up a claustrophobic tube into the Arena.

No, a Hunger Games game needs to be all about what happens in the arena, and what that represents in very real terms. It needs to support up to 24-player online gaming (with bots taking over for any tribute spots not filled by human players) and it needs to be poignant.

The Hunger Games would need to inspire strong reactions in its players.

When a tribute falls in the book (and, remarkably, in the film), we are made to feel loss. Even the "career" players that we come to fear and perhaps hate are someone's child, and we ultimately should mourn their loss even as we feel a sense of relief that our own tribute (and any that we might build an alliance with) is one step closer to closure. Unlike in the source material (where deaths are announced once a day with no detail on how it happened), the game should recap for all players the final moments of battle followed by a short video eulogy and the reaction from the home district. It should not look the same every time, so players who experience the same arena battles multiple times are not easily inured to the moment upon repeated viewing.

One of the amazing things about the movie is how neatly it has opened up. It went from being a very personal tale, where the fallout of Katniss' actions isn't fully realized until Book 2, to a shared experience with very powerful shockwaves and repercussions emanating from the action in the arena. We see the reactions of the commentators, the people in the districts, and even the resulting political fallout. The game could take it a step further, really communicating the range of reactions to each in-game slaying so that we feel empathy or at least mixed emotions.

When we saw The Hunger Games in the theater, there were a couple of guys sitting next to GrrlGotGame. During an emotional scene about two-thirds of the way in (you know the one, right?), one of the guys said, "Dude, are you crying?" His buddy replied without hesitation: "No shame, bro."

If it reaches even a few dudebros, it would be worth it.

To work, every battle would have to be winnable by all characters. There would have to be games where Katniss is picked off early, and Cato takes home the prize. What would this mean for the winning district? What are the consequences for the families, friends and homes of the losers? How does the injustice make you feel, as the player controlling Cato and those who fell before him.

The Hunger Games as a strategy game.

This raises an interesting quandary: What to do with the early fallen in a long match? Sure, they could watch as spectators. But why not put them randomly in the role of gamemakers and the district mentors, so they could take an active role in influencing the outcome by adding challenges in the arena and providing gifts. Their allegiance to their own fallen persona stripped away, they can take a hand with the power to either give or take away. This mechanic would need a lot of work to balance, but it could be the best part of the game. There could even be a mode where all players take on the roles of gamemakers and mentors, and then battle for control of the arena to achieve a specific outcome without actually playing as a tribute. It would be a real-time strategy game like no other (well, maybe shades of Peter Molyneux's Black & White).

In terms of scope, there could be up to 75 arenas, but that's awfully ambitious for a retail game. I would imagine there would be a respectable number including the 74th with Katniss and Peeta, Haymitch's year, and a few others that could be entirely fictionalized since they were never covered in the books. Additional years, including the intricate island arena from Catching Fire, could be added as DLC down the road if the game takes off and proves worthy of continued development. For battles without established Tributes, the player should be able to create their own - which would deepen their investment in their characters.

So, what do you think? Is a multiplayer Hunger Games something you would like to play? Do you think such an approach could alter how people think about games and, perhaps, the world in general?