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What's bugged me for a long while now is that Warren Specter made a comment on Thief 3, one to the effect that he "doesn't get it", referring to the Thief genre.

I suspect it's part of a long-running public debate between Warren Spector and Doug Church about semi-emergent vs. stealth-style game-play. (This debate is reasonably represented by Deus Ex and Thief, respectively.) You can read more about this here.

In short, it's not that Warren doesn't "get" Thief -- it's that he doesn't necessarily agree with that particular set of design decisions.

The Video Game Ombudsman does what this article did on a regular basis, with more structure, in the form of a (we)blog. Plus, Kyle has heard of the word "ombudsman" before, so that gives him a little more cred.

Websites like GameCritics, Joystick101, and GameGirlAdvance have gotten notable mentions from industry and academic heavyweights, such as the venerable Henry Jenkins.

I encourage smarter game/gamedev/gamebiz/gameculture/gameacademia journalism, but to say this is new and unique is an insult to those that have come before.

I don't know about that. The Japanese seem to tend to churn out a lot of useless crap and make you pay for it. These people invented Pokemon: "buy the same damn game 5 times to win!!" These are people who buy brand new ultra-thin laptops every couple months and throw out the old, useless one. And listen to all the crap you get as a bonus when you pre-order. Get a Final Fantasy cell phone strap! Seriously, how much of that crap is going to end up in a landfill in a few weeks?

I think we may have found a society even more frivolous than our own.

• Sid Meier's Pirates!
• Sid Meier's Colonization
• Covert Action
• Gunship
• Silent Service
• F-19 Stealth Fighter
• F-15 Strike Eagle
• CPU Bach

No! It was Custer, having his Revenge!

I like joystick101.org (tis a different pace, though)

On a sidenote, hope joystick101.org gets put back up, I've got a few ideas burning that are being wasted on kuro5hin.

The salon.com article is definetely more polished, but he goes into a bit more detail about the emails (it's scary how the mom writing the article can't take responsibility with her son for her son's situition, and instead just points her fingers wildly). He goes over the same points. Perhaps the salon article is a heavily revised version of this one, but it's interesting anyway. The older article

Here's an excerpt from a post from Henry on joystick 101, for those interested in those angry emails (some people need to chill, IMHO):

I've gotten a couple of hate letters since the show aired. This one is the real classic:

"Here's an e-mail I sent to the nice lady who is sticking her head in the lion's mouth at the Lion/Lamb project. I think you should read it. By the way, moron, get a shave. You geeky looking freak! I have a college degree. My brother got his PHd from Stanford - I'm sick of these academic freaks like you and your stupid uninformed bullshit. Call the ACLU and tell them. I want my freedom of speech enforced to the point I can call you a freak! You obviously are not a mother trying to raise teenagers you stupid freaking moron idiot. Here's the e-mail. You make me sick.

THAT COMPLETE IDIOT HENRY JENKINS FROM MIT - HE'S NOT A MOTHER OF VIOLENT TEENAGERS. These video games teach and ingrain violence. My son is supposed to be a 19 year old college student who wastes all his time playing and promoting these games. He works part time, barely, in Electronic Boutique, and brings home about $100 a week, which is ridiculous. He can justify anything. He is a video game addict like a gambling addict. It is a serious addiction and sublimates all positive learning, brings violence into our schools, and ruins people's lives. He has a very nice girlfriend who stands on her head for him, and he still chooses video games over a healthy relationship with a human being. He would rather sit around with his buddies and play stupid idiotic video games over and over, for hours all night. Phil Donahue needs to wake up. My son lives in a cesspool of video games - spends what little money he has o! n them, and is basically, a "wino" on videogames. Makes me sick to look at the wasted potential. What he could be doing. He is overweight, has very poor health habits, lives in an absolutely filthy room, and sponges off his family. In about 3 months, he is going to get the wake up call of his entire life, when I don't renew my lease and toss him out on his ***. It's a sick disease. Oh, and he is violent. He had to hospitalized for a week after trying to throw furniture in our home. He can't drive a car because he doesn't pay attention and hits other cars. I am sick to death of these stupid morons with their free speech bull. Put me on the show with you. I'll tell them. I have a B A in Music Ed. I am getting a nursing degree. I am very well spoken. You need to hit them really hard with the facts - be my pleasure. I'd like to take that stupid X Box and crack that moron from MIT over the head with it. I am sending that idiot an e-mail! ."

here, at joystick 101, including text from an example "hate-email" he received after the show.

here, at joystick 101, including text from an example "hate-email" he received after the show.

from Dr. Jenkins can be found on joystick101.org. On one hand its a shame that his final article isn't available from another MIT branch off project, I understand the importance of reaching a venue that is a bit more well read. Personally, I think its a hard line to defend a game like Grand Theft Auto 3 in the face of a mother who lost a child. Everyone points out that the parents should be more involved, we don't need regulation, etc. But from my understanding thats just what her grassroots organization is about. If I was Henry, I'd have probably walked out on Donahue. It probably looks bad but if you've read the transcript it would be hard to get much worse.

You are clearly very lucky, having only ever been involved with honest people in the industry. It is a fact, at least in the UK, that magazines grant high review scores to games in return for "exclusive" coverage.

The real question is who cares what happens to Gamespot? They give any old crap an 8 or above. Look hard and you can find some good reviews online: at joystick101, gamecritics, or eurogamer. And they're all free.

Shortly before this article was posted, I canceled my subscription to PCGamer after 5 years. Of course, it had only partially to do with their inaccurate reviews. Mostly it was because they started printing two commentary columns per page instead of one (thus, less commentary), are doing less reviews, and what little they do write is crammed full of crap about "TheVede"'s last lunch break. I'll just stick to J101, thanks.

Sure! How about this one. Works for me.

Check out Joystick101 for some more first-hand reports on the various talks and presentations that went on at GDC 2002. Particularly this one and this one.

Check out Joystick101 for some more first-hand reports on the various talks and presentations that went on at GDC 2002. Particularly this one and this one.

Check out Joystick101 for some more first-hand reports on the various talks and presentations that went on at GDC 2002. Particularly this one and this one.

Joystick101 also has a nice review which gives a good summary of the changes (couldn't verify yet, though).

I'm a little slow, eh

Time to pimp. It doesn't specialize in breaking-news or up-to-the-minute reviews like some other sites, but Joystick101.org is a gaming site I've found myself spending a lot of time at. A community driven site (running Scoop) that posts articles by editors, and allows users to vote on submitted material. Sort of a cross between Slashdot and Kuro5hin.

Good place to find some intelligent, thoughtful discussion on just about anything gaming related. I invite everyone to check it out.

can be found here

The up down up down example is a good one, and there many, many others out there like it. Gen Exers: How many of you can still hum the frogger theme? How many people can still recreate a PacMan pattern? These references are far from isolated; for those of you who are unaware of youth culture -- there's Pokemon now taking its place. As JC Herz pointed out in joystick nation, Games are huge part of our culture, thinking, and vocabulary. And I do agree that it's becoming increasingly so with each subsequent generation. In my discussions of games with game players, I've found that younger kids are much less bogged down by cultural baggage surrounding games than older people are --to many, computer games are not a 'waste of time', dangerous, or any more out of the ordinary than film or team sports.

The biggest problem I had with the article is that there is much legitimacy to the notion that "adult culture" doesn't have much to offer kids. Games may be training kids to have quicker reactions, and they may have knowledge of how to exist in virtual environments and negotiate virtual identities -- but knowledge is not necessarily wisdom, by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, it's a give and take -- every generation is in a dialogue with previous ones. In fact, this notion that every generation needs its revolution is hardly new -- Jefferson said the same thing in the 18th century.

The final thought -- that games may surplant other forms of entertainment is interesting -- but really not the issue. It's about media convergence. What is Pokemon? A toy? A game? A movie? Look at the list of products which port across media. Since Pac Man, games have been filtering across media, and it's happening with increasingly frequency with Pokemon and Final Fantasy movies coming out. The impending Star Wars Online (Starwarsgalaxies), could be the most interesting cross-over of them all.

What's the most striking to me is the place that videogames have in our culture. Common wisdom is that computer/ video games are more frivolous than Chess and, worse for you psychologically than traditional sports, even though many games demand a good deal of critical and creative thinking and traditional American games are extremely violent. Yet, because games are mostly the province of teen-age boys See Henry Jenkins work on the topic), they are marginalized in society and used as scapegoats for broader social ills.

Off my soapbox now...

Many of y'all had some good points about the release of PS2, including the lack of killer apps. I give a round - up of release stories as well as my own thoughts on it at: Playsta tion2 Round-up, again, from Joystick101.org.

Many of y'all had some good points about the release of PS2, including the lack of killer apps. I give a round - up of release stories as well as my own thoughts on it at: Playsta tion2 Round-up, again, from Joystick101.org.

Good point. It's all about the killer apps, of which, I haven't seen any yet. I posted my feelings on the matter in a new story on joystick.