DVD cover for the 1995 film "The Usual Suspects," courtesy MGM

Over the Christmas break, we took some time to reflect on what changes or additions we could make to improve the blog. One of those concepts was Page 110, which debuted today. Another, which has also been some time in coming, was to add monthly columnists. We've always done our best to incorporate other voices into the mix here at Level Up, whether it's people who work in the videogame industry in some capacity in Outsourced, or interested outside observers in P2P. But in those cases where our blog opened up conversations among ourselves and a handful of gifted, thoughtful writers, we felt compelled to expose those voices to our modest but influential audience--you.

Our first official column, titled The Law and the Short of It, is penned by someone who should be no stranger to close readers of Level Up: Justin Blankenship, former Federal Trade Commission lawyer and current stay-at-home father. From Fall 2001 until early 2004, Blankenship worked in the FTC's Mergers 2 division in Washington, D.C., which reviewed mergers in the chemical, technology, and entertainment fields for potential violations of Section 7 of the Clayton Act, in search of potential anti-competitive concerns that would hurt consumers. So as part of his division's jurisdiction, he examined similar mergers while at the FTC. Blankenship sent us an email expressing his opinion that the FTC would take a hard look at the EA Sports/2K Sports part of this deal for antitrust reasons; we requested that he expand his thoughtful email into a full post, and based on his superlative work, we asked him to join our first wave of monthly columnists. Click here to read Blankenship's debut column, and be sure to check back later today for the premiere of our second opinionator.