Critical Game Studies

Last Post: End of Term

2008-05-07T16:08:00.002-05:00

Hello, all,

Your final papers are graded (without comments) and course grades posted. If you would like your paper returned, with or without comments, please let me know as soon as possible. Papers can be picked up in my office in the next few weeks - I will be gone over the summer but will hold on to them through the Fall, so you can also retrieve them at the beginning of next term.

Otherwise, enjoy your summer and go play some games!

GTA activity book

2008-04-24T19:28:00.001-05:00

http://the-minusworld.com/2008/04/23/grand-theft-auto-iv-activity-book-for-kids/

Wow. This is a pretty funny joke that parodies the anti-gaming hype that GTA is for kids.

Citing Games: Some More Examples

2008-04-24T13:58:00.002-05:00

Grand Theft Auto III. Rockstar Games: Rockstar North, 2001. PS2.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. Aspyr: Funcom, 2006. Xbox.

For a game that has not yet been released (if needed):

Bioshock. 2K Games: Irrational Games, 2007 (expected release June 1). Xbox 360.

For an ongoing game:

Asheron’s Call. Microsoft Game Studios: Turbine, Inc., Oct. 1999 - present (ongoing). PC.

And some more traditional citations:

Bailey, Tom. “Character, Plot, Setting and Time, Metaphor, and Voice.” On Writing Short Stories. Ed. Tom Bailey. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. 29-79.

Bartle, Richard. Designing Virtual Worlds. Indianapolis, Indiana: New Riders, 2004.

Dibbell, Julian. “A Rape in Cyberspace; or, How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society.” (21 Dec 1993) Feb 26 2007.

“The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Clichés” (June 2004). 29 Nov. 2006.

Howard, Todd. “Bethesda Softworks Announces The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.” www.elderscrolls.com (22 Oct 2004). 26 Feb 2007.

“The Legend of Zelda Retrospective: Part 6.” Youtube.com. Dec 28 2006. <www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXN1BF65WjI>

“Plot/Theory Analysis FAQ.” Shadow of the Colossus: FAQS and Guides. Gamefaqs.com (26 Aug 2006). Feb 28 2007.

Citing a Videogame

2008-04-24T13:21:00.002-05:00

Final Fantasy 17. Square Enix (developer): Square Enix (publisher), 2012. PC (system played on).

Can we play a game now?

2008-04-24T04:58:00.002-05:00

Videogames and films could easily be deemed as two of the biggest revolutions in multimedia. It's been since its earliest days, the videogame industry has been fascinated with films and movies, and with turning big-screen stories into interactive worlds and all this with a range of success. But later down the years Hollywood indulged into creating movies based on the interactive storylines and worlds rendered in videogames - again with mixed success. In recent times, Hollywood has been mining videogames (and their predominantly huge male fan base) for box office gold. What makes this art of transition of films to games, analog to digital and vice versa so inconsistent? What makes success to elusive?

In the last 2 decades or so there has been a magnitude of revolutions in films, in multimedia. This revolution is the shift from analog to digital methods of recording and manipulating vision, perception and sound. However, if you think about this, it is interesting that the development of videogames in many ways followed that of film. The only difference being, it took films about eighty years to do what videogames took 20 to do. Still games are trying to get as close as possible to movies, may it be looking photo-realistic, may it be having deep storyline or may it be to inject emotion through games the same way movies do. Movies on the other hand, are trying to cash in on the gaining popularity of videogames.

Videogame developers are passionate about their games. And gamers, are more passionate about the games they play so devotedly for most part during the day (and, even in their dreams!). When a movie based on such a game which is popular and has a massive following comes onto the big-screen, the gamers expect it to be closest it could in following the game. But the game's biggest assets, its interactive form, challenging AI or the multiplayer aspect, the non-linear format are the most difficult to replace. And when the director of that movie manages to encompass all these hurdles and pack it into a linear medium, there are the non-gamers and conventional movie-goers who think it's too radical or a blasphemy or maybe just that the plot doesn't make sense. I remember this incident, I was watching "Doom" in a theatre and right when the pinky monster pops up, the guy (presumably a gamer) sitting ahead of me remarks, "Oh, I would have so landed a headshot on that!" And a person sitting next to me just looks at the guy perplexed and possibly disgusted. He probably did not realize the cult following that Doom possesses among FPS gamers. Still, the gamers did not react favorably to the movie primarily because the movie strayed away from the original game-plot, there were not enough monsters, etc.

A movie has such a wide base of audience that it's almost impossible to have a successful game-based movie that would be an instant box-office hit. It does not take a film fanatic to know that the critics rarely appreciate seeing a video game on the silver screen. Unsurprisingly, it is equally rare to find a film critic who appreciates a good video game at all! Movies like the first Mortal Kombat, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, both Tomb Raider installments followed the respective game plot loyally and have done pretty well among general audience and gamers. Transformers (movie), on the other hand was praised my general public but grossly criticized by the hardcore fans.

The failure to make this transition is solely due to the lack of interactivity in a movie, and without the luxury of a joystick (or a controller) in gamers' hands, he stands no chance to make the incoherent on-screen antics any better. The joystick places the gamers in control of the narrative, essentially allowing them to rewrite the story. Two of the most nerve-chilling games Silent Hill and Resident Evil have multiple successful sequels. However, they each offer a completely different take on fear where Silent Hill often feels more terrifying of the two. There is a reliance on torchlight, for instance, creating a sense of intense vulnerability whilst a hollow morose soundtrack of gothic industrial screams and clangs shake your spine. It does not mimic the high level of monster-slashing action and shock horror techniques used to build fear in Resident Evil. In 2002, Paul Anderson's interpretation of Resident Evil was released, followed by Christophe Gans' Silent Hill in 2006. Both directors admittedly being huge fans of the respective series, thereby allowing the films to remain largely true to the games, each using the same nightmarish creatures to haunt familiar locations. Both directors even recreated some of the most iconic scenes; such as a train carriage showdown in Resident Evil reminiscent of the second game's ending, and Rose Silva's car crash in Silent Hill taken directly from the opening of the first game. This loyalty means that the films also reflect their respective games' portrayal of fear. Unsurprisingly, the critics in both the US and the UK were mostly negative in their reviews where as both films were a hit with the fans, although when reviewing the profit margins it appears that the action-orientated Resident Evil was more successful overall. Nevertheless, gamers should perhaps be reminded that even in videogames, the joystick only gives the gamer the choice to do his own stunts and stuff, rather than the ability to affect the storyline, which is usually pre-determined by the developer. Nonetheless, support from fans means that the industry will continue to push into the cinema and games will keep evolving and getting closer.

The Closest Chances for Game Movies

2008-04-23T21:36:00.003-05:00

sorry for the late paper. I had severe trouble finding a game for my original topic and had to switch gears at the last second. Since it's not appropriate for the paper, I would also like to just point out that with the new Speed Racer movie, we were 20 dollars and a paint job away from a serious F-zero movie.

My full intention for this paper was to write out a summary for a live-action game movie that would be successful enough to reach critical acclaim and hopefully lift the stigma on game movies. For this, I set three simple criteria.

The game has to be obscure so as to not immediately be recognized as a game movie
The game has to have a rich background and history with at least some maturity to it
The movie has to be a side-story of the game's plot and not an immediate rehashing

However, as I spent a whole week searching, I came to realize that no game has actually met all of these criteria. Even if one did exist, it's likely said game wasn't very good, and would not reflect well on it's movie successor once it was revealed it was a game movie. So, I decided to present four candidates that fill most of the criteria, but fall short in some way and present my argument for them.

Psychonauts- Unfortunately, this one fails to have any known backstories worth exploring that weren't fairly well fleshed out in the game. Do we really want to know Dr. Demento's life as a dentist before the game? Also, this game is not as obscure as it would need to be to keep from being immeditately recognized as a game movie. However, the game has three major things going for it. First, the writer of the game is alive and would want to see his character brought to a mass audience again. Second, the game, while not Oscar winning, is definitely an interesting and wonderful world to epxlore. Third, the game ended on a cliffhanger that'll probably never be resolved due to poor sales of the original game. A movie could be an excellent chance to tie up this loose plot end. If anyone could write a movie script for a game, it's Tim Schaffer. Mind you, it'd come off as a bit like Kevin Smith, but is that a bad thing?

Skies of Arcadia- Here's a game with a really interesting world. Technology is steam-punk, everyone lives on islands floating in the sky, and the whole place is littered with bad ass Air Pirates and an evil empire. This isn't exactly a Shakespearian tragedy, but the game does have a solid plot and a very well fleshed out world. On top of that, if we're talking about selling seats, nothing is hotter in the movie industry right now than pirates and fantasy. Like Psychonauts, the fans got a cliffhanger ending that will likely never be resolved, and we're too assume that the main characters had many adventures after this. So, a side story movie after the game isn't unheard of. The game's obscure enough, the world's rich enough, and we have the grounds for an after story. The problem with this adaptation would be the casting. Even with only 6 main characters in the actual game (and only 3 of them actual members of your crew), the movie might have too many characters. Fans would insist on a nod to some of the members of the previous game, and it might bog down the plot a lot. There's only so many cameos you can do in 2 hours. On top of that, casting Vyse, the main MAIN character, would be extraordinarily difficult. Vyse is portrayed in the game as one of the most charismatic characters ever. For some reason, this was accepted in the game. People like Vyse. However, in a movie, without careful casting, Vyse would be a smug James Bond/Indiana Jones wannabe. Finally, even if it does come out, this isn't going to win any Oscars without Peter Jackson directing it

Breath of Fire IV: Dragon Quarter- This one's very interesting. Despite being from a famous series of games, the game itself is an obscure cult classic due to a weird combat system. The world is rich and interesting. It's set in a post-apocalyptic future wherein the people polluted the world so bad that the people can no longer live above ground. Instead, they live underground where monsters roam free and rangers have to keep everyone living from day to day. One of the characters is created for the sole purpose of filtering the air in the underground mine shafts that everyone lives in, and it turns out that she's defective and that living down here for much longer will kill her. From a serious plot stand-point, this game has everything. In a game that's only about 10 hours long, we touch on issues such as class gaps and elitism, the needs of one versus many, the environment, the harshness of dark side of science, government conspiracy and surveillance, terrorism versus freedom fighting, and sacrifice. The game even has an almost tragic ending. The game fleshes out its story extremely well with unlockable side cutscenes extending the story on multiple playthroughs. The best part is, if you cut out the fluff and dungeon crawling, the game could actually be truncated into an actual 2 hour movie without sacrificing anything of particular value. However, this volates the rule of doing a side story. You could discuss the events prior to the game a bit more, but ultimately, this would be a rehash of the game itself.

Phantom Brave- This one has much the same idea to it as Dragon Quarter. Fairly simple plot that covers some deeper issues at its core. The story of a girl that can see ghosts and her ghostly sidekick covers issues of honor, people's inability to accept things that are different, personal sacrifice for the good of others and society, not judging people by appearances, and even that the most insignificant of people can have a major impact on the world. It's a deceptively deep plot with few enough main characters that you could reasonably cover most of them in 2 hours without sacrificing anything. The plot is a bit longer than dragon quarter, but it is still possible to get the whole thing down due to the simplicity of some of the chapters and the fluff nature of others. It even has a bit of a tragic twist at the end of the game. Once again, we're getting mostly the same plot. Unlike Dragon Quarter though, this one has the potential of telling the story from a different character's point of view. The tragic Anti-hero of the game, Walnut, is interesting enough to warrant a main character role in a movie, and a story about him would be one about the redemption of the flawed hero. All in all, it would make for an interesting and very serious film that doesn't have the typical happy video game ending.

In the end, I'm not entirely sure the industry is ready for good video game movies. No one has made a game that fully fits the criteria needed to break that barrier. How long were movies out before we had a good movie based on a book? How long after that before we stopped constantly focusing on the fact that said movie was a book first? If anything, this research has proved that the industry isn't ready yet. A game hasn't come out that's good for movies, but this research does show that there is a good possibility that we will get there in the future.

The Dark Eye and Involving a Player Through Interactive Fiction

2008-04-23T19:24:00.003-05:00

Blogger went down for maintenance or something and didn't save my draft >:(

Many developers wish to recreate an experience from a book or movie or graphic novel while being completely faithful to the source material. Many developers also wish to involve the player in a more involved emotional experience than the typical game. Interactive fiction is one format which has had some success in this area.

For the uninitiated, interactive fiction is similar to the adventure game genre. The games focus on exploration, interaction with other characters, and are heavily narrative based rather than reflex based. However, unlike adventure games, interactive fiction is typical much more linear and resctrictive. While adventure games often allow the player to roam around until they figure out what they need to do next and often revolve around puzzle solving, interactive fiction is generally limited to moving from one character interaction to the next on a heavily design-guided path.

The Dark Eye serves as an excellent example of a game that succeeds at getting the player involved in the story while being a faithful translation of its source material in content, tone, and style. The Dark Eye is a piece of interactive fiction that places the player in the role of an unnamed character who is visiting his uncle Edwin. The game uses this overarching plot as a framing device. During his visit, the main character becomes ill dues to the paint thinner Edwin uses to paint. This paint thinner, along with the main character’s decline in mental health due to his nightmares and events in the main story, causes him to have hallucinogenic nightmares. These nightmares are retellings of Edgar Allen Poe stories and the player plays through them from the point of view of both victim and victimizer.

The Dark Eye faithfully recreates three of Poe’s stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amantillado,” and “Berenice.” By using the interactive fiction format the developer, Inscape, can do a more accurate job of placing the player into the shoes of characters in the stories. By limiting the choices that the player has at any one time it is easier to manipulate the player into going a certain direction, interacting with a certain object or experiencing a certain event. This makes it easier to control the pacing and the exact events and the order they take place in for each player. This in turn makes it easier to manipulate the player’s emotional reactions to the story, just like a movie or a book. The framing story is an original story but maintains a faithful atmosphere by creating a very Poe-esque narrative using many of the common themes in his short fiction.

The Dark Eye limits what the player can do much more than most games. Although the ‘nightmare’ sections can be played in any order, within the scenes themselves the player is often very limited. There are key moments when the control cursor is ‘grayed out’ to all action choices except one so that the player can in fact only turn left or pick up the box or whatever might be happening at that point. Yet the fact that the player is given free choice to choose the order in which the stories occur (even going so far as to allow the player to select to play the victim in a story and then at key parts ‘soul jump’ into the victimizer if they so choose) allows for different experiences among each player while still keeping the same story.

In the end, the deciding factor is whether or not this kind of interactive fiction can be categorized with other video games. The limitation of player choice makes it easier and more effective (compared to most games released so far) to maintain a faithful translation that actually places the player into the role of a character in the story and to create a narrative that more easily drives the player. However, the interactivity and choice afforded to the player are major factors of what makes a video game a video game and are the major draw for the medium. Interactive fiction, if handled properly, can be an effective tool but in the end it really must be categorized as a separate entity from games due to its too restrictive nature.

Sly Cooper Movie

2008-04-23T15:07:00.002-05:00

The Sly Cooper franchise would make a seamless transition to the video format. First, the game is already heavily reliant upon cinematic cut scenes to carry the story. Second, the game employs a staff of witty writers and utilizes a darker, modern aesthetic that has been well received by gamers of all ages. Thirdly, the protagonists and their setting are very unique and offer filmmakers the chance to create a highly differentiated movie. Lastly, because of its success in the video game market, a Sly Cooper movie has the ability to transcend market segments and reach a broader audience. If successful, the movie could lead way to further games, a Saturday morning cartoon, and various merchandising endeavors.
Sly Cooper and the League of Ragnarok starts in the same way as all Sly Cooper games: with a recollection of past events and the story of how the characters met in an orphanage. One day, Bentley reads about a crime in Eastern Europe, a crime in which a band of techno-terrorists have stolen blueprints to a doomsday device. This band of techno-terrorists, or the aptly named League of Ragnarok, wish to create a 3 year winter causing the destruction of society and its eventual rebirth into a new world order. Sly and Gang must steal the components of the device before the league can build it, in order to foil their plot and save the world. The plot will reunite old friends as they work together to defeat the League.
Their journey starts when Bentley hacks into the League’s computer and copies the blueprints of the Vetr Cannon, a gigantic weapon with the power to change Earth’s climate. This allows the League to ascertain the whereabouts of Sly’s hideout and they are subsequently attacked by Angrbär, the League’s muscle-bound hitwoman. They narrowly escape and retreat to their mobile hideout, Murray’s modified van. Sly and Gang quickly hatch a plan to infiltrate the Jotunheim ruins and stop the device from being activated. During the infiltration, Sly is captured, Murray manages to escape, and Bentley is thrown into the ocean and presumed dead. With Sly and Gang dispatched, The League of Ragnarok is able to activate their device and envelop the Earth in a 3 year winter.
…9 months later…
The world has been shrouded in winter for about 8 months now. Cold, hungry, and deprived of human contact, Sly Cooper sees sunlight for the first time. He hears a woman’s voice asking him if he is alright. Slowly her face comes into focus: it’s Carmelita Montoya Fox! She with the help of Bentley, and Dmitri Louseau the “Lounge Lizard,” infiltrated the League’s underground gulag and extracted Sly. She explains the dire situation and expresses her desire to set aside their differences and work together for the good of the planet. The League has been holding the world’s food sources ransom and charging extravagant prices to everyday citizens. The world is steeped in a permanent -4 degree winter while the League watches from their mobile, floating techno-paradise of Jotunheim.
First, Sly and Gang must discover the position of Jotunheim. Bentley hacks into the Interpol database and is able to locate Angrbär. The team flies to southern Europe and manages to sneak into her lair. After much fighting, Sly and Carmelita interrogate Angrbär and are able to pry the whereabouts of Jotunheim from her. She informs them that the waterborne station circles the equator in order to maintain the chilled climate. However, it must stop every 3 months at an uncharted island in the south Pacific.
Jotunheim is an impregnable techno-fortress equipped with weapons and traps birthed from the twisted minds of the League. It will take all of Bentley’s cunning, Murray’s strength, and Sly’s stealth to infiltrate this metallic leviathan.
Sly and Gang eventually make it to the core of the station where the leader of the League of Ragnarok awaits, along with the power source for the Vetr Cannon. Sly must defeat the evil warlord and disband his league. After a climactic battle, Sly overcomes the odds and incapacitates the evil villain. Carmelita is able to make the arrest and downloads the names of the remnants of the League from his master computer. Sly is able to steal the power source of the Vetr Cannon, a 14 ct. diamond, and reunites with his friends outside Paris. During the epilogue Sly finally conquers his fears and professes the feeling he’s had for Carmelita throughout the first three games. Emotionally and physically battered from the past year of duress under the League has shaken her faith in traditional law enforcement. She too professes her feelings toward Sly and joins their Gang as his fiancée and partner. The movie closes with the wedding in Sly’s new mansion paid for by the stolen diamond.
In all honesty I had envisioned this game as a Saturday Morning cartoon. Each episode could feature Sly’s Gang obtaining an integral piece of info or equipment for the big heist that would end the season. Sly Cooper’s far-reaching appeal and unique aesthetic make it a ripe IP for the big screen. The use of traditional animation cuts down on awkward acting and allows for a truer interpretation of the original work. A properly translated game could open doors for future titles, sequels, and profitable merchandising. A well received movie could also give Sony the mascot they are looking for.

King Kong

2008-04-23T11:23:00.002-05:00

This paper is over the interactive translation of the movie King Kong into the videogame, Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie. Why he felt the need to make the title that long is unknown to me.
The movie was released December 14, 2005 while the game was released about a month earlier on November 17th. The reason I mention this is that we have discussed how movies repeatedly use games as merchandise for movies to make extra money and increase hype, and do not give them the due respect they deserve. Generally, my opinion about games based on movies is that they continually feel unfinished and rushed.
I enjoyed the film and honestly felt it had the potential for a great game. The scenery, locations and story made a great setup for a game. There was an amazing world created in the film that gave the game a lot to work with.
I think overall they did a good job of translating the game over. The game had around forty levels, but they were fairly short so you played through them fairly quickly. The story was changed in ways that would make the game stronger. For example, in the movie only Ann Darrow is captured by the natives and lowered over to Kong. In the game you (Jack Driscoll’s character) are captured and watch this happen. Then Carl (another character from the movie) comes and unties you and you sneak away to go rescue her. They use a lot of common creatures and locations from the movie, but make many new experiences that weren’t in the movie. Also the sequence of events in the game is not the same as the movie, but I do not think this takes anything away from the experience.
If they had spent more time on details in the story it could have been a magnificent game. The game became very repetitive, doing the same actions over and over. It seemed in every level you had to use this torch to burn some brush and find this specific stick to open the door, even though there were other sticks everywhere else that would do the job just fine.
The game was clever in some aspects when you could do things like kill some little creature then throw it on a spear to distract the V-Rexes from attacking you. Another interesting bit about this game is there is no display whatsoever. There are no health, ammo, target or navigation icons on screen, only your view. You can hit a button on the controller and he will tell how much ammo is left. Ammo is very limited so you cannot go crazy with it. Many times you run out and are forced to use the spears lying around, which is pretty neat and probably realistic. Also you have to protect the whole team, none of the main characters can die when you are all in battle.
Also you actually get to play Kong occasionally. This seldom occurrence is really a strong point to the game. His controls work very well, sometimes the camera work is odd while playing him but other than that it is great being the beast.
My overall view of the game is that it is good, but could have been amazing if treated more like a game instead of an addition to a movie. I feel they used it to push movie sales and rushed it. They did a good job with the story, as not following the movie but borrowing locations, characters and creatures. They should have just thought the levels out more to reduce some of the repetitiveness.

History in Games Based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms

2008-04-23T05:01:00.000-05:00

Video games have the ability to allow players interaction or participation with historical events to alter the past and play out what-if scenarios. Loose fidelity to historical facts can be advantageous to the game by expanding the interactive experience, but the game’s presentation and execution of a time period could determine if developers’ interpretations succeed in immersing the player in a fictionalized historical environment. Koei’s interpretations of the Chinese historical novels by Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, are provided mainly in the form of two series: Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors. As both series cater to a different audience, Koei chooses greater liberties in Dynasty Warriors as opposed to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors bring effective as well as questionable experiences in the representation of the Three Kingdoms era, but ultimately the former succeeds in merging history and fiction through player interaction.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a simulation game where diplomacy and battles occur in determined turns. The player governs provinces in an overview map where civilians and military are represented by numbers in a provinces’ statistics. In battle, the player controls several generals who have their own units. A unit may attack another unit in various methods, such as melee or special tactics, but the player remains disembodied from the fray. The player cannot directly control individuals within a unit and must partly rely on the game programming to determine how many soldiers die and whether or not a special tactic works. The close-up combat of the action game, Dynasty Warriors brings the player to the vanguard, and players take a direct role in accomplishing tasks that lead to victory. Dynasty Warriors’ strength comes from throwing the player in the midst of a battlefield. Each soldier, civilian, beast, and siege weapon is represented by a 3-D model, along with a health indicator, so the player can count each head if he or she chooses. By controlling a single general, and having some authority over bodyguards and troops, the individual battles of history become more personal as the player succeeds or fails at tasks. Actually taking the role of a general, rather than ordering a general, gives the player a stronger sense of fighting in the chaos of battle and having first-person impact on the expansion of territory.

The vague or broad description of most generals in Luo Guanzhong’s novels allows Koei to fill in their interpretations in their own creative manner. Romance of the Three Kingdoms presents characters through painterly portraits while Dynasty Warriors use both portraits and full 3-D models. Defining features such as Lu Bu’s strength or Xiahou Dun’s eye patch are faithfully represented in either series. However, the depiction of other characters—Zhang He, for example—considerably contrasts from one game to the other. Zhang He does not appear as the flirtatious, effeminate narcist that he is in Dynasty Warriors in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Because of his vanity and an outfit adorned with butterfly wings in Dynasty Warriors, players may take the character less seriously, and the real Zhang He’s character, one of the five top generals of Kingdom Wei, is undermined. His portrait in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, along with other generals (male and female), are drawn with helmets. As generals should be, they appear ready for combat, not ready for a costume party.

Extravagant clothing of characters in Dynasty Warriors helps player-controlled characters and enemy generals stand out from crowds of soldiers, but combined with rock music, heroic or silly poses, fantastical weapons, and gravity-defying action moves almost makes the battlefield appear like a cartoon circus. The more traditional Chinese music and the earthen color palette in Romance of the Three Kingdoms does not jar the player out of the environment. In this case, less is more, and Dynasty Warriors character appearances exceed exquisiteness to the point of ridiculousness while the facelessness of numbers representing soldiers in Romance of the Three Kingdoms leaves room for the player to inject his or her own imagination.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a quieter game compared to Dynasty Warriors, which is truer to the reflective ancient Chinese culture. Dynasty Warriors aims for a younger audience with colorful superheroes and fast-paced action. Koei’s decision to insert various aesthetics, such as gaudy costumes, becomes a distraction and pulls the player from the game even if for a brief moment. In the end, the overall atmosphere of Romance of the Three Kingdoms remains consistent, more accurately depicting the Three Kingdoms Era while still allowing fiction through player interaction.

Books again

2008-04-17T10:06:00.002-05:00

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2008/01/29/interactive-adaptation-of-enders-game-announced.aspx

Ender's Game into a game... They actually don't say much about the game. Not to force things into categories, but I don't even know what kind of game it is. By the title "Battle Room," it looks like they're focusing on the children's training games. I wonder if it's going to follow the book or have a new story, or if it's just going to be a fighting/tactical game of sorts with more emphasis on the battles themselves rather than characters and the world.

As long as I'm on the topic of books... Using the DS for reading books.

http://www.siliconera.com/2007/10/02/the-ds-turned-into-an-e-book-reader/

Two Articles

2008-04-17T07:54:00.003-05:00

http://gamepolitics.com/2008/04/17/tomorrow-is-gaming-your-library-day/

We may not have a ministry of culture like in France, but it is nice to see some government body take notice of games. Hopefully, this will help generate a better view of games in the eyes of parents.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18264

This is a very interesting article about morality in games. She uses MGS to support her arguement. I personally don't believe that the developers are responsible for adding morality in games. I certainly think that gamers should choose to react emotionally to games in any way they want. It's definitely a thought provoking piece.

Simple? Minimalistic? Inane or Intelligent?

2008-04-16T23:46:00.003-05:00

I was myself left with these one-worded questions after I successfully "finished" this game aptly named You Have to Burn the Rope. Before reading any further I would recommend you to play this game, so that my post wont spoil it for you. After I read an article on 1up.com about this insanely simple flash-based game that has become an instant web hit, I thought I should play this game. You are play as this small fella with seemingly unlimited number of axes in his cache. But to kill the level boss you have to just "burn the rope". As if the game elements, graphics, self-explanatory title were not simple enough, the creator also mentions the method to kill the boss!

As the author Kian Bashiri commented, "It's about games being easy and cliched. Some people have said that it's about games being too hard and that's not something I intended really, but I think it applies too. I don't think it's good when a game has 600+ hours of gameplay." This is almost synonymous to what I mentioned in one of my previous posts titled "It really has to be that "f***ing stupid"?" where BioShock director Ken Livine says, "If you want people to follow your plot, it has to be really f****** stupid! In recent times plot has been highlighted as an area in which games fall short, but do we really want to be caught up dissecting a story for hidden messages and meaning. Or, do we just want to sit back and be entertained?"

The full article on 1up.com can be found here and the game here.

Exercise on SL

2008-04-16T18:49:00.002-05:00

I do triathlons and just read an article in a magazine about SL having triathlon training. I found a link to an article about the same group of people and thought it was kind of interesting.

http://www.slquery.com/news/view/286

Writing for Movie-Based Games

2008-04-16T15:52:00.002-05:00

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17643

To me, a large part of worlds/movies being translated successfully into games is the writing.

This is an interview with a freelance writer, Dalan Musson, who has written for both film and games. The focus is more on games using movie licenses rather than original game worlds, and it has some interesting points of comparison between the film industry and the game industry. Musson also shares some thoughts on writing for games in general.

Bringing it Full Circle: Games with a Message as Translated Spaces

2008-04-16T12:59:00.002-05:00

As has been shown throughout the semester, the 4 topics often intersect. So, I thought for my last post, I'd touch on translated games with political messages. A lot of people seem to be under the fully justified idea that the best way to portray a message is to allow the player to play it. This is met with varied results. These range from...

Games based on the Bible:

http://www.n-lightning.com/ominoushorizons.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkNvQYiM6bw

Games used to Educate about Historical Events:

http://www.socialimpactgames.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=206&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0

Games based on Political Events and Ideals:

http://www.socialimpactgames.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=10&topic=&allstories=1

http://www.socialimpactgames.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=155&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0

http://www.socialimpactgames.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=238&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0

Games that pass a message about Corporations and Business Practices:

http://www.mcvideogame.com/index-eng.html

In reality, none of these games have been particularly successful in reaching their audience. Is this because the simulation idea doesn't work or because people don't want to hear it? Do people not like these messages or are the spaces poorly translated? Are some things not meant to be translated into an interactive media? Is it inappropriate?

Oh, and for future research and semesters, here's a website full of these kinds of games:

http://www.socialimpactgames.com/index.php

On the issue of sequels

2008-04-16T12:26:00.002-05:00

http://www.ugo.com/a/worst-videogame-sequels/?cur=main

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=4&cId=3154508

This is what I got when I searched for "Best Video Game Sequels". I had no problem finding a share of BAD video game sequels, but people seem to not want to admit that Video Game sequels are occasionally good or even better than the original. As a matter of fact, a quick search of "best video games of all time" revealed a lot of top lists wherein the top 10 were littered with sequels.

http://www.filibustercartoons.com/games.htm

A fan grabbed a huge number of these lists and averaged out the numbers, and of the ABSOLUTE top 5 from these averages, 4 of them are sequels. On top of that, save a few lists, most of these lists themselves are filled with almost nothing but sequels.

Still, fans complain over and over about sequels. Even Zero Punctuation, a very popular online series of review videos, constantly complains about Nintendo constantly remaking their mascots despite often using them as skins to present new and innovative styles of gameplay to the mass market. They're called stale, uninventive, and greedy. At the same time, we call Twilight Princess a triumph of game development.

So what is it that gives sequels such a stigma in the industry? Is it because there's recycled material? Every company recycles code and material, even in non-sequels. Is it because they're less polished? If anything, sequels are more polished. Is it because they stagnate gameplay? A lot of sequels actually add to the advancement of game design. Ocarina of Time INVENTED the z-trigger lock on system for 3-d adventure games. Is it because sequels create a business model that causes the industry to not want to risk itself on new IPs creating a continual cycle of the same content over and over from company that can't afford to push the boundaries? Okay. You got me there.

Independent Movie Games

2008-04-16T12:05:00.003-05:00

I actually found this while searching for articles for the blog. It's a bit weird, but it's a site with independently created movie games, and they're weird ones. Some of these are literally movie adaptations that SHOULD NEVER be made. We're talking a Casablanca arcade game. I've seen plenty of fan games (some of them good), but this one's new for me. Is this satire over the quality and accuracy of movie games mixed with fandom or is this an honest attempt to create a diversion gone wrong? There seems to be something interesting to talk about here, but I can't put my finger on it.

Furthermore, why would you remind people of the existence of Howard the Duck?

http://www.joblo.com/moviegames.htm

http://www.karcreat.com/KCGames.html

Extra Bonus Fun (Because it doesn't deserve it's own post):

Charles Barkley's Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden Saga Part 1 of the Hoopz Saga (It's an RPG)

http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=11760

Halo research

2008-04-15T22:18:00.003-05:00

After struggling with my paper topic I'm going to change it to focus on the Halo series, not for sure what aspects just yet. Most of links were found while I was looking for certain parts about the series to focus on.

Potential rebirth for a Halo movie?
http://movies.ign.com/articles/863/863684p1.html

The early parts of this article try to connect Halo to the Bible. Interesting at first then the stretches start...
http://halostory.bungie.org/masterchief.html

Some end-of-term reminders

2008-04-14T14:08:00.002-05:00

First, that because we missed a day due to my illness, the fourth short paper will now be due on the 24th of April, not the 15th. Essentially, we're pushing the entire fourth unit back by a week.

The final 15-20 page paper is still due on May 1st. We will not be having class that day; rather, papers will be due in my office at 12:00 PM. (You do not need to post the long paper to the blog!)

Second, a reminder that I will be leaving class a bit early next week, due to what I'm affectionately calling "circumstances beyond my control." I will be on my email all next week, save for Thursday night (during which I'll be waiting for the anesthetic to wear off and feeling sorry for myself.)

If you have any questions about the rest of the term, please email me as soon as possible. These deadlines are coming up very quickly.

The Zelda Trailer

2008-04-10T11:11:00.002-05:00

http://uk.movies.ign.com/dor/articles/863515/legend-of-zelda-movie-trailer/videos/legendofzelda_filmtrailer_040108.html

Unfortunately, this was an April Fool's joke. It is doubly unfortunate because more effort was put into this trailer than into some feature films.

I'd be curious to see what a person who was wholly unfamiliar with the source material thought of the trailer. How much of the emotion and excitement I/we feel while watching it comes from the preexisting material?

OMG! Uwe Boll strikes back...

2008-04-10T00:59:00.005-05:00

...and in a seemingly ridiculous manner! He hits back at the "Stop Uwe Boll" petition and he does that with some really pathetic grammar and sentences framed in such way that will make you ponder. He goes on to refer himself as the only genius out there in the whole industry. Talk about modesty! 1up.com had this article which contained his response to the internet petition. Even the author of the article Steve Watts cannot contain his amusement!

The article can be found here. A word of warning though, expect some F-bombs dropped every now and then, with a tinge of his "modesty"!

PS: The comments left by the readers are even more hilarious!

Good and Bad Translations

2008-04-09T22:54:00.002-05:00

Talks about movies being made into games. Not super insightful, but somewhat amusing and the best made up movie title ever.

http://www.modojo.com/features/20061102/132//

On the flip side, a couple of games that made the translation well...so this site says.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Movie-Licensed-Games-That-Are-Actually-Pretty-Rad-8801.html

Mario's Time Machine

2008-04-09T22:12:00.003-05:00

http://www.neoseeker.com/Games/Products/SNES/mario_time_machine/

I played this game at a very young age on the PC. I think I first learned of Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci (whom, unfortunately, made me think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back then), and a couple others from this game.

This takes a different approach to history. It's more of an educational game than an "experience history" kind of game like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I wonder at what point not staying true to history will be taken as an insult to history rather than taken as a splash of creativity.

Beowulf comes to mind. And a little off topic, when is it advantageous to use CG characters instead of real actors when you use the real actors' faces on the CG characters?

History and Legend in Games

2008-04-09T21:28:00.003-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms_%28video_game%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasty_Warriors

These are two interpretations of the Three Kingdoms era by the same company, Koei. Basically, Romance of the Three Kingdoms takes a more realistic approach while Dynasty Warriors goes for flair and anime style. It's fun to see how the characters look like in one and the other, and then even throughout each game in each series.

Koei has also made games from other historical evidences, like the Nobunaga games and the Joan of Arc game. They take great liberties in their character portrayal...

Why License Games Tend to Fail

2008-04-09T20:09:00.001-05:00

Here's a fun article talking about the glory days of the SNES and why (beyond nostalgia) some of the license games of yesteryear were not only good but excellent. It's mostly intuitive, but still a good read.

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/28419

Star Wars Galaxies: In Retrospect

2008-04-09T20:07:00.003-05:00

Since we've discussed this multiple times, I thought I'd look up a bit more about the controversies surrounding Star Wars Galaxies. Not shockingly, the developers say a few things that intend on keeping the space rather than making a fun game. It is interesting to see the thought process on their designing of the game though.

http://archive.gamespy.com/interviews/december03/galaxies/

Drama CD

2008-04-09T17:46:00.002-05:00

The Drama CD is an interesting kind of translated space that is only found in Japan. They are essentially Japanese Radio Dramas, many of which are based on video games. I've seen Biohazard, Disgaea, Phantasy Star, Guilty Gear, and many others turned into Drama CDs. It often happens with unexpected series, I mean, Guilty Gear?

From Video Game to Traditional Game

2008-04-09T17:02:00.002-05:00

Many video games have been converted to CCGs and this practice seems to have picked up recently. WOW, EVE, Pokemon, City of Heroes, Heroes of Might and Magic IV, .hack, Sim City, and Mortal Kombat all got the CCG treatment.

However, making traditional games from video games is by no means a new practice.

Writer Speaks Out

2008-04-03T11:55:00.001-05:00

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18064

In this article, Justin Marks, speaks out against gamers thrashing game adaptations. He also offers some solid advice on how to fix the problems, as well as why they mostly seem to fail. He offers a unique, Hollywood perspective to adapting games.

Class is Canceled Today

2008-04-03T10:51:00.002-05:00

But the classroom is yours, so please start the discussion of translated spaces. I will be in contact this week through the blog.

It really has to be that "f***ing stupid"?

2008-04-03T01:08:00.005-05:00

Its seems very disturbing and demeaning to a gamer's IQ or intelligence when a former playwright and director of BioShock make a statement such as "If you want people to follow your plot, it has to be really f****** stupid"! CVG had pointed out an article in PCZone by BioShock big daddy Ken Levine. He goes on to mention the downsides of having a detailed plot in game. He asks, "In recent times plot has been highlighted as an area in which games fall short, but do we really want to be caught up dissecting a story for hidden messages and meaning. Or, do we just want to sit back and be entertained?" In all fairness to him, BioShock was a smash hit in 2007 and was based on a seemingly inane plot.

The article can be found here.

Captain McGrandpa

2008-04-03T00:33:00.002-05:00

Captain McGrandpa is an original game on Gametap that is designed to be a massively mutliplayer text based adventure game. The trick is that it's played through the Gametap forums using a specialized text parser. The game changes and the world evolves based on the players' actions. They essentially used the game designer as a sort of GM to react to the players' actions and write the whole thing, writing the code for the game I'm assuming, on the fly as it progressed.

Feelies

2008-04-02T23:48:00.002-05:00

Infocom, old developer of adventure games such as Zork and Hitchhiker's Guide, used to have something they called "feelies" that would come packaged with their adventure games. Feelies were various objects associated with the game, such as sunglasses and pocket fluff with Hitchhiker's, or paper materials that expanded the setting, like books or letters from the game. The wikipedia article talks about them as if they were just copy protection, but people I've talked to who played these games seem to feel that they were more. The feelies, especially the books that described background story and other paper works, often not only expanded the world but were needed to make it through the game. This seems to provide a good mesh of a game and real world materials to add to the experience of that game.

2008-04-02T21:50:00.003-05:00

I have been wanting to see the new King Kong movie and just haven't got around to it, since it is on the list I plan to play it and watch the movie. I found this article that talks a little about the game development and adaptation to game from film. It also says that one of the game's goal is to make the user cry, which interested me since we saw that one presentation on why we don't cry in games.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9968336/

This is for the people who expressed their dislike for Uwe Boll. I didn't know much about this person so I tried to find out a little bit, apparently there are a large number of people, over 18,000 now, who don't care for him.

http://www.petitiononline.com/RRH53888/petition.html

Wii Shortage

2008-04-02T21:37:00.002-05:00

http://gamepolitics.com/2008/04/02/is-wii-shortage-related-to-weak-us-dollar/

This is an interesting article that states that Wii's have been undersupplied to the US to protect Nintendo against declining profits.The USD has been regaining some of its strength vs. the EURO and JPY. The JPY has also depreciated against the Euro, further reducing Nintendo's profits. (historical FX data from OANDA)

ARGs

2008-04-02T18:04:00.002-05:00

I was shocked to see that no one has brought up Alternate Reality Gaming. From the standpoint of gaming across multiple media and translating an experience from one domain to another, certainly ARGs are worth mentioning. Anyway, it's something worth mentioning since the text from ARGs often can go from text story to sound files, hacking of websites, and even real life meetings.

For people that need a little catching up...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

And ARGs are popular enough nowadays that they even have their own network dedicated to finding them...

http://www.argn.com/

So why is it important to talk about ARGs in translated spaces?
1. It takes the mystery novel appeal and translates it to a mass audience in real time
2. It's a unique cultural experience with massive insight into game development and the needs of the casual and hardcore gamer
3. It's the only medium where you can get hilariously ironic free referential swag for participating: http://www.argn.com/archive/000711harvey_dent_campaign_swag.php

From Text to... Text?

2008-04-02T17:12:00.004-05:00

You've probably heard mention of it and the devious "kill you 4 hours later" puzzles. For adventure gamers, it is infamous. It is none other than the text based Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text-based video game. Amusingly enough, it's one of the most accurate translations of a book's universe and mood to a video game ever without being a direct text read-out of the book. Since everyone's doing something new, I thought I'd post on something old (and who wants to read about ET again).

Anyway, rather than rant about my personal experience for 3 pages, I figured I'd just give the gift of letting you experience it yourselves. The following is the 20th anniversary edition of the game brought free by the BBC network. It can be hard if you haven't played a text-based adventure game (and hard even if you have), but it's a good fun read and play. You'll probably feel just as hopeless as Arthur Dent did in the books.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_andrew.shtml

A good reason for this translating so well is the fact that Douglas Adams, along with Starship Titanic, worked directly on this and saw video games as an amazing opportunity for storytelling. Needless to say, as cruel as it is, a lot of love was put into this game.

Just like it's like taking a book out...

2008-04-02T09:46:00.003-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhJKvualUA0&feature=related

This is an interview with Raymond E. Feist, a writer who gave Dynamix game developers permission to make a game based on his fantasy world. He didn't actually write for Betrayal at Krondor (which is why he says when he played it, he was surprised). Feist liked how the game developers worked in his world that he later wrote a novelization of the game (Krondor: The Betrayal) and sequels.

Betrayal at Krondor was well-received by players and critics, as stated by Wikipedia, although I'm not sure if the game sold as well. People today might say it's too much reading, but I don't mind all the reading if it's decent like this game, Quest for Glory, or Daggerfall.

Cyber Socializing.

2008-04-01T21:37:00.004-05:00

Drifting away from the game/film dynamics for a bit and back to socializing in MMOs, I came across a very interesting study carried out by a UK based university on the topic of cyber socializing. Though the study used a small and self-selecting sample of gamers and is far from being conclusive, the researchers feel their findings should pave the way for further research, particularly whether gender-swapping in an online setting has a propensity for affecting a player's gender identity in the real world. Additionally, all the respondents came from four popular online gaming websites (Allakhazam, Women Gamers, White Wolf and IGN's Everquest Vault), further reducing the possibility for a widely varied population. The Allakhazam site was used as the main recruitment forum because of its large audience. It also caters for more than five MMORPGs, including the majors Everquest 1 and 2, Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, Dark Age of Camelot, and Lineage II.

The study conducted by Zaheer Hussain and Mark D. Griffiths (Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK) titled "Gender Swapping and Socializing in Cyberspace: An Exploratory Study" suggests that a majority of MMO gamers cross th gender barrier. A test-group of 119 online gamers ranging from 18 to 69 years of age completed a questionnaire. The results showed that just over one in five gamers (21%) said they preferred socializing online to offline. Significantly more male gamers than female gamers said that they found it easier to converse online than offline. It was also found that 57% of gamers had engaged in gender swapping, and it is suggested in the study that the online female persona has a number of positive social attributes in a male-oriented environment.

The original study in .pdf format can be found here.

Event on Wednesday

2008-04-01T10:56:00.004-05:00

The AFI Dallas film festival is going on this week, and there's a talk tomorrow evening that fits in with our current discussion about film and games. The panel takes place at 5:30 PM tomorrow, April 2nd, on the 16th floor Wet Deck at the W Dallas Victory Hotel. Free and open to the public.

BLURRING THE LINES: How Does the Film Industry Impact the Gaming World?...and Vice-versa
Co-hosted by the Dallas chapter of the International Game Developers Association
Today’s video games are complex creations with scripts, art direction and fully-developed characters. How are these games impacted by film and its creative practices and storytelling techniques? And how has a new generation of gamers forced the entertainment industry to reexamine the projects it puts onto the big screen? We’ll examine how the creative and business model for each industry is changing.

Moderator: Gordon Keith, The Gordon Keith Show Panelists: Randy Pitchford; Marty Stratton; and John O’Keefe

Saw Game

2008-03-31T12:14:00.005-05:00

http://kotaku.com/358097/saw-writer-talks-saw-video-game

The executive producer, and also the writer of two of the Saw movies, is writing for a Saw game. Here are a couple quotes that jumped out at me:

"We have no idea how that is going to apply to a computer game format, considering that most games are generally pretty simple in it's plotting."

"Maybe its a good thing that Leigh and I are naive to the video game world and that we're writing it like its a movie!"

Despite claiming to be big gaming fans, the quotes don't really give me that impression. Maybe it depends on what kind of games they've been playing, but "simple" in plotting doesn't describe a lot of games that actually have a story script (whether or not they're good scripts is another matter). Simple isn't necessarily a bad term, but I would think people who like to create stories might want to try doing something more instead of dismissing game stories as bland or simple.

Writing for a game and writing for a movie are two very different things, and I don't think it's wise to jump into one or the other blindly.

Bollsh*t

2008-03-31T10:08:00.002-05:00

http://www.cinemablend.com/features/Uwe-Boll-Money-For-Nothing-209.html

I can't believe this person. He purposely makes bad movies to take advantage of a law that is supposed
to help my country's future prospects. I hope they finally are able to close the loophole.
Talking about translating games into movies would be more fun if this man didn't exist.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/03/27/take-two-looking-at-bioshock-movie-mmo

Take-Two, in an effort to escape EA's takeover bid, has told their investors they are interested in pursuing a Bioshock movie
and MMO and a Civilization MMO. Many of the comments state that this enderavor may fail because
Bioshock is about exploration. Although Bioshock is linear, you don't even know who your character is for most of the game. I only see this film doing well as a prequel, focusing on the founding of Rapture, it's rise, and it's ultimate downfall.

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/03/14/kurt-wimmer-to-write-metal-gear-solid/

This article states that they are wanting to give the MGS Script to Wimmer, the "mastermind" behind Ultraviolet. I wonder if these people watch movies at all? Would it help if someone who knows video games and movies were to write a script?

Translated Spaces: The Last Topic!

2008-03-27T15:11:00.002-05:00

At least, the last topic for this semester. For next week's class, please remember to post twice, comment twice, and bring in any game-related films you'd like to sample in class. Obviously we won't have time to watch a full feature, but I'm willing to dedicate at least half of class to discussion of film clips.

Possible subtopics for this unit include: adaptations and interactive translations; games and other media, including films, TV series, novels, and comic books; games utilizing multiple forms of media; textless gaming; historical or non-fiction game types; expanded universes; licensing and intellectual property; sequels and remakes; translated experiences

The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Underappreciated Masterpiece

2008-03-27T13:06:00.002-05:00

I've mentioned this a couple of times, but now I get the dubious pleasure of posting it in some context. This article talks about why the Super Mario Bros. Movie is an underappreciated masterpiece. While I don't necessarily agree with all the points (although, some of them are oddly right), it is a hilarious and semi-informative read. Anyway, enjoy!

http://www.destructoid.com/why-the-super-mario-movie-is-an-underappreciated-masterpiece-29694.phtml

DVD Bonus Footage:
Of course, if you can't stand ANYONE liking the Mario Bros. Movie, you can always get an alternate and more swear filled perspective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw7WLSjrYdo

Bragging Rights

2008-03-26T21:38:00.000-05:00

There are many many different reasons people play video games. However, it can be said that on average there are four big reasons a person decides to play a game:

1. To be entertained by the gameplay. To feel a sense of “fun” or enjoyment from playing the game.

2. To achieve a sense of accomplishment/satisfaction upon completion of the game. This can be achieved even is the game does not have a set “end” and sometimes even if the player does not finish the game, as games can have several breaks that can give this feeling.

3. To experience a story or characters. This is another different source of entertainment. The story or characters do not have to be well crafted; they merely have to appeal to that particular player’s sensibilities.

4. Bragging Rights.

This last motivation is my topic of discussion for this paper. There is one major motivation I didn’t mention which would be “to be challenged” but for the sake of simplicity in this paper, “to be challenged” will be lumped together with accomplishment even though it is a different sort of accomplishment. Although, as you will see, “to be challenged” is also closely related to bragging rights, although here I am referring more to challenge for challenge’s sake.

Let’s start with an anecdote. I was recently playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl and looked up an FAQ on beating a special mode called 100-man brawl using every character in the game. This is one of the challenges in the game and doing these challenges gives you a reward like a trophy or new stage or what have you. The game gives you these golden hammer items that can be used to automatically complete a challenge that the player doesn’t want to do or might be too hard. I had used one on this particular challenge because I found it annoying and time consuming. The FAQ had this to say about this particular challenge, “Now the last one is a bit of a challenge, not really that hard if you know what you're doing. But it's still very time consuming and some players use one of their golden hammers on it. Don't, you don't need to use one on that, you don't need to use it on anything.” This made me think. Why would you not use any of the golden hammers on anything? You don’t unlock anything special for not using them. Why would anyone want to go through extra aggravation and spend a bunch of extra time doing all the challenges that they don’t actually enjoy doing when they have an item that is specifically there to be used to avoid this?

This is what I refer to as “bragging rights”. The force that drives players to take a route in a game that gives the same result but uses a much harder path. The thing that drives players to spend hours and hours on a game, only to receive a large number followed by their initials. Bragging rights is the motivation for players to be able to say things like, “I have the highest score in Pac-man,” or “I beat Metal Gear 2 using only the knife,” or “I beat Hoshigami.”

This is a long standing tradition in video games. In the early days of the arcade many games had no ending; they were designed to get increasingly harder with no story to progress through due to technological limitations and in an effort to get the player to use more quarters. As a method of motivating these players to keep playing beyond the simple enjoyment of the game, these games had charts that would show the high scores. The better the player did, the higher the score. It became a sort of competition among arcade goers; the person with the highest score could brag that they were better than anyone else at that game. Nowadays, this tradition is still alive. However, there are very few games whose sole motivation is a score. In fact, many games on the market don’t even have a scoring system at all. Players achieve bragging rights through other methods however, often artificially created by the player. It can be something like playing through a game on hard mode to not losing any lives to beating all the challenges yourself, without using a golden hammer to finish one for you. Many games and companies are offering new ways to relive this old tradition, like adding in more difficult modes of play in the game or like Microsoft creating a “gamerscore” for all Xbox 360 games.

This practice raises two questions. Are other players really impressed by the accomplishments of one person in playing a game? Especially now where the games and the market are so different. Can a player really brag to others about his achievement and receive praise or even not end up looking like a loser/braggart? I think that this is much harder to do now and that most players who challenge themselves in this way are really looking for a different kind of end result with their bragging rights. These players feel a greater sense of achievement at merely having accomplished such a large feat worthy of bragging about. In a way they want to be able to brag to themselves to make themselves feel skilled or proud for their achievements.

The other question is: At what point does the aggravation, time, effort, and difficulty out weigh the right to brag? This is really dependent on what the goal is and who the player is. Many players find it too much of a hassle merely to play through a game on a higher difficulty level. They see no reason for it. Yet, it also depends on the developer and how they handled the challenging task, because there is a major difference between and enjoyably challenging and aggravatingly hard. In the end it’s something that has to be determined by the player. And maybe the players friends if they are competitive enough or at least interested enough to react to the achievement.

Indy Games: Think Big or Think Small?

2008-03-26T11:36:00.001-05:00

There's no doubt that the Indy gaming movement is garnering a lot of attention right now. It's often seen that larger corporations are too busy with money and sequels to worry about things like experimental gameplay and art. However, there seems to be two ways to approach Indy games. One is to make a small demo game to get across concepts for gameplay without fully fleshing out an experience, and the other is to make a much larger game that creates a more complete experience. Essentially, there's Indy demos and Indy games.

If a developer chooses to think small, there's actually quite a few advantages to go along with it. The biggest of these is that a small team of people can churn out a large amount of content at a very rapid pace. This can effectively allow one group of people to test the waters on numerous ideas for gameplay and keep a fan base that enjoys these demos satisfied long enough to the next demo. Furthermore, this can allow for a group working on a game like this to develop the game in their spare time rather than treating it as a second job. The advent of the casual games market also gives an advantage to this style of thought. While a larger game made by an Indy developer can sometimes be considered a casual experience, the large number of the real casual gaming experiences in the field are definitely shown in smaller demos. A good example of this is Crayon Physics. While not exactly a multi-hour long masterpiece, the goal of Crayon Physics is certainly casual in nature. At the very least, it can be said that Crayon Physics is closer to a casual game than something like Cave Story. Another interesting point is that you can always build up from a smaller game. Should an idea succeed, like the aforementioned Crayon Physics, you can always make a bigger game out of the gameplay later. The final thing to consider about smaller demos is that the smaller Indy games tend to be more serious or deal with the concept as games as art or experiment with weird narratives. While not true in all cases, games, like Mondo Medicals, at least try to stick out in terms of story, narrative, or the design of the game itself. Sometimes the experience is just short enough to try out a new narrative style without irritating the player if the concept fails. Mondo Medicals and it's sequel, Mondo Agency, provide a surreal and incoherent plot, a game entirely done in gray scale, and counterintuitive solutions to the puzzles. It sounds like a bad idea, but those elements make Mondo Medicals charming. In a longer game, they would not be tolerated.

Should a developer think to go large with the Indy game, there's quite a few advantages as well. A wider selection of gameplay is open to a larger game. Small demos are constrained by the unfortunate fact that you can't always fit deep gameplay into a demo. However, a larger game can be much more deep in concept. Audio Surf or Cave Story are Indy games that just wouldn't work as incredibly small demos. Audio Surf's upload element is too key to it's success to put in a short demo with a couple of songs. Cave Story's RPG gunning elements and difficulty make it difficult to place a good time to put a demo. Too early and you don't show off a lot of core gameplay, too late and the players won't be able to beat it. With the rise of Xbox Live Arcade, a lot of major developers are buying a lot more Indy games. More complete games seem to be more likely to be picked up by these developers. A good number of games have been confirmed for the Wii's Wiiware service. The vast majority of these are rather large games that just seem to take up a bit less memory. Behemoth studios has managed to get by selling Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. Alien Hominid actually sold well as a multi-console budget title, and Castle Crashers got bought as an Xbox Live exclusive. While not massive 30 hour experiences, both games are pretty long for an Indy game. On top of all this, when a larger Indy game is completed, there seems to be a better reaction to its release. Why play a 15 minute experience made in a day when you can essentially play a whole game? The idea with bigger Indy games is to think larger with the gameplay and design the games with the intent to sell.

So, what should an aspiring game developer do? Do you make smaller games in larger amounts and treat them as tech demos or do you go for broke and make the big fully fleshed out titles from the beginning? Both concepts are valid and have their champions, but personally, I have to give a slight edge to larger Indy games. If you can be bothered to spend the time, there's just a lot more flexibility involved in creating a larger, deeper experience. It's also just more efficient to make games from the beginning with the intent to make a profit. If the concept is solid, there's a chance it can be picked up and bought which will make getting an even bigger game into the industry easier. Finally, among the Indy games that seem to have the biggest press around them, the larger ones definitely take the cake. Smaller games have titles such as Crayon Physics or Mondo Medicals. Larger games have Audiosurf, Cave Story, Knytt Stories, Trilby: The Art of Theft, La Mulana, and the list goes on. That's not to say that smaller games aren't a good idea. For a college student who also needs to study, they're the perfect solution, but if someone considers themselves a full time Indy developer thinking big is the way to go.

The More You Know

2008-03-26T11:34:00.004-05:00

Since the genesis of video games, certain developers have taken it upon themselves to include messages within their games. These messages can be obvious or hidden, and tend to be positive and can sometimes be controversial. The definition of games with messages for this discussion will be games that released on a major console that included an obvious, positive message and are NOT categorized as edutainment. The reason for this is that console games require a license and are therefore screened, and console games tend to have more financial backing thereby giving them access to the mainstream market. Messages in video games are akin to product placement; they are subtle yet pervasive and synchronize with the theme of the game. Are video games a good vehicle for the dissemination of positive messages? I will argue that video games actually serve to dilute the message due to the fact that that gameplay and storyline take priority.

Advertising, regardless of the delivery vehicle, is meant to generate or enhance recall. In short, recall is what causes buyers to pick one brand over another when they are unsure, indecisive, new, or looking to switch brands. However, positive messages such as saving the rainforest, recycling, protecting endangered species, and animal cruelty require a much higher investment on the part of the viewer. These messages require constant action and engagement and therefore are less likely to be remembered using traditional, passive methods.

Throughout video game history there have been a handful of games that have attempted to deliver a message or generate awareness around a particular topic. While the titles depicted here are of above average caliber in terms of gameplay, they do a poor job delivering a concrete, lasting methods. The analysis of these older games, before moving on to recent titles, will show that the delivery of these messages is hindered by the medium of games and not by hardware or graphical limitations. Growl (Sega Genesis), a beat’em up developed by the Taito Corporation, has the player, a member of the Protectors of Animals’ World Society (P.A.W.S.), defeating a nefarious poaching and smuggling syndicate known as the Rendow Animal Protection Organization (R.A.P.O.). While saving oppressed animals is a noble task, this message is tainted by the extremely brutal portrayals of 16-bit violence. For example, after you save an elephant, he tramples around the screen for three minutes killing all your enemies which explode into 10 pieces under his foot. Also, the first enemy you kill in this game is a woman. Lastly, the final boss of this obscure title turns out to be an alien worm parasite that hid in a human body to control all the poachers. The violent gameplay paired with the odd ending sends mixed messages, thereby leaving the player remembering the quote, “Get lost you wisp!” in lieu of the “save the animals” message.

Kolibri (Sega 32X) and Ecco Jr. (Sega Genesis) were both developed by Novatrade, the creators of Ecco the Dolphin. Kolibri is a very unique shoot’em up requiring the player to save the Earth using a hummingbird imbued with Earth’s power. Ecco Jr. is a toned down, kid-friendly game featuring facts about dolphins and a light-puzzle solving adventure to save the oceans. These two games feature completely different gameplay but share the same themes: they want to make you aware of the beauty and fragility of nature. Kolibri and all the Ecco titles portray the Earth as a living, sentient being. The majority of Kolibri’s manual displays information about hummingbirds, their lives, their habits, and how to build a hummingbird feeder. These aforementioned games serve as poor vehicles because their gameplay mechanics and storylines are too far detached from their message.

Eco Fighters, or Ultimate Ecology in Japan (CPS-2), is an obscure shoot’em up created by Capcom. This game features renegade ecologists, led by Dr. Mori, that fight against pollution on an Earth-like planet. These ecologists use a ship to fight against an evil corporation, a corporation which has every legal right to be on the planet. Once again, the message is lost on the player due to the gameplay and storyline. Dr. Mori even advocates eco-terrorism in his line, “We must fight pollution, whatever the cost!”

Now I will move on to three recent games that will show that, although technology has improved, developers still cannot deliver a clear message and entertainment simultaneously. Finny the Fish and the Seven Waters (PS2) delivers mixed messages. On one hand, the in-game characters are very much against fishing. Conversely, all the lures Finny can collect are actual, licensed fishing lures from Japanese companies. Also, after Kappa the Turtle forces Finny into servitude, he tells him that he must eat to survive. He even says, “Your prey’s will to live is a strong as yours. They will put up a fight.” He actually makes the player feel bad for eating small fish. This is a title aimed at a younger generation that showcases that it is difficult to achieve a balance between generating awareness and entertaining.

Herdy Gerdy (PS2) is an interesting tale of courage, competition, and saving the world through the eyes of a little boy. This game was developed by Core, the same team responsible for Tomb Raider. In this game the player guides Gerdy through the world as he begins to understand himself and his bond to nature. This is a “world where animals have thoughts, feelings and personalities that you must learn to understand and influence.” (Herdy Gerdy synopsis on back of box) This title features absolutely no combat, and the goal is to herd all the animals unharmed into their respective pens using magical herding tools. This eco-friendly title is presented in a beautiful style of animation that captures the personality of each creature.

The final title in this analysis is the hilarious platformer, Whiplash. This title chronicles the escape of two test-lab animals, Spanx, the stupid weasel and Redmond, the intelligent hare. Redmond has been chained to Spanx’s arm allowing him to be used as a weapon. He is also indestructible due to being repeatedly sprayed by mega-hold hairspray. Naturally, the enemy in the game, FD Mann, and the Genron Corporation are made out to be the pinnacle of all evil. Crystal Dynamics actually received criticism from some groups claiming they made light of animal testing. Crystal Dynamics ensured them that this would help raise awareness for the issue. Whiplash actually does a commendable job of reinforcing the “evils of animal testing” message throughout the game. The player receives bonus points for freeing fellow inmates and destroying Genron property. Nurse Carol Ann, an ally in the game, is a Genron employee who has become sickened by the animal testing. Although this is a fun and witty game, it still is not able to fully deliver its message. It is difficult to broach a serious subject with laugh out loud humor. It would be akin to making a hilarious Susan B. Komen flash game.

Attempting to generate awareness or garner support for a cause is a difficult task to accomplish using a console game as a communication vehicle. If a title were to be an obvious an anti-war plug and lacked entertainment, very few people would be willing to play it. No one has yet to find an ideal balance between their pitch and the entertainment value of their game. Thus the message is often diluted or lost altogether when attempting to use a video game. Console games require a heavy investment of time and money, therefore I believe these messages will continue to be communicated poorly as storyline and gameplay must take priority.

Socializing in The Sims 2

2008-03-26T09:33:00.002-05:00

The world of The Sims 2 encompasses a social culture where making friends leads to happiness and success. While players can choose how they want to play, socialization between Sims is encouraged through game mechanics. The Sims 2 focuses on relationships in a neighborhood, offering social Sims more advantages than anti-social Sims. One may be aware of how The Sims 2 measures aspects of being social and how the measuring affects gameplay.

Each Sim has his or her own aspirations and personalities, defined by simple options such as putting points in personality attributes and choosing turn-ons and turn-offs. The Sim’s life aspiration, a Sim’s ultimate goal, can also be chosen by the player. While these goals do not specifically state the need for socializing, being social plays a large part in developing a Sim enough to reach his or her lifetime goal. A goal of having a family is obvious in the social aspect while the social aspect in rising to the top of the medical field may not be as apparent. Sims cannot get a promotion at work without friends, nor can they fulfill aspirations to keep themselves happy without interacting with other Sims. Friendships drive Sims forward in life and closer to their goals.

The Social bar represents one of the needs of a Sim, equally with Hunger, Energy, Comfort, Bladder, Fun, Hygiene, and Environment. The Social bar gauges how much a Sim socializes with other Sims. As the bar decreases, the Sim becomes unhappier, so the player must continuously interact with other Sims to keep the meter at a sufficient level. To raise the Social meter, Sims must talk with another Sim, whether in person, on the phone, or through e-mail. A content Sim performs better at work and is generally more willing to listen to the player’s commands. Playing the game with a content Sim runs more smoothly than playing with a discontent one.

Similarly to the Social bar, a meter is used to gauge the experience of dates or outings. The meter measures the agreeability of the player’s Sim to current company. To be agreeable, the Sim must actively pursue approval of others. Otherwise, the meter decreases, and the Sims are left with a poor experience. A poor experience does not help in making friends.

A Sim must make friends in order to progress to the highest level management in his or her career, which will then in turn earn the Sim more income. Like in the real world, friends supposedly give the player’s Sim more credibility that moves employers to promote the Sim. Although being social and maintaining a number of friends is necessary for job promotions, a Sim no longer needs to maintain friendships once he or she achieves the maximum level of the job. Negative marks can appear, friends can disappear, but the Social meter can still be full. In this manner, The Sims 2 sees general interaction between Sims as a social activity, no matter the circumstance of the activity, and yet gives the player many benefits for having friends to draw the player in the direction of having amiable Sims.

Making friends leads to benefits like job advancement. Friends can also leave presents at a Sim’s doorstep, from flower vases to plasma TVs, but only if they have a good time with the player’s Sim. The game clearly tells the player when a Sim’s interaction is positive or negative through conventional icons. Green plus signs and green arrows are good, and red minus signs and red arrows are not. The clear-cut design of good or bad does not necessarily mean the character is not socializing. While a Sim needs to act approvingly at dates or outings—needing green plus signs and green arrows—the Social bar still increases whether the Sim gossips or argues. The player may find playing an anti-social character less fulfilling than a social character due to the amount of content and rewards created for social Sims.

The Sims 2 measures social interaction, and game mechanics encourage socializing. Socializing is a Sim need, and a large amount of socializing is essential to rising in ranks, achieving goals, and staying happy. The Sims 2 is a game not about living and directing a virtual life, but living and directing an actively social virtual life.

Taste the Rainbow

2008-03-26T03:33:00.000-05:00

Darkened Skye has, in my experience, the most prevalent in-game product placement of any game. It takes the real world item of Skittles and puts them into the game as the most important piece of the game.
Most games that use in-game product placement will make it a part of the background or a prop; Darkened Skye uses Skittles for many aspects of the game. In the beginning your health is shown by an orange circle with a white ‘s’. After completion of the first level you gain another circle, this time a red one, and speak with an old lady who calls them Skittles. They originally show your health, but later become your goal for each level and they are used in combination with the other colors to form magic spells. There are continuous references to the rainbow and magic, both synonymous with the Skittles image. The plot of the game is very simple: Skye, the main character, must go and get the rainbow back from the evil Necroth who has stolen the rainbow so he can keep all the Skittles to himself.
What does a game with this level of in-game product placement mean? Honestly, I can see this being both good and bad for this game in particular, and videogames in general. My main complaint is that the gamer is not informed they are paying for the lovechild of all the Skittles commercials from the 90’s. The box has no reference to Skittles anywhere and so you do not realize what you are buying. Obviously, there are games that let users down and cause them to regret buying the game, but Darkened Skye is nothing but deceptiveness. One site said that Skittles had commissioned the game, but I have not seen a lot of information from other sites confirming that. Would the sales of the game been drastically reduced had they been honest about the presence of Skittles? I definitely believe so; on pure principle people do not want to pay for an advertisement.
I mentioned that the addition of Skittles could possibly be a positive aspect for this game. This is purely because it is one of the only things that add to the game. This game is very weak on many levels and does not compete with many other games. The Skittles gives it some form of identity and uniqueness. The game continually pokes fun at itself and many other normal gaming conventions; it attempts to be funny and is occasionally successful. The game play is pretty rough and I read gets worse the farther you get into the game. My main point is that the Skittles may be the only interesting point that would cause one to even remember the game’s name. In conclusion, the game frustrated me and left me annoyed. I read many reviews that some people found the surprise addition of Skittles very amusing and an important part of their enjoyment in the game. If the game had been a good game, that felt completely finished and fun to play, maybe I would have felt the same. Since it did not have that feel to it, it came across as a feeble attempt to make a new kind of advertising and failed. If they decided to do this, they should have been done much better.

Games from Class

2008-03-26T03:02:00.001-05:00

http://rodvik.com/rodgames/marriage.html
http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/
http://www.thepoppenkast.com/data/JW/thehangover.zip

Play before you read too much about these, they are meant to be experienced.

Also, here's Facade: http://jayisgames.com/archives/2006/12/facade.php

PS - this was on the wrong blog for a while. I have too many things in Blogger!

Botched PC Game Launches

2008-03-24T10:12:00.003-05:00

Game launches are pretty much a happening event, especially when that game is one of the most anticipated ones out there. The more the anticipation, the more the expectations from the game. And in case of PC games, there are those free "micro-installments" we so lovingly call patches. Then, there are those publisher pressure and deadline requirements that many games are released, well unfinished. A prime example could be SiN, released in 1998 and expected to stand its own against the critically acclaimed Half-Life and to be released during the Christmas holiday season, was let out with bugs and resulted in SiN not achieving as much success as the developers had hoped. In short, I would think a lot more could go wrong at PC game launch than a console game. And 1up.com has documented the top five of those messed up launches.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3166996

An Anecdote of Social Dynamics In-Game

2008-03-23T02:57:00.001-05:00

As an on and off player of World of Warcraft, City of Heroes/Villains or any other MMORPGs, it has always been challenging for me to blend in easily into the game as I would do in an online first person shooter. To my credit I have played most of the good MMORPGs and RPGs out there, but I just cannot hang on to it long enough to build a completely loaded character on level 60 or something. That said, I have some friends who just swear by them and like playing MMORPGs (Guildwars in this case) over anything else and they do it for more than five hours every day! There are those small elements that attract me to play these games and unfortunately, many that drive me away from it after I start indulging into these.

Starting with the good bits, what fascinates me is the choice and options you get to create your character. I would say out of all the MMORPGs out there, World of Warcraft employs the most number of character customization. The game has nine character classes that a player can choose from, though not all classes are available for each race. Each class has a set of unique abilities (general skills and spells available to the entire class) and talents (allow players to build their character and further refine their role). Every class has a set of three talent trees, with which players may choose to build their character's talent trees for damage-dealing, healing, etc. Characters can also equip different weapons and armor, either to customize their character or to improve abilities, as and when they acquire it. In addition to all this, it will let you change the head gear, skin color, hair style, facial hair, etc. Now this seemingly results into an enormous number of customized player characters. The sense of uniqueness in my character is what makes this part interesting and makes me give this a shot. The character is ready and unfortunately that’s the end of good times for me!

I think, game balance and design is one of the most difficult tasks when it comes to MMORPGs. Open ended gameplay, un-anticipated human behavior, huge number of player, weapons, levels combinations lead to a lot of un-expected situations. And to make the gameplay smooth and playable on most computers, you cannot expect eye-candy of the highest order from these games. But that’s a personal opinion, or else you won’t have millions of gamers playing this game every now and then.

Almost every game starts with a message stating that game play experience may change when you play this game online. WOW doesn’t have any difficulty level to choose from. Thinking it will be difficult to play against computer by default, I decided that playing against other humans on a PvP server (the interaction within the game in a PvP server occurs between other human players) would help me grasp faster as there would be other humans on the same level as me. But this theory backfired real bad and real quickly! My level one paladin stood no chance against the bunch of rogues I ran into. Every time I went back to my body (after they killed me) they used to lurk around, waiting for me. And me being a grade A World of Warcraft noob, did not realize it for the first eight times they killed me! I don’t know how level 52 rogues can stoop to such low levels by assaulting a level one paladin time and again. I later found out that this distasteful practice was described as "corpse camping" in Wikipedia.

"Corpse camping is where after killing another player, that player then continues to camp at the enemy's corpse (either by using stealth or other means) and kills them when the player resurrects themselves. Although this is frustrating to the camped player, this is not considered griefing by Blizzard and is not subject to punishment by Game Masters."

That said, I quit that server and hopped onto a PvE server. I get to create my player character once again from scratch. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I cannot take the same character that I had created in the PvP server to the PvE server, not for free at least. Paid transfer was an option, but my character was not worth it!

Player vs. Environment, commonly referred to as PvE by most online games and gamers, is the player-controlled character competing against the game world and its computer-controlled denizens, as opposed to Player vs. Player. A player must complete a pre-defined task without fighting other players. To my surprise, Blizzard usually calls them "normal" servers. Since it would seem that, a PvP server would be a normal server in an MMORPG. For a casual player like me, who just wants to play the game and train with less interruption, then PvE may just be the place for you. Some players like the thrill and risk of random player vs. player combat, and would consider PvE realms to have a difficulty that is too low. But in its defense, in a PvE server corpse camping, ganking, and griefing tend to be less prevalent.

Ganking and griefing have several meanings. When an overwhelmingly large or more powerful group or party kills you and/or your group or when a single player attacks a player of equal or lesser level who is in the middle of a fight with something else and is handicapped by that fight, its ganking. Griefing is the term used to describe the act of one player hassling another player. This can be as simple as someone trying to obscure someone else's view with their own character, or as bad as pulling mobs onto someone, or even preventing someone from achieving their goals like killing quest-givers or other NPCs.

But then I ran into a different kind of problem in the PvE server. I was only able to interact with players who were near about the same lever as I was i.e. level one! Other experienced players who were on much higher levels than me, would not either have the time and patience to speak to me, or maybe I did not initiate the conversation in the right manner. In any case it leads me to ponder about in-game social dynamics. I was later helped by a level six player who got me up to level three by directing me what to do and which quests were to be take. Should there be etiquette for in-game conversations too? In my opinion there should be, but I don’t see any courses educating you in schools for that in near future.

GMI evaluates SL

2008-03-20T11:12:00.002-05:00

In an extensive 2007 survey of several hundred SL users, conducted by Global Market InSite, not only evaluated the market potential for real-life brands and product advertisements, but also studied negative and positive social attributes as reported by the SL residents.

https://www.gmi-mr.com/gmipoll/release.php?p=20070423

Interestingly, some negative consequences were evident, but significantly paled in comparison to the positive.

http://simchronicity.wordpress.com/2007/04/23/second-lifes-potential-for-virtual-consumer-marketing/

Having recently researched the "Warcraft Widow" groups (http://kotaku.com/gaming/world-of-warcraft/warcraft-widows-an-internet-support-group-222201.php), I found it quite interesting that SL does not impose time commitments which are so present in other 'game structured' online worlds. One does not have to cut off real-life, to improve their online characters.

Virtual theft, is it?

2008-03-20T02:36:00.004-05:00

Now, this is something new. I was going through the law website and there was an "old" article (dated Dec 21, 2007) about a game publisher made to pay-up for the loss of virtual property of a gamer in China! A Chinese court has ordered MMO publisher Shanda Interactive Entertainment to pay the equivalent of $680 USD to a player in its MMO World Of Legend for the loss of virtual items. The gamer plans to return to court to sue Shanda for the roughly $20,000 USD he has spent on the game over the previous five years.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/12/chinese-gamer-s.html
http://www.pacificepoch.com/newsstories/113050_0_5_0_M/

Everybody Has to Start Somewhere

2008-03-19T23:26:00.002-05:00

I was looking at some recent examples of how the people and developers in the indy game industry have managed to become "legitimate" or at least more successful than the typical indy game developer both here and abroad.

Darwinia- Developed by the creators of the critically acclaimed yet small release Uplink, Darwinia was Intoversion Software's second game which pretty much sold way better than anybody could have anticipated. They are also the group that developed Defcon.
http://www.introversion.co.uk/

N+ - Developed by a two man team, N was a platformer based around tricky acrobatic game mechanics in which the player had to make their way through a death filled level to reach the exit. What was a free game and also updated and released on PC as N+, but still as a free game, is now available on Xbox Live and has DS and PSP versions coming out soon.
http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/

Cave Story - Many of you probably have heard of the awesome action-platformer created by one Japanese man over the course of five years. A fan translation was made for an English version and it's popularity has garnered it a PSP release, although it has been some time since I last heard new information regarding the PSP version.
English version - http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=cavestory

Touhou Project - From Doujin group Team Shanghai Alice, the Touhou Project is in fact a series of bullet-hell shooter (and a couple fighting games) known for its characters and its creation by one man team ZUN. Although as far as I know none of the Touhou games have a "legitimate" release, the series has way more popularity than the average Doujin game.
http://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/html/game.html

Melty Blood - As mentioned in class, Melty Blood started as a doujin game by group French Bread with the help of Type Moon which was based off of Type Moon's game Lunar Legend Tsukihime which itself started as a small release and turned into a bigger game and anime series. Melty Blood, after several different versions were released, eventually received a PS2 release of Melty Blood: Act Cadenza and is a popular 2d fighter in Japan.
http://www.e56.info/mbacps2/index.html

Replica Swords

2008-03-19T23:15:00.002-05:00

Apparently Square Enix is suing several stores for selling unlicensed replicas of swords from Final Fantasy. I am surprised regarding whether or not the design of a sword is actually covered by trademark, the law in this area can be a tricky thing.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/02/square-enix-sue.html

Line Rider and a tiny bit about machinima

2008-03-19T16:29:00.003-05:00

Drawing a bit of a blank on the articles this week. So, I thought I'd show something related to gamer culture that also pertains to my semester paper. I'm writing on the rise of gamers who like to create in games more than playing them. One of the prime examples of this is Line Rider. This game literally could not exist without a huge creative fan base. The basic idea is to draw tracks for a little man on a slide to ride down. It's supposed to be a basic level editor, but the fans have taken it to a new level and given it a cult status. It's a good example of exactly how far the creativity of gamer culture is willing to go.

Here's a good example of one of the many artistically rendered levels. Keep in mind that this is ONLY done with a line drawing tool. There are no fill functions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SASjlj5R4U4

Also, I ran across this while writing the post.
http://www.machinima.org/

Apparently there's an ACADEMY for Machinima now, and they have a film festival. We've come a long way since the days of people making jokes in Gary's Mod and Unreal.

Japanese Gaming Culture

2008-03-19T14:37:00.002-05:00

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6177668.html

I found this article about Japanese gamer culture while looking around and just now realized that'd it'd make for a nice perspective to comapre to American gaming culture. The difference is vast, and sometimes it's worth considering, when analyzing the industry or making a game, that Americans are not the only consumers of games. We have a very different style from other countries. Although, I'd love to see something on European gamer culture. All I have to run on is a few weird cases and Ubisoft.

Drafting in Professional Gaming

2008-03-19T13:17:00.002-05:00

Looking over the article on the CGS earlier I noticed something rather amusing.

http://dallasvenom.thecgs.com/2008_Draft_Evaluations_The_Introductions

The CGS has instituted a draft like in most professional sports. While maybe not shocking, this seems to have some unusual backlash to it. Specifically, the Counterstrike players seem to be angry that the draft picks are based on individuals and not teams. This means that teams are getting split up in the name of the draft pick. The teams, of course, are arguing that this destroys the team dynamic for what is a team sport. Certainly, the idea of drafting one's former hated rival onto your team raises a few eyebrows.

http://thecgs.com/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=53931

This does actually make sense for single-player games played in rounds. Team dynamic doesn't exactly matter heavily in games like Forza 2 or single-player WoW PvP. Sponsored teams should pick only the best players in these categories. However, the Counterstrike one seems almost like a situation where someone tried to tie professional gaming into regular professional games. It seems like these analogies just don't work.

Either way, does being a "Professional" league give you the right to break up teams? Does this lead the way to showmanship and singular stars rather than well-balanced teams? Is this what's different from the CPL that's keeping them alive? Do people find drafts to be more professional or interesting?

Enlightened Ass-Kicking

2008-03-19T07:03:00.003-05:00

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/03/12/in-china-monks-mix-counter-strike-with-spiritual-enlightenment/

This is an interesting article about Chinese monks spending time in an internet cafe playing Counterstrike. Apparently Buddhists have no problems achieving moksha after cutting bloody swathes through a virtual realm. I guess teenagers are the same everywhere. It's nice to know that those that walk "a higher path" have the same sense of fun as the rest of us.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/03/06/in-game-advertising-continues-to-grow

295 million USD in 2007. That is not very much money. More money was spent on the Super Bowl alone. This number, however, is going to continually increase. E-marketer predicts that this number will be 650 million by 2012. Those who don't want to see
their storied franchises violated by these ads probably have nothing to worry about. Their is a lot of criteria for
choosing product placement, in-game ads, etc. and Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy probably aren't there yet (and probably never will be).

Just for Fun
Little. Yellow. Different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7thSdlRhuM

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/19

Guinness World Records - London Gaming Costume Gathering

2008-03-19T00:54:00.002-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj__eu_6zdo

There are lots of Marios, and I think I saw a ghost from Pac-Man. People gathered in London for the Guinness World Records for the largest assembly of people dressed as video game characters.

Somehow eighty people doesn't seem like a very big number to break a video game character gathering record, but I suppose it's never been recorded for the Guinness Book of World Records before so would then be a record.

The gathering is not the only game-related thing in the book:
http://bethblog.com/index.php/2008/02/29/guinness-reveals-elder-scrolls-records/

I don't have a copy of the book, so I don't know just how many entries concerning games are in it.

Oblivion's Downloadable Content

2008-03-19T00:28:00.002-05:00

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/03/download-oblivions-horse-armor-for-a-price/

Morrowind mods were free, even the ones made by the developers. With Oblivion came a different story: developer-made mods are called downloadable content and are not free. One of the first downloadable content was a horse armor pack that allowed players to outfit their horses in one of two types of armor. The horse armor was supposed to be in the release of the game, so players felt cheated not so much because of the price, but for having to buy a very small mod that should have been part of the game to begin with.

Later downloadable content added more in-depth quests, player-houses, and new items, so some people are willing to pay for them, but many other people aren't. Players feel they have the right to download official mods for free, as well, maybe because they were free for Morrowind.

Taste the Spyware

2008-03-18T23:03:00.004-05:00

I'm playing Darkened Skye to see how big a part Skittles are in the game....They are the game. It is a giant mesh of all the old "taste the rainbow" commercials. Skittles are your health, your magic and your goal. They don't even try to hide it either. They use the same colors that are in the package, put a 's' on them and call them skittles. This is the best review/description I have found on it, check it out if you are interested. I'll save any more description for class.
http://www.epinions.com/content_127066345092

My other article is relates to installing what some gamers are calling spyware. I don't know if this works for console games as well or just PC games, but would be interested if you know more about it. Basically EA is allowing advertisers to display ads that would be relative to your location and also I think your preferences. It is started with Battlefield 2142 and NFS Carbon. This may be old news to you, but I hadn't heard about it.
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/43668/

Death of the CPL

2008-03-18T17:04:00.003-05:00

Pertinent to our gaming-for-profit conversations: After a ten-year run, the Cyberathlete Professional League has closed down, canceling its 2008 events. Their reasons include "the current fragmentation of the sport, a crowded field of competing leagues, and the current economic climate." On the other hand, the Championship Gaming Series seems to be fine. Wonder what the difference is?

The CPL's notice, and Joystiq's commentary.

And one more thing....

2008-03-07T18:58:00.001-06:00

...on professional gaming. From Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/364652/playing-games-for-a-living

Is it just me, or is there something about doing your draft picks at the Playboy Mansion that tries a little too hard?

Inside the ESRB?

2008-03-07T18:52:00.002-06:00

As per our conversation last class, here's an article from Gamepolitics in which one ex-game-rater explains how the process works, and what problems he has with the current state of the system. Interesting reading.

http://gamepolitics.com/2008/03/06/ex-game-rater-dishes-the-dirt-esrb-boss-fires-back/

In game ads: Hellgate

2008-03-06T01:16:00.002-06:00

I plan on surveying current attitudes/buzz regarding in-game ads, and I'm starting with Hellgate:London.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/21/1623205&from=rss
http://hellgatepalladium.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-hellgate-london-ingame-ads.html

I'll start by saying that I don't like in-game ads, but I don't hate them either. A lot of people seem to get up in arms about advertising and any sort of "spying" done to target ads. More precisely, these alarmists are the loud ones and few people stand up in support of ads or moderated rhetoric. One common complaint is that the consumer is still paying $50 or so to look at ads. You get a taste of this point of view in the Slashdot comments in the link above. The other issue is that some people perceive advertising as distracting or as ruining their experience. Luckily I have not played a game where it was the case that the ads were overly obtrusive. As someone points out, also on Slashdot, the ads are in the form of posters left up in the post-apocalyptic subway stations. They feel right and are even preferable to simply having bare wall.

The second link is a sort of follow-up to the whole in-game ad issue. The developers of the game are now using the poster space to occasionally celebrate the achievements of certain players (richest, highest level, etc). I think this is an example of a company doing something cool for players. Interestingly, it's also the only thing anyone has mentioned lately regarding the ads.

The Second Life economy

2008-03-05T23:02:00.002-06:00

http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php

Interesting things to note:
There are almost 13 million SL accounts
Less than 500,000 logged in last week

Last month, almost 1,000 people made USD$1,000 from Second Life.

Twice as many Linden Dollars go into the world every month as come out.

For a couple months last year, the monthly spending inside SL was over USD$35 million.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation

Topic 3

2008-03-05T21:34:00.002-06:00

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Internet_/Foreign_girls_flocking_Indian_gaming_portals/articleshow/msid-2710611,curpg-1.cms

This article isn't very long, but what I found interesting is that American women, mostly teenagers, go to a site to role play in arranged marriages. Unfortunately it does not go into much depth about what the game does, but I thought the fact that there are games that even do this was surprising.

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628372

This site talks a little about advertising through a game, but not necessarily in game. It has a lot of valid points because no one wants their gaming experience interrupted.

Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier

2008-03-05T20:55:00.001-06:00

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828

I don’t expect anyone else to read this entire document.
This is an early look at the emerging economics of Virtual Worlds. The author uses Norrath as his site of study and presents some interesting facts. He also provides a good definition for a location having an economy: any distinct territory with a labor force, a GNP, and a floating FX rate, has an economy.

1. The exchange of PP to dollars occurs in a highly liquid, illegal market. Its value exceeds that if the JP Yen and IT Lira. (in 2001)

2. A competition for time has arisen between Earth and VWs. For many people Earth is the less desirable option.

3. Each avatar develops a social role by becoming a specialized agent. The avatar’s class determines what items it will supply and demand. This includes asocial players

4. Many people spend more time in-game than they do working.

5. It is possible, with the .0125 $/PP exchange rate, to maintain a living above the poverty line. In 2001 the poverty line for 1 person was around 9000 a year. He says that the average wage was around $3.42 an hour in-game.

6. Norrath’s real-world GNP in 2001 made it the 77th richest country. Imagine where WoW stands.

This is a study of one game, but the principles, assumptions, and findings are far-reaching. They can be applied to MMO’s today. Studies like this will foster understanding of how societies and economies evolve. The beauty of an MMO is that each time a game is released the society and economy start from scratch. The interaction between virtual and real world is becoming more important each day.

Police and Virtual Thefts (in Japan)

2008-03-05T20:50:00.005-06:00

On the contrary, the gaming culture as its glorified in Japan is more mature than in US. Police and lawmakers take virtual thefts and offenses seriously. But well, it maybe because the numbers involved in the Japanese case was much higher than the one in US; $340,000 in Japan vs $4,000 in US.

"A Japanese teenager was recently arrested by the Tokyo Police for stealing the virtual equivalent of 36 million yen (roughly $340,000 USD) from Korean MMO publishing giant Nexon, according to a story at Kotaku.

When confronted by authorities, the 16-year-old confessed, saying, "I originally wanted the dress worn by the princess, but I just ended up racking up a bunch of game points."

The boy, a player of Nexon's Mabinogi, obtained the private login name and password of an employee of Nexon's Tokyo branch, and used that information to illegally access the game's servers and pilfer the aforementioned loot.

Obviously the Tokyo Metropolitan Police are treating this as a serious offense, but it will be interesting to see if it's handled as the equivalent of the theft of a similar amount of real-world currency. One could argue that technically none of the stolen goods actually exist, though an argument could also be made in the opposite direction.

Luckily for the boy though, they'll probably just skip right over all of the Gibsonian considerations created by this brave new virtual world and chalk his crimes up to teenage indiscretions."

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/japanese-teen-s.html

Police and Virtual Thefts (in US of A)

2008-03-05T20:45:00.004-06:00

I was reading through wired.com based blog and I came across one that was aptly named "gamelife". It had a post pertaining to a virtual theft that happened in Final Fantasy XI. Its not surprising that that local police couldn't charge the alleged perpetrator of the virtual theft, who was actually a friend of the actual FF XI player. The investigators blatantly told the player that the items were devoid of any monetary value and hence the suspect cannot be charged with any kind of criminal law. It is still difficult to frame laws for virtual heists and the real issue seems to hinge on people's definition of the term "monetary value".

"After the loss of almost $4,000 USD in virtual goods and currency, Final Fantasy XI player Geoff Luurs brought his case before the Blaine, Minnesota police department only to be refused any kind of aid.

Instead of arresting the alleged perpetrator of the virtual theft (a friend of Mr. Luurs), police investigators told Mr. Luurs that virtual items "are devoid of monetary value," thus no crime had actually been committed.

While it's not surprising that police were unwilling to aid Mr. Luurs, Joshua Fairfield, an associate professor of law at Washington And Lee University feels the police hesitance was due entirely to the amount of money lost. He commiserates with Mr. Luurs and says that, "the first time IBM loses $10 million, we're going to see some police action."

It's long been speculated as to how police forces would react to virtual theft, and many gamers had come to the conclusion that the police would do nothing long before this incident proved them correct.

While we'd like to think there would be some kind of legal recourse for the loss of any property with monetary value, the real issue seems to hinge on people's definition of "monetary value."

Perhaps Mr. Fairfield is right and we'll have to see a high-profile company like IBM take a major hit before the police of the world will have enough precedent to believe every 20-year-old who claims his roommate stole his +5 Helm Of Rat Punching.

Then again, it's not hard to imagine that scenario creating a ridiculous strain on law enforcement agencies.

In the end, we seem to be left with what the games' creators have told us all along: guard your login info with your life and trust no one."

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/02/police-refuse-t.html

WOW Economics

2008-03-05T18:41:00.004-06:00

http://www.gamerprice.com/wow-gold-study.html
This is an interesting study of the exchange rates between Azeroth and our World. The difference between Europe and the US is astounding. The author implies that Blizzard polices the US servers more thereby creating a shortage of sellable gold. This actually makes sense:
If demand remains static and the money supply is reduced, the supply curve would shift left, thereby raising its price.
I am curious to find out if any savvy players have taken advantage of any arbitrage opportunities. I don’t know if this is even possible.
Government intervention can play a large role in exchange rates. Monetary, fiscal, and legal policies can have tremendous effects on inflation, and appreciation/ depreciation. Blizzard is the government of Azeroth and their policies seem to have a clear effect on the economy.
The author also suggests that American may have more dispensable income and are therefore more inclined to spend more money. An increased amount of discretionary income does not always increase the propensity to consume.
I find the idea of the interactions of real and virtual economies very fascinating and I am hoping to do more research in this area.

The Idea of the Let's Play.

2008-03-05T14:51:00.003-06:00

My Posts are a bit video heavy this week. I apologize. Most of these topics are better to show than tell.

Anyway, I know this is my third post, but in the past couple of months or so, I've come across an unusual phenomenon on message boards and youtube; the Let's Play. The idea of the Let's Play is to watch someone play a game through message board posts that highlight the gameplay step by step or watching videos of someone playing the game with commentary. The original concept was for someone to play a game so you didn't have to. This was either because the game was:
1. Hard to get
2. Hard
3. So good you needed to be exposed to it
4. So bad it should never be played by anyone, but it's funny to watch

This supposedly started out pretty small, but has now exploded into a rather large sub-genre of the gamer community. It's gotten weird enough, that there are actually people that are considered "celebrities/professionals" of the Let's Play community. The videos I posted in my Indy Gaming Gone Horribly HORRIBLY Wrong posts are examples of Let's Plays (thus, why I posted this as a third post since it's technically a sub-post of one of my other ones).

I know why the LPers (name of people that post these videos) do it. It's a mix of pride, prestige, bragging, ego, and the desire to perform in front of an audience. The thing that slightly baffles me is the precise reason that most of these are fun to watch. Watching people play games without getting to play yourself is often boring. What about the youtube environment makes it more fun. Is it because in some way we attach to the video's creator as we would sitting next to a friend at our house playing games and cracking jokes. Is it because the commentary is funny? I'm curious what other people think. To get you started here's a link to one of the more "well-known" LP'ers youtube profile. Pick a game that sounds fun and watch for a bit if you dare.

http://www.youtube.com/profile_play_list?user=DeceasedCrab

For the record, avoid the Barbie: Magic of Pegasus one unless you're ready to watch a man on heavy painkillers playing a game intended for 4 year old girls while playing heavy metal music.

Viral Marketing Campaign

2008-03-05T14:45:00.002-06:00

Upon the mention of Viral Marketing, I remembered one of my favorite viral marketing campaigns ever. Unfortunately, the site doesn't exist anymore, but I found some links that show what it was. The following are links remarking on the viral marketing for Shadow of the Colossus. They mocked up some fake documentary crews and had them discover "real life" Colossi. They called it, "Giantology". Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSkkkZIjMls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TPYhZJqydo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdkHsvncBpk&feature=related

http://kotaku.com/gaming/shadow-of-the-colossus/shadow-of-the-colossus-gets-viral-131133.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Colossus

Like I said, I personally think this is one of the more clever viral marketing ads I've seen.

Indy Gaming Gone Horribly HORRIBLY Wrong

2008-03-05T14:31:00.002-06:00

For those of you that haven't seen this yet, this is "I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game". It's essentially a huge gamer pop culture reference. On top of that, it follows a recent trend of rom hacks and independent games of being unnecessarily hard, unintuitive, and unfair. Ultimately, this makes it fun to watch, feels like an accomplishment if you finish it, and just a pain in the ass to play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPBgxWyXYKI

This is just one of the many video runs of this game. It's just a taste of how sadistic it is. A quick search on youtube will show you more, and for anyone curious, yes, I do own a copy of the game if you REALLY want to try it.

Either way, I find this interesting, because there's a huge gamer culture surrounding these ridiculously hard and unfair games right now, and they're rather popular. Is this because people enjoy a challenge, have to prove themselves better at the cost of their sanity, or because Schadenfreude makes the videos irresistible to watch. For reference, here's a few other examples of independent games that are unfair and people getting frustrated over them. Fair warning. These WILL probably contain some cursing.

Cat Mario Parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaCkpbbOVVM
Kaizo Mario World: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua6pbz3ROvQ
La-Mulana (and the start of the fabled Hell Temple): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY0IH80cHB0

Either way, I figure this makes for an interesting look in current gamer culture while getting a few laughs.

Viral Marketing

2008-03-05T12:29:00.002-06:00

We're all familiar with one viral marketing campaign or another and the video game industry is certainly no newbie when it comes to the subject. Many people know about I Love Bees which was done for Halo 2. There was also the big failure from Sony to use viral marketing to increase PSP sales at the end of 2006, in which they had "fans" exclaim their love for the PSP through videos and blogs. It was easily discovered by SomethingAwful as well as others on the internet as it was too obvious. What is interesting is that the Japanese video game market seems to also be picking up on this trend. Armored Core For Another is being hyped up by Japanese bloggers who were paid to praise the game on their blog and Famitsu's blogger Jamzy has gotten in on it as well, as his blog seems entirely dedicated to selling 360s anyway.

Gary Gygax

2008-03-05T11:56:00.005-06:00

I'm sure most of you already know this but the world lost gaming legend Gary Gygax yesterday. Fittingly, March 4th was also the day celebrated as GM's Day. The world of games, video games included, would not be what it is today had Gary Gygax not helped expand the niche historical miniature market into fantasy wargaming. From there his and Jeff Perren's fantasy wargame Chainmail developed into the pen and paper RPG known as Dungeons and Dragons. A lot of the earliest video games were made so people could try to play D&D on the computer. Don Daglow, president of Stormfront Studios, speaks of when he used his college mainframe to create DNGEON (because only six letter names were allowed) and other college systems who got it couldn't run it because of its massive 32k size. Just imagine western gaming without the influence of D&D to build upon and take a moment to thank Gary Gygax for his vision and hard work. Maybe roll up a character in his memory or play through an old adventure module. And remember that Gary Gygax isn't truly dead, he reached epic level and ascended to godhood.

online burglary

2008-03-05T08:58:00.004-06:00

http://virtual-economy.org/blog/dutch_teen_arrested_for_habbo_

This is an interesting article about the theft of virtual goods
from players of Habbo Hotel. What I find the most interesting is that
he was not only charged with hacking, but
burglary as well. How do legal bodies go about assigning value
to virtual objrcts? Do, or will, virtual
goods be subject to any depreciation? Will a household's assets
include virtual assets in their investment portfolio in the future?
This act stirs a lot of questions.

Independent Games Festival

2008-03-03T23:23:00.004-06:00

http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html#Noitu

I was not aware of the Independent Games Festival before I just now looked it up. Usually when I heard the term "independent game," I think of 8-bit games or "playful" software that didn't do much aside from something "neat." I missed a whole world of gaming. The link takes you to the finalists and winners of the IGF. Be sure to look at a few of their sites.

I watched Crayon Physics Deluxe and tried Tri-Achnid. Both have beautiful art and music, and the mechanics in Tri-Achnid are very intuitive.

Insight into E3 Booth Babes

2008-03-03T22:32:00.004-06:00

http://www.gamecritics.com/feature/report/e3expo2004_babes/page01.php
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/06/booth-babe-gamer-tells-her-tale/

These are a couple of links to interviews with booth babes. I'm not sure if this fits in the topics for the next weeks (maybe under instances of virtual in the real?), but I've always wondered what E3 was like in different people's perspectives. While the articles are about the booth babes, you can still get an idea of what visitors and developers are like at E3.

In the GameCritics link, a reporter asks several booth babes (and one that wasn't and was offended that she was mistaken for one) what it's like being a booth babe. The Joystiq article goes into the perspective of one booth babe, who is also a gamer/actress/model.

Here is a link to what E3 was supposed to enforce in 2006.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70075

I personally would go to E3 to see the games, not the girls (or guys, if they would ever do such a thing). It wouldn't hurt to go there for both games and girls, but it seems maybe the girls were becoming more the focus and more the reason to go to E3 than the games.

On a side note, the game industry seems professional and yet not so professional at the same time, if professional is taken in the conventional meaning. E3 is a serious place for game exposure, and yet it seems like a huge spring break cosplay party. I understand the developers work hard to get their best latest work up and have to compete for attention, and using a sexy model or two would turn some heads. But if I were a developer, I'd feel inept as a developer if I have to rely on something that probably has nothing to do or very little to do with my game to market my game.

Topic Three: Money and Culture

2008-03-03T11:48:00.001-06:00

Possible subtopics include virtual economics; in-game product placement; viral marketing; replicas, theme parks, merchandise, and other instances of the virtual in the real; direct downloadable content; console wars and the future of the commercial industry; independent game creation; the mainstreaming of gamer culture; professional gaming; and anything else you can think of :)

Please remember to post twice a week and to comment twice on the posts of your classmates.

Epidemics in MMORPG

2008-02-28T03:31:00.000-06:00

Almost every game nowadays posts a message before the game starts stating that game play experience may change when playing this game online. Which rather makes us think that internet can be such a scary place to be in or it maybe the next best thing that happened to you. But more than scary people lurking the internet it’s the people who disrupt gameplay and spoil the whole experience of playing an MMORPG.

The idea of going to a PvE Server is mainly to avoid having to handle with stupid fights when you want to learn the game and try new things. That’s the mistake I did, I got into a PvP server and needless to say my level one paladin stood no chance against the bunch of rogues I ran into. Every time I went back to my body (after they killed me) they used to lurk around, waiting for me. And me being a grade A World of Warcraft noob, did not realize it for the first 8 times they killed me! I don’t know how level 52 rogues can stoop to such low levels by assaulting a level one paladin time and again. I so wanted to say “I did not wish to lower myself by engaging your kind, but you leave me little choice!” and decapitate them all.

That said, I quit that server and hopped onto a PvE server. I get to create my player character once again. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I do not need to take the same character that was mauled up in the previous PvP server. I would say out of all the MMORPGs out there; World of Warcraft employs the most number of character customization. It will let you change the head gear, skin color, hair style, facial hair, etc you name it. It’s probably the case with most gamers out there, but I always tend to use a male character for an FPS game, but a female character for third person game. I guess, it’s because I don’t want to keep looking at a dude running (and dancing) for multiple hours in-game. Anyways the strategy of moving to a PvE server proved the most effective, as there were much “friendly” NPCs in this world. I had already decided that I will show no mercy. In a skirmish I cornered a “ferocious” pig and showed it who is boss!

Lastly if you are going to die, die with honor, or at least style. Fellow players talk about your “bravery” at great lengths for a long time after you die; like one to two minutes! You don’t want “diseases” killing you in game. I over heard about this disease called corrupted blood that killed a lot of people back in the early World of Warcraft days. I was so curious, I had to look it up in Wikipedia and unsurprisingly I did find some interesting tidbits.

Virtual epidemics are worse than virtual thefts. Corrupted Blood was a virtual plague that infected characters in the computer game World of Warcraft, spreading rapidly from character to character. Its resemblance to real-life disease epidemics drew international attention in the news. The epidemic began on September 13, 2005 when Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of World of Warcraft, introduced a new instance called Zul'Gurub into the game as part of patch 1.7. Inside this instance was a boss named Hakkar the Soulflayer, alluded to as the "blood god". Players who fought Hakkar were affected by his debuff (a spell which has a negative effect over a fixed period of time). The debuff, in this case, was Corrupted Blood, a spell that caused 250–300 points of damage (compared to the average health of 2500-5000 for a character of the highest level, and with those at the mid-levels having about 1500) every few seconds to the afflicted character. The affliction was passed on to any characters standing too close to an infected character. While the curse would kill most lower-level characters in a matter of seconds, higher-level characters could keep themselves alive (via healing spells, having high stamina, or other means) long enough to spread the disease around the immense landscape inside the game. After a few days, Corrupted Blood had become World of Warcraft's version of the Black Death, rendering entire cities uninhabitable and causing players to avoid large clusters of other players, and in many cases, causing players to avoid major cities altogether.

Every so often, Hakkar will cast this debuff on a random player, effectively forcing players to be spread apart, or in the case of melee classes, to move away from Hakkar before spreading it to the other melee classes. Blizzard Entertainment tried several times to fix the problem, including imposing quarantine on certain places. This "plague" was eventually "cured" by changing the mechanics of the Hakkar encounter to eliminate the spreading of the effect from character to character. Hakkar still has an ability called Corrupted Blood, but it now takes the form of a red bolt launched at a random player fighting the boss. The player and those nearby take damage, and receive a heavy damage over time, but the effect no longer spreads further.

In March 2007, Ran D Balicer, an epidemiologist physician at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel, published an article in the Journal Epidemiology describing the similarities between this outbreak and the recent SARS and avian influenza outbreaks. Dr Balicer suggested role-playing games could serve as an advanced platform for modeling the dissemination of infectious diseases. In a follow-up article in the Journal Science, the game Second Life was suggested as another possible platform for these studies.

Courtesy: Corrupted Blood from Wikipedia

A Brief Aside for Logistics

2008-02-27T13:14:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow from 11:30 to 12:30, as a class we will be attending Dr. Jonathan Frome's lecture in ATEC 1.606, entitled "Levels of Engagement: Why Different Media Generate Different Emotions." Dr. Frome is a candidate for the film studies position; his dissertation is entitled "Why Films make Us Cry but Videogames Don't: Emotions in Traditional and Interactive Media." Come prepared with hard questions.

We'll discuss the current round of papers after his lecture. See you then!

Character is Only the Domain of Man/Woman/Imaginary Being

2008-02-27T11:25:00.002-06:00

The topics surrounding character gender in games with user created avatars have existed since before the beginning of the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game genre, floating around in the realm of the Pen and Paper RPGs. Of all the topics in this area the most widely discussed is that of cross-gender character creation. That is to say, male players playing female characters and female players playing male characters.

I personally have played a lot of MMOs and, as a male, have played a large number of female characters. At least seventy percent of the characters that I actually put time into are female. However, my quick acceptance and seeming preference for playing female characters puts me among a small group of people. In my experience most male players might have the occasional female character, but the large majority of their characters are still male. In addition to my large amount of experience with MMOs, I have also played various Pen and Paper RPGs for many years. Having for a long time always been the Game Master in almost all the Pen and Paper gaming groups I have been in, I have acted for an innumerable number of female NPCs. This might partially explain my comfort with playing characters of the opposite gender, but more interestingly is the number of different kinds of players I have encountered in these groups.

I will be concentrating on just the relationship of male players playing female characters for now because I have more experience in that area and the reverse relationship will come later. I have met people with several different personal views on this subject, determined through my observation of their play. First comes people who prefer to play female characters for whatever personal reason and play them almost exclusively. There are people who, like me, are comfortable with playing characters of the opposite gender and will play whatever they feel fits best with the concept they’ve come up with. Then there are the players who have played female characters a few times, but only as experimentation or a change of pace, they largely play male characters. The next kind of player plays male characters almost to exclusivity and the reason can range from that’s just what they feel comfortable with to coincidence to that’s their natural choice and they don’t ever think about why. Then the last type that I have met on occasion feels very uncomfortable with the idea of playing a character of the opposite gender. They don’t necessarily view it in the same way as they might view cross-dressing, but they still treat it with a sort of light awkward laughter.

Although it is to a lesser degree because of the anonymity of playing a character in an MMO versus playing a character at a table of people and then having to speak that character’s actions and words, these types of views can still be seen in the world of MMOs. It is likely that any uncomfortable feelings or stigma attached to this process is due to views in culture as a whole. Men who wear women’s clothing are odd at best and men who act in any sort of feminine way are assumed to be homosexual. So how might someone who wishes to place themselves into the role of a female character be viewed?

This brings us to female players playing male characters. It seems to be a more common and more widely accepted practice. From what I’ve heard of people discussing the topic and from what I’ve observed of people’s reactions, female players who play male characters are not seen as different and female players who don’t want to play male characters are not viewed as “silly”. It’s likely that this also stems from cultural views. A woman doing “men” things is more readily accepted than vice-versa, even the term ‘tomboy’ is used less nowadays. A man wearing women’s clothing is weird, whereas a woman wearing what is seen or used to be seen as “men’s” clothing is an everyday occurence. This isn’t a reprimand on the unfairness of society or anything, just an observation on how the culture is.

This reflection of real life into the virtual world may offer an explanation for at least one reason why the male to female and the female to male player to character relationships are viewed in so many different ways. There is also the fact that there are people who just want to play their gender merely because it is what they are used to and those who want to play the opposite gender because when imagining themselves as someone else they might as well be as far from themselves as possible. There are any number of reasons for both kinds of character choices and this just scratches the surface of the topic.

My MMO character history (Only those characters who were played past the first few levels adjusted according the leveling system of the game. I have made too many characters in CoH and CoV.):

Guild Wars: Name Forgotten – Female Assassin

Final Fantasy XI: Name Forgotten – Female Elvaan Red Mage

Star Wars Galaxies: Skizzix – Male Trandoshan Smuggler

EVE: Lenai – Female Gallente (Smuggler/Drone User)

City of Heroes: Lenai – Female Defender (main)

Remade and forgot new name – Female Scrapper (other main)

RocknRollMartian – Male Ass Kicking Band Leader

Tiddlywinks – Robot Scrapper

City of Villains: Lenai – Female Stalker

World of Warcraft: Searniz – Male Troll Rogue (main)

Roury – Female Night Elf Rogue

Lenai – Female Blood Elf Rogue (other main)

Male:Female:Genderless Robot ratio - 3:8:1

Paper 2

2008-02-27T10:45:00.001-06:00

The ultimate goal in EVE is power.
- Official EVE Online Website

EVE Online is almost completely differentiated from the myriad of other massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) available in the market today. The game assumes a “harsh reality” and is unforgiving even in the early stages of “NOOB” play. The galaxies of EVE are reminiscent of the lawless, money-driven, “Wild-West” galaxies of the Ferengi from Star Trek or the Hutt-run galaxies of Star Wars. EVE presents an interesting universe, one in which the story is but a novelty, and the narrative becomes almost entirely player-driven. Despite the lack of a traditional graphic avatar, EVE provides a large amount of flexibility in the amount of role-playing one wishes to do. However, the entire universe of EVE revolves around and is completely dependent upon the extremely complex, realistic, and volatile virtual economy. “The ultimate goal in EVE is power,” and in EVE economic power reigns supreme. EVE supports a multitude of play-styles, however, the matter which style one prefers, economics will play a vital role in their survival. With this in mind, EVE offers a truly unique avenue for digital identity in that your reputation and identity is not measured by your appearance or speech, but instead by your economic standing and business cunning.

EVE Online employs a heretofore unseen level of economic complexity. Every sale, every purchase, and every ISK (Interstellar Kredit: the base monetary unit of EVE) must be analyzed and weighed against other options. For example, the opportunity cost of mining ore for 2 hours could far outweigh the cost of buying it for 3.01 ISK per unit. In fact, EVE’s economic forces are so powerful that CCP (the developer) publishes a quarterly economic newsletter giving growth rates, inflation/ deflation rates, consumer price index, and gross user product, to name a few. In their newsletter, CCP states, “our knowledge of the economic forces in EVE is increasing, guiding us closer towards the ability to make short-term economic forecasts for macroeconomic variables in EVE.” Although intimidating at first glance, the universe of EVE allows for easy access to the economic statistics for your particular region. This enables the player to approach an economic transaction in several ways:

1. Find the average region price and sell at the same price or cut into your profit and undercut the lowest seller.

2. Charge a premium, or “convenience fee,” for being the exclusive seller of an item in a farther system.

3. Keeping an item in hopes that someday you will be able to afford the skill, train it, and finally try to use the item only to find out your ship doesn’t have the capacity.

In addition to the obvious market transactions of buying and selling, EVE also allows the player own corporate stock, create contracts, manufacture items from blueprints, research new items, and earn ISK through bounty hunting NPCs or player initiated bounties. It is during these activities where the players’ reputations truly become paramount. The most notorious players have the highest bounties on their heads, and the best mercenaries receive the high-paying contracts. Due to the economic nature of the game, I believe EVE gives the player more freedom to be themselves throughout the virtual experience.

The corporate structure of EVE creates a rewarding experience for the socially-tuned player. Corporations offer protection, coordinated mining endeavors, price fixing, and a source of pride. On the other hand, unlike some MMORPGs, EVE can be a very rewarding solo experience. Solo adventuring can build confidence and wallets. Many corporations identify with a single task at which they claim to be experts. These include mining corps, fleets for hire, manufacturing corps, etc. The corporation to which a player owes his/ her allegiance is another source for in-game reputation. These corporations can become so large and exert enough influence to control the ebb and flow of the economic tides. There have been stories of weeklong blockades, corporations fizzling out due to economic miscalculations, and the infamous “Heist.” The corporation actually plays a bigger part in the role-playing aspect of the game than the character’s race or sex. Striving to be bigger, better, and richer is what makes players stay in the game.

EVE Online employs an interesting dynamic not shared by many MMORPGs: the universe can make you feel insignificant due to its overwhelming size (EVE comprises of over 5,000 systems totaling countless KM2 of virtual space) but CCP goes out of their way to include the players in decision making processes. I believe that this adds greatly to the enjoyment of EVE and does much to fuse the player with his/ her digital identity. CCP was quoted as saying, “Eve Online is not a computer game. It is an emerging nation, and we have to address it like a nation being accused of corruption,” after being accused of favoritism. This is a powerful statement showing the true feelings the developers and many players share about EVE. CCP also uses technology to uniquely add to the engrossing nature of this game. All 200,000 players are housed on one super-server, thus allowing a large, permanent virtual-community to establish itself in the Eve universe.

CCP has created an opportunist’s paradise, one in which economics and market forces rule all. Eve is a vast, cold expanse filled with dreams of economic superiority; a place where one man’s unfair monopoly is another man’s cash cow. CCP has created a universe in which the players make the decisions, drive the market, and make trades across billions of miles. Business cunning, political savvy, and guts are the tools of the EVE role-player as they try to carve out a piece of this place to call their own.

If you want to see the economic report go to http://ccp.vo.llnwd.net/o2/pdf/QEN_Q4-2007.pdf.

Topic 2

2008-02-27T07:56:00.001-06:00

I played World of Warcraft to look into the aspects of anonymity and behavior online and also the creation of avatars and if they had any significance to the identity of the player. Do people act differently? Did their avatars say things about them, either known or unknown to the player?
The more I played the game, the more I realized that with the time I had to play the game there would be no way to find the knowledge I was looking for. World of Warcraft (WOW) is a game that to fully experience a player must invest large amounts of time. The online community is a very tight knit group and to gain respect from the other players your rank must show you are devoted. With my skill, I could not gain the experience I needed; therefore I could not gain access to the social elements I was interested in. I chose instead to look into the book Computer Mediated Communication which shows research into the internet as a whole. My purpose was to see which elements that were present in dealing with digital identity online translated over to the gaming world.
While the book discusses mostly text-based online interaction, the points made are valid and strongly applicable to WOW, as well as many other online communities. “Scholars talk about our having multiple identities – people take on different identities throughout their lives and find new ways to represent themselves to the world (Thurlow 97).” Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games allow people to create another character that lives in an online world. This character can be a branching of their current identity or they can try to create an entirely different identity with them. This topic relates to how we are in real world; we are constantly reinventing ourselves, our identity is always evolving. In my opinion, nothing is really wrong with this. If someone is more comfortable and can express themselves more openly online, then they should do so.
Online communities allow people who wish to express themselves more in the real world communities a chance to do just that. “Anonymity [of the internet] paved the way for disembodiment – an identity which was no longer dependent on, or constrained by, your physical appearance…It would give an opportunity for those whose voices had not been heard before to speak and be heard (Thurlow 99).” The book referred to the internet as being color blind. Personal characteristics such as race, gender and religion are only known if you let them be. Also the aspect of being anonymous can give some people the courage to voice their opinion. It also may encourage others to express themselves in a negative way. For instance, we discussed in class the WOW funeral scene where a group of people came charging in and ruined a funeral, obviously this would never happen in real life. The aspect of anonymity however allows, and possibly encourages, people to act out more. I know many people who will make crude remarks online without thinking twice when in a real life social setting would never imagine it.
The authors of Computer Mediated Communication also quoted the famous internet scholar Sherry Turkle referring to chat rooms, “You can be whoever you want to be. You can completely redefine yourself if you want…You are the character and you are not the character, both at the same time. You are who you pretend to be (99).” Creating an avatar is creating another identity. I believe there is rarely a direct correlation between a user and an avatar. Many times people just pick one to try something different they cannot do in the real world or enjoy the aesthetics of a certain character. Some of my colleagues have mentioned they will almost always play a character of the opposite gender, just because it is something different from their real life. Like the research given to us in class, occasionally it really could be someone trying to live out a different identity in the best way they know how; however I believe if they spend enough time with the same group of people they may eventually give themselves away. Based on our class discussions the majority of one’s selection seems to be personal preference without a deeper meaning in most cases.
“It’s therefore important to put online identities into context: first, in the context of the fluid, multiple nature of offline identity, and second, in the context of what people are really up to in cyberspace (Thurlow 102).” My final thoughts are that each individual would need to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis; but overall there is no direct correlation. Anonymity online will allow, and encourage, people to act more confidently for positive or negative impact on the online world.

Thurlow, Crispin; Lengel, Laura and Tomic, Alice. Computer Mediated Communication. Sage Publications, 2004.

Character Customization in Guild Wars

2008-02-27T03:05:00.002-06:00

Character creation can be a fun, painstaking part of the MMO experience. Players expect options for their character’s appearance if they plan to spend an extended period in a virtual world. Guild Wars’ creation process allows players to select their character’s appearance from premade faces and hairstyles. While selecting from a pool of skins formed by the developers’ imagination may keep characters within the aesthetic confines of the game world, the limits may come into conflict with the visual individuality of a character, the personal preferences of the player, and the depiction of the sexes.

One may run through the vast MMO world with a hundred different players on the screen at one time. One may also find their character’s twin, or even triplet, in that crowd. Guild Wars does not offer a great range of initial character customization. Players can only play as the human race, despite other races existing within the Guild Wars world. A player’s decision to select certain avatar options may be swayed by the options available or not available in avatar customization. Developers gave female characters a larger pool of faces and hairstyles compared to male characters. However, female characters do not have a choice to be old or horribly disfigured, but male characters have old, haggard, and scarred options. Thus, male characters have less choices to be attractive—and less choices in general—while female characters have many choices in meshes but no choice to be unattractive. Because many people would rather play a unique, attractive character, the higher possibilities for attractive features and more options in faces and hairstyles may support the inclination to play a female character.

Character customization, of course, does not end at the initial creation of the character. The character’s profession determines what kind of armor or clothing that character can wear. Professions follow a theme in their equipment. For example, while there are several variations to armor sets, warriors can only wear heavy armor, mesmers can only wear fancy outfits, and dervishes can only wear long robes. Armor sets, however, can be mixed within each profession, allowing players to find creative armor combinations. In an effort to further customization, Guild Wars implemented a system in the third chapter where players could buy armor of any appearance with the highest armor rating and customize the armor’s statistics.

The system, conversely, has little use if the armor sets are not particularly to one’s taste. By setting each profession in a rigid image, some armor sets fall short in creativeness. Nearly all female characters’ armor sets are close-fitting or show skin in unpractical places while their male counterparts are covered from head to toe in bulky gear. Female characters’ armor, on the other hand, has finer, more intricate details, and higher quality than male armor. Again, these are reasons why some people may choose a female character over a male character.

Creativity waned in the coming of the last chapter. Old armor meshes were retextured and marketed as new armor. While armor had been retextured and noted as different armor sets before, the community became enraged at the lower texture quality produced in the final chapter of the series where they expected entirely new armor sets. Players, too, had been asking for variation in armor within their profession. Female elementalists wanted options for more modest dress. Assassins did not want spikes jutting out of their shoulders and limbs and pleaded not to have anymore spikes. Many times, players only received half of their requests, even as early as the beta.

In the beta, female warriors were as thin as spell casters with necks just as long. Players complained about giraffe necks and that they preferred the warrior to at least appear capable of wielding a two-handed hammer without her arms snapping off, and the developers partially responded. Female warriors were given faintly more muscle in their arms. In contrast, the male warriors have always been thick, muscular gladiators. Their necks and thighs appear as solid as the tree trunks in the environment. Many people reported on forum polls that they had chosen female warriors because they found the male warriors too thickset, not the least bit attractive, and even loutish. This posed a problem for players who wanted to play male warriors as intelligent, elegant, righteous leaders, since many other players would only see them as twelve-year-old brutes. The developers did not see the need to change the male warrior’s appearance nor the female characters’ necks.

The developers hold a set vision for the professions, as well as what defines male or female. A player is given appearances to choose from by the developers, and what those aesthetic decisions are affect, to some degree, the character a player will select. If a player finds a duplicate of his or her character, the twins may be amused, take screenshots, and forget about the encounter. They may not wonder why they look alike, or they may subconsciously guess why they look alike—there were no better faces, or it was the best looking armor. In games where character customization is limited to selecting from premade appearances, many players may not find designs to their liking and will have to settle.

A Spade is a Spade: You Can't Force Socialization

2008-02-27T01:46:00.001-06:00

There are many different types of MMORPG players and many different theories on how to categorize them. No matter how you choose to categorize them, there are two categories that always come up in some form or another; gamers and socializers. Gamers are players who play MMORPGs because they are a game. Socializers are players who play MMORPGs for community and socialization. While not mutually exclusive, these are two important distinctions to make in terms of design. Nowadays, developers seem to be intent on trying to capture more socializers in their demographic. This seems to be rooted in the idea that a strong social community can make up for weak design choices, lags in updates of new content, and keep an MMO thriving after its pinnacle of activity. The most interesting case of this is in a fairly new MMORPG titled Dream of Mirror Online (DOMO).

DOMO focuses its design almost entirely on the social aspect of its game. Every part of the gameplay is made for players to work together. Every player is allowed to level every class in the game on any of his characters. Upon leveling multiple classes, the player can choose to use skills from other classes to augment his main class's power. Four of these classes (the doctor, the musician, the dancer, and the merchant) seem to be built entirely with teamwork in mind. While possible to level these classes in solo play, it is significantly easier to level with the aid of other party members. Even the classes that can level by themselves easily have at least one skill that seems to benefit another class more than their own class. On top of this, quests are designed to be incredibly difficult at the levels they are given without a group backing the player up. DOMO even uses the Chinese Zodiac to match people up with your character that would be compatible as friends, rivals, or lovers in real life so you can have an excuse to party with someone. Finally, DOMO uses a relationship system that allows players to designate players as friends, teachers, students, or lovers. These relationships actually give major combat bonuses to the player while playing near the person they have this relationship with. All of this is built in to give social players a gameplay advantage while encouraging more gameplay oriented gamers to team up more often and make friends.

However, this system, while fascinating, doesn't seem to be entirely successful. After having played for three weeks, I have noticed some interesting facts about the players in the game. Despite being very heavily balanced towards multiple players, a large number of players still choose to work on missions as a solo effort. This is clearly harder to accomplish, but it doesn't stop solo players from playing solo. Furthermore, despite it being a major mechanical benefit, only one of my real life friends that chose to test the game with me decided to form a friendship. General player reaction on forums and in the game also seem to show a general avoidance of these relationships. Even the lover relationship, which gives what some consider game-breaking level benefits, seems to be avoided. As a matter of fact, the idea of having an “online lover” seems to freak people out so much that it is avoided even more. The only reason I can seem to find for avoiding these relationships is the fact that once you have a relationship with someone, it seems like you almost have an obligation to party with that person. Does giving someone mechanical benefits really give someone a social responsibility to follow? Is this a job? On the other hand, the extremely social gamers with no interest in power seem to have no problem with forming relationships in game. Boards with these kinds of players are filled with topics asking for new friends, lovers, and teachers. It's odd that the people that would desire a mechanical benefit the most would shy away from it the most because of an implied social hierarchy.

In the end, I don't think DOMO's party friendly engine is necessarily a failure, but I think their attempt to turn their more game-driven gamers to a more social attitude is mostly a failure. It seems to be conclusive evidence that you can't change a player's inherent style of play. With everything focused so heavily on the socialization aspect its a wonder whether DOMO will be able to keep their game-driven audience overtime. Either way, DOMO is always going to be a great place for social gamers.

Guild Wars Bots

2008-02-18T15:41:00.002-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOgjQd2v-Bw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akh4IsnvZcc

Here are a couple of videos of bots. Bots in GW have mostly been blonde guildless monks with strange names and no fancy armor. I think they zone out into an instance, kill the closest couple of monsters, pick up loot, zone back to the outpost, and repeat. I've found them in quite a few outposts--Granite Citadel, Altrumm Ruins, Bergen Hot Springs, Elona Reach, Zos Shivros Channel... It's not just a couple per outpost. There are flocks of them at each outpost.

OMG Lawsuits!

2008-02-14T16:54:00.004-06:00

From today's discussion: Bragg v. Linden Labs is the current newsworthiest, although this suit about the theft of in-world sex toys is recent as well. Wired's rundown of the Bragg suit is interesting, particularly Fairfield's comments at the end. Anybody agree that land in SL is equal to bandwidth sold by AT&T, or is virtual property more "real" than that?

Goonfleet

2008-02-14T01:04:00.002-06:00

Goonswarm's wiki - Goonswarm being the alliance based around Goonfleet, the Something Awful based EVE corporation(aka a guild) which is the single largest corporation in the game.

It's mostly interesting to note that a lot of controversy and complaints surround Goonfleet when in fact most of them are from whiny players(no I'm not in Goonfleet) who seem to only complain because Goonfleet is so big and therefore does really well, but plays within the confines of the game.

Goonfleet has also themselves raised issue and made accusations several times of favoritism among EVE players who personally know CCP employees or are in fact CCP employees themselves who have placed themselves into corporations and given themselves director access. Band of Brothers being one of the main corporations which is heavily accused of being in bed with CCP and this is likely at least one source of the heavy rivalry between Goonfleet and BoB.

EVE Heist

2008-02-14T00:44:00.002-06:00

Probably the biggest heist in MMO history happened on EVE Online.

Should this be against the rules? Does it make the game more compelling or realistic? Is it fair or unfair?

The Parlor

2008-02-13T23:31:00.001-06:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=479473958902023238

The RvB video we watched in class reminded me of this video. Go ahead and watch it and then come back.

Finally

2008-02-13T22:30:00.002-06:00

http://www.sat1.de/spiele/family_spielen/aktuell/content/19509/

This is one of the first pro-game articles I have read that has come from a major media group.
They praise the families who play games together. They also make an argument that some games
may make your child more likely to want to learn. Also, they cite the articles from about a year ago in which a few surgeons said that games make them better surgeons. I think this is an important step for Germany. I personally hope that they mirror France's position on the subject in the near future.

I think the point of this article is mostly to educate parents about games. one of the quotes I like is:

Und welche Eltern möchten seine Kinder heute noch an Computer- und Konsolenspiele heran lassen, wenn sie in der Zeitung lesen, dass Computerspiele dick, dumm, gefühllos und aggressiv machen?

And what parents would actually buy their child a console/ pc game when the newspaper says that games make them fat, dumb, lose feeling (emotionless), and aggressive?

Few more articles from the Fatherland

2008-02-13T22:13:00.002-06:00

http://sw-guide.de/2007-01/world-of-warcraft-der-soziale-verfall-eines-menschen/

The Social Downfall of a Man

This article is a little different. It starts off by the writer describing what his life was like before he started playing WoW. This is what makes me think this article is somewhat fake. he essentially takes all the stereotypical effects of online-games and applies them to his story. One thing that tipped me off is when he says, "I played football (aka Soccer, just in case) all the time and could've gone pro. I was told by doctors that I was TOO FIT for my age." Please.

He basically chronicles his "downfall" at day 1, 1 month, 6 months, 9months, 18 months, and 24 months. He does highlight on good aspects of the game, such as socializing, hunting in parties, and other forms of teamwork.

Fake or not, this article touches again on the German fear of "too much" time spent in-game.

http://netzpolitik.org/2008/zypries-computerspiele-sind-gift/

In this article a little known politician calls video games poison. She is hell bent on rectifying the "video game problem." The article was actually posted by a pro game person who shines light on her inability to ever make a rational argument. She is essentially one of those people who think gamers can't socialize.

Avatar Rights and Freedom of Speech.

2008-02-13T17:37:00.003-06:00

One last post from me for today. There's been a lot of talk about avatar rights recently. We even had a seminar in the conference room recently on your right to the intellectual property of your identity online. There's also been a lot of talk about freedom of speech online. From a legal standpoint, the mods can ban whatever they want. It's a privately owned game. However, a few future sighted people are wondering about the issues of avatar rights in public virtual spaces. Also, how should one enforce freedom of speech online if it's desirable. This is a fairly interesting take on the issue of freedom of expression online. While not to a point, I mostly agree on the fact that if we're enforcing freedom of speech in online worlds, something similar to the fact that infringing another's rights and breaking the law is not covered. However, I think the person talking here is also forgetting the fact that the US is not the only group online and therefore, our constitution does not apply.

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/01/at-the-event-sp.html

IP Banning and Online Cheating

2008-02-13T17:16:00.002-06:00

http://www.massively.com/2007/11/29/broken-mirror-broken-dreams/2

This is actually a bit of controversy that happened with the MMO I'm testing for this week. Essentially, the Beta was open to everyone, but then the game's license got sold to a European developer who insisted that the NA version of the game commit an IP ban. This actually caught a lot of flack. Amusingly enough, the NA company started a petition to stop the IP ban. This isn't too shocking since they're essentially losing customers, but it's interesting that they'd start the petition themselves instead of letting enraged fans handle it.

The problem here is that in closed beta a lot of EU players made friends with NA players. Thanks to the ban, a lot of these friendships are essentially destroyed. The Asian version of the game I believe has no IP banning, although you have to be able to speak Chinese to play it. So, any connections internationally there are kept.

There's no doubt that all of this is legal, but it does bring up an interesting question of the social implications and the implied moral implications here. Are the European players outraged because they won't get to play for a while, are they mad because they see this as racist to ban a country based on IP, or are their newly founded American relationships in a couple of month closed beta that dear and precious to them? Sure. This is good business sense, but if the later is true, I wonder if you can't consider the IP ban to be somewhat immoral. The company is in its rights, but is it wrong to break up the community? What can be done to protect these communities from the reality of the outside world, and what happens to an online community that's still strong when it dies? What are the effects? It's not exactly urgent, and probably doesn't warrant a full in class discussion, but I thought it was interesting enough to get some comments on the blog over it.

I'm also enclosing a second article that's so minor it doesn't deserve its own post, but I thought it might be a handy reference for the next couple of weeks. I found it while doing random research. This is the article on wikipedia for online cheating and the forms it takes. It's all pretty obvious, but it's a nice reminder and reference document.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games

A Side Note: Sexist Gaming?

2008-02-13T16:02:00.002-06:00

http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/imagine-babyz/

Apparently this has sparked some interesting controversy and some polarized arguments. Thought it might be interesting to see the view points on this. Seriously, this is a real game, and I'm just going to let the image speak for itself to get a quick reaction.