The missing link

I know I'm a bit late on this one, but in my defense the only Zelda game I ever played was Ocarina of Time. However, I can't believe that they made Link right handed for the Wii version of the game! Miyamoto said:

Although Link is [traditionally] left-handed, at E3 we noticed people seemed to be using the right Wii controller to swing his sword. That's why we decided to make Link right-handed.

As a lefty I find this outrageous! Of course the funny thing is not that they chose to change it because most people are right handed, but that on the message boards I checked out there was always at least one person who said something like, "For the lefties, it isn't that hard to hold the Wiimote in your right hand." OK, let's assume that is true. Then why wouldn't it be just as easy for right handed people to use the Wiimote in your left??? Funny how that doesn't seem to get mentioned...

Lefties of the world unite!

Digg is being ruined by self-promotion and spam

This isn't really related to gaming, but it is something that i've noticed most in digg's gaming news section.

Back in the day I was a huge fan of ZDTV and then later TechTV so I've followed Digg pretty closely almost from the first time Kevin Rose mentioned it on the The Screen Savers.

When Digg first started it was a pretty good source of news and info. Lately, however, it seems like 99% of the stories submitted to the gaming news section are just lame asses who take a press release from Sony or Nintendo, put it on their crappy blog and submit the link to their crappy blog to digg. They don't submit stories from anyone else, and they don't digg or comment on anyone else's stories. OF course, if the people on digg would take ten seconds and look to see that a story was submitted from some site they never heard of, and that site is the only one the submitter ever submits, then the quality of digg might be a little better.

I realize that self submission isn't against the rules or or anything, but it is just lame. Do we really need fifteen submissions to some crappy blogs telling us what games are going to be on the Wii this week? Call me crazy but I think if your crappy blog was any good people would submit it for you... ...which is, of course, why my blog has never been submitted to digg.

There's a lot of good gaming news in diggs gaming section, which is why the new version of the site is going to have my digg feed in a sidebar, but even after the diggs there is still a lot of crap. Does anyone else agree with me or am I the only one?

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)

Video Game Violence is apparently the number one issue in this election???

It is highly interesting to see how videogames have become such an important issue. What we have here is not simply a failure to communicate, but a generation gap. Old people are statistically heavier voters. Older people are statistically less likely to play videogames. Old people get scared, vote against the person who didn't "protect the children." I can't wait for our gaming generation to get in power.

Since my last post about anti-violent videogame political ads it seems that the other issues have all but disappeared from the airwaves. I can't turn on a local channel without seeing one of those videogames are evil commercials. Of course it doesn't hurt that these ads are by National Republican Congressional Committee and not by a specific candidate. That way they can take money from a lot more places than just Indiana and pay for the ads and it also allows the candidates to have plausible deniability since they didn't "approve this message."

Last week I got a call from a political party talking about how one candidate voted against lowering taxes for families and things like that. Today, however, I just got a call about how bad it was to vote against laws for prohibiting the sale of violent videogames to children. I'm glad we got that war thing taken care of so that we can turn our attention to these important topics. Oddly enough, the call started off by saying how the opposition had been running negative ad campaigns and then went on to talk about how horrible the opposition candidate was! Irony be thy name!

Anyway, I asked the person what was wrong with voting against some stupid violent videogame law. She seemed stunned by that and repeated the questions, "Is there something wrong with voting against laws that would protect children from violent videogames?" I said, "Yeah, what's wrong with that?" She then said maybe the opposition was "out of touch with Hoosier values." I said I was a Hoosier and asked if she thought there was something wrong with my values. Then she hung up.

The ratings game...

In the April issue of Computer Gaming World, there were no ratings on the reviews. They wrote:

Its April, Fools!
As you flip through this issues reviews, you'll notice something. Yes, CGW is playing a cruel April Fools Day joke on impatient consumers everywhere: This months reviews come score free. Was Star Wars Empire at War worth the wait? Is Rainbow Six: Lockdown anything more than a lazy console port? And do you really need to play a game about the Winter Olympics?
You'll just have to read the full reviews to find out scores be damned. [....]
And if you believe this is crazy, just wait until you see next months all new Reviews section. Page 79

Then, in the May issue, Jeff Green Wrote:

NEW REVIEWS: ZERO STARS?
I'm old. How old am I? [....] I'm so old, I remember back when this magazine ran game reviews without any star ratings on them. From our humble beginnings in 1981 until June 1994 (thats 13 years, according to my calculator!) this magazine did not attach numeric scores to reviews. And when we finally started to, in July 1994, it incited an immediate firestorm of protest. You've sold out! readers cried. You've dumbed the magazine down! they sighed. You've made the text irrelevant! they whined. Over time, however, the protests died down (mostly), and the gaming public came to accept scores as a crucial aspect of a game review. Now, a games GameRankings.com average is often the only thing many gamers (and publishers and developers) even care about.
So its with much irony that the CGW mailbox now overflows with new protests from readers angry that we removed the scores last month. Why we did that may be a little clearer this month, as we reveal more of our ongoing strategy to reposition and redefine our editorial mission here in 2006. Or maybe it will be even less clear. What do I know? In any case, check out our new Viewpoint section [...] Page 10

Where the reviews used to be, they wrote:

Pardon Our Dust
WE JUST BROKE OUT OF THIS STUFFY OLD BOX. THIS month, your trusty Reviews section receives a revisit, complete with the shiny new Viewpoint moniker that tops this page. Name change aside, you should notice four very important changes to CGWs newly refocused opinion section:
1 More in-depth reviews. Reading the same old stuff six weeks after it hits the Internet just doesn't cut it anymore. Now, 1UP.com servers as our jumping-off point for longer, deeper reviews of the games you should be playing.
2 No more scores. Those of you who want your Cliffs Notes still get a verdict box with a short summary of the reviewers opinion but now the text speaks for itself. If you're really desperate, check out our new Reality Check page for a spread of other industry scores and see how they compare with what we say. Page 79

Personally, I didn't really care. One rating doesn't convince me to discourage me from buying a game. However, a funny thing happened as I flipped through the September issue of Computer Gaming World. They have started sneaking rankings back in.

In the Rise & Fall: Civilizations At War review Tom Chick starts off by mentioning another review with the phrase, "he says in his 9-out-of-10 review" and then a subsection heading for the review is, "Brother, Can You Spare a 7 Out Of 10?" (92, 93). Similarly, in Greg Kramer's review of City Life, there is a line which states, "Despite its oddities and rough edges, the game’s critical consensus remains positive, with most ratings hovering around 1UP’s strong 8 out of 10" (98).

Curious, I went to 1up.com and looked at their review of City Life and who wrote it? Why Greg Kramer! Curious, I looked at 1Up's review of Rise & Fall: Civilizations At War was written by Tom Chick (who gave it a 5 out of 10, so why the heading 7 out of 10??). The oddest review in the issue is Eric Neigher's review of Titan Quest which is basically a discussion of his 1Up review of Titan Quest..

What in the world is going on here? Are they simply pimping for 1Up.com? Or are they regretting eliminating the ratings and attempting to slip them back in?

My first assumption was the latter. I assumed they got so much hate mail they were attempting to satisfy people without appearing like they caved into pressure. However, I was curious to see if anyone else had noticed the hijinx occurring and found out that something even more starting was going on with CGW: they were being canceled/turned into a new magazine called: Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. So now, just like Playstation and X-Box have their official magazines, it looks like Windows will have their official magazine which employs much of the staff of Computer Gaming World.

It will be interesting to see if they retain the "no ratings" policy or if they use that opportunity to reinstate them. Honestly, however, I can't see a magazine with a name like Games for Windows: The Official Magazine being really popular or lasting too long. Who knows though. It will certainly be interesting to keep an eye on.

FIlms are inherently inferior to videogames!

The title of this post is meant as hyperbole. While there are exceptions where such comparisons are useful, I honestly believe that most comparisons between film and games are pointless. A great number of comparisons are simply people who don't play or understand games saying little more than, "These damn kids today! Why back in my day..." or people who do play games wanting to feel as if their pastime was valid in the eyes of those who don't play games. Personally, when it comes to entertainment, I don't really care what people think about the things I like. I mean, I'm basing my graduate school career on videogames and the last conference paper I presented was titled, "If You Don't Respect the Verbal Artistry of Professional Wrestling, I'll Kick Your Ass!" so it isn't as if I"m banging on the door of the gates of Art with a capital A begging to be let in.
However, a post on Shacknews with the title, "Steven Spielberg to Make Us Cry?" got me thinking about just how unfair such comparisons are. The article includes the Spielberg quote, "I think the real indicator [that games have become a storytelling art form] will be when somebody confesses that they cried at level 17. In light of the reposting of this quote and the fairly recent pontificating by Roger Ebert on how much films suck, I thought it might be fun to turn things around and see how well films come out when criticized using videogame standards...

I think that the real indicator that films have become a viceral art form is when someone feels a sense of accomplishment and pride for having finished watching a film. While it is true one may feel a sense of pride for having endured a film that is particularly bad or painful, until films can give viewers a sense of pride not from that enduring, but from the triumphant conclusion of the film, they simply will not be as good as videogames.
While films are quire successful in economic term -- although people often claim that videogames are a bigger business than the Hollywood film industry, that only discusses domestic box office sales. When one takes in international box office sales, DVD sales, and revenue from cable and the various licencing deals, Hollywood dwarfs the gaming industry -- films are simply not as viceral or as captivating as videogames. WHile there are films that can cause people to cry, to laugh, to be scared or other emotions, that sense of pride and accomplishment is lacking. Moreover, while there are films that people watch again and again, not even the most well loved film is watched as much or for as long a time as the most loved videogame. Online games from Counter-Strike, to Everquest were first released years ago and although they have both received subsequent upgrades, the core game remains and there are still thousands of people who play them hours a day on an almost daily basis. While devoting the equivalent of a 40+ hour workweek to a game may be a form of addiction, if one were to devote 40+ hours a week to watching the same film, it would surely be a sign of a much much deeper problem than any non-physical addiction such as gaming playing.
The fact that these games are online raises another point in which films are simply inferior entertainments to videogames. Such games, whether they are online or played via LAN or with consoles, are inherently social. The same cannot be said of films. While people often go to the theater and watch films in groups of friends or even strangers, in the vast majority of cases, the actual watching is done on an individual basis. ONe may not be alone but, at least in most western contexts, any sustantive communications with other people in the same room are minimal. In multiplayer games, communication is the key to success. These games build the kind of efficient and meaningful communication that films can only dream of. Numerous relationships in these games have resulted in marriage. It is difficult to imagine how two people that have never met before watching a film and had no contact outside of the time the film was being watched could fall in love.
Moreover, the fact that there are professional game playing teams indicates that playing these games could easily be said to develop teamwork. Again, I find it hard to imagine how watching films could be said to either require or develop teamwork if watched in the typical fashion. SImilarly, if one could imagine competitive film watching where people were paid simply on the basis of their film watching skills -- and not on how well they could write about having watched films --- then that person has a more creative imagination than I.
This is just a brief overview, but from this is should be clear why films are inherently inferior to videogames.

See how easy it is to totally ignore the merits of one medium when comparing it to another? I"m not attempting to say that such comparisons are entirely meritless because of this. I am attempting to say that while it is good to occasionally point out the failings or deficiencies of current videogames, it is not good to focus on those weakness to such an extent that we forget the things that current games are good at and that films are not the final word in entertainment.

You can lie about your age online? Oh no! What about the children?

Now that we have solved all the other problems of the world, the US government has once again turned to the most pressing issue of the day: videogames. This week "Politicians lash[ed] out at video game industry" and "Lawmakers slam[ed] FTC for video game actions." Most notable were the comments of Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky:

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Illinois Democrat and ranking member of the subcommittee, criticized Wal-Mart for the ease with which consumers under age 17 can buy explicit games on its Web site simply by checking a box certifying they are the proper age.
"That age verification is a joke," in an era when 13-year-olds can be issued credit cards and other children have access to their parents' cards, she said.

Yes, finally, an elected official takes on the real issues! If the Internet had been available when I was 17 I know that buying videogames would have been the first thing I would have done. Well, of course as a 17 year old, I would have been more interested in looking at porn, but luckilly, there isn't any of that online or anything...
However, if we accept for a minute that Rep. Schakowsky's concerns are valid, her complaint is still horribly misguided. Let's look at her statement again:

"That age verification is a joke," in an era when 13-year-olds can be issued credit cards and other children have access to their parents' cards, she said.

From that quote, it seems clear that Rep. Schakowsky feels that there is something wrong with 13-year-olds having credit cards. So what does she do? Does she attack the credit card companies? No, she attacks the businesses that accept credit cards. Now, I don't really care about credit cards, but look at her own logic. Kids having redit cards is bad, so we're going to attack companies that accept credit cards because the worst thing that kids will do with a credit card is buy a videogame. This just illustrates how sad our government has become. Instead of dealling with real issues, we are going to freak out about people buying videogames online. (insert your own joke about how this is a waste of time since the government is monitoring everything we do and knows everything we are doing anyway...)

Chamillionaire is such a poser

So yesterday I got up five or ten minutes before the top of the hour and rather than start watching the end of something, Ihit the music video channels. The first video I ran across was some crappy ballad, so I kept flipping and ran across Chamillionaire's Ridin' video (both links have sound). It was ok. That is untill her to to the lines: "Ride with a new chick, she like "Hold up." // Next to the Playstation controlla // There's a full clip in my pistola; // send a jacker into a coma.
However, the video clearly shows the "new chick" holding an Xbox controller. Nice one Chamillionaire. What a poser...

About that Showbizshow clip...

You know that post I made about David Spade's SHowbiz Show covering E3? Well, they didn't. Even though they advertised it in the teaser immediately before the show aired!
Never fear, however, the clip is online at Comedy Central's website.
You can view the Showbiz SHow's clip of E3 at that link or if you don't want to look at the ads you can watch the clip directly. It isn't all that great, but I can't leave my tens and tens of fans hanging!

Ashamed to be a gamer, but not ashamed of all my fellow gamers...

While I am still ashamed to be a gamer, I am happy to report that I'm not ashamed of my fellow gamers. Yesterday, the first Sin episode was released. I'm not done with it yet, but the first scene causes quite an impression. Apparently, the programmers at Ritual and/or Valve have spent too much time playing games like Dead or Alive because the first thing you see is the Elexis Sinclaire character bending over you with her breasts sloshing around as if they were water in a glass that is being violently shaken. I mean,not only do breasts not move like that anyway, but look at her, she obviously has a bra on, so there is really no reason for them to move around like that.
Thankfully, I'm not the only one who found that very odd. In the comments over at Bluesnews, at least two people had already posted about it. Now I don't feel like the lone voice or reason or the crazy man standing on the street corner yelling at people as they go by.
On the downside, however, in writing this post I did a search for "boob physics" and found that not only were the creepy boobs available in Half-Life 2, but I also found one of the most disturbing videos ever. It isn't pornographic or anything, but manages to simultaneously objectify a bunch of polygons, as well as ignore the effects of the violent actions performed in order to demonstrate that objectification. creepy. Call me crazy but I like my sexiness and literal violence as separate as possible...

That's some good empowering there boys...

Wonderland has a story about a new website attempting to "empower female gamers." This GirlsofCS seems to be nothing more than a Suicide Girls wannabe. One of the posters on Wonderland found that the site is owned by LANFusion where someone linked to a page on the GirlsofCS site where you can see the kind of "empowering" they are talking about. As I said over at Wonderland:

it doesn't look like anything but yet another nudie site to me. Skinny 18 year old white girls... yawn.
I don't see anything within the site itself that even talks about gaming.
If this is empowering, I don't want to see what unempowered looks like...

I should have picked an easier line of research!

I"m currently in a class on Hollywood masculinity so I'm writing about the Aliens versus Predator games. (OK, not all of them. Unfortunately, I don't have a Jaguar and I'm not really into RTS games.) However, to make my argument about the depictions of the different speicies and masculinity, I think I should rewatch the movies.
In this same class there are people wring about a movie they have chosen.
Now let me get this right, I have to play two games and an expansion pack AND watch seven movies for the same assignment they only have to watch one movie?!?!? Man, I am a moron!!! I should have been a film person!

Is It Just Me????

So once again, people are talking about videogame journalism and how horrible it is.

Reading these posts, however, it seems that people have very very different ideas of what "good" is. I know, I know, saying that taste is subjective is a pretty crazy idea! I'm not saying I'm some bastion of good taste. I liked the Doom movie after all...

Here was my comment on Slashdot:

Most of the comments here talk about horrible reviews, but is reviewing really journalism? Is Roger Ebert a journalist? Not to degrade reviewers. But do people really 100% trust one videogame review?

While I like reading reviews, I read videogame reviews the same way I read film reviews: with a grain of salt.

Maybe it is because of my research interests, but I'm a lot more interested in the non-review journalism such as articles that talk about trends in gaming or gaming culture. That is more of what I think of when I think about journalism instead of reviews.

What is most interesting is that one of the people Robin Hunicke mentioned as, "look[ing] beyond muzzle flashes, explosions and crisp sound" is also the same person that wrote what Something Awful called

...the most pretentious review ever written about anything.... You could write a gushing review of "Time Code" as a concrete poem shaped like a moebius strip and you would still be a galaxy away from Kieron's review of Darwinia.

Then there's everyone's favorite Escapist Magazine. Am I the only one that couldn't look bast the horrible pretentious layout? It may well be the best thing ever written about videogames, but I wouldn't know because I've never been able to read a single article because-- call me crazy -- but I hate having to click next every three words.

The thing that most frustrates me is that all the complaining about the state of videogame journalism seems to imply that somewhere out there there is some field of journalism that doesn't totally suck. Sure there are the exceptions and there are the rare good articles, but what are these people reading, listening to, or watching that they think that videogame journalism is some exception to the sad state of journalism? Complaining about horrible videogame journalism is like complaining about someone staining the couch cushion when the couch is sitting in the middle of a garbage dump. It may be accurate and a valid complaint, but it is kind of missing the point.

Game inspired by a tv show is released, so of course people write about how horrible videogames are...

Associated Press reporter Nathaniel Hernandez has written an article about Blitz: The League. It has gotten picked up by lots of papers. The version in the Chicago Sun-Times seems to be the most complete. Here's the first paragraph of that version of the article:

In a gritty new video game about a fictional football league, players cripple their opponents, gamble and use performance-enhancing supplements.

The article goes on to make some comparisons between the game and some current accusations brought against some players. The article isn't too bad, but it still mentions Mortal Kombat since that was known back in the day as a very controversial game.
The irony is, of course, that while the Blitz franchise has been around a long time, this version of "controversial" and "gritty" game was not originally going to be called, Blitz: The League, but Blitz: Playmakers, after the controversial ESPN show, Playmakers (warning: web site plays a stupid sound clip). Blitz was going to be called that, because one of the writers for the tv show worked on the game. So this controversial game is really an unofficial adaptation of a controversial tv show. Funny how the article spent all this time talking about the various and sundry aspects of the game and didn't mention that...

I say videogame, you say video game. what's the difference?

Over at Buzzcut, there is a post titled, "Videogames: Closing the Annoying Gap" which argues that "videogame" is preferable to "video game." I couldn't agree more. I've been thinking about this for a while and I just haven't gotten around to posting about it. It is quite annoying to always have to search for both terms. It is also equally annoying to do a Google search for "videogame" and see "Did you mean: video game" but search for "video game" and not be asked if I meant "videogame." (Of course there is also the term "computer game" which also gets used from time to time)

I think I prefer one word over two simply because it emphasizes the inseparability of the video from the game. I would actually prefer some sort of gamevideo term, but that isn't a word in english. I also think using "video game" sort of makes it two separate things and that they aren't a real synthesis of both.

The author of the buzzcut article argues that the difference is primarily geographic:

In the U.S., the habit it to write video games, as two words. In Europe, I usually see videogames.

I'm not sure I agree. I think the difference is deeper than that. Take a look at these search results on Google Scholar: "videogame" and "video game." See a pattern in the results? Most of the search results for "videogame" are people who are actually researching videogames. On the other hand, however, most of the search results for "video game" are people who are really researching violence and the effects of videogames.

I noticed this a few months ago and the reason I haven't posted on it earlier is that I am not quite sure what to make of it. I haven't taken enough rhetoric courses (and no, there are no media, film, ethnography, or performance pages even though they are supposed to be equal parts of the department. But I digress...) to understand what difference that space really means. I suspect that it has to do with a kind of literacy or even respect for the medium. Those who use "videogame" have a different kind of literacy regarding the medium that those who tend to prefer "video game" do not. (Roger Ebert used "video game" in his review of Doom which started the whole deal with him). Of course I'm not saying that just because you use one term over the other means that you are smarter or more serious about videogames. However, I do think that it is interesting that the vast majority of violence stuff uses the two word phrase while perhaps not the vast majority, but a majority nonetheless, uses the one word phrase.

So anyone got any ideas? What is the meaning behind using one word over the other especially when they sound the same? This isn't like "terrorists" versus "freedom fighters" or "invasion of Iraq" or "liberation of Iraq" but I do think that it is a similar kind of thing going on. A rhetoritician! A rhetoritician! My blog for a rhetoritician!

Roger Ebert Appeals to Authority...

Since the last time Roger Ebert told us we were wasting our time playing videogames, his website has posted a couple pages of letters from gamers. Most of them tend to fall in the "but game X has a lot of text and cut scenes!"

Well, Ebert's Answer Man column appeared this morning with people still playing the same game and Ebert still using the same logic:

Q. Thank you for jump-starting a discussion about the relative artistic and critical merit of video games as compared to film and books. I do take issue when you argue that video games can never have the merit of a great film or novel. You say: "There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control."
Where you see a flaw, I see promise. Arguing that games are inherently inferior because books and movies are better at telling stories and leading us through an author-driven experience is begging the question. It's like saying that photography is better than painting because photos make more accurate visual records.
The invention of photography sparked a crisis in the world of painting: "Why should we paint if pictures can do it better?" But then painters figured out that there were lots of other things that they could do, that cameras can't. Now we see an enormous explosion of creativity in the world of painting. And another different explosion in the world of photography.
We agree that games are inherently different from films and books. I believe they are at their worst when they try to mimic films and books, and at their best when they exploit this difference to create experiences that films, books, and all the other art forms cannot. No one criticizes sculpture for failing to tell a story as well as a good movie.
Many people would agree with you that there aren't yet any games that rival the best films or books that you care to list. Game makers are only just beginning to understand that games are not films/books with action sequences. I think that you'll see that the more we work that out, the more we will find ways of creating meaningful artistic works that are unlike anything anyone's seen before.
Tim Maly, designer, Capybara Games, Toronto

A. If or when that happens, I hope I will approach it with an open mind. This debate has taken on a life of its own. In countless e-mails and on a dozen message boards, I've found that most of the professionals involved in video games are intelligent and thoughtful people like yourself. A large number of the video game players, alas, tell me "you suck" or inform me that I am too old. At 63, I prefer such synonyms as "wise" and "experienced."
Today I received a message from Professor David Bordwell (retired) of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who is generally thought of as the leading scholarly writer on film; the textbooks he has written by himself and with Kristin Thompson are used in a majority of the world's film classrooms. What he said was intriguing on a practical level:

"The last dissertation I'm directing is on video games as they compare to film. The guy is bright, so we let him do it. But he brought his games and game platform to my house to give me some experience on this medium. I lasted through 15 minutes of 'Simpson's Road Rage,' largely because my coordination is so poor. Even if I got good on the controls, what keeps me away is the level of commitment. The idea of spending hours at this boggles my mind.
"My student told me that the most sophisticated games require up to 100 hours to master. In 100 hours we can watch two Bollywood films or 50-plus Hollywood/ foreign features or 80 B-films or 750 Warner Bros. cartoons. Depending on how fast you read, in the same interval you can probably finish reading 20-30 books. Not to mention 25-35 operas or 100-120 symphonies. And that's just for one game! On the basis of my very limited experience, and given my tastes (a big part of the issue here), the problem with video games is that they're too much like life -- too much commitment for thin and often frustrating results."

So now we are down to quoting from someone who has spent their live devoted to studying film to say that film is better than videogames. Wow, a retired films scholar saying film is better than another medium, who saw that coming? Maybe I should ask the pope which religion is best? Moreover, he gets advice from Bordwell? While I'm sure that Bordwell has an open mind, it is just that.... zzzzzzz. Oh I'm sorry, I dozed off. Funny how that happens whenever I start thinking about Bordwell... OK, ok, that might be a bit harsh and a cheap joke (but not too far from the truth...)

But really, how much weight are we supposed to put behind the opinion of one films scholar. If one film scholar is that important, I can go call up Jim Naremore and get some quotes form him. I don't' think I need to since when I took a class form him I wrote about videogames and we talked for about half an hour about them and he seemed really interested in them. Not once did he tell me how foolish I was for taking all this time playing games when I could be reading Dickens....

Of course the whole "it takes a lot of time to get into videogames" is total hogwash. Recently, IU had a Godard film festival (crappy flash and sound a tthat link) that was put on by our department and I went to an hour long talk. Wow, obviously I haven't spent enough time studying film to understand that crap. They showed some clips and if I had to sit through an entire Godard film I think I would spoon my eyes out. Clearly there is some sort of literacy there that takes hours and hours to learn. I find it ironic for Bordwell to say he doesn't have time to play a videogame when he presumably has time to sit through things like I saw at that colloquiuum...

All I really have to say is that if we are going to start appealing to famous scholars to defend our taste, then people need to go read what should be the starting point on taste: Bourdieu's book, Distinction. Appealing to elitists by claiming that your favorite thing has similarities to their favorite elite medium ain't going to cut it. Elitists like elitism. Nothing we downtrodden masses have to say is going to change their minds. Moreover, claiming that *someday* *maybe* videogames will be as film-like as film or that we will have our own Shakespeare, is just lame.

When are films going to be as exhilarating as videogames? When will film produce their John Carmack? I mean, really, all these film guys do is pick up a camera and pull the trigger. Carmack reinvents the equipment we use to make a videogame every single time he makes a game. Let me know why a filmmaker develops his or her own camera, lighting, actors, physics, and lets the viewer star in it. Then film might be as inherently good as videogames....

Roger Ebert Gives Videogames Thumbs Down.

Over at Shacknews, there is a post titled, "Ebert on Video Games: They are Inferior" which basically talks about Ebert dissing videogames without even playing them. In his review of the Doom movie, Ebert writes:

The movie has been "inspired by" the famous video game. No, I haven't played it, and I never will...

Wow, nice open mind you have there, Roger.
In his Answer Man column, the debate over the relative merits of videogames has continued with readers writing in attempting to defend videogames, and Ebert basically saying that he doesn't know anything about them, but because he doesn't know anything about them, that must mean they suck.
The October 30, 2005 Answer Man column begins with this Q and A:

Q. If "Doom" were just another action thriller, then I would have to say you were too generous by giving it one star. The movie frankly deserves zero stars. But is not just a movie. "Doom" was to games what "Rashomon" was to movies. It invented a way of showing something that had never been done before -- what you call the "point-of-view shot looking forward over the barrel of a large weapon."

"Doom" the movie is a tribute to this seminal event. This movie isn't about clever camera angles, witty dialogue or subtle directorial touches. "Doom" has no pretensions, aspirations or delusions about what it is about. You aren't supposed to wonder about the origins of mankind as you walk out of the theater. "Doom" the movie is "Doom" the game brought to the screen without messing around too much with the original. "Doom" works as a tribute because it fails so utterly as a movie. There is a reason so many video game-based movies suck: They are fundamentally different forms of representation. Thus by being faithful to the game, the movie pisses off the critic and pleases the gamer.

Vikram Keskar, Kirksville, Mo.

A. With friends like you, what does "Doom" need with critics? Surveys indeed show that more than half the movie's opening-weekend viewers had played the game. I suppose they got what they were expecting. I am a believer in the value-added concept of filmmaking, in which a movie supplies something that a video game does not. Seen as a moviegoing experience, this was not a good one. There are specialist sites on the Web devoted to video games, and they review movies on their terms. I review them on mine. As long as there is a great movie unseen or a great book unread, I will continue to be unable to find the time to play video games.

Darn those "specialist sites on the Web" and their reviews of movies...
The critique of videogames continues in the November 13, 2005 Answer Man column:

Q. I've been a gamer since I was very young, and I haven't been satisfied with most of the movies based on video games, with the exception of the first "Mortal Kombat" and "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." These were successful as films because they did not try to be a tribute to the game, but films in their own right.

I have not seen "Doom," but don't plan to, nor do I think that it's fair to say that it pleases all gamers. Some of us appreciate film, too. That said, I was surprised at your denial of video games as a worthwhile use of your time. Are you implying that books and film are better mediums, or just better uses of your time?

Films and books have their scabs, as do games, but there are beautiful examples of video games out there -- see "Shadow of the Colossus," "Rez" or the forthcoming "PeaceMaker."

Josh Fishburn, Denver

A. I believe books and films are better mediums, and better uses of my time. But how can I say that when I admit I am unfamiliar with video games? Because I have recently seen classic films by Fassbinder, Ozu, Herzog, Scorsese and Kurosawa, and have recently read novels by Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, Bellow, Nabokov and Hugo, and if there were video games in the same league, someone somewhere who was familiar with the best work in all three mediums would have made a convincing argument in their defense.

That's good thinkering there Roger. It is nice to know that Roger Ebert is omniscient and knows what everyone everywhere has done...
Although in the same column, he defends Dark City, a film I found to be incredibly silly and lame, so what does he know?
Not content to let the issue go, the November 27, 2005 Answer Man column contains yet another Q and A:

Q. I was saddened to read that you consider video games an inherently inferior medium to film and literature, despite your admitted lack of familiarity with the great works of the medium. This strikes me as especially perplexing, given how receptive you have been in the past to other oft-maligned media such as comic books and animation. Was not film itself once a new field of art? Did it not also take decades for its academic respectability to be recognized?

There are already countless serious studies on game theory and criticism available, including Mark S. Meadows' Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative, Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, and Mark J.P. Wolf's The Medium of the Video Game, to name a few.

I hold out hope that you will take the time to broaden your experience with games beyond the trashy, artless "adaptations" that pollute our movie theaters, and let you discover the true wonder of this emerging medium, just as you have so passionately helped me to appreciate the greatness of many wonderful films.

Andrew Davis, St. Cloud, Minn.

A. Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.

Well, there we go, "videogames represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultures, civilized and empathetic." Even though the letter writer lists a couple of books I have no love for, Roger ignores them and says that he doesn't know of anyone who has cited a game "worthy" of his high level.

You know, I"m not fan of "art" because I've read Bourdieu and hate the smell of elitism in the morning. However, Roger Ebert goes beyond mere Auteur theory and venturing into pure elitism land. Of course, I tend to get feisty when I think people are being elitist. So it isn't his denying the artistry of videogames that I dislike, it is his pure illogical snobbery about it. Of course, this is why I am opposed to people getting into the art thing. Some people just don't get it and no matter how much we try, then never will. Pointing out cinematic games isn't going to do it. As I said in my comment over at shacknews, "art" is just as meaningful a term as "beautiful." We each have our own notions of what is or isn't beautiful and we can argue about that definition without ever coming to a satisfying definition.

I hope that gamers will let this go and not go after Ebert. He's never going to change his mind and we don't need someone else taking Thompson's side. Let Roger read his literature and watch his cinema. A friend of the devil may be a friend of mine, but someone who doesn't like Doom is no friend of mine.

That Damned Biased Mainstream Media!!!

I guess those who complain about how biased the media is might have a point. The big news in videogames is, of course, the Jack Thompson Grand Theft Auto is a Murder Simulator, Devin Moore Video Game Violence Made Me Do It Case of Strickland vs. Sony. I've already covered 60 Minutes's horrible story about the case. In that story, I noted that Ed Bradley hadn't even bothered to put Thompson's name into google to find out about Thompson's "colorful" history. Now, we have an even more egregious example of the portrayal of videogames in media.

Game Politics has been doing a great job of covering the case and they link to Tuscaloosa News who has two articles covering the case, "Attorney is subject in 'video game' case" and "Lawyer pushes to have standing in video game lawsuit" (stupid registration required, unless you head over to BugMeNot). The second story also links to a short videoclip of a local televison channel's coverage, which they call, "Lawsuit Against Video Game Makers Continuing In Fayette." All of these stories are mainly concerned with what is currently going on in the lawsuit, which is a challenge over Thompson's ability to try the case. He is a member of the Florida Bar, and since the trial is taking place in Alabama, he has to get special permission to try the case there. So because of his numerous inflammatory press releases and hijinx with Penny Arcade, the defense is trying to get him removed from his case.

The story has been picked up by the Associated Press and is called, "Judge Asked to Dismiss Video Game Civil Suit and is said to be based on "information from: The Tuscaloosa News." The funny thing is, nowhere in the AP story is it mentioned that the case is currently centered on Thompson himself. Oddly, the AP story does include an anti-videogame quote from Thompson.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't be that big of a deal. The AP edits down stories all the time. In this case, however, the AP has completely changed the message of the story, distorting it so that they are only concerned with the dismissal of the case, and not the question of Thompson, himself. Someone said, "No, we don't care that this guy is being accused of being sensationalist and unfit to be involved in this case, we just want to get a quote:

"These Grand Theft Auto games are unique," lawyer Jack Thompson of Miami argued on behalf of the victims' families. "They are murder simulators. The only thought they convey is how to murder people and how to enjoy killing."

So now I ask you, if videogames can't even be fairly represented in a story that was originally about how a guy is sensationalistically misrepresenting videogames, then what hope is there?

So how about that internet/book synergy...

Once there was book called First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game and they had a pretty cool idea where people could respond to it online and in the book they put the url's to the website.
Ummmm, yeah... ...how's that working out??? If anyone has any idea when the site will be back up, or where the responses can be found give me a shoutout.

Does the APA know good science if it hit them in the head?

I know I said I was taking a break from videogame violence stuff, but every time I ttry to get out, they pull me back in...

It seems that the American Psychological Association is in full press release frenzy. First off, I wonder why they bother. Every year they have their convention which is followed by a bunch of press releases. Is there the thought that this serves the public interest, or is this simply an association trying to hype themselves and prove that there is a reason for their existance?

Regardless, like clockwork, they have released a press release about a paper delivered at the conference and resolution about videogame violence. Of course it have been covered by tons of web sites. On Slashdot, there was much discussion about videogame violence. Always currious, this is the post I made:

I took about five minutes and went to the APA's website and found that this great new study isn't based on original research, but, according to the APA's press release is simply a review of the research. So this "news" isn't anything new at all. And, if you bother to read the subtitle of the press release, it says, "Boys Play Games Longer and May Be More Vulnerable to Increases in Aggressive Behavior." Note the use of the word "may."

If you read through the press release, we find that the lit review is presented by "Jessica Nicoll, B.A., and Kevin M. Kieffer, Ph.D., of Saint Leo University." Those in academia know that it is kind of unusual for a prof to collaborate on a paper with an undergrad. Looking at his webpage I didn't see any paper that seem remotely close to violence or media effects stuff. THe press release says they are from St. Leo, so a search of their website finds that on April 21, 2005 Jessica Nicoll gave a paper called "Violence in Video Games: A Review of the Empirical Literature" (page looks like ass in Firefox). That panel was chaired by Dr. Kevin Kieffer. So, unless the paper underwent serious revision between then and when it was given at the APA, this is really Jessica Nicoll's paper.

That's right, this paper that is getting a press release and all sorts of media attention is the work of an undergrad. While it is wrong to judge the quality of the paper without having read it, it seems safe to say that *gasp* just maybe this is being blown out of porportion a little bit...

This post says that she is a graduate student but I didn't find any evidence of that and all indications are that the original April 21, 2005 paper was given when she was an undergrad.

This seems especially true when WebMD quotes Kieffer as saying

"The bottom line is we see three things," Kieffer tells WebMD. One is short-term change toward more aggressive behavior. Two, there are gender differences: Boys play more often and they are more likely to be at risk of behavior changes. And three, some more vulnerable kids are drawn to these games -- kids who are already more violent, and those with low self-esteem."

...none of which sounds all that groundbreaking to me and pretty tame.

Furthermore, this post links to the APA's "Resolution on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media." If you look at the press release about that resolution you will see that at the bottom is states:

Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media: Elizabeth Carll, PhD, and Dorothy Singer, EdD co-chairs; Craig Anderson, PhD, Brad Bushman, PhD, Karen Dill, PhD and Lilli Friedland, PhD.

As this post points out, If you look at the resolution's references we see 3 papers authors by Elizabeth Carll, 4 by Dorothy Singer, 6 by Craig Anderson, 5 by Brad Bushman, and 2 by Karen Dill. OF all the people on the committee, Lilli Friedland is the only one that has not listed as a reference for the ill effects of videogames. One more cynical than I might think that these people have an agenda or something... (And this doesn't even mention that they start the resolution stating, "...decades of social science research reveals the strong influence of televised violence on the aggressive behavior of children and youth.." as if were a given fact that too much tv makes you violent.)

Oh well, I suppose I should be thankfull that they didn't bring up the old myth of rape in Grand Theft Auto since there is no rape in GTA...

The Last Word on the Last Word on the Ludology/Narratology Debate Debate

While I was glad that it was by no means the central issue of DiGRA, the Ludology vs. Narratology debate was still going on. As the title of my blog post attempts to suggest, we have already had more than one paper or presentation that attempted to be the "Last Word" on the debate, which of course signals that despite the best intentions, we haven't reached the last word on narratology vs. ludology yet. As such, I thought it might be good for me, if no one else, to lay out my own journey through games studies and how I got to be where I am today.

LIke most people who study videogames, I have played them more or less all my life -- we had a Pong machine when I was a very young kid (actually, I'm fairly certain it was one of a million knock-offs and not an official Pong machine) and I've played games ever since. WHile the first console may be different for other people, I'm sure the majority of us have similar journeys, so I won't bore anyone with that. What I've learned from talking to people at DiGRA, was that out academic journey to games studies is unique for each person, and that is what I'm going to talk about.

As an undergrad at Ball State University, I was an English major and a Math minor and while I liked reading the classics and found pleasure in the problem solving of Math, I was a fairly unremarkable student. I was much more interested in genre fiction such as sci-fi, sword and sorcery, and pulps as well as comic books. The point of this is to say that I've read many of the classics, and I've got a better than average math background. I'm no expert on narratology, but I've got a shelf full of Norton anthologies that are gathering dust.

In one class, we read White Noise by Don Delillo which was inspired by Bowling Green's Department of Popular Culture. While the book kind of satirized the department, it sounded really fun, so when I realized that I didn't want to be a high school teacher, I applied to that program and got in.

At Bowling Green, I spent the first semester kind of trying to keep my head above water while I took the mandatory 6 credit hour theory class that threw me head first into cultural studies stuff. I had originally thought I was going to do my Master's thesis on comic books, but I was a bit dissatisfied with that. I finally figured out that I wanted to write about videogames and began to look around for anything written about them. That's when I ran into the Ludology vs. Narratology thing.

At first I was really attracted to Ludology simply because my English background had totally burned me out on narrative. I still often say, only partially in jest, that plot is for losers. I'm all about spectacle. Give me kicking, shooting, lasers or zombies over some deep story any day of the week. So I knew I wasn't a narratologist, so I thought I was a ludologist. Now I'm not so sure. I don't think I'm either...

In the Department of Popular Culture, one of the other requirements was a Folklore class. While I found the old -- mostly narrative centered and thinking about origins of folk tales and such -- to be very boring, the more modern incarnations of folklore such as that practiced by Greertz and Turner to be really interesting. That's when I realized that I was really interested in people a lot more than I was in videogames. Here at IU, I'm in the Department of Communication and Culture and there is a Performance and Ethnography component and that has only reinforced my opinion that people is where it is at. Which is why I am not totally satisfied with ludology.

Unlike any other medium, videogames are really only complete when the consumer is engaged in them. Film and Books and Movies are technically the same for every person, even if we the consumer always consume them differently, but videogames aren't. So if we don't talk about the player, then how can we be talking about videogames? This is why I am becoming more and more tired of the ludology vs. narratology debate. In doing a quick search through some of the papers in this debate, the word "player" is conspicuously rare. You can talk about stories and game structures all you want, but maybe I'm just crazy, but when I'm playing I'm not worrying about the story. I'm enjoying the experience. While thinking about stories in games and structures of games certainly is important, centering on it to the exclusion of the player seems overly narrow to me.

I think the main frustration that I have with this debate is that, like many debates, it tends to act as if these two approaches are the only game in town. Those of us that are advocating other approaches don't seem to have a place in the debate. I'm not a narratologist, and I'm fairly certain I'm not a ludologist. I'm an ethnographer and a student of popular culture and youth culture. Perhaps if we really could get to the last word in the debate then those of us that aren't interested in EITHER option wouldn't have to nod politely whenever it comes up.

Still ashamed to be a gamer...

Unfortunately, little seems to have changed since I first announced that I was ashamed to be a gamer. While I haven't seen any magazines as gratuitous as those, the spectacle of E3 has brought it's fiar share of shame.

Over at Games.Slashdot.org they had a link posted to GameGal.com's column on their 2005 E3 Hall of Shame in which the have pictures of a few of the "Both Babes" they found most offensive (The also have a rundown of their Historic Hall of Shame features "Booth Babes" of years goine by).

I'm not so ashamed by having "Booth Babes" pimping the games, as I am by the negative reaction to the article that many of the posters on Slashdot had to the idea that there *might* be something wrong with having "Booth Babes" to sell your product and how hard people try to justify it. It is funny to see shuch a gorup of people that are so quick to judge others as sheep refuse to stip and think that maybe there might be another way to get people interested in your games...

..of course that is only once you get past the lengthy discussion on how much money strippers make...

Oh goody...

Watching the Jane Pauly show on "videogame addiction" and, oh joy, they have David Walsh on. Guess what, he says that playing online is a new thing! I guess I was halucinating back in 1992 when Doom came out and I thought I was playing online... (and before anyone says it, I know Doom wasn't the first game to have online multiplayer, but it was the first game I played online)

60 minutes ...for me to poop on!

Oh you just know I got something to say about our friend Jack Thompson's appearance on 60 Minutes last week in a story about how evil Grand Theft Auto is. Although Cathode Tan has done a far more complete job of dissection the (il)logic of Jack Thompson Postmodern Attorney.

I just expect Jack Thompson to say that videogames are evil. What I don't expect is for 60 Minutes, allegedly one of the most respected new programs on the American airwaves, to do a story on videogame violence without any real opposing side being presented or without seeming to stop and question the legitimacy of Thompson who has had a long history of harassing Janet Reno as well as a Miami DJ who finally had to take out a restraining order against him. If only 60 Minutes could have spent some time doing research. I know that typing lawyer "Jack Thompson" into google is really tough, but I'm sure they could get an intern to do it or something.

Then there is also the fact that Ed Bradley, he with the hip earring, didn't seem to bother playing Grand Theft Auto, but just watched someone play it. So does that mean I can just read the screenplay of a film and say that is the same as having seen the film? Once again, if only 60 Minutes could get some interns to take an hour or so to teach Ed Bradley how to play a game.

Now I don't want to say that 60 Minutes is for old people who like to say things like, "Those damn kids these days!" but it certainly seems like the only purpose of this story is just to scare people. No fact checking seems to have been done. No verification of the authority of the accusations. The only person they talked to was from the ESA and didn't do much to defend himself.

If 60 Minutes is one of the most respected television news programs, then television news is nothing more than a bunch of sloppy fear mongers who are out of touch with reality. Maybe that's the real story 60 Minutes was running last week...

I Hate Social Scientists

My research involves ethnography and my PhD minor is Anthropology. As such, I've sent a lot of time in classes talking about the role of the researcher and how the researcher brings biases and assumptions to the study. Apparently, this type of self searching and introspection doesn't seem as evident for many people doing social science "experiments" especially our friends who seem convinced that videogames are bad. Even if the evidence doesn't support their hypothesis, it doesn't seem to stop them from finding a reason why even not finding anything wrong is a problem. The most recent case in point comes from a Washington Post article Students See Video Games As Harmless, Study Finds (registration required, but the story has since been picked up by other papers). Now, certainly, I can't be too hasty in condemning the research because after all, this is being filtered through the newspaper writer's writing and, therefore, might not accurately represent the findings or beliefs of the researcher. Additionally, I have my own agenda. I think I have made that clear. All that being said, the article paints a picture that is not very rosy.

The article talks about a research study conducted by University of Maryland professor Melanie Killen in which:

Researchers showed them images from a pair of over-the-top video games, one an "extreme" golf outing with strippers as caddies, the other a blood-and-entrails affair. Then, they were asked if what they had seen could be harmful.

First of all, they weren't really from videogames.

Killen and fellow researchers at the University of Maryland's Human Development Department interviewed more than 100 college students, whose average age was 19, for 45 minutes each. They showed them images from a series of imaginary video games, each one modeled on a familiar genre in the gaming industry.

Unfortunately, this little detail isn't mentioned until halfway through the article. Even so, "most subjects understood that the two over-the-top games depicted negative themes and harmful stereotypes."

One would think, great, this study proves that games know that there are negative stereotypes in games. Wrong. The very next sentence makes this abundantly clear, "But they failed to see how that content could harm them." The article ends with: "It's not like they were in denial about stereotypes," Killen said. "But they for some reason think it's not going to affect them." So there it is, the assumption that exposure to stereotypes, even if you know that they are negative stereotypes is harmful. Gamers can't win. Period. And it isn't like any other form of media has stereotypes or anything...

Of course, the article in and of itself is horrible and it is entirely possible that the biases that seem to come from Killen's research are from Daniel de Vise the article's author. In just one article, in addition to the findings of Killen and her team, de Vise manages to bring up Columbine, make a drive-by swipe at Grand Theft Auto, talk about how "photorealistic" the graphics have become, and quote Craig A. Anderson who has spent much of his academic career rehashing the same arguments that media and videogames in particular are evil and make you go crazy and kill people. Wow! All that is missing is a quote from Grossman and Thompson (either Jack or Robert)!

Real world ethics and gaming?

It is often debated whether videogames are ruining the morals and ethics of youth, however, I have a different dilemma in mind. The question at hand is, "Is it acceptable to buy a game or other form of entertainment if you know that one of the people who created it holds views that you strongly disagree with?"

This is not a hypothetical situation, but rather one based firmly in our modern world for it seems that noted science fiction writer Orson Scott Card, who wrote a column for Compute magazine for many years, has a few things in the works that are of interest to me. He is working on the Advent trilogy of games, the makers of A Tale in the Desert have just just announced a MMORPG based on one of his stories, and he is going to write Ultimate Iron Man for Marvel comics. And he is also an outspoken critic of homosexuality and gay marriage.

I'm not here to debate if he is right or wrong. I can't change your mind and you can't change mine. I also think he has every right to say and think whatever he wants. The question is, just because he is involved in something that sounds interesting, should I support him by giving him my money? I don't think I will, but I'm interested in what others think.

Stupid is as Stupid Does...

I bought myself a settop DVD recorder for Christmas and on my Christmas break I've been copying over to DVD all the videogame stuff I've recorded on VHS. Yesterday I watched some of the videogames are evil/moral panic stuff including First-Person Shooter (the internet archive has a cached copy of the site which seems to have gone offline, but because it was all fancy flash, not much is left of it) which details the story of the filmmaker and his attempt to understand his son who is obsessed with Counter-Strike. I know when I become a parent my first impulse will be to make a movie about my son rather than to try to actual join in and play the game myself.

I also watched PBS's The Video Game Revolution which, while a history and not nearly as moral panic-y as First Person Shooter, contains segments with a psychologist who closely monitors his son's videogame playing. That isn't a problem, because any responsible parent should do that. However, instead of actually, you know, turning off the game and controlling the situation, the father repeatedly tells the kid to turn it off while the kid whines and moans -- but continues to keep playing.

Now I'm not a parent, and it is certainly easy to gel like an expert when you aren't one yourself, but it seems odd that these two examples, in which both fathers have some sort of credibility lent to them by their profession, filmmaker and psychologist, both seem so clueless not only about videogames but how to parent. Is it any wonder then that people who seem so clueless about their children also seem so clueless about what they children are doing? I guess that is why we need people like Jack Thompson to try and save us from ourselves...

kids and games and fears

Just before Christmas, on my drive to my parents' house, I was listening to AM talk radio and ran across a station discussion kids playing poker. There were specifically discussing a 12/20/2004 story by Marco R. della Cava that appeared in USA Today under the title, "Poker at an early age: Not just another teen fad." According to the article:

Now kids as young as 10 are being dealt hands, often with parents' approval. Poker paraphernalia is being hawked everywhere from supermarkets to kiddie emporiums such as Toys R Us. All of which rings alarm bells for gambling addiction experts who warn that poker could be a slippery slope into other high-risk activities.

To those of use that play videogames, this sounds awfully familiar. From my experiences with teaching college undergrads, I can attest that among the men Texas Hold 'Em is very popular, almost as popular as videogames. As someone who worked in a casino for a little over 2 years, I've seen first hand the dangers of gambling. (Of course the fact that the article talks about the dangers of gambling doesn't stop at least the online version from linking to a page on how to play!)

On the radio show almost everyone agreed that there wasn't much harm in kids playing poker, and I more or less agree. However, it is interesting that there isn't more of an uproar about the evils of poker. There are a few stories, but I've yet to see anything about banning it or anything. It seems odd that a game where losing money is a built in part of the way the game works should raise fewer concerns in parents than a videogame which would have to have negative consequences when you weren't even playing it to be a danger.

However, if you read the article closely, you will noticed that it places the blame on poker's popularity squarely on television:

Why now? Flick on your TV. Expanding poker tournament coverage on ESPN, the Travel Channel and Bravo has had two compelling effects.

First, the slickly produced shows (ESPN employs more than 20 cameras, comparable to what's used on major sporting events) have taught kids the fundamentals of a wildly popular version of the game known as Texas Hold 'Em, which challenges players to incorporate face-up table cards into their hands.

Second, TV has granted quasi-celebrity status to a hip generation of poker stars who can lose tens of thousands with James Bond-like panache. Hey, why suffer through the indignities of Survivor when you can make a mint with a steely gaze and a bit of luck?

While no one can argue that TV is responsible for the current popularity of poker, it seems that rather than having some inherent appeal to it, poker is attractive because TV has made it that way. Now right or wrong, that is interesting because the subtext here seems to be that, once again, it is the media's fault! Why else would it matter that the show was "slickly produced?" By including that "fact," it seems that the author seems to hold an Adorno-esque opinion of television in that kids can be won over by the glitz and glamour of it, rather than having anything to do with the appeals of poker in and of itself.

The reason this is so interesting to me is that by discussing the effect of television, the author of the article, at least in part, makes this no so much that poker is evil, but that television is bad! So once again we have a subtext that implies that if it needs electricity, it is seductive and can manipulate us.

Oops, I did it again...

It seems like my last post has created a tempest in a teapot. Unlike the last time I got into a flamewar, I didn't think anyone would react so negatively, and I didn't even imply anyone was an elitist bastard this time!

While some of the comments are reasoned and sound, some sound like they protest too much. Sorry I implied that it was wierd to want to look at half naked videogame characters. And I'm sorry that my parents gave me a name that doesn't fit in with your normative idea of what a name should be.

I'm glad that Tore over at vesterblog sympathises with me, because from the comments I thought I might be the only one who thinks the whole deal is a little weird.

Seriously though, someone explain the appeal of half naked videogame characters when pictures of real people are so easilly available. Please.

Ashamed to be a Gamer

I was in the local bookstore today looking through the magazines and for teh first time in a long while I became ashamed to be a gamer. While looking through the rack of gaming mags I saw the following:

Now I had heard about the things with videogame characters appearing in Playboy, but a whole magazine devoted to videogame women? That's just sad. And a gaming mag using a woman to sell their mag? Is the game mag industry that competitive? So is there anyone out there willing to admit they bought either of these without a sense of shame or irony?

I Don't Really Love Gold(en Eye 2)

I got the chance to play a bit of the new GoldenEye yesterday. Now, I'm not some big hig muckety muck or anything, there was a booth set up on campus and had it, the new prince of persia, and a couple other games that aren't out yet. Unfortunatly, I was running late for class and was only able to play GoldenEye2 for like 5 minutes.

5 minutes of pure hell! Now this won't be a real preview or anything, but a mini-rant. I pretty much play FPS games every day. But I play them on computers. You know where this is going, right? IT took me the entire time to figure out how to control the damn game. FPS games simply aren't made for controlers. I never got the hang of Halo (especially driving the damn vehicals) and I certainly wasn't able to get the hang of GoldenEye2 in five minutes. I know the first one as well as Halo are insanely popular, but you can put it right up there with the Sims on the list of things about gaming that I don't get. If you get it, more power to you. I don't get the appeal of CSI or Law and Order either, so what kind of judge am I?

Other than that, the game pretty much looked like crud as well. It looked like is was using a first generation Lithtech engine. I only saw one level, so it might have been just that level. The rest may be beautiful as any other game on the market, but that level certainly wasn't.

Illiterate Fools!!!

I've been having weird dreams lately. The other night I woke up from a dream about either a dissertation defence or a question and answer session after giving a colloquium. After I had finished waking up screaming and making sure there weren't any professors hiding under my bed, I started thinking that so far in my graduate school career I've had to explain myself to people who had no experience with videogames. That is pretty crazy. When I get to the point of having to put together a dissertation committee I am going to force them to sit down and play some Counter-Strike.

But more than that, I have to think of how many pages I have had to fill with basic background information about videogames. As I lay there in be trying to fall back asleep, I realized that nothing is more of a testament to the fact that there really is a literacy to videogames than the fact that every time I go to write a paper for a class, I have to spend a few pages explaining what the hell it is that I'm talking about. So it is sort of a meta-commentary on the project that I am trying to make in and of itself. I'm trying to explain that there is a set of skills that one needs to develop to play most videogames and there I am having to give an education to my professors every time I write about it!

Associated with this act of explaining videogames to someone who doesn't play them is the moral dilemma: do I have to write this crap again, or should I just cut and paste it from another paper? I like to think I have a pretty strict moral code, so I usually end up re-inventing the wheel every time, but hopefully there will come a time when I won't have to do that.

Finally, since I mentioned a few posts ago that the videogames documentaries are creating a canon for the history of videogames, I am aware of the ways in which my constant rewriting of an explanation of videogames, I am engaging in my own canonization process in that I am canonizing what is a videogames and what people do in relationship to videogames. This, of course, has the risk of creating a narrow definition of videogames, gamers and the like, as well as putting blinders on to other forms of gaming. The moral of the story is that i'm sure I'm not the only one that goes through these dilemmas, and we all need to try to be aware of when we think of or write about videogames, we don't do so in too rote or narrow a fashion.

test post

testing this from my new l33t boxen

Is it art or is it commerce?

I'm in the midst of unpacking, so this might not make much sense. Be warned!

I've been thinking about the state of videogame theory. I was over at the fairly newly launched GameBlogs.org and realized that it seems that all those who study games really aren't studying the same thing. It seems there is a large amount of crossover between people who make games and academics. There are a lot of game makers who theorize and a lot of theorists who make games. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.

In one sense, the interaction between the two is a good thing. It lets each side see things from the other side. I'm all for tearing down boundaries, and mixing things up.

However, on the other side, I would like to see a bit more separation between the two camps. I'm not sure I really all that interested in how to sell games or making better games or even using games for purposes other than to entertain. I don't see that those have all that much to do with what I am interested in.

On some level, it is more of a personal problem. I don't don't want there to be a solid division between any approaches or goals to gaming. I'm just not sure that I want to read about some of those things. If I step back though, I think that the growing number of gaming blogs that have popped up in the two plus years since I started this site is a sign of the growth of the field. The fact that there are lots of sites that I don't necessarily feel like they apply to me, and that I don't feel the need to read regularly is a good thing, I guess.

German Doonsbury and Jack Thompson

Been terribly busy with the German class. I'm in the middle of doing hurried translations of some German-language videogame articles so I can write up an annotated bibliography and then go back to being a monolingual American!

This morning I saw that the comic strip Doonsbury had recently ran a week long series of strips about videogames. I hadn't seen anyone mention it, so it is worth a read through if you haven't seen it already.

Of course one of the stories that is getting the most buzz is the murder in the UK that is supposesd to involve the game Manhunt. Of course you know our good friend Jack Thompson had to get his nose involved. Some sources are even alledging the family of the murdered boy have hired him to sue Sony. Who knew that Jack was able to practice law outside of America? Of course now that the police have said that they don't see any connection to the game, but that doesn't seem to have caused Jack to say that he might have been wrong.

Has it been six months already?

It has been said that every six months the moral panic over videogame violence tries to rear its ugly head, and sure enough, nearly six months ago to the day I wrote a post about the public's perceptions about violence and referenced a widely discussed New York Post column.

Well, now Nick Wadhams of the Associated Press has written a pretty wildly picked up article that once again Lawmakers are attacking Violent Video Games. Wadhams has written a fair number of articles on videogames before, so it is sad to see this new article to folow the stereotype so well.

Matteo Bittanti has written a great article about the formula for the moral panic and created, "The "Crusade against videogame violence story" CONSTRUCTION KIT™.

The most disappointing thing about the article for me is that it appeals to the same old sources: Iowa State University's Craig Anderson, Mary Lou Dickerson, Leland Yee, Joe Baca, the National Insittute for Media and the Family and what report on videogame violence would be complete without a quote from my FAVORITE lawyer Jack Thompson?

Can we please get some new sources? At least Wadhams didn't call up Dave Grossman but the new kid on the block, Evan Wright author of Generation Kill.

However, I must say that the reason why the use of sources is so disappointing is that not only are these people the exact same people who pop up every six months saying exactly the same things and for exactly the same reason, but in addition these are people with an agenda whose opinions are presented as if they had credibility. I'm sorry, but in my opinion none of these people have any credibility whatsoever. Of course if you are reading this then you probably know that. However, I don't think it can be said enough. These are people with an agenda. I am not interested in the violence issue, but if we want to be able to talk about anything else the agenda that people have against videogames needs to be made clear and obvious so that we as academics can get on with more interesting subjects.

Untill that time comes, how about we all meet back here six months from now?

Use a cheat, go to jail

It has been widely reported that Gabe Newell has posted to the Half-Life 2 Fallout forums:

We've started taking legal action against cheating (cheat-sites, cheat creators,...) both in the US and abroad. This is in addition to the on-going investments in anti-cheating technology. You'll see reports of this percolating up as various actions happens.

The reaction to this announcement at places like this games.slashdot thread have been mostly supportive of such announcements. However, you can't have it both ways people. Everyone complains and complains about how evil the RIAA is for using people who download music. Why are we happy when Valve threatens legal action against people who have paid for the product?
I'm curious as to what grounds they are intending to pursue legal action. The DMCA? Copyrights? EULA's? I thought we hated all those things too? When I heard that Valve was going to pursue legal action (and it isn't entirely clear what that means, suing them for damages or attempting to prosecutes them for breaking a law), I was disturbed. I know cheating sucks, but legal action isn't going to prevent cheating any more than suing people who download music without paying for it. Valve already pissed off enough people complaining about Steam (which I've never had a problem with) and with having Steam download Counter-Strike: Condition Zero in the background (even though the first time you started Steam after they added Condition Zero it DID tell you in the fine print that it was doing that) and I thought that more would be pissed off about litigation to solve their problems. Admittedly, some were, but the majority of comments seemed to be positive.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, I mean people always want things that are good for them and don't want things that are bad for them. However, from an ethnographic point of view, it is good to remind ourselves that as humans, our ways aren't always consistent. I know I'm not and I guess I shouldn't expect anyone else to be either.

Learning new ways to play vs. being taught a new way

Over at the IGDA web site, Matthew Sakey has written an interesting column, Reality Panic. In it he discusses the fact that when people were play testing Deus Ex: Invisible War,

At one point, testers approached a T intersection: to the right were laser tripwires and gun turrets; to the left was a locked door; and directly in front was a (usable) window. He said every single one of them, without fail, went to the right. One can imagine how frustrated developers must occasionally get when they watch gamers consistently employ Neolithic problem solving tactics when modern development tools make much more advanced techniques available.

The column makes a strong argument that the dominant paradigm of gameplay is changing. More and more things are possible, but we have been trained to think in narrow ways when playing games. We have been taught in a million little ways that the door can't be opened and the window is a dead end. But that is no longer the case. Technology has progressed and allowed for more possibilities.

The problem is, no one told us that. As Sakey correctly points out, game designers need to reteach us. We can learn that the rules have changed on our own, but it will be much more effective, and much more satisfying if the game teaches us that the there are new possibilities open to us.

To take this farther though, I wonder if it might be possible that ten years from now, when we look back at the games where there were fewer possibilities and reminisce about how great they were just like we now reminisce about the simplicity of games like Pac-Man. Will we look at Quake and say that it was more fun, a better game because we didn't have to worry about ragdoll physics and being able to find our own path?

I'm sure we will. I can't wait until we get the "id classics tv games" that we hook up to our HDTV's.

Same old story, same old song and dance

From time to time there are always those who like to pull out that good old, "How can you theorize games if you don't know how to program them?" and argue that videogame scholars need to know programming in order to really understand what is going on in a videogame. While I don't deny that there is some validity to that and I, myself, have a tiny little bit of programing experience (Logo, baby! I made a shooting game and everything!). However, there is another part of the story. I'm going to go out on a limb and argue that all the programming in the world isn't going to help you really understand videogames because there is more to games than the software and hardware. There is the wetware, to go all cyberpunk. Yes, I'm talking about, once again, the people who play the games.
Therefore, I'm going to turn the question around, "How can you theorize games if you don't know anything about ethnographic methods?" and I argue that videogame scholars need to know some anthropology, folklore or performance studies to really be able to articulate what is going on when we play games. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't study videogames, I study the people who play them.
Anthropologists and Folklorists have been studying people for a long time now. They have written a whole lot about what people do in social situations. We should probably spend some time thinking about that. The more I think about videogames, the more I realize that the scholarly study of them really does require a unique background of information. There is the new media stuff, certainly, and there is the human computer interaction stuff, but there is also the good old fashioned human to human interaction too. We are people and we are doing things. What we are doing is just as important was what we are doing them with. So game scholars, take that intro to programming course, but make sure you also that that intro to ethnography, anthropology, performance, or folklore class, too.

Is it just me?

I've started leaving G4TV on in the background while I study or grade. Is it just me, or is the way the show Filter is set up vaguely offensive or at the very least creepy? For those that don't know, the show is basically a Top Ten List show where they count down the Ten Best/Worst/Most games. Sometimes it will be the ten best fighting games, or the ten best boss battles, or whatever. Anyway, I recently noticed that every episode they have the host, Diane Mizota dressed up in a costume appropriate to the theme of the list.

If you think of the implications of that, its kind of creepy. So here she is, a person with no identity except that which the game gives her. It seems so weird. She is this empty vessel, which the producers fill with whatever the theme of the day is. Now certainly, that isn't much different than ET on MTV or any of a million other shows, but do we really need to see a woman dressed up like Mario? As presented, she is little more than a doll that they play dress up with and young boys are supposed to drool at. She has no agency. No will of her own. To make matters worse, she is of Asian decent, so to the vast majority of viewers, she is probably already represents the Other. Let's not even get into the fetishization of Asian women that so many male gamers seem to exhibit. So to the demographic that G4 seems to be strongly targeting, teen age middle american boys, she is doubly othered, woman and Asian and then they proceed to make her play dress-up in these goofy outfits.

Maybe I'm being a bit paranoid, it could be a lot worse. I mean I haven't seen them do a tribute to DOA Beach volleyball yet or anything, but I can't help but want to change the channel every time her show comes on because I can't bear to see what outfit she is in every episode.

The rant that will not die!!!

My rant is continuing to generate discussion. In fact, the whole conference seems to be stirring up debate. Is gamesstudies headed for its first rift? I hope not.

For my part, let me backpedal some more. I already posted about how I regret some of my language, but let me make clear, I implied that Dr. Palmer was an elitist bastard.

A couple of people have questioned if I understand what was really intended to go on at that confernece. I fully feel that I do. I'm not sure that ranting was the best way of making people understand my problem with the article. I don't really have any problem with the conference. It is the way that it was presented in the article and some of the assumptions that still seem elitist and reproducing the bad of older disciplines that disturbs me.

That being said, bring on the comments. It is only through engagement that we will be able to prevent gamestudies from factionalizing. So let's keep the talk coming.

...Even if you are all wrong! (that was a joke, seriously!)

Ranting Results???

Now, I do not seriously think that little old me had any influence on this at all, but in the comments below, Walter Kim (of Ludonauts.com) noticed that the article in question is no longer called "The Ivy-Covered Console" but is now called "Deconstructing the Videogame." I haven't had a chance to read the article again to see if anything else has changed, but it is interesting that at least a tiny little bit of the elitist connotations of the article have been removed.

Ranting regrets...

Of course the rant hasn't been up a day yet and I feel like I should clarify it.

I like the work of all the bloggers mentioned. Even with the person who has the quote that I strongly disagree with is entitled to his opinion and I really don't mean anything personal by it.

I read Mia Consalvo's blog that she noted that violence isn't mentioned at all, and I have to agree that this is a great step.

However, I sitll think that the article is dangerous in that it presents a very elitist vision of what videogame studies could end up being. Elitism sucks. Beware of it! (and of course I am aware of my own biases of reverse-elitism, or automatically tending to privledge the popular)

And of course there are typographical errors. I cannot spell. I may have a BA (or is it a BS? I really don't remember) in English, but that doesn't mean I can spell. I would go back and fix it, becasue it is embarasing, but I it is published and so be it.

*RANT* Uppity Research Makes the Baby Mario Cry! *RANT*

So this is going to be a rant inspired by the article Ivy-Covered Console. I am glad that our work is getting some press, but it seems that this article is built on some frustrating biases.

First, let me say it. We all know that the only reason that this conference that the article is about is not the first videogame conference, nor is it the biggest. Yet it gets coverage in the New York Times which spends a lot of money with commercials trying to convince me to have it delivered to me even though I live in Indiana. Sure lots of people think the New York Times is hot shit, so in some ways it is great that this article exists. Of course the only reason why it exists is that this conference is taking place at an Ivy-League School. So at the heart of this article is elitism. Something I have little patience for. What do you expect from someone that has a Master's degree in