learning what not to do while playing is important too...

The semester is over. I've got my grades all done. I just have to turn them into the university and then the summer will officially start

Last week I was playing Halo with someone who wasn't familiar with playing first-person shooters. I explained to her the controls and started playing. While playing she had a hard time moving around. This is to be expected, but the reasons for this weren't immediately obvious. She didn't have much trouble actually moving the character. Instead, she had a hard time controlling where the character was looking. She would frequently end up looking at the ceiling or the floor, unable to see where she was supposed to be going. This is not the first time I've seen people who are new to FPS games on consols have this difficulty. This got me thinking.

In the past I have thought about the ways in which players have to learn what to do in order to be good at games. They have to acquire skills which are not obvious to those who think that games are mindless entertainment or killing machines. However, in this case it wasn't so much a matter of learning what to do, but learning what not to do.

Of course we can argue that not doing something is actually doing something, but the point is that I at least had not thought that one has to learn restraint. In Halo you have to use the right stick to look left and right, but you also use it to look up and down. However, you look up and down much less than you look left and right. So you have to learn how to move the stick in one direction without accidentally moving it in another. (or move it on one axis but not the other).

Broadening it out I can see how learning when not to do something is a skill that I myself have yet to master. In online games like Counter-Strike it isn't that I don't know how to do something, but that I'm too impatient to learn how not to run around that corner or whatever. And by failing to learn when not to do that is at least one reason why I stink at the game. This is not an Earth shattering insight by any means, but I at least found it interesting.

Reviews, Reviewing, and Reviewers…

What seems to be the biggest story in the gaming industry lately is the large number of people leaving Ritual, the makers of Sin Episodes. Natuarlly, this has people wondering, "Does this mean the end of Sin Episodes?" Although the newly appointed head of Ritual says they are still making the next installment.

Now, I'm not writing this because I particularly care if the next Sin Episode gets made. After all, I found the first one to be, shall we say, "excessive. No, I'm writing this because somehow the rumors of the fate of Sin got so out of control that Slashdot reported the story as saying that on the podcast for the Games for Windows Magazine, (aka Computer Gaming World) " employees from Ritual Entertainment confirm that SiN Episodes is finished. I was curious, so I listened to the podcast in question (direct link to the mp3) and of course, the podcast contains nothing like that whatsoever. Basically, it is just the editors of GWM just sitting around gossiping about what they think might happen because of the departures.

Oddly enough, after they finish talking about Ritual, they start talking about Left Behind: Eternal Forces (at about the 23:35 point). In particular, they start to talk about why they weren't planning on reviewing it. This led to a discussion on which games they decide to review and what they are looking at when they review a game. This is of interest because I just got finished playing Call of Duty 2 and was thinking about the experience of playing it.

One of the main reasons that they said they weren't planning on reviewing the Left Behind game was simply that they didn't think their target audience would be interested. They said something to the effect that, "That's why we don't review hunting games." I think that's a perfectly valid (or cromulent) reason not to review a game.
After all, they don't review a lot of those Barbie or Nancy Drew games.

Another reason that I didn't find quite as valid was that they were concerned about the subject matter. At about 25:15 in one of them says, “We basically said, “No we don’t want to review it” because of the controversy that goes along with it and no matter how we presented it, someone was going to take offense.” Another of the editors challenged that opinion asking what they were afraid of and what if it was a really good RTS game? The response was, “I think the challenge there that we’re avoiding there I suspect is not being confident that we can address the intersection of content and you know between actual gameplay and the way things are executed and then the thematic – err everything else that is going on that makes the game what the game is. […] if the unit balance is awesome and the tactics are cool, does it matter that the theme of the game is that you gotta kill or convert non-Christians?”
“And that’s a big challenge because we always – and we, I’ll just speak for critics at large – are very capable of going in with a Consumer Reports angle and saying ‘this works’ or ‘this doesn’t,’ ‘these little Satanists that I’m fighting get stuck in buildings and don’t come out when I fight them’ but when you get to the point where what we don’t do so well or very often – at least at large – is say, ‘What does this all mean? How does this come together? What is it saying? What do we think about this thing other than just the mechanics of it was fun to shoot that or that AI worked well or this environment was shady?’ That’s where I think the real criticism is at and this could have been a model game [to do that]” They then go on to say that you don’t go to a Mel Gibson movie and just ignore any possible themes or messages in it. The reviews editor said that they didn’t review it because they thought that people that didn’t believe in the themes of the game would be offended, but another editor pointed out that conservative Christians might be offended by the themes of Doom. After discussing it a bit more, they decide that maybe they should review it.

While I’m glad at least one of the editors decided that it is worth talking about the themes of the games, it is a bit disheartening that it wasn’t the reviews editor who thought that it was a good idea to do that.

All of this brings me to Call of Duty 2. The game doesn’t have as obvious themes as the Left Behind game, however, unlike many other games, Call of Duty 2, like a whole slew of WWII games is based on an actual event and attempts to recreate situations that could at least have plausibly happened. That is more or less what made me a bit uncomfortable in playing the game. There is a world of difference between shooting the Strogg or Combine and shooting Germans.

Now maybe I’m the only one that feels this was since the WWII genre is eternally popular in videogames, but I think it is more than just my own hangups or German ancestry (They left Germany in the 1860’s so it isn’t as if they had anything to do with the atrocities that happened in WWII).

As I was writing this, I was also playing Postal 2 and apparently one of the patches adds a secret mission (hunt around behind your house and there is a sewer tunnel that takes you to it). This secret mission is populated entirely by characters who look like Osama Bin Laden (and later in the actual game Osama Bin Laden characters show up). So the strange thing is that I didn’t feel weird about shooting Billions of Bin Ladens.

The question, then, is why do I feel weird killing Germans but not Bin Ladens? Is it because Bin Laden is an individual while Germans are a nationality? Who knows? I think that the moral of this long and winding post is that it is important to look at the ideologies and messages of the games we play and review.

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!

So Many Consoles, So LIttle Money......

So we've now seen the launch of the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii (worst name evar...) and the good old 360. And me? I got nothing.

I was going to go out and do some coverage of the local game launches, but none of the local stores did any midnight sales or even seemed to have people camping out and waiting in line. So no coverage for you!

Personally, I bought Half-Life 2 for X-Box for $9.99 just to see how it compared to the XP version. It looks the same, but the controls blow. The right stick is used to aiming and if you click it, you zoom in, but you can't shoot. Therefore, inevitably, whenever I get into a tense fight, I inadvertently click the stick, zoom in, can't shoot, and die. The D-Pad is used to switch the weapons. In a fairly clever approximation of the PC version's menus where multiple weapons would be under each number, the X-Box D-pad has four categories with multiple weapons under each one and pressing in the same direction multiple times will cycle through the weapons in that category. The problem is, however, to switch you have to take your thumb off the left stick which is used to control the direction you are going. So when you switch weapons, you have to stop moving, which is frustrating. I've started to stretch my right thumb over to the D-pad to switch.

I've played Halo, I've played Goldeneye, and now I've played Half-Life 2 -- all on consoles. And guess what? They all sucked. So is the appeal of games like Goldeneye and Halo simply people that have never played FPS games on a PC? Or is there something I'm actually not getting about these games? On some level, I suppose it is similar to EA who keeps releasing Madden for PCs. Who buys those? If you are going to play Madden, buy a console. If you are going to play a FPS buy or build a gaming computer.

Are videogames remkes of movies?

The journal The Velvet LIght Trap recently released a call for papers for a special issue about remakes. That got me thinking about the recent trend of making videogames based on old movies. Just this year games based on, The Godfather, The Warriors, Jaws, and Scarface have been released -- and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. What are these games? Since the call for papers asked for papers about remakes, the question that popped to my head was, "Are these remakes?" In some cases, they are sequels. In other cases they are side stories. Can a story taken from one medium and made in another even be a remake -- that is to say, are adaptations different things than remakes? Must a remake be in the same medium as the original? Is a film of Romeo and Juliet a remake? I'm not sure. Any thoughts?

Genre Trouble

With appologies to Judith Butler, it seems that there is some genre trouble going on in the videogame world. The October issue of Edge magazine has a short column about the fact that there are a million Grand Theft Auto III clones coming out and "GTA Clone" isn't exactly the best name for it. I'll go ahead and commit copyright infringement by posting the fill text of it here since it doesn't seem to be online (Insert here a rant about how expensive Edge magazine is in the USA and how they need an electronic version because I'm poor.):

Just Cause, Scarface, Crackdown, Dead Rising, Yakuza, Saints Row, Gangs Of London – oh, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. And that's just in this month's issue: there's no question a genre has just come of age. Pity we still have no idea what to call it.
The 'GTA-clone' – not that it was ever an elegant phrase – just won't cut it any more, not in the face of the extraordinary diversity listed above. And surely no one's seriously suggesting that we wrap our tongues around 'the free-roaming action adventure' from here on in. Or we could take a tip from the Germans: if for them platform games are 'run-and-jumps', perhaps we could have the 'drive-and-shoot'? Perhaps not.
But that last idea raises another problem. Possibly held back by the fact that we still don't have a name for it, it's still not really been agreed what the key components of the genre actually are. It needs to take place in a freely accessible world, but does that space need to be physically contiguous? It didn't seem to need to be in Grand-Theft-Auto-meets-Mars-Attacks Destroy All Humans. Does it have to include combat? Surely yes, but its absence didn't stop Grand-Theft-Auto-meets-The-Simpsons Hit'n'Run being widely claimed a clone. Does it even have to be driving and fighting?
There's no question Dead Rising feels a little like it belongs, and yet it doesn't really meet that requirement. Perhaps, appropriately, the only way to judge them is like suspected alcoholics. If a game can tick three of the following boxes, then it qualifies: freely accessible play area, story missions and side missions, hidden packages and/or detailed stats, a civilian population to torment, some form of combat, some form of driving. Does that about cover it?
Of course, genres have always been problematic, and they've always had awkward names, but perhaps the GTA-a-like issue is so acute because it's the first true second-generation genre. The familiar roster (driving, shooting, platforming, strategy) are all built around the idea of a game focused on one type of interaction. But what we're talking about is a genre built out of those genres: a genetic inheritance. It's just unfortunate that it's a child that seems to be forever stuck with a double-barelled surname.

I've talked about genre before, as far back as my review of Medium of the Video Game. And I recently made a post about it on a Slashdot story asking about A Definitive List of Gaming Genres. I wrote

Genres are only useful for movie stores... Ok, so that may be an exaggeration, but I think the point remains valid: there isn't much point in coming up with genres.

Mark J. P. Wolf in Medium of the Video Game list a bunch of genres that are fairly useless such as listing demos as their own genre.

While I'm not a fan of applying film theory to videogames, I think that Rick Altman in Film/Genre makes the most interesting use of genre by syntax and semantics. (Actually, there isn't a lot of need to read the entire book. He lays out syntax and semantics as a way of looking at genre in his article, "A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre" which is widely reprinted and is included as an index in the Film/Genre book).

Regarding the GTA-Clones, besides the obvious title of GTA-Clone, the phrase I seem to hear most is some variation on "urban action." Which of course has problems of its own since there isn't any reason why a GTA-Clone would have to be "urban" in nature.
In films, and other media, genres aren't born fully formed like Athena leaping from the head of Zeus. They develope over time. We may think of The Great Train Robbery as the first Western, but it wasn't instantly called that. Other films had to imitate it and take elements from it untill enough film were made that people could look back and retroactively determine what a "Western" was. The same thing will have to happen with GTA-Clones. In a few years, we will be able to look back and make up a name for them that is more descriptive than "GTA-Clone."

Darn those violent videogames!!!

With the mid-term elections coming up, local television has been inundated with political ads. One of the local candidtates, Mike Sodrel and his political party have been running ads against Baron Hill (Of course Baron Hill's people have been running negative ads as well. They just aren't as noteworthy.). The funny thing is, these ads seem like they are actually asking me to vote for Hill and not against him. In the first one, Sodrel says that Hill voted against "protecting traditonal marriage" (how banning gay marriage protects marriage is beyond me) and voted against "protecting our flag" (which would be ever so effective...). Who knew those were bad things? And not, the latestest ads bring out the big guns: videogames!

Nice to know that in Indiana the biggest issues are videogames. Good thing there isn't a war going on or anything...
What will the next ad be? Baron Hill supports blogger? Baron Hill supports left-handed people? I for one can't wait!

So are there any good pc games coming out before Christmas?

I just finished playing FEAR and found it fairly entertaining. I don't expect to get the expansion pack though. At least not until it gets really cheap.

Which brings up an interesting point. I don't really have any games to play right now and I can't find anything good coming out in the next couple months. I would love to play Dead Rising, but I'm poor and can't afford a 360. I'm also not really a console gamer so I have no plan on getting a Wii or PS3 -- and since I'm no fan of Sony someone would have to give me one before I owned a PS3.

So is the PC gaming market taking the year off and wiating for the consoles to come out before they release anything interesting for PCs?

I am looking forward to Bio-SHock, but it isn't coming out untill next year. There is also Half-Life 2 Episode 2 (still a confusing name) which is also pushed back untill next year. Even the They Hunger game is eerilly silent on its release date.

While there are some WWII games coming out, man, I am sick of WWII. Even if they are the Greatest Generation, WWII ain't the greatest setting for gaming. Give it up already! Let's not even talk about Battlefield 2142...

So it seems like this Holiday season I will be catching up on my reading...

...unless of course someone wants to buy me one of those Playstation 3s...

Again I ask, "What does 'Cinematic' mean???"

With Valve's supercargo announcement of Teem Fortress 2 not only still existing but coming out fairly soon, and with the rebirth and release of Prey, it seems that all we need to bring on the End Times is the release of Duke Nukem Forever.
One other thing was mentioned along with the Valve announcement that confused me. As is usually, Valve bragged about graphic upgrades for Episode 2, something I've previously speculated about. One of those features was "cinematic physics." So what is so "cinematic" about explosions? People always say such and such is a very cinematic game and I have yet to know what they are talking about except when they are talking about a cut scene or lens flare. Especially since Half-life never breaks from the First-Person I don't know what "cinematic explosions" could mean unless they are just talking about, "over the top."
I've discussed my confusion over "cinematic" before and I"m still not clear on what people mean when they say that. THe only thing I've seen is this very interesting article about some of the explicitly cinematic effects in the Source engine which use things such as motion blur, film grain, and color correction. But I don't think that is what people are thinking about when they normally say something is "cinematic" is it? Just like the answer to that eternal question, "Just how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" the answer to "What does 'Cinematic' mean?" may very well be, "The world may never know."

Silent Hill is for yuppies...

I've been busy lately with end of semester stuff. Then the last couple days when I've had more time to post my internet has been down.

Using my free time, I took one for the team and went to see Silent Hill. Despite the lukewarm reviews and videogame expert Roger Ebert's review, I have to offer my own thoughts:

The Silent Hill movie sucks. It is, however, a fairly accurate recreation of the experience of videogames. Not that the film is in any way like the game. I wouldn't know because I've not played any of the games. However, while watching the movie I found myself lapsing between being interested and terribly bored. Of course, the parts that I found interesting were when all the weird stuff was going on. The parts that I was bored with were when there was lots of talking. That's when I realized why the Silent Hill movie is like a videogame. The dull parts where we learn about the stupid story are the cut scenes while the parts where things actually happen are the game itself. Think about it, while people may talk about the weird and confusing stuff in the storyline of the game, the selling point of the game is really the weird creepy stuff, not the storyline. The same thing applies for the movie. I don't' really care why this weird shit is going on, I just want to see the weird shit!

The film is like a videogame in another way as well, but not the actual game it was based on. No, the Silent Hill movie is actually Super Smash Brothers. In SUper Smash Brothers, Nintendo takes all their characters and throws them together into a fighting games. In the Silent Hill movie, the creators took a bunch of elements from other horror movies and threw them together. Call it collage, call it bricolage, I call it Super Smash Brothers. Take one part mom and creepy girl from the Ring, one part stereotypical rural people, one part star of Lord of the Rings, one part Wicker Man, one part Children of the Corn and one part the Village. Stir and bake until golden brown.

The most irritating thing for me was, as the title of my post suggests, is that the main couple in the movie are apparently some super rich yuppies complete with all white living room with fancy all white furniture. Great, another film about the plight of the rich and beautiful and how evil and inbred rural people are. Don't even get me started on the fact that the people that made the movie apparently have never set foot outside of a city in the first place...

Unfortunately, the creepiest part of the film was not the scary monsters, but the weird objectification of the mom. I can't decide if I'm a prude or a pervert but I found it quite unsettling that this woman who spends the entire film being so motherly (and let's not forget that the mom goes from lying on the floor shaking and screaming for anyone to help her to a little Linda Hamilton who will stop at nothing to save her child...) and yet we have lots of shots of her leaning over to reveal her cleavage and millions of shots of her running toward the camera without wearing a sports bra.

To wrap up, another review haiku:
I saw Silent Hill
I didn't like it too much
It was blandtastic.

To wrap up this epic length post, our friend Roger Ebert pontificates about videogames lack of merit one again in his April 30, 2006 answerman column:

Q. I was surprised by "Silent Hill" director Christophe Gans' incendiary comments about you in this month's issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, especially considering your positive review of his earlier work, "Brotherhood of the Wolf." Gans phrased his comments to indicate he wanted you to read them.

David Seelig, Philadelphia

A. In the article, Gans praises video games as a form of art and says "The Legend of Zelda" was "a beautiful, poetic moment for me." Asked about my opinion that video games are not art, he said "F--- him. I will say to this guy that he only has to read the critiques against cinema at the beginning of the 20th century. It was seen as a degenerate version of live stage musicals. And this was a time when visionary directors like Griffith were working. That means that Ebert is wrong. It's simple. Most people who despise a new medium are simply afraid to die, so they express their arrogance and fear like this. He will realize that he is wrong on his deathbed. Human beings are stupid, and we often become a--holes when we get old. Each time a new medium appears, I feel that it's important to respect it, even if it appears primitive or naive at first, simply because some people are finding value in it. If you have one guy in the world who thinks that 'Silent Hill' or 'Zelda' is a beautiful, poetic work, then that game means something."

Ebert again. I am willing to agree that a video game could also be a serious work of art. It would become so by avoiding most of the things that make it a game, such as scoring, pointing and shooting, winning and losing, shallow characterizations, and action that is valued above motivation and ethical considerations. Oddly enough, when video games evolve far enough in that direction, they will not only be an art form, they will be the cinema.

A tip on the early cinema: No wonder it was seen as "a degenerate version of live stage musicals," since the talkies hadn't been invented yet, and there is nothing more degenerate than a musical without sound.

Your comments on age and the fear of death are thought-provoking. You know, Christophe, the older I get, the more prudent I become in how I spend my time. As David Bordwell has pointed out, it can take at least 100 hours to complete a video game. Do you really feel you have mastered the mature arts to such an extent that you have that kind of time to burn on a medium you think is primitive and naive?

On my deathbed, I doubt that I will spend any time realizing that I was wrong about video games. Your theory reminds me of my friend Gene Siskel, who observed that nobody on his deathbed ever thinks: "I'm glad I always flew tourist."

So the moral of the story is be an elitist asshole. Well, at least not everyone in the mainstream media is a hypocrite... So his justification for not giving videogames a fair chance is that he's old??? That's just ponderous man,

Battlefield 2142 -- Africa is for Europeans???

I've never really played the Battlefield games. I've got the original Battlefield 1942 around soemwhere and I played Desert Combat at an IU Lanwar a couple years ago, but that is about it.
The new issue of PC Gamer has a cover story about the new Battlefield 2142. It looks fun and all with mechs and stuff. However, I noticed one thing in the article that I found kind of disturbing. The article states:

War will take place over who gets the best of what's left after a new ice age. While most of the fighting will take place in northern Africa (as only a quarter of the Earth's surface is still livable under these dire circumstances, mostly centered around the equator), it's certainly possible that Far East countries might join in the fun in future expansions. The two factions involved are "the American-European Alliance, made up of the American continents and most of Europe," and the "Pan Asian Coalition, a combination of Russia, the Middle East, and India."

So the equator is the only place habitable because of the ice age and the Western countries and the Far Eastern countries are fighting it out over the remaining land. Well, that sounds cool and all but last time I looked at a map the equator ran through South American and Africa. Isn't it odd that there isn't any mention of THE PEOPLE THAT ALREADY LIVE THERE???? One would think that a game set in Africa would feature, you know, Africans.

Of course this is just a preview and there is very little actual information out about the game, so who knows, maybe EA will suprise me and there actually might be some people from the place where the game actually takes place. Yeah, right. And maybe hell will freeze over too...

TY Pennington's Asteroids Jacket Found!

Last week I blogged about this cool Asteroids jacket Ty Pennington was wearing. Well, thanks to my friend, Meredith managed to track down a picture someone posted on Flickr of a guy wearing one on a subway, In the comments, someone found out where to buy the jacket.

It is unbelievably expensive.

So unless you buy me one, dear reader, I don't think I"ll ever be able to buy it. Won't you help this young man's dreams come true?????

Indiana Violent Videogame Law is Down, But Not Out

While it seems that , for now, Vi Simpson's Videogame Violence Bill is dead in the water, according to the IU newspaper, Simpson hasn't given up hope of getting the bill passed into law. According to the article, Simpson said, "I'm hoping we'll have an opportunity to re-introduce the bills in November, and generate some additional interest in them."

Of course, let's not forget that most anti-videogame crusaders are basing their claims on misinformation. For example, take Simpson, who issues a press release about her videogame bill that stated:

“Right now kids can walk into just about any store and get their hands on a video game in which they can shoot police officers, use drugs, steal cars, rape women or even assassinate a president. That’s frightening to say the least,” said Simpson.

It would be frightening -- if it were true. But it isn't.

As Game Politics points out:the notorious JFK Reloaded is not - has never been - available in any retail store. So, unless there is some other game about assassinating a president, she is wrong and her bill wouldn't do anything (not to mention that there's no law against a child buying JFK or the Manchurian Candidate, so why should videogames be any different?).

Of course, also in that statement, is that other straw man: rape. In this, SImpson isn't alone. Our other good buddy Joe Lieberman also seems to think that Rape Master 3000 is a best seller because Lieberman has also said that there are videogames featuring rape. On that webpage there is a videoclip and about 35 seconds into is, Lieberman says, "It's a crime to sexually abuse or rape a woman. Yet repeatedly in these video games the players are being rewarded for doing exactly that."

No. No they aren't. I first said that there are no American videogames that feature rape in them back in January of 2004 -- more than TWO years ago! You would think that such a stupid misconception would die by now. Unless someone is still out there selling Custer's Revenge, then people who say that there are videogames on store shelves that feature rape, they are just plain wrong. I know it, you know it, isn't it time our elected officials knew it? Even Grand Theft Auto's Hot Coffee features consensual sex. If you don't want your kids playing games that feature sex, then fine, but don't make up things to make is sound worse than you think they are!

So it seems as if we have two options here: Either our elected officials are misinformed and ignorant or they are lying. Isn't either alternative unacceptable?

The real reason THompson doesn't like videogames...

I just ran across an interview with Jack Thompson that Spong did back in October. In the interview, Thompson states:

No, I am not in any sense a 'gamer'. I've been too busy to do that. If that response is taken to be a criticism of how gamers spend their time, it is because it is intended to be. The "do violent games spawn violence?" debate is one thing people disagree on, even though all the evidence is on my side. But I'm not sure how any human being with a life and a conscience can justify spending any considerable time playing games in what amounts to useless mental masturbation that helps absolutely no-one. Seriously, my generation had left still the residue of the notion that your life (the substance of which is time) doing something for others. How does playing GTA 20 hours a week help anyone other than Take-Two CEO and sociopath Paul Eibeler? Games are largely a waste of time, in other words. People need to be 'stewards' of their time - again, a concept (stewardship) that is largely foreign to the gaming community and to the younger generations generally.

Funny how this is very similar to Roger Ebert's dismissal of videogames. Perhaps we should stop spending our time trying to get people to think that videogames are art and just trying to get some respect for them first. Without respect, how can we convince anyone that they are art in the first place???

Could Copy protection on VIdeogames Go the Sony Route???

With all of the media press about Sony CD's installing rootkits on computers, I began to think, what else is being installed when we put disks in our computers? There are always those stupid Interactual players that want to install on dvds. There are reports that those detect things like Alcohol 120%. Already notorious for refusing to run when certain programs are installed are some videogames which use copy protection schemes.
When we put a cd or dvd in our computers, we can always hold shift or click no to prevent stupid software from being installed on our computers. However, what are we supposed to do if videogame manufacturers start using root kits? We have to install the videogames, so there isn't any way to know what else they are installing at the same time. There is no reason to beleive that sometime soon, if it hasn't already happened, that some videogame installer will, in fact, install a root kit on our computers. After all, Sony makes computer games too...

ALso of note, not content to threaten the Florida State Bar Association, or the judge who took him off the Strickland vs Sony case, now Thompson has taken to threatening Amazon.com. He has even gone so far as to post his own review/rebuttal on Amazon.com.

For me, the most disturbing part of Thompson's rebuttal is something that he does quite frequently: mixing his faith with his opinions. He consistently expresses the belief that if you disagree with him and do not think that videogames are violent, then not only are you not a Christian, but you are actively anti-Christian. In his world-view, it seems that the only reason you dislike him is because he is a Christian and if you disagree with him you are anti-Christian. This kind of "you are either with us or against us" mentality is more dangerous than his beliefs on videogames.

Can you define cinematic???

One of my least favorite words is "cinematic" because it seems to mean practically anything -- especially when it comes to videogames. How often have we heard something in a videogame called, "cinematic?" The problem, however, is that it is an undefined term! What does cinematic mean???

Sure, cinematic, at it's simplest level means something "like or of cinema" or "having the qualities of cinema." But no one ever talks about the unique qualities of cinema when they use the term when talking about other mediums. It seems to me that when many people use the term, they aren't even talking about the unique qualities of cinema, but qualities of cinema that may be evident in other mediums.

So my question is, does anyone actually define what they mean by "cinematic?" While some of the medium specificity stuff from early film theory is useful, I've not been able to track down anyone who actually defines cinematic. Surely someone out there has bothered to define it, haven't they? If anyone knows of a definition of cinematic, please leave a comment!

Back in the USA

Well, here I am, finally back home from DiGRA2005. I hate travelling ever so much. As someone who is 6ft 4, 225lbs, I am not made to ride in teh back of a crowded plane! Thankfully it was only two timezones away. Those brave souls from other continents have my sympathy.

The conference was grand. I'll post more of my thoughts on specific things in the days to come as I recover from the travel. For someone who grew up in a small town in Indiana, Vancouver was quite an experience. Because I am cheap, I went to Orbitz and booked the cheapest relatively close to the conference hotel I could find and, unfortunately, I booked a hotel in the ghetto and the hotel room was the smallest EVAR. The taxi driver who took me from the airport even told me not to go out after dark. It was really weird that even though my hotel was on the hotel was on the same street as the conference hotel and only 15 blocks away, about 10 of those blocks were full of boarded up buildings, hoemless and crackheads. Then suddenly, after those ten blocks, it was full of skyscrapers, suits and tourists. Citys are odd places. However, I didn't have any problems -- although I find the suits more repugnant than the homeless...

The best part of the confernce for me was to finally be able to put some faces with names of my fellow bloggers. I had a good time talking with Lars Konzack, and Cyberzel among lots and lots of other people -- including someone from Indiana University I had never heard from before!!!

To finish this post up, here is a round-up (in no particular order) of bloggers who beat me to the punch and already posted about DiGRA (some folks more than once!):

Greg Costikyan
Robin Hunicke
William Huber
Cindy Poremba
Andrew Stern
Greg Lastowka
Lars Konzack
Cyberzel
Jason Rhody
Jonas Heide Smith
Jesper Juul .

And there are lots of pictures as well (including some of me looking really enthusiastic!):
Flickr pics
Grand Text Auto and
shinyspinning

360 degrees of... nothing?

So the biggest gaming news of the week was the big MTV Xbox 360 unveiling. LIke most people, I found it to be totally vapid and lame. (If you didn't catch it, there are torrents out there) For those looking for more substance, there is the ourcolony video as well as tons of other previews.

This makes me wonder why Microsoft (oops, I'm sorry, I mean Micro$oft!) is doing it this way. What seems to be going on is a dual pronged launch. The MTV for the mainstream people and the online stuff for the hardcore. However, I can't imagine that the MTV special got anyone excited. It was the exact same thing as the SpikeTV Videogame Awards -- a great example of people who don't play videogames trying ever so hard to make videogames cool. The similarities were striking. The same big warehouse that was dimly lit with laser beams flashing, the same lack of actual videogame content, and many of the same b-grade celebrities. Wow, Elijah Wood plays videogames! (While I loved the Lord of the Rings movies, is there anyone that would describe Elijiah Wood as cool??) This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone since MTV and SpikeTV are both owned by Viacom.

While this might make the case against media consolidation as well as the case that corporations are full of incompetent people, it also brings us back to Microsoft. If there is any company that is less cool or less sexy than Microsoft, I can't imagine what it is. However, even Microsoft must have realized that this MTV thing wasn't going to satisfy gamers, so they hedged their bets with Our Colony. But if you go to google news and search for Xbox, you'll get lots of hits, but not much coverage from mainstream media. Perhaps the real coverage will come next week with E3, but right now, it doesn't seem like the mainstream media cares. Is Microsoft just throwing money out the window with this then? Sure, they can afford to, but is any of this working? Gamers online are excited about it, but does anyone else care?

I've got no thesis statement. I've got not real point here, but the vapid wasteland of the MTV spot combined with the more substantial our colony video as well as the near-astroturfing of the gaming sites makes for interesting advertising. Is it significant the an online video that is only a few minutes long seems to be much better received and much more news worthy than a 30 minute program on MTV? Who knows. But it sure is interesting to kick back and see the hype unfold. The real test will be on the day the Xbox 360 goes on sale.

Sick! Sick! Sick!

I'm at that stage where I can feel the flu coming on and I'm dreading it. I just have to stay healthy until Tuesday and then my papers will be written. Just 'till Tuesday.
On another note, over at Gamasutra, there is a new article entitled, "The Psychology Behind Games" that uses Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's notion of flow. I wish I'd thought of that.
Of course I'm just kidding. I did write (link to rtf file) about it and it was a chapter in my Master's thesis. While it seems obvious that it should be applied to developement of games rather than just analysis, I chose not to do so since that wasn't my interest. It is interesting to see someone take that viewpoint on it. It certainly never hurts to have someone else write about Flow. Maybe sometime the idea will catch on.

A "Far Cry" from how it used to be...

A long time ago I wrote:

Dear Game Developers,
Stop pissing me off. Let me use both of my cd drives when I install your games.
Thank You.

Well, yesterday I saw Far Cry on sale for $19.99 and so I bought it. Unfortunately, it wasn't the DVD version, but the 5 CD version. I got home and began to install it. I put disk one in my main cd drive (which is of course a dvd drive...) and put disk 2 in my other cd drive (which, of course, is also a dvd drive... see a pattern here?). I had anticipated on trying to switch the drive letter when it asked for disk 2. However, imagine my surprise when it asked for disk 3! It automatically knew that I had disk 2 in the other drive and didn't even ask me for it. Sweet! I applaud Crytek or ubisoft or whoever it was that made the installer smart enough to know I have two disk drives!

However, as far as the game itself goes... All of you people that gave it 90% and higher. Where can I get some of that crack you're smoking? I mean, I'm only an hour into it or so, but the game seems really blaa and unremarkable. Sure it is all outside, but that's more or less the only remarkable feature I've seen so far. Of course I have barely gotten into it, so I won't judge it too harshly, yet. It might get more awesomness-ativity later on.

In other news, I'm heading up to Chicago Monday to take in the Game On exhibit. I've been waiting for this to get stateside since I got the book and wrote a review of it (thank goodness for Archive.org! even though Joystick101 is back online, the archives seem to be missing and I can't find my original copy of the review). I'll be sure to give my rundown of the exhibit when I get back in town. Check out some other people's comments over at slashdot.

Different (Red) Factions, Different Experiences

In my continuing marathon of gaming before classes start again, I've completed Deus Ex 2 and have finished playing Red Faction 2. Notice I didn't say I completed it. I couldn't force myself to make it through the final boss battle but other than that, both games were fun in their own way. I must admit that after playing Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Deus Ex 2, to start up Red Faction 2 was quite a shock. I have written before that the graphics of the new games were pretty naturalized for me and I didn't really notice them. However, when I saw Red Faction 2's two year old graphics, I suddenly did appreciate the prettiness of the other games, especially when I jumped into Counter-Strike:Source or HL2 Deathmatch.

Because I went from Deus Ex 2 to Red Faction 2, in addition to comparing their graphics, I also couldn't help myself from comparing other aspects. The first thing I noticed was that both games betray their console heritage. I played both of them on my l33t computer, rather than the x-box and while both played find with keyboard and mouse, there were obvious consessions made for the consoles. The most talked about console feature in Deus Ex 2 was the small levels and the frequent loading. Interestingly, Red Faction 2 had small levels too, but they weren't nearly as frustrating as Deus Ex 2's -- and in fact, because Red Faction 2 doesn't feature any in game saves -- another console carry over -- the short levels were actually welcome. That I found myself hoping to end the level in Red Faction 2, and thus automatically save my progress, and yet dreading loading a level in Deus Ex 2 was interesting. Constant backtracking was the reason why the small levels in Deus Ex stuck out so much. I especially dreaded settings like Cairo where you had to backtrack through one level just to get to the other level you wanted to go to. I found myself longing for the little lightening bolt thingys that Riven had where you could just zip past things and skip the stuff in between. Red Faction 2, on the other hand, is purely linear with no backtracking through levels.

So we have one game that features non-linear gameplay, which is supposed to be the hottness, and one that features linear gameplay, which is supposed to be lame and broke-down, and yet the linear gameplay is less frustrating. Now I'm not saying red Faction 2 is better than Deus Ex 2 because I don't think that is the case at all. I'm saying that gameplay is meaningless if the technology behind it isn't up to par. Deus Ex 2 looked pretty and had progressive gameplay, but the technology of the levels hindered the gameplay and made it frustrating. Red Faction 2, on the other hand, managed to somehow turn 3 liabilities - short levels, linear gameplay, and no in-game saves, which are both technological limits and non-progressive gameplay, and make it work.

Red Faction 2 had a lot of other problems, losing the Mars setting, continued underuse of their Geo-Mod technology, stupid cut scenes, and lame characters just to name a few, but they managed to make an OK game. Playing these two games back to back made me stop and rethink the relationship between gameplay and technology and how gameplay needs to work with the limits of the game engines to hide the limitations of the engine. For the most part Red Faction 2 managed to hide the limitations of their engine, while Deus Ex 2's gameplay unfortunately highlighted the limitations of its engine.

Civilization and Colonialism and Empire

I just turned in my paper about Colonialism and Empire in the Civilization series. I'm certainly not the first to write about it. However, it did take me a while to hunt down those who have. So in the interests of making it easier for people to find sources about colonialism and empire in Sid Meier's Civilization series, here is my Works Cited:

WORKS CITED



Avalon Hill.  “Civilisation.”  1981.

Bako Bitz.  “The Culture of Civilization III.”  Jan. 15, 2002.  Joystick101.org.  Dec. 7, 2004 <http://web.archive.org/web/20040324004449/http://www.joystick101.org/story/2002/1/12/222013/422>.

“Civilization (board game).”  Wikipedia.  Dec. 7, 2004 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_board_game>.

“The Civilization Legacy.”  The Official Civilization III Web Site.  Dec. 7, 2004 <http://www.civ3.com/legacy.cfm>.

Chick, Tom. “The Teaching Game:  All I Really Need to Know I
Learned in Civilization.”  Jan 2002. CGOnline.com.   <http://web.archive.org/web/20020124200343/http://www.cgonline.com/features/020118-c2-f1.html>.

Civ3.com. The Official Civilization III Web Site.  Dec. 7, 2004 <http://civ3.com/>.

Civilization 3 Complete. Atari, 2004.  

Douglas, Christopher.  “‘You Have Unleashed a Horde of
Barbarians!’: Fighting Indians, Playing Games, Forming Disciplines.”
 Post Modern Culture 13.1 (Sep, 2002).  Dec. 7 2004.
 <http://alpha.furman.edu/~cdouglas/barbarian.htm>.

Friedman, Ted.  “Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation,
Subjectivity, and Space.” Nov. 22, 1997.  Personal Site.

 Dec. 7, 2004 <http://www.duke.edu/~tlove/civ.htm>.

Guha, Ranajit. Introduction.  A Subaltern Studies Reader,
1986-1995. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
 ix-xxii.

Lammes, Sybille. “On the Border: Pleasures of Exploration and Colonial
Mastery in Civilization III Play the World.” Level Up: Digital Games
Research Conference.   Eds. Copier, Marinka and Joost Raessens.
 Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2003, 120-29

Mehta, Uday Singh.  Liberalism and Empire: A Study in
Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought.  Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1999.

Memmi, Albert.  The Colonizer and the Colonized.  London, Beacon, 1965 (1957).

Meyers, David.  “Bombs, Barbarians, And Backstories:
Meaning-Making Within Sid Meier's Civilization.”  Forthcoming in
Ludologica: Videogames D'autore: Civilization And Its Discontents.
Vitual History. Real Fantasies. Ed. Matteo Bittanti.  Milan,
Italy: Edizioni Unicopli.  <http://www.loyno.edu/%7Edmyers/F99%20classes/Myers_BombsBarbarians_DRAFT.rtf>.

Moumouni.  “Pretty Historically Correct.” Jan. 20, 2002.  Joystick101.org.  Dec. 7, 2004.  <http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:mSg0dZG2sg8J:www.joystick101.org/comments/2002/1/12/222013/422/13++site:www.joystick101.org++%22culture+of+CIVILIZATION+III&hl=en>.

Poblocki, Kacper.  “Becoming-State. The Bio-Cultural Imperialism
of Sid Meier's Civilization.”  Focaal -- European Journal of
Anthropology 39 (2002): 163-177.  <http://www.focaal.box.nl/previous/Forum%20focaal39.pdf >.

Sartre, Jean-Paul.  “Introduction.”  The Colonizer and the
Colonized.  By Memmi, Albert.  London, Beacon, 1965 (1957).

Squire, Kurt.  Replaying History: Learning World History Through
Playing Civilization III.  Diss. Indiana University, 2004.

Stephenson, William. The Microserfs are Revolting: Sid Meier’s Civilization II. Bad Subjects 45 (Oct 1999). Dec, 7 2004 <http://bad.eserver.org/issues/1999/45/stephenson.html >.

“Wargaming.”  Wikipedia.  Dec. 7, 2004 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wargaming>.

My (Half-Life) 2 Cents Worth

While I didn't stay up late for the unocking of Half-Life 2, I did get up a bit early to play and in teh hour and a half I've played, I give it thumbs up. I like the consistency of the sounds for things and I find the game to be a much more tense experience than the first one so far. Graphics are pretty but, like Doom 3, I find myself numb to them after a while and just sort of expect things to look that well. OK, back to playing... You know it really is inconsiderate of Valve to release this game right when I am supposed to be writing papers and grading!!!

You Don't Know Jack... Thompson

There are two old sayings, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt" and "Brevity is the soul of wit." However, when it comes to certain people, these sayings are fairly contradictory.

Our favorite anti-videogame lawyer, Jack Thompson has been answering some questions and the answers aren't quite what some were expecting.

Over at Kotaku, when they aren't busy making witty comments about my purchasing habits, have been having an email conversation with Jack Thompson who has provided some very short, but very telling answers to their questions.

Over at slashdot, the story was posted and some people don't seem to want to believe it is legit. I feel fairly certain that this is indeed consistent with the Jack we all know and love. I made the following post:

People are saying that this is fake. But based on other email
comments I have seen from Jack Thompson, this is totally keeping in
line with his responses.

In a thread on a videogame forum
there are people who claim that they have
emailed Thompson and got such pithy responses as: "the rubbish is up
your cranium, take it out," "you're biased against lawyers. grow a
brain," "No, actually it's all about ignorant gamers," "You don't know
my motives, so don't try guessing," and "children are allowed to buy
them. do your research, junior."

In another email exchange I've found, he basically says, that he would rather sue videogame companies than have laws passed.

Finally, Thompson is also famous for being the lawyer behind
the Two Live Crew obsenity trials, , and most bizarrely, claiming that Janet Reno was unfit for office in Florida
because she was gay and people would blackmail her because
of it (except by making a public deal of it, wouldn't that make it
impossible to blackmail her). As well as harrassing a local DJ Neil Rogers who had to get a restraining order taken out against against him.

In short, Jack Thompson is certainly 100% capable of the odd
responses stated in the article. There is actually lots more odd things
that this lawyer has done. Do a search for "jack Thompson" and
videogames and tons of stuff will come up about him.

I find the fact that some are hesitant to believe that a lawyer would respond in or act in such a manner to be very interesting. It is because of this that I have decided that Jack Thompson and his anti-videogame violence efforts are in fact NOT real. He is, as U2 said, even better than the real thing. And what better type of layer to have crusading against a virtual entertainment than one that is hyperreal, or simulacra.

He is against a medium that some could argue is composed of simulacra (simulacri?), says things that we don't believe are true and people don't believe that he actually said the things people attribute to him.

Jack Thomson: Postmodern Attorney. You don't have to believe in him because he doesn't believe in you.

KISS the Painkiller

OK, I've been rather busy with school. However, since I built a new computer a month ago, I certainly have found some time to give it a workout.

I've finished Doom 3. It was enjoyable. I jumped quite a bit. Perhaps I am all id (ha! I made a joke!) but I found it satisfying. At least one review I read lamented that the horror was only jumping out of the closet at you style and not psychological in nature. Too bad. I like things jumping out at me. Maybe I'm jaded from killing so many sprites and polygons, but psychological horror doesn't creep me out that much. I like gore.

Unfortunately, I hate cut scenes. Why? Why? Why? I don't want some damn cut scene to show me the monster. I want to see the monster myself.

I have moved on to Painkiller. I enjoy it. The pure mayhem is fun. The gameplay is a bit simplistic and arcade-y, which is a nice change of pace. There ain't no reading of memos or combinations to remember, just monsters to chop up. Sorry story people, there is something to be said for just running around killing bad guys. I don't know what the bad guys in Painkiller are supposed to be, and I don't really care. I mean there are skeletons in suits of armor. What is their motivation? What is their backstory? I don't care. They are tying to kill me, ergo I will shoot and chop them into little bits.

While some have compared Painkiller to Blood or Serious Sam, it reminds me most of KISS: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child. The KISS game was actually really fun -- even if, like me, you don't wish to rock and roll every night and/or party every day. The mayhem and weird weapons and shooting are all good mindless fun. I give them both nine thumbs up. Now, don't ask me what the story of the KISS game is, because I have no idea.

I am l33t!!!!

I'm posting this on my l33t new system amd 64 3500+, ATI radion x800 pro. I've only got 512 ram currently since the other stick of 512 i have prevents teh machine from booting. So I need to order some of that "mached pair" stuff.

But my system is l33t enough to play Doom3! So yes, contrary to a prior post, I bought Doom 3 (unfortunatly, the Ban Doom site doesn't seem to be up any longer).

The first thing I noticed about Doom 3 was how little I noticed the graphics. They because instantly naturalized for me. Of course I had seen lots of screenshots before playing it, but I was surprized that I wasn't really wowed by the graphics. They are, of course, awesome, but the game comes on and that's what it looks like, and I just sort of acccept that. It is only when I consciously compare it to other games, that I notice the graphics.

The second thing I noticed was the damn cut scenes! AARRGGGHHH!!!! Why? Why? Why? That was the first thing I was afraid of those years ago when we first saw some E3 footage. As of yet, aside from teh introductory cut scene, I really haven't seen any reason why they have to go to these stupid cut scenes to either advance the plot or show the monster crawling out of the wall. If I care about teh plot, I will look at the people talking. There are planty of monsters jumping out that scare me. Perhpas the monster slowly coming out at me is supposed to be some sort of slow reveal/paralyzed by fear type of thing. Unfortunatly, the only thing it does for me is piss me off when I can see the damn (see, damn, demons. It isn't cussing if they really are damned!) monster coming at me and I can't shoot at it or back away from it and I have to act the isntant they give me back control. But I don't know when they will deem to allow me to control the character again, so I'm constantly impatient and worrying it will take half a second for me to react to being a player and not a watcher and the stupid cut scene will cost me some health. CU7 5C3N35 R teh 5UCK!!!!

Young Lust

With the imminent release of DooM 3, I, like a lot of people, am thinking of upgrading my computer. I've currently got an Athlon 1900+ based home-built system. I am totally lusting after these newer systems. I always had overheating issues with this computer, so I do not think I will be building my own this time and so those small form-factor LAN party cases are SO tempting! However, I am going to try to wait a month or so.

In investigating from whom I am going to buy from, I am amazed at all the fancy cases and lighted cases and other flashy stuff that is on the market today. There are some obvious crossovers between the case-mod community and the muscle car guys (even down to using many of the same concepts and techniques). However, there is also a lot of model building involved with people making cases out of ammo boxes, and putting coffeemakers into cases.

The common thread in these similarities is that gaming, cars, and model building are all hobbies dominated by men. It is interesting to see how videogame players keep finding ways to perform their masculinity despite the stereotype of gamers as nerdy and rather unmasculine. So even we dorks can find activities that women are traditionally not active in! So this performing of masculinity is somewhat doubly bound, although case modding mimics car customizing, I don't really think that having a tricked out computer has the same cultural capital in the larger non-gaming society as having a tricked out car.

I guess I'm a bit more old school though. I don't want my case to have a window or to glow. I want my computer to look bland an unimportant but have a kickin' motor under the hood.

No Doom For Me!

Due to some disturbing information I have recently learned about, I will not be purchasing Doom 3. Won't someone think ot the children?!?!

I hear they like it when you call 'em chicks...

A few days ago, Slashdot had a discussion titled, "Recruit More Women Developers, Attract Women Gamers?" which was mentioning the MSNBC article, "Gaming tries to shed boys' club image" which discusses the attempt to get more women developing games so that more women will buy them. Of course a lot of the comments on Slashdot amounted to "make games that are fun, everyone likes fun" which totally misses the point that what is fun for one person isn't fun for everyone. One of the posters brought up the Pew Internet study on college gamers (pdf file) but that study might be a bit misleading. I responded:

Actually I was at a conference back in April and one of the presentations discussed studies of the gender of gamers, and I think they referred to that Pew study specifically but I may be misremembering. Anyway they said that those studies tend to be a bit misleading because in general men and women tend to play different kinds of games, for different reasons and for different lengths of time. They said that women tend to play more card games and things like bejeweled online while men tend to play more of the retail buy in a box at the store and install games. Also they said that men tend to play for fun while women tend to play more out of boredom. Finally they said that men tend to play online for longer periods of time than women.

Now of course these are all generalizations and there are certainly exceptions, but I buy what they were saying and so we need to take studies about gender in gaming with a grain of salt to make sure that they aren't whitewashing over some real differences.

Now the reason why I'm posting this isn't because what I said was really insightful or anything, but because of the response I got. A woman gamer wrote a really great response to my post in which she discusses her thoughts on women and gaming. Go read it. It's really interesting.

FInally before I go, go look at that MSNBC article again. Notice that first picture? While the gaming industry may be trying to attract more women, at least the people who picked the pictures for this article are still thinking in very traditional ways. "Let's put up a picture of a game that women would be interested in!" "Oh, I know! They like the Sims! Let's put up a picture talking about kissing and boys and all the yucky icky stuff girls like. Eeeww I hope I don't get cooties from posting this!"

addicted to following the news on addiction...

There are a couple more stories on the addiction within the game Achaea. Terra Nova points to an article on Wired called Virtual Dopers Crave High Scores that has a couple quotes from the developers. It is an interesting read.

addiction

Over at games.slashdot.org there is a story entitled, "Drug Addiction Integrated Into Achaea MUD" that while doesn't have many details, talks about an interesting gameplay element that the MUD has recently added. While not the first online game to add adiction (according to a couple posters over at slashdot A Tale in the Desert also has addictive drugs.

The addition of addictive drugs which have negative consequences is an interesting subject. What is the purpose of having such a thing in a game? Is it to lend it a feeling of reality, to make the gameplay experience more realistic? Is it moralistic and attempting to teach us the drugs are bad? Does it turn addiction into entertainment?

I've not played either game, so I don't know how the drug addiction is implimented except from what is written over at slashdot, and I can't offer any great insite. However it is certainly worth pondering what this does to the gameplay experience, especially in a world where we are told that some drugs are bad and yet every other commercial is for a drug that we are supposed to ask our doctor about. Are there good drugs in these worlds? Are there fairly harmless stimulants? As the games we play become more complex, there are more complex question that need to be asked.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

The ESA has released their annual "Essential Facts" brochure (PDF file) with their statistics about who is doing what in regards to videogames. Yet again this year there is not one word of race. It would be nice if someone somewhere with the resources would do a study to see what the racial breakdown of videogame players is. It would also be nice if the ESA would release their raw data. I can understand why they don't because this is designed for the general public, but it would certainly be nice to have more specifics on the data. I mean these numbers are already suspect in my mind because they come from the industry and so are spun in the best possible way. However, without even knowing how the data was gathered, what questions were asked, or how the questions were phrased, the data is next to worthless for anything by a soundbite -- which again, is what it is designed for. It is just kind of sad that the most complete statistical data on the gaming industry is unacessable to the people who are really the most interested in it.

lazy summer days...

I made it through my first year of my phd. I've got an incomplete, but I'm working on it, i swear!
So E3 has started. Amazingly, I am soooooooooo unimpressed by what I've seen today. It seems like there is a huge concentration on graphics and physics. Not a whole lot of talk about gameplay going on...
Oh well, no exciting new games just means more time to catch up on my work.

Artisans and craftsmen (and craftswomen)

There's an article going around about on of the founders of Bungie starting his own studio. In the article (ok, its more of a press release, really) he says that he is going to outsourse a lot of the development. THe article ends with an interesting quote:

"It's kind of broken," Seropian told Reuters, speaking about the current model of development used by the bulk of publishers. "It's kind of antiquated - it's how they were making films in the '30s."

Well, I don't think that is really the "problem" (if there is one). The difficulty isn't that videogames are made like 1930's films. It is like they are made like 1730's items -- that is, by hand and not mechanical reproduction. I left this message about it over on Slashdot:

I don't think this will be as cost effective as one might think. Basically the videogame industry is still in the pre-industrial artisanal (sp?) era. Everything is still made by hand. If you want to make a chair, you still need to build the chair piece by piece. There is no equivalent to a factory-made chair. So rather than the unskilled labor we now have in most factories, we have skilled craftsmen and artists.

Until technology exists for the equivalent of unskilled labor to design the chairs, wheels, and furniture of a gaming world, the costs of developing games will still be high.

I forsee a day soon when a start up will open that specializes in creating the props of vidoegame worlds so that game designers will have a situation similar to that of the players of the Sims where they have a wide variety of chairs (or whatever) to pick from and they just plop it into the game pre-fab without having to employ someone to exclusively make such props.

Now certainly there is something to say for props that are build explicitly for the game. They provide a sense of stylistic unity. But I really do see a day when pre-fab props will come to be used.

EA Continues to sink its claws into university life...

So not only is EA paying some guy to cover the campus in stickers, but now they are coming here officially. Their "Games Live Tour" is coming to IU (pdf file).
They will be here tomorrow. I plan on going. Hopefully, I will get to talk to one of the people running this show and get some info on just how much money is wrapped up in this. It amazes me the amount of money that EA seems to be wrapping up in just this campus. One would think that videogames had turned into a business if one didn't know better...

I can't escape it!!!

OK, this whole "I'm researching videogames" thing has started to get to me. I've been on spring break this week (whooo party! ...or not) and I have been visiting friends who don't own videogames (I know, I know, it is hard to believe that a) there are such people and b) that I, of all people, would be friends enough with them, but it is true). Now I"m home and trying to get caught up on school work. All day I've been looking at my lonely X-Box and thinking -- "Man, I really should play a little bit. It's been a week since I've played" but not out of some (at least overt) addiction, but out of obligation, like I am somehow obligated to play.
I know I've talked about it before, but it is weird that a hobby has now become some sort of job. A great job, but it still feels weird.
Anyone else feel that way?

A shocking, I say shocking, revelation

I was doing some reading this morning and found out something I didn't know. We remember about the guy who shot Reagan back in the day, right? He did it to impress Jodie Foster. This story is pretty commonly known. Any time when they do a biography of Reagan they say this. While I was alive at the time, I didn't remember WHY shooting Reagan was supposed to impress Foster.

The reason was that he was imitating Taxi Driver. That little bit of info goes pretty unreported when we the assassination attempt is discussed, at least as far as I can tell. Certainly, I might just be out of the loop. Now if he had done it in imitation of a video game, you can gaurantee that bit of information would be mentioned every time.

Look at Columbine. When it first happened, it was often said that there were three things that the kids were imitating. Now, chances are, if you ask the person on the street they will only say videogames. However, at the time there were also comments made against Marilyn Manson (I think though that it might have been shown that they didn't even really listen to him) and the film, The Basketball Diaries in which there is a short scene where the star shoots some people in a school while wearing a trenchcoat.

It's funny how the film accusations have fallen to the side. Now, this may come as a shock, but I am beginning to suspect that the media might be just a little bit less fair and balanced than they would like us to think....

Go with the flow

There is some discussion of work and how we need a way of talking about fun. In thinking of this I have long said that we need think of playing videogames as a performative act. We need to stop looking at the games and start looking at the players. (I've been saying that for almost 3 years now! That is a lifetime in videogame studies!) The fun is in the players, not the game. While his work has been criticized and it has ventured close to new age self help territory, I think that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on "flow" can be of help in focusing on what goes on with the gamers and what is fun and how to talk about pleasure. I really recommend taking a look at Beyond Boredom and Anxiety for a way of thinking about pleasure and what happens when we are in the zone and why work sometimes is pleasurable.