Cute little film about the console wars!!
Monthly Archives: May 2006
The Love Thing in Games
Guardian Games Blog led me in the direction of an interesting piece at Apogeevr, about ‘real’ emotions in virtual worlds.
It reminded me a lot about the dramatical yoooha in The Sims Online. There was always someone who had been hurt by another because of cheating or being unfaithful! Private Investigator’s in virtual worlds are thriving from their business! Lots of them are employed by real life husbands and wives who want to know what the hell their spouse is doing in-game, but a lot of business is being generated from virtual relationship drama as well! If a virtual spouse ‘suddenly’ disappears, the PI will try and see if they’ve started a new account as a different avatar a.s.o.
So keywords here is real emotions, real relationships in virtual worlds. But I’ve never truely understood this! I don’t understand how anyone can form a relationship without trust! And I suppose that’s what I came across most often with lovesick avatars; their constant paranoia which led to constant and tedious drama! But it is impossible not to get emotionally attached to the world – so I guess I understand it to some extent.
Linux and Sony?
Well this is just too bloody interesting, scary or brilliant! I can’t make up my mind!!!
It’s funny how games are starting to open up to their gamer’s creativity. I’m baffled by it, and I’m not sure I’m comprehending exactly what’s happening here. Is this maybe a bad move from Linux? Or is this a revolutionary moment? I’m confused! So I’m just cut’n’pasting for now – but the future of games truely does seem exciting!
"To me the proof of success was that the fans didn’t hunt me down and kill me"
Words uttered by Louis Castle on the success of Blade Runner at the E3 Workshop: The Inner Game: What Goes Into The Industry’s Best-Selling Titles.
He apparently considered being true to the story as a success – I thought that was quite charming! It seems failures have a lot to do about lack of sales. Tetsuya Mizuguchi listed Rez as a failure because of the lack of sales success: “I love Rez! I spent a lot of time and energy to creat it, but commercially it failed. Marketing said they couldn’t find any words to describe the game. ‘Is it a shooter? Is it a music game?’ So it was like a wall going up. I felt miserable…I still want to break this wall!” – yeah!! Go for it!! It’s a shame that a game doesn’t do well on the commercial market because the marketing staff are having a hard time defining what the game is! That definitely is a pathetic and useless wall!!
The E3 thing Part 1
I’ve had a crazy weekend…so I’m trying to get caught up with work and all the wonderful news out there! Ofcourse there’s loads of E3 stuff that needs to be documented, so I’m just going to do some link zenning here as I read!
First up Robin Williams plays Spore! Hillarious!!! Enjoy!
Player vs. user
Before I design some lethal weapon to kill the bird that’s franticly chirping outside my window telling me that I’m still nowhere and it’s morning – I thought I might vent out a bit in here!
Last year I had an incredibly difficult time discussing narrative with my fellow students in Games and Game Culture! They just refused to discuss with me the meaning behind the aesthetics of the worlds we were playing in. I remember someone, slightly frustrated with me, explaining to me that narrative is something that has happened. You can’t be playing narrative because narrative is story telling and you’re not telling a story. When I then (stubborn as I sometimes can be) emphasised that the whole geography we were in (Prince of Persia at the time) was basically telling us something, they usually sighed and gave me a whole song and dance that it was all code. When I then further persisted in stating that “well the game designer must have had some intention by designing this temple that I just can’t seem to get out of!” – respons: “No, Linn!!! It’s all just obstacle to reach your goal!”.
Am I cheating if I do this?
So…I’m really into a flow of writing (expect a post on what soon) and I’m trying not to get caught up with ‘who said what and did they really say that’ glitches that often lead me astray to even more interesting reading which in the end leaves me with an even more immense sense of low selfesteem!
But along the way I keep using the phrase ‘sanbox games’ and a question popped up in my head (I’m sure if you could look inside my head you would probably only see a big shiny question mark, anyways). So I thought that I would just use this blog to put the question out there instead of using an hour to track it down and loose my ‘flow’!
Does anyone know who came up with the term ‘sandbox videogames’? I feel very strongly that it must have been Will Wright – but then again, Henry Jenkins is a strong candidate as well. So if you know who started using the term and where first – I would love a little hint in the right direction! But I seriously do feel like I’m cheating by asking and not doing the fundamental research that I should do all by myself! Oh the morals of life and the desire to do things right!! Will they ever stop tormenting me?
"…even if their world doesn’t really exist."
Clickable Culture reports on a lawsuit made against Linden Lab for “a virtual land deal gone sour”. From what I gather, Marc Bragg found some glitch in the system (bug?) of Second Life where he could buy land for under the market value. He decided to invest in this discovery and see if he could make a profit when he proceeded to sell the land for market value.
And from what I gather something suddenly happened that made him loose his Second Life account. According to Bragg, Linden Lab terminated his account “without explanation, without citing any violation of community policy, and have since refused offer a credit or a refund”.
Bragg in a statement says: “These games are like the virtual Wild West, but Linden Lab is still obligated to honor real-world contract law and consumer law, even if their world doesn’t really exist.”
Of course he’s right! Second Life has a potent market with US dollars and since they’ve issued Intellectual Property rights to their citizens – they really do have to think about real life contract and consumer law. Second Life very much exists then, if you ask me. But by what laws should they adhere to? Don’t get me wrong, I love what Second Life has done! But with it comes some democratic responsibility and not dictatorial rule. I’m no lawyer, so I’m not sure – and to be honest, lawsuits like this kinda scare me for what’s going happen in the future. I, for one, don’t want too much reality in virtual worlds although it is exciting to see it evolving, it’s like a whole new society being born – and that is fun!
I find it really suprising if Linden Lab truely has behaved in this manner. They must have been prepared for this happening somehow, haven’t they? And I’m sure they’re within their rights of punishing those who take advantages of bugs for profit (after all, we’re not talking about a game here, we’re talking about reality) – but to just cut him off with no reason, no explanation and furthermore no dialogue! I’m sure they could have worked something out, somehow and learned from this ‘glitch’! So…I’m not sure if this is really the way it all went down – I’m looking forward to hearing Linden Lab’s response!
Public Diplomacy Through Games
The University of Southern California has come up with the novel idea of hosting a competition to create a game promoting public diplomacy. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the results for months now!
The finalists’ presenations are now available and the winner is to be announced today.
Looking at these, I was searching for something creative and fun. As much as I adore and admire simulations such as Peacemaker – I was hoping something less ‘obvious’ would make the finalist list as well. I’ve often thought that the trick to learning in computer games is to hide the ‘message’ behind humor and absurdity. For a game to be truely successful in teaching something like the promotion of diplomacy, I feel it has to lure those who just want to go and have a great gaming time as well. I know of very few who play to learn something and having played my fair share of dreary simulation games for the jobs from my past (I’ll have to tell you about those some day! ) they usually don’t work (at least I can’t remember what I was supposed to learn).
I truely love the idea behind Hydro Hijinks, it actually made me think about Myst and the game of consequence.
The others are brilliant as well! Ambitious but lovely! I would however, love to see more fun and absurdity!
Anyways it’s a great initiative and a big ‘yay!’ to Second Life for making them all possible!
Oblivion rated Mature
Ok – I’m all for video games getting an age rating and that kids need to be that age in order to buy the game! I’m all for that, really! But when stuff like this happens, I get outraged!
According to the Washington Post the ESRB has now changed the rating of Oblivion; The Elder Scrolls to Mature which means: “suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language”.
Isn’t that a bit extreme?
And it also seems like they’re blaming Bethesda for the nude patches created by the gamers themselves! That’s just ridiculous! I actually do understand that hidden sex games is a problem, but when gamers themselves are creating stuff – it’s just wrong to blame the game developers! Shame on them for inspiring creativity!
Where would technology be today without the wonderful creativity of horny geeks?
Update: Guilded Lillies knows far better than I what this is all about! They give a great account about what this is all about! I still think the ESRB is overreacting, but I also agree that Bethesda should know better after the Hot Coffee incident and I’m not comfortable with them using words like ‘hackers’.
It seems like the discussion has focused on the modding and not the ‘blood and gore’ dilemma. I would love to find out what ‘blood and gore’ was presented to the ESRB and what they’ve now recently found that’s offensive. And if the problem truely is the nude modding, should the X-Box version of the game not stay on Teen as there are no modding capabilities there?
Remember What The Dormouse Said 