Monthly Archives: December 2006

That’s good proofreader there SpikeTV…

Last week was the first airing of the Spike TV Video Game Awards. I saw part of it, but I didn’t see the end because Jack Thompson was on Nightline the same night. I wanted to see the end of it, so I went to Spike’s site for the awards. It said they would be replayed Saturday, but they weren’t. They were on today. I thought that maybe I read the site wrong, so I went and checked out the site again. I saw this and realized why I got confused.
spiketv.jpg
It seems that TV for Men has a whole different calendar of their own where the 17th is Saturday and not Sunday…

(Just a note, the comments are messed up. It gives an error if you try to leave a comment, but they go through. I just have to approve them first. I’m going to switch to wordpress sometime in the next month or so and so I’m not going to bother trying to figure out what’s wrong with the commenting system. Sorry! Thanks for the comments though!)

Girls, Girls, Girls…

It is that time of year again. Yes, the annual Play Magazine GIrls of Gaming issue has come out. The last time I talked about it, I got more comments than just about any other post I’ve made. Guess what? I still don’t get it. However, that isn’t the topic of my post. It is just a coincidence that I saw this magazine on the stands the same week I saw another story related to gaming.

The game Left Behind: Eternal Forces has been getting a ton of criticism, including groups calling for the game to be taken off the shelves because apparently, if you can’t convert people, you can kill them. While that sounds pretty inflammatory, context is everything. After all, this is supposed to take place after the rapture, right? So arguments about a game showing a religious group killing non-beleivers aside, within the game, the presence of a creator has already been made apparent. I don’t know about you, but if it became clear which religion was correct through some incident like the disappearance of those who follow that religion, I’d have to start thinking about converting.

If there are things that the mainstream media loves to report, they are religion and those darn evil videogames. So it should come as no surprise that this story has been picked up both far and wide. However, I’m not going to chastise the media for once again playing the “What about the children?” card. No, I’m writing this because there is something even more insidious about the themes of the Left Behind games: sexism.

Apparently, for all the press that the game has received, only the gaming media has actually played the game because according to a post called, The Difference, by Dan Stapleton, Assistant Editor at PC Gamer in the game characters can be converted and become your friend. But on the other hand, there is another group of characters who you can convert who are called, “friend woman.” So right off the bat we have the fact that if you are a man, you are in effect genderless. You are just a friend. If you are a woman, then you are marked as a different class and your difference is marked by the really odd term “friend woman.”

However, it doesn’t end there. You can train your friends and friend women. These friends “can be trained to pursue a number of careers, including soldier, medic, musician, builder, or recruiter/evangelist.” The friend women can be trained to have a medical or musical career.

Apparently, after the rapture not only will we be killing people we can’t convert, but we will also be limiting the career choices of women….

(click on the link to the column for screen shots and some interesting commentary about this)

Games for Windows???

One of thestories that has been going around the gaming magazines and news sites is Mircorosft’s new “Games for Windows” initiative. In addition to some stuff that will be in Vista, it basically ammounts to that magical word, “advertising,” and that other magical word, “branding.”

The Holiday 2006 issue of PCGamer has a coverstory about “Windows Vista and the Future of Gaming” that discusses the Games for Windows initiative with some industry people. Scott Miller of 3D Realms has some surprisingly candid things to say. In response to the question whether or not this initiative will do any good he quite wisely says that the best thing to do would be to make Windows suck less. On the other hand, when asked if he was excited by the prospect of Microsoft buying shelf space at stores for games, Miller has an odd response:

“All of this is frivolous. If Microsoft really wanted to help the game industry, [it would] lobby to instate a legal window whereby retailers cannot resell games within two months or so. (31)

So Miller thinks that more laws and not selling used games would be the solution??? Call me crazy, but I think his first quote makes a lot more sense than his second.

Case in point, Call of Duty 2. Sunday I went to the store to buy a game and because it was on sake, I deceded on Call of Duty 2. I got it home and opened the box only to see that the game came on 6 cds. SIX! What??? That is just insane. A DVD drive can be bought for something like $20. I think it is time to get rid of multi-cd games.

So I start to install it and I get some random error that it can’t find msvhs30.dll or something. I search around online and find that people are saying that Windows Defender is the cause. So I’m going to have to uninstall itbefore I casn even play the game. I imagine that most people would have just given up without even looking the error up on Google, but having to uninstall a program to get a game to install? That is just plain crap.

Because I figured that Windows would want to restart after uninstalling Defender, I was hesitant to uninstall it. On a whim I right clicked on the cd and started the installer instead of the crapy “autorun” program and guess what? It installed without a hitch. So the problem wasn’t the game, but the stupid autorun splash screen thing. Even more lame.

Of course, as any PC gamer knows, the lameness wasn’t over yet, because the stupid game insists on having the cd in the drive in order to play the game. Sure, because I love th sound of my drive spinning up when I start a game… So I have to go online and download some hack to get rid of the cd check.

And some people think selling used games is the problem with PC gaming???

It seems like ever PC game I’ve bought lately has been screwed up by everything that goes along with the game and the hoops one has to jump through before you even get to the game. No wonder people pirate games.

I’ve had to download a pirate copy of a game that I bought couldn’t get to run because of all this crap and I’ll admit I’ve downloaded a couple of older games that I wanted to play for my research. You know how much trouble I’ve had getting those pirated games to run? Absolutely none.

Maybe there’s a message in there soemwhere…

Where’s the hype???

So now the Wii, the PS3 and the XBox360 are all out. Where’s the hype? Is there anyone else who seems like there really isn’t any rason to buy any of these? Only the Wii with it’s remote controller seems to be worthwhile at all. Gears of War looks cool, but I don’t know why it would take a 360 to play it.
I’ve mentioned before that I haven’t seen any games coming out lately that I’m really interested in, so perhaps I’m just getting jaded?
I’m intersted in HL2 Episode 2, and ummm…. that’s about it. If Dead Rising would come out for PC, I’d be all over that.

So what AM I playing?
I am playing a bit of HL2 on the XBox, and I’m playing a lot of Weird Worlds.

So the question is, “Is the lack of games I find interesting my problem or the industry’s problem?”
I would imagine both. I’m poor and I’m busy, so the few things out there that do look interesting I don’t have money or time to hunt out. Hopefully after the new year I’ll have more time. Untill then, come on gaming industry! Give me some spectacle!