Digra is coming up quick

Now that we are in August, it is less than two months until Digra 2007 in Tokyo. So in addition to preparing by booking tickets, hotels, and taking a couple Japanese lessons, one thing I can’t help but think about is, “What cool stuff should I buy?” Certainly, I will get some stuff that I see in stores but since I’m going to a gaming conference I wonder if there is something in particular I should be buying. Is there some game that is Japan-only that is a must have? I know there are tons of dating games and I might pick one of those up for novelty value but I would like to get something that is either good or worth something over here in teh states.

Anyone have any ideas?

Halo 2 and F.E.A.R. Extraction Point

Wow, a review of Halo 2 for the X-Box. No one ever accused me of being timely. Is this the latest review ever? I only bought it a couple weeks ago so you can’t blame me too much, can you?

As I said before Halo 2 is really primitive. Halo 3 really needs to be a big jump forward in terms of the way you interact with the world and how the story is told if it wants to be competitive. When the first Halo came out FPS games on consoles were fairly rare, but now there are tons of them. The Halo franchise can only coast along on reputation for so long.

I’ve often discussed my interest in issues of race and gender in videogames. Halo 2 does have some non-white people and women in the game, and of course we don’t know Master Chief’s ethnicity. However, the Flood and the Covenant seem to be exclusively of one gender and one ethnicity which is kind of lame.

Of course the most infuriating thing about Halo 2 is the end. That’s been gone over a million times so all I will add is, “I agree. It was too abrupt.” Check back here in 2015 for my review of Halo 3! Maybe I’ll have a 360 by then… (click those ads damn it!)

The FEAR (I’m too lazy to type all the periods) expansion pack was ok. It was disappointing that all of the calls and such that were important in giving the background info in the core game was so sparse and lacking in this one. The most disappointing thing, however, was that half of the game was theoretically about recuing the lady in distress. Lame. While the gameplay was entertaining enough (if only because of those creepy guys that move really fast and you have to do bullet time to see them). It was highly mediocre. It will be interesting to see how the franchise continues since Monolith has the rights to make future games but the publisher has the rights to the name FEAR. I wonder if it will lead to competing games as in the case of the Call to Power games and the Civilization series.

Computer Games Magazine to be Reborn???

It was a sad day in the gaming world when the news that Computer Games Magazine was shutting down. Well four months later there still hasn’t been any official word on the magazine and as a subscriber they still owe me some money (typically when a magazine is canceled they will just switch the remainder of your subscription to another magazine but even that hasn’t happened.). Curious as to what was going on I went over to their website. Seeing something on teh front page about a website redesign I went to their forums and found a thread with some good news:

The magazine was shut down in March and it took until the end of May to acquire it (and this site). We’re in the process of fixing a number of things simultaneously: Computer Games Magazine and sibling MMO Games Magazine (formerly MASSIVE magazine), plus, we’re re-launching both sites (sorry they’re a bit broken right now). Existing subscribers will absolutely be taken care of… All subscriptions will be honored when we re-launch (and we might even get you a subscription to another magazine in the meantime). Importantly, we are beginning the process of making all 197 back-issues of CGM available online in some form (a gigantic undertaking). We’re committed. We’re into it. We’re working like crazy. And, the same fine writers are still interested in continuing the excellence CGM readers have enjoyed for the past 20 years. Thanks for hanging in there.

I also noticed that the bottom of the webpage says that Computer Games is now owned by Polaris Media but it leads to a very spartan website which says little to nothing about who they are.

Regardless, it looks like there is hope that Computer Games Magazine will be coming back. That’s good news in my book. While websites have largely taken the place of videogame news I still have a fondness for magazines and Computer Games was, in my opinion, the best of the US-based magazines. They weren’t afraid to look beyond the new games and look at the culture of videogame players and videogaming’s role in society as well as how society viewed videogames — all things that other videogame magazines are sorely lacking. Here’s hoping that the reborn Computer Games will continue to look beyond exclusive previews and reviews.

The current reading list

Currently I’m finishing up Edward Castronova‘s Synthetic Worlds. He’s here at IU so I figure I should read his stuff. It is interesting so far. It is a bit less academic and aimed a bit more at casual readers than I would like. But it is still a nice read. Some of the things he says about mmorpgs might make good counter-points to some of the things I plan on writing for my dissertation on FPS players.

I’m also reading Susan Jeffords’ The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War. She wrote it before Hard Bodies and I’m mainly reading it to see if it is just a rough draft of Hard bodies or if there is something different about it. So far it is similar but more heavilly focused on books about Vietnam than film or television.

I finally got around to playing Halo 2

I know, I’m only a little behind, but I finally got around to playing Halo 2. And I don’t mean the PC version. I mean the X-Box version. I saw it at the pawn shop (the best place to buy movies, in my opinion!) and bought it.

I wasn’t that big of a fan of the first Halo. I thought it was incredibly average and I really really hated the handling of the vehicles. So what do I think of Halo 2? It seems incredibly average and I really really hate the handling of the vehicles.

The mythology of the Halo universe is interesting enough. It is also interesting that they don’t really try to remind you of what is going on with the Flood and stuff. It has been three or four years since I’ve played the original Halo and I didn’t really remember what the Flood was about and stuff.

On the other hand, I am struck by how primitive the gameplay of Halo 2 is. There’s no physics. There’s no real interaction with the environment. I hadn’t noticed how common or expected those things had become in the FPS world until I played a game that didn’t have them. I’ve been playing some pretty obscure pc fps games lately like Chaser, Alpha Prime, and Red Ocean and they seemed more advanced than the evolved combat of Halo 2.

That doesn’t mean it is a bad game. However, what it does mean is that Halo 3 is going to have to be quite a bit different to be any good. It will have to include some of the features that have become commonplace since Half-Life 2 introduced us to the gravity gun. Whether or not Halo 3 actually includes things like the ability to pick up things and interact with the environment, it will be a success because of the number of people that will buy it as soon as it comes out. It doesn’t matter much to me personally though. I don’t have a 360. But it is only a matter of time before I see Halo 3 at the pawn shop. All games end up there eventually…

I am SO not in with the in crowd…

After hearing about it for what seems like forever, I bit the bullet and downloaded Second Life. So can you guess what I thought about it?

That’s right. I didn’t get it.
I will go back and spend some more time in it but right now, I just don’t get it.

Now that shouldn’t be a big surprise because I also didn’t get the Sims. I continue not to get the Sims.

I also didn’t get what was so great about Buffy and why academics thought it was so awesome. Especially when Xena was better and did all the things Buffy did but first!

But I’m sure that most other academics don’t get why I’m researching first-person shooters.

Oh well. They can have fun researching their 16th century poets and such while I’m in Tokyo!

In addition to going to DiGRA I’m also heading to the Association of Internet Researchers Conference in my perpetual conference city Vancouver. (This will be the 3rd conference in 3 years that I’ve gone to in Vancouver!)

Maybe I can get in with the in crowd at Tokyo or Vancouver!

Changes…

I’ve bit the bullet and bought my ticket for Tokyo. So I guess I’m committed to go to the DiGRA conference. Let’s see, a 6ft 4 guy sitting in coach for 14 hours. That should be fun…

Of course since I speak no Japanese I may gain a new appreciation for Lost in Translation. …no, I don’t think anything could make me do that!

I also broke down and bought a PS2. Yes, I’m totally on the cutting edge. I got some games from a friend and I’m currently addicted to Simpsons Road Rage. I know it is quite old and just a rip off of Crazy Taxi, but I’m enjoying it.

Looking for some tips I ran across some reviews by people who didn’t like it as much as I did. I found it really interesting that this person got so worked up about the logic (or the lack of logic) of the game’s premise. I’m not saying that this reviewer is wrong or anything. That person is totally entitled to like or dislike the game. It is just interesting to see how someone could be so focused on aspects of the game that I wasn’t focused on at all. I agree that the setup doesn’t make all that much sense with the character’s motivation or that if all the characters are driving their own taxis then the bus would go out of business, but I didn’t care. I just want to drive around and smash stuff! To each his or her own, I suppose…

Depravity and/or Laziness?

After being the recipient of some interesting accusations, I’ve had an interesting few days (and no I’m not ishmael). I’m also playing a very lame game called Chaser. It must have been made by fans of Final Fantasy because it has tons and tons of cut scenes. Of course I’m not watching any of them.

Having been accused of defending depravity though, I have been thinking more about the depictions of gender and race in games. Games like Chaser and Brothers in Arms are a good case study. In these games race and gender basically don’t exist. Or rather no other genders than masculine and no other races than white exist and so they make gender and race invisible. I can understand a game like Brothers in Arms not including women because it is set in WWII and women weren’t allowed in the military front lines. Chaser, on the other hand, is set in the future and goes from a space station to numerous places on Earth and then to Mars! All without women. I talked about race in Brothers in Arms but Chaser doesn’t even have the excuse of segregation to explain why everyone is white.

Of course the reason for this is that the vast majority of game developers for First-Person Shooters are white men. However, I’m a white man and I notice these things so why don’t they? It isn’t some conspiracy. Internalized sexism and racism may be a reason but more than anything it is probably just laziness. Of course the fact that in the US we don’t talk about gender or race (except to talk about those damn feminists or playing the race card) means that it isn’t something that most people have reason to think about.

But really what I want is for game developers to stop being so lazy. I mean Chaser may be really really not good but at least they didn’t make another WWII game. Make a game that is different. Make a game that has different people in it. I like playing games that involve shooting people but I’m tired of all the people I’m shooting in the game being white men!

What I’m Buying…

In preparation to begin to prepare to get ready for my trip to Tokyo I asked a friend who has been to Japan for some books and he recommended these:


He didn’t recommend this next one but I heard about it and since I don’t know Japanese so I figured I would buy this too:

And finally, this is what I’m currently reading:

Housecleaning…

I’ve trimmed some of the dead blogs from the blogroll and updated some of the other broken links. If there are any other gaming blogs out there that I’m missing, let me know.

Personally, I’ve been accepted to the DiGRA Conference in Japan. That is pretty awesome. It will be the first time I’ve been to a non-English speaking country. …Of course that is if I can afford to go… So click on those ads over there! Jccalhoun needs the money!