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Taking Games Seriously
"The spirit of the hacker is one of the great creative wellspings of our time, causing the inanimate circuits to sing with ever more individualized and quirky voices; the spirit of the bard is eternal and irreplaceable, telling us what we are doing here and what we mean to each other." -- Janet Murray, Hamlet On The Holodeck
What will it take, wondered MIT Professor Murray in her classic 1997 book, for authors to create rich, satisfying stories that exploit the charactertistic properties of digital environments and deliver the aesthetic pleasures that cyberspace seems to promise?
For Murray, one of the first academics to take seriously the evolving digital world as culture, there's no doubt that the next Shakespeare will come from cyberspace.
Her prediction was especially bold at a time when the Net had already become almost synonymous with obsession, addiction, bomb-making, gun-buying, and porn. But day by day, it's clearer that she was right. Culture isn't being destroyed online, but re-invented. The next Shakespeare is probably clacking away on some Weblog or messaging system. In our time, the Net is where smart, curious, freedom-seeking and restlessly creative minds go to express themselves, experiment, and create a new kind of culture.
Wherever he or she is, her work will probably pop on a Web site something like MyVideoGames.com, launched a few months ago by Neil Morton and Steve Park, two former editors of the culture-savvy Canadian magazine Shift.
MyVideoGames is already an important site, just by dint of its existence. It acknowledges, implicitly and explicitly, that games are no longer simple forms of entertainment, but increasingly creative, complex -- even political -- expressions of the new culture forming online. It's the gaming equivalent of the newsmagazine in the media world of yore - stylish, literate, interesting.
The site offers breaking vid news, reviews, profiles of game heroes and heroines, and essays. One recent edition featured reports on the sleazy days of gaming, and the controversial "tits-and-ass game" Panty Raider, as well as ruminations on the sometimes-addictive nature of creative games. Such a site, almost inconceivable even five years ago, now seems a benchmark of the way new media evolve to recognize and shape new culture. The mainstream press, as usual, gets left behind, clucking about the new world like Temperance Ladies outside a bar.
It makes sense that this new kind of medium is forming around a complex community of gamers who seek not only amusement but intellectual challenge, stimulation, role-playing and community. Gaming is becoming a bigger part of the cultural lives of more and more people all the time. On eBay, some game characters are auctioned for tens of thousands of dollars. Barely recognized off-line at all, gamers number in the tens of millions, a following as large or larger than that which follows many traditional forms of culture -- opera, classical music. Gaming, given the storytelling inherent in video and computer games, is perhaps the most vital new cultural form emanating from cyberspace. Many games have evolved far beyond mind games like chess and Scrabble. Their characters, storylines and intellectual challenges are demanding and highly evolved.
This isn't by accident. The formulaic nature of storytelling, Murray points out, makes it especially suitable for the computer, so skilled at modeling and reproducing patterns of all kinds.
The idea of cyberspace as culture is a particularly bitter pill for many of the shapers of thought and opinion -- educators, academics, journalists, writers, members of the clergy, the so-called intelligentsia -- to stomach. In fact, Murray still has few colleagues supporting her contention that networked computing is re-shaping culture in diverse and highly creative ways.
Undaunted, Murray began teaching a course in electronic fiction in l992. "These stories cover every range and style, from oral histories to adventure tales, from the exploits of comic book heroes to domestic dramas." She is, she writes in her book, drawn more and more each year to imagining "a cyberdrama of the future ... I see glimmers of a medium that is capacious and broadly expressive, a medium capable of capturing both the hairbreadth movements of individual human consciousness and the colossal crosscurrents of global society. Just as the computer promises to re-shape knowledge in ways that sometimes complement and sometimes supercede the work of the book and the lecture hall, so too does it promise to reshape the spectrum of narrative expression, not by replacing the novel or the movie but by continuing their timeless bardic work within another framework."
Murray's idea will remain bitterly controversial for some time, especially among the guardians of conventional culture. But that's exactly the sensibility that pervades MyVideoGames.com, from Sean Monkman's essay on the physical challenges of videogames on the hands to Jonathan Kay's heartfelt -- and very truthful -- essay on how vid-games became the "ultimate scapegoat" after the Columbine High School massacre in l999.
Morton and Parks got the idea for MyVideoGame last October after they noticed half the workers in the Shift offices playing and talking constantly about games, and organizing get-togethers to play after work.
"So, I thought, heck, I gotta start a site that focuses on nothing but that," he e-mailed. "Videogames are a new mass medium. So let's do real videogame journalism like [Jann] Wenner did with music when he started Rolling Stone." Morton and Parks noticed that while a number of sites were devoted to cheats and reviews, hardly any focused on gaming's growing importance as a cultural force. "So we made a quick adjustment ... Let's focus on implications, not just applications of gaming." The site began soliciting contributions from academics and journalists, game addicts, designers and players.
With the result, Norton and Parks have made a bit of media history, once again demonstrating how mainstream journalism has napped through many significant, if less sensational, parts of the digital revolution. MyVideoGame.com recognizes precisely what Janet Murray describes so convincingly in Hamlet On The Holodeck, now out in paperback from MIT Press.
One of the most vigorous, rapidly expanding forms of popular culture, games are growing astonishingly inventive, creative, challenging and complex. Some, without question, are works of art both graphically and conceptually. For growing numbers of Americans and people elsewhere in the world, gaming is intrinsically conected to story-telling, mental stimulation and recreation, for all that school administrators, politicians and many parents still don't get it -- or fear it.
Murray's notion of the transformative power of computing as an advance in the history of narrative also is reflected on the discussions and editorial agenda of myvideogames.com.
"Computers offer us countless ways of shape-shifting," writes Murray. "Using 'morphing' software, we can transform faces so seamlessly that a grinning teenage boy melts into a haggard old woman, as if under a magic spell. The transformative power of the computer is particularly seductive in narrative environments. It makes us eager for masquerade, eager to pick up the joystick and become a cowboy or a space fighter, eager to log onto the MUD and become ElfGirl or BlackDagger."
Although 'Net gaming be be a bane to society, it also allows people to meet from all over the world. It can also be argued that gaming helps bring near-professional level graphics hardware to the masses.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
I didnt make a word of that article. So is another "digital revolution?"
Does Jon Katz believe that MyVideoGames.com is the first site to focus on games??? The first site to report game news and publish articles ruminating on the meaning/use/significance/addiction to games?
Gaming community has been flourishing on the web, and on the 'net before that, for a long, long time. MyVideoGames is just Johnny-come-lately...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I have taken Jon's article, run it through Microsoft Word 97's Autosummarize feature, and posted the results here, so thatyou may enjoy, pure, distilled if you will JonKatz, in one-tenth of the normal time. The faint of heart and pregnant women should probably avoid this summary. Lets see what happens...
Culture isn't being destroyed online, but re-invented. The site offers breaking vid news, reviews, profiles of game heroes and heroines, and essays. Gaming, given the storytelling inherent in video and computer games, is perhaps the most vital new cultural form emanating from cyberspace. Many games have evolved far beyond mind games like chess and Scrabble. Murray's idea will remain bitterly controversial for some time, especially among the guardians of conventional culture. One of the most vigorous, rapidly expanding forms of popular culture, games are growing astonishingly inventive, creative, challenging and complex.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Now am I the only exception, or is this an unjustified generalization? I mean, there's lots of other stuff "we" do in our free time...
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Culture is not static. It is dynamic. It changes with the times and the people. That should be obvious. However, it is my belief that apart from culture changing, in itself, we are becoming generally more acultural. As we graduate to a global community, large cultures will be broken along more specialized lines. E.g., some of us may associate with Geek culture more than we do with the culture of our nation. We might feel more at home in a foreign culture, if surrounded by geeks. Culture is changing from the bland one-size-fits-all, into individual and peculiar flavors, in small niches. E.g., people who like anime have a culture to themselves, which breaks nationality borders. We should take care that the free market of ideas leads to cultural diversity, not aculture stagnation.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think that online gaming is definatly a healthy output. It gives people the chance to use there stinking minds for a change instead of just vegging out in front of a TV. It's alot more fun to feel like you are apart of your favorite TV show then just watching it. Will it become a dominate form of entertainment? Probably not... Will advertisers shift and spend a greater part of their budget to someway advertise on online gaming sites? Absolutly.
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Games have always been a defining and shaping force of culture since ancient times. Notable examples would include the Olympic Games of Ancient Greece (and modern times), the gladitorial games of Rome, and chess and pachisi(sp?) among the nobility of europe and india.
Until recently, most games in our culture (I live in the US) were played outdoors by groups of people. Baseball, football, soccer, etc... However today, few people have the time or outdoor space to engage in these activities, and there are very few adult leagues set up on a purely recreational (ie not very competitive) level. As a replacement for these, online gaming has developed.
I both play and administer muds and have come to know people from literally all across the globe through my play and work on these. Much of what used to occur on street corners and ball fields now happens over computer screens, simply because that is what we all have free or relatively free and easy access to.
As Kirk observed (rough quote) "The more advanced the culture, the greater the need for the simplicity of play"
Games will continue to develop and become more a part of our culture, just as chat-rooms, messanging, and email have become.
Of course I use Microsoft. Setting up a stable unix network is no challenge
I don't think its the medium that will distingiush the next great minds. Its the content. Porn aside, we have yet to create somthing online that captures the soul of the everyman. We play to the desires of the many. The next great thing has to entice the everyman with somthing innovative that could only have existed through this new meduim. Not simply rehashing old ideas. From what I have seen we have yet to concieve this.
Some games have always been mainstream (at least to game players) - the fighters, the first person shooters, the sports games, etc. And it's these mainstream games that most of the non-videogame audience looks at when they don't take games seriously. What's serious about a sports game, after all? It's just a diversion - a fighter isn't likely to spark creative minds to make new things, it's likely to let someone vent some steam :)
:)
Recently, though, other types of games have made it to the forefront. Final Fantasy VII was one of the first RPGs to have its own commercial - suddenly, RPGs were mainstream. It's games like these that the non-videogaming populace could look at and think (possibly) that they're worthwhile. Something with plot, depth, and artistic merit. Something that could spark a creative mind to make new things.
I'm not bashing any of the other genres. There's nothing like a good quakefest, after all - but to the folks who aren't really into videogaming, it's the games that seem to have more depth which are leading to greater acceptance of games.
Now, if I could only convince my parents
-Denor
This is a very interesting view of the way gaming works - I like it. I have first noticed something like that years ago, when I got myself really interacting with people during a Quake match - that was interesting. The possibilities are endless, now that there are more and more games, some very specific, some with nothing but gun-shooting and noise, and really clever ones, like Warcraft, Simcity, The Sims, C&C... /.). Anyway, gaming is more and more close to a real life experience - I hope to be expanding my knowledge and my icq list more and more from now on, as games keep going better and better (which is kinda bad, because my computer is sooo slow :P). :)
The meaning of gaming is not clear to most people not into computers. They mostly think games are for geeks, and that only nerds like videogames (or teenagers). A guy was arrested in my country, after shooting more than 5 people in a theatre at his town (Sao Paulo), and the accusation blamed it on influence coming from Duke Nukem (I even think there is an article about that right here at
Quake anyone?
Your title is a most accurate indicator of the intelligence of the content within. By their very nature games are not and should not be taken seriously - they are played to GET AWAY from reality! It is an oxymoron - it's like saying "Microsoft Works"...
Ahh! What are we going to do? Help! Help!
Video Games and Children
Violent video games unplugged by King County health board
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com (Usability Portal)
How to Download YouTube Videos
Excuse me, but isn't formulaic the last thing a good story should be?
Personally, I think that games of any sort are not fit for storytelling. You can't really have "interactive" stories because you'd quickly run out of place if you made everything possible. At their heart, all adventure and roleplaying games are linear, it's just that some disguise the lack of choice you have better than others. And in the end, solving (often frustratingly arbitrary) puzzles is not something that really makes you enjoy the story better.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Take out the extra '"' !
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
Neil Morton and Steve Park, two former Shift editors, have launched Myvideogames.com, a webzine that promises to offer literate commentary on game-culture and storytelling. They claim they want to do for video game reporting what Rolling Stone did for music journalism.
I'm not usually a Katz-basher, but this one really seems to be stretching its content past the breaking point. And he didn't even get URL right!
- Michael Cohn
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Far be it from me to challenge the many months of historical perspective behind this statement, but gaming with storytelling elements was old when the VIC-20 was new.
Gaming != Computer Gaming, folks.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
You are right in that it does seem to be an unfounded steriotype. I know pleanty of admins, programmers, etc. that either have no interesting in First Person Shooters or no interest in almost any games! Now, that doesn't nessisarily apply to me and most of my closest friends - we used to do the LAN-party thing quite often with Quake II, and then later Unreal Tournament.
There are quite a few steriotypes that are applied to geeks in general - can't get women (I'm engaged to a beautiful red head who's studying to become a Dr.), play games (hell, I've been spending too much time having fun writing games these days to actually play many other people's games! And I still really prefer a good strategy or thinking game to most FPS games), never see the sun (well, I am alergic to sunlight, so I suppose this one applies), etc. I know I don't fit the profile, and to tell you the truth - most of the geeks that I know don't fit the steriotype either. Strange how steriotypes work...
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Once again, Katz is no so much irrelevant as simply not relevant.
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
I think that $CURRENT_TREND is forcing us to re-examine our entire culture.
With my vast imagination, I predict a time when these developments could lead to $OBVIOUS_APPLICATION.
Other clueless liberal-arts majors in my field scoff at the notion, because they don't "get it" like I do.
Technical experts tell me that all this is currently impossible, but that will all change once $FAR_OFF_BREAKTHROUGH happens, and we should be ready.
I have no idea what it will take to make this a reality, but that's because I'm a big-picture person, not a detail person.
You geeks, who clearly never would have thought of this without me, should all get behind my vision so we can make $OBVIOUS_APPLICATION happen someday.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
No mention of Everquest, the most addictive game in the world.
Funnily enough, I think it's because of the medium's relative youth that these 'tasteless elements' are not yet found in computer games. It won't be long before someone does it... And I don't even think it needs to be such a bad thing either.
The difference with movies is, of course, interaction. I hope I can live with computer games (18+?) in which the bad guy spouts racist crap (happens all the time in movies/novels), but it all becomes a bit more poignant if the game allows you to somehow influence what's happening (e.g. save your girlfriend from being raped?).
Things might even go further. When in a movie someone 'plays' the bad guy, we know this is only pretending on the part of the actor. How does playing a rapist reflect on the actor's character? Not badly I hope. And does this translate to someone playing a rapist in an online RPG?
Great games
Gamers on the net are a huge minority in real life, at no point can this kind of culture be of much value. The people that make it up are spread across the world very sparsely. If you go up to someone on the street and ask him what Frag means, or something else equally game specific but well known to all modern gamers, they will probably say some cute fuzzy creature on cable TV. Just my 2 cents, but I'm not sure how we can get a culture website out of this, it should be labeled Hobby website.
With the guys I work with, we plan to be online have "virtually" meet in nightly fragfests. It's a bond at the watercooler when we trade war stories. So, Gaming is social. Demented and sad, but social.
joel
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
To say that "the Net" redefines culture is like saying that FTP redefines a computer program.
Sorry, but that's so much carp, and I think you know it. (At least, I hope you do!) Trying to pump up the Internet (calling it the Net makes it sound so... ...pop trash) is not only foolish but, IMHO, counter-productive.
A latter-day Shakespere is unlikely to care about someone ranting about the Freedom Of The Net, or Libertarian Codswallop. They'll be too busy DOING to care about such stuff, and too busy BEING to worry if someone thinks their culture is post-techno-hyper-counter-revolutionary.
The secret of success is not fanatical obsession with preaching an ideal. The secret of success is simply being. Let yourself exist. If humanity needed propoganda chiefs THAT badly, we'd be born with a newspaper in one hand and a stock ticker in the other.
Forget blind obsession and trying to look good. If you try to look good, you won't and you aren't. Get on with your life, and if you don't have one, then get one. The Internet is simply one more part of that life, the same way the dishwasher is. I don't see people shouting from the steepletop about the amazing Cultural Revolution that caused, although it was arguably a lot more extensive and pervasive than the Internet has been, to date.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Honor doesn't take much, other than true skill. It's teaching the cheating bastard a lesson. It's taking on the guy attempting to rape the newbie as opposed to the newbie. It's sticking for the ideals of "That's just not fair, it's not right."
You're not often going to get the chance to do it in real life, I'd wager. I mean.. if you're truly pious and good you'll stick up for what's right. You'll probably get the shit kicked out of you a number of times too. As much as we'd like to be truly honorable all the time, we also have this thing about saving our own asses sometimes.
Online gaming culture has the chance to be different from this, to actually have some honor in it. Sadly this doesn't seem to be happening. More people become obsessed with being Ultimate Rambo, or winning at all costs, or taking down the easy ones. Online gaming is becoming more popular. I hate to sound nostalgic, but I'm dead sure the two are linked.
Anyway, I guess my point is online gaming appeals to me because I have the chance to cultivate a (albeit small) culture akin to Arthur's Knights. Sounds stupid, but feels cool. Whatever keeps me happy?...
you don't half talk some crap
.oO0Oo.
stick you head out of your bubble once in a while
I don't know any serious programmers or engineers who like to play games
what about the hundreds nay thousands of serious programmers who WRITE games. It's no done in VB ffs.
you're obviously not very good at them
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Looking at how the gaming industry has developed over the last ten years, there are many interesting parrallels that can be drawn to the early development of film at the beginning of this century and the continual evolution of literature.
When film was first introduced, a number of devices for conveying both narrative events and symbolic meaning were invented. As this happened, the public learned to follow these queues. As this happened films became more complex. They were able to make extensive use of editing and camera angle to express the director's intentions in a more precise and compact form. This same development of devices occured in literature and is now occuring in video games.
We have become acclimated to the usual devices and genre's of video games. These are analogous to the serial genre films that dominated the first half of this century and are still popular today ( "The Maltese Falcon", and "Scream" being good examples of these). Video games differ from movies only in that they provide an interactive vicarious experience, wheras film is passive. (Multipalyer games would be analogous to watching a film in a crowded, noisy theater).
So, what I want to know, is when will the french new wave of video games get here? I mean genre breaking games that have an actual philosophy embodied in their creation. The "Literary Game" would be an interesting thing to see developed, but right now people are still learing the ropes of playing, so I imagine it will be a few years yet.
stuart@linuxfreak.NOSPAMcom
I find it humorous they pin down video games as the Defining Game. RPGnet main focus has been "Gaming Culture and a Culture of Games" for four years now. MUDs and MOOs are incredibly well documented and dissected in referred print publications. Gamasutra has some of the best essays looking at computer games from an social and even an anthropological viewpoint.
While I'm not decrying MyVideoGames, I am always a bit saddened when yet another Net Startup leaps into the fray... to reinvent the wheel. If your goal is to reach existing communities, why not contribute to those selfsame existing communities, instead of building a new one and fractioning the already crowded web?
Cheers,
Sandy
Yes, all this stuff about games being cultural and the like is right, but that's really in the games that not very many people are exposed to. (Or at least not the people who are saying games are the Devil's work).
A good portion of the "good" games are RPGs, which these people don't have the motivation (and usually the time) to really get into... and if they play the games at all, it's probably not for very long. This poses a bit of a problem, because they don't get to see any of the story of the game.
Take FF7. Quite possibly the most popular RPG ever, definitely a target of someone who wants to 'find out what's going on'. You start the game out fighting men with guns and blowing up a reactor. Look at the values there!
If these people would actually sit down and play the games (or stop just looking at FPSs and the like), then maybe people's view of them will change.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Is it just me, or anybody else has the feeling that this, ahem, "article" is shameless plug for a neither-original-nor-particularly-interesting web site?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
While no one claims stereotypes fit everyone they represent, there is always some portion of truth in them. All the geek friends I have are avid gamers, though while we enjoy UT, we also play EQ, Baldur's Gate, and a number of games from other genres as well. Granted, we are part of the younger geek contingent, early professional years. Gaming is likely far less common among older geeks, as they weren't similarly raised on Nintendo, Sega, or even Coleco.
-Tannin Kal
I'm always amazed at the naivete the so-called media critic, JonKatz.
...") or asserts the prominence of an general idea in the broadest, most non-specific way ("Not since the invention of the first printing press over 500 years ago did ...")
...
Gotta give the guy credit: he's as earnest as college freshman writing his or her first term-paper.
In fact, Katz's articles usually read like freshman, 5-paragraph paper material.
For example, the typical freshman paper always contains that first paragraph which either quotes the dictionary ("Webster's dictionary defines the word 'geek' as
As for the 'body' of the paper?
Well, Katz, like most college freshmen, relies on broad, sweeping assertions to drive home a point that hasn't been properly (or even 'clearly') specified. We know we're reading something -- the author is certainly making a lot of assertions -- but we aren't convinced why the author so adament in his or her assertions.
The persuasive power of the text is lost in what I've come to understand is the typical Katzian sentence.
For example: "...there's no doubt that the next Shakespeare will come from cyberspace."
Are we to believe this literally? Does Katz even himself believe this? Is this a quote? A paraphrase?
Or is this just rhetorical flourish? Or, worse yet, rhetorical "filler" to bridge the paragraph previous to the paragraph following?
Or, another example:
"Culture isn't being destroyed online, but re-invented. The next Shakespeare is probably clacking away on some weblog or messaging system."
Katz is fixated on the notion of the next Shakespeare. It's an interesting idea: but he's using Shakespeare -- or his *notion* of Shakespeare -- for a specific rhetorical purpose.
As I read this, he's not meaning the "next Shakespeare" literally -- he's apparently using the name "Shakespeare" to imply "a good writer." Or perhaps "a famous writer". Or, wait -- is a "good" *and* "famous" writer?
Or, better yet: "a writer who creates enduring work?"
But Katz's Shakespeare is "clacking away on some weblog or messaging system."
WTF?
First, why would anyone "clack away on a weblog?" And is clacking on a weblog really similar to clacking on a "messaging system"?
Second, why would Katz's Shakespeare -- one who creates enduring art -- clack away at a message system? Is Katz implying the cultural shift from creating theater (the first "Shakespeare") to creating applications (Katz's new Shakespeare)?
If this is the case, it's an interesting thesis: perhaps, this new "eCulture" has made some gradual shift in its notion of the imagination -- creative works now include stuff like "weblogs" and "messaging system" and if Shakespeare is to be found, he (or she) will be located not by examing plays, novels, or stories, but instead web-based applications like "weblogs" or "messaging systems."
This, as I say, is pretty damn interesting. Katz is no fool -- he just writes like one. Why not pursue this notion?
Well, because that's not what the article is about. The article is really about gaming. And, um, this (apprently) new idea: a gaming site.
WTF?
I could go on, but I won't.
Instead, I'll make a plea: Katz, please don't underestimate your audience here. Please tell me that you really don't think we're as naive as your writing makes us sound.
Tell me that it's all done for a rhetorical purpose. You think Slashdot readers aren't as savvy as they really are.
If that's the case, I can forgive you. You've made a mistaken assumption about your audience -- and, well, in the future, you'll crank your rhetoric and analysis up a notch.
You don't actually write this sort of simplistic analysis: you just write it because, well, that's the sort of quick analysis you think Slashdot readers want.
If all this is a rhetorical mistake, you're forgiven. But, if not
But seriously folks, anyone who thinks that pretending to be someone you aren't in some online fantasy game will make you a great storyteller ...(you complete the sentence)
Now, the internet has done a few things to change the standard, role-playing game. I can now meet new gamers on the net, as Katz said, there's lots (I think he said something around 10 million or so) of people out there. Not only meeting them online, but it's also possible to play a RPG (Role-Playing Game) online (through IRC or ICQ, or other messaging systems... even email, it's just that email games take a while to play ^_^). The format of this is different than table-top gaming, and seems to lend itself more to character interaction than combat.
Another way of using the net, (which I've started to do) is to play table-top, or online, and to post information about the campain online. This is great for maps, or giving people the background that their characters should know (for fantasy worlds).
The net is involved in games now, I've seen reference to ICQ and IRC in the source books; and for one game, I've got a source book dedicated to the web.
Anyways, I'm not sure if a new culture is actually being formed (although I wouldn't doubt it), but the net is influincing normal table-top/board games, and the way we play them.
There are always those who decry any evolution of a given culture as equivalent to destroying it. Likewise -- as in this case -- any new culture to emerge is often viewed as having the effect of marginalizing current cultures. The reality is that new cultures emerge, others fall by the wayside, and still others evolve to reflect changes in the views of their members.
One of the earlier examples of this would be the spread of music outside of the church. This was resisted vigorously from the idea of anything other than monophonic unison chanting through harmony, polyphony, accompaniment, etc. Especially interesting is that before that time, relatively complex quasi-orchestral music had been the norm before culture altered its course toward the "music is religious" idea.
Follow the pattern through radio destroying books, movies destroying radio. Television destroying a culture of children going outside to play. At the end of the day, all we have is a richer society with more options for entertainment, more lifestyle choices, and more culture than at any other time in history. And the pattern shows no signs of letting up.
When the next shift in culture appears, will those who are comfortable with this one cry out, "You're destroying our culture! What will happen to the Internet?"
Nerd Rock In Progress
This article failed to mention that the consoles are entering the online gaming (uh...) game as well. With the next generation of 128 bit systems there will be online rpg's, puzzlers, and FPS (Half Life, Quake 3 and Unreal) there will be a flood of online gamers logging on from thier favorite consoles. I hate to say this but, console gaming seems more mainstream then computer gaming. A $200 dollar console sounds a hell of alot more attractive to a teen gamer then a $1500 pc. I still dont think that online gaming will replace other forms of entertainment, though.
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
This is beyond parody. Classic Katz :-)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Won't somebody please think of the children?!
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I am often considered part of the much maligned "intelligentsia"; I'm
a professor at the most famous Ivy League University (along with being
a partner at a software startup). And I for one *do* think that video
games *may* become the central artform of the 21st century. At the
beginning of the 20th century, film was a used for little more than
silly experiments and peep-shows that people who could not afford the
theater attended. But by any reasonable measure film became (along
with the novel) the great artform of the 20th century: Kurosawa,
Bergman, Kubrick etc.
But greatness is just the promise of video games. No video game has
achieved anywhere near the sublime greatness of ``Wild Strawberries''
(a better example for this audience would probably be ``2001''). I do
think, however, that video games may achieve greatness sometime in
this century. Such video games will almost certainly look vastly
different than they do today.
I usually don't bash J. Katz, but this post was aggressively stupid.
Katz often rants about the stereotyped, oppressed geek. But I guess
stereotyping the ``intelligentsia'' is fair game. Nowhere does he
present the arguments that *SOME* in the ``intelligentsia'' would make
against video games---arguments with which I do not agree. He just
bashes them for their conclusions.
Moreover, I would welcome the next ``Shakespeare''. But given that we
haven't had one since the original, I'm not holding my breath. We've
had great, fantastic wonderful writers and artists, but no one with
the overwhelming culture transforming power which was Shakespeare. I
refer Katz to Harold Bloom's masterpiece ``Shakespeare: The Invention
of the Human''. But wait, offer a reference? That's just what
someone who's part of the ``intelligentsia'' would do! Never mind
that Harold Bloom (who is a professor at Yale) is much hated by many
members of the literary establishment. Does that still qualify him as
a member of the ``intelligentsia''? I thought only geeks were allowed
to disagree and have the right not to be stereotyped. Then again,
many members of the ``intelligentsia'' are geeks, one would say most
members if one follows Katz's very expansive definition of geek. MR.
Katz you are full of contradictions. I wish that were the only
problem that the post had.
"...there's no doubt that the next Shakespeare will come from cyberspace."
Actually, I'm from Iowa. I only work in cyberspace.
imuho
(with apologies to jtk)
Why do people always stress the story aspect of games. Does football have a "story"? Or "monopoly"? Does anyone care if Doom or Quake had a story? Games are not books of the modern era. Books are. Games are something else. The most important interaction between people and the world happens with hands and eyes. That's why graphic intensive finger candy is great. But good games don't need fancy graphics, Pokemon does not, board games do not. Because people are symbol handling machines, and they like playing with symbols. This is a broader concept than language of words and stories. I don't object to stories in games, but I have yet to see one which is not infantile.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
How many companies/web sites have a "My (insert thingy here) ?!"
The only people who understand what that refers to use Windez.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Yes, I was personally shocked and offended by that. I certainly can't trust him now. How dare he!
Er, no. The hippies, the beats, the flappers all did just fine without computers.
Subcultures -- that is what we're talking about -- have been around for a long time. Much longer than computers. Computers do indeed facilitate it by accreting minorities, but merely having a highly mobile culture (lots of cars or trains) is already a big help.
IMHO subcultures are a natural result of the fact people are different -- are born different -- in very fundamental ways. Subcultures arise from people sharing certain personality traits, often rarer traits, banding together for mutual support. Subcultures are inexorable. They may be hindered by lack of mobility or free flow of information, but even in the worst situations of information flow (say, heretics trying to find each other in 12th century France) humans manage. They're amazing that way.
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-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
This article is baffling, especially to those of us that have made a living taking gaming "seriously" for the last, oh, 10 years or so. This smacks of a savvy PR fim alerting a journalist of their hot new website. There's nothing at myvideogames.com that isn't served up at other gaming websites that cover the videgame industry. Surely Katz isn't ignorant of the thousands of websites covering the videogame industry; reading this article, it appears Katz is guilty of that which he rails against, assuming other sites are intellectually vacant. (Well, most are.) Sorry kids, myvideogames.com is hardly an important site; it's a late-arriver. It offers nothing that isn't offered elsewhere (wow, news, reviews, profiles and essays!).
---
---
"My life is a patio of fun."
God, sometimes it just so hard tell if people are just stupid or if they are excellent trolls.
The idea drives the intelligentsia nuts, but it's becoming clearer all the time that culture isn't being destroyed online but re-invented here.
What are you trying to say here, Jon? I resent your churlish insinuation that we aren't the intelligentsia!
Such a site, almost inconceivable even five years ago, now seems a benchmark of the way new media evolve to recognize and shape new culture.
Huh? Really?!
I wish I would have known this 5 years ago, when I built my first site in college, the focus of which was on computer gaming and table-top role-playing. Where I wrote about my characters and their trials, tribulations, and triumphs. Where I wrote about the computer games I was playing, those I wanted to play, and those I'd soon play. Where I wrote about my own experiences in gaming, both computer gaming and table-top. Where I wrote about how I thought gaming shaped me, in part, into who and what I am today (or was at the time... though it tends to carry through the years in it's own funny way).
Katz, where were you five years ago to tell me that I couldn't put that old site up? You could have saved me a lot of time...
] D
Does Rob or anyone at Slashdot even read what Katz submits before posting it? It appears that Katz can submit whatever he wants to Slashdot and they publish it without question.
I don't know, but not necessarily. See how it says "Posted by JonKatz" and not "Posted by CmdrTaco"? JonKatz is one of the authors on Slashdot, so he has the ability to post whatever he wants on the main page (he can also go through the submissions and post things people submit, but it doesn't look like he ever does.)
--
A serious gaming site has existed for quite a while, focusing on developers, called Gamasutra. Though perhaps Gamasutra focuses on developers, not players, it's still solewhat serious and askes very broad questions about gaming from time to time.
Also, I don't think subcultures are the issue here, though that could be one prediction. The original author spoke of becoming acultural, or at least forming more numerous niche cultures and severing one's connection, or at least self-identification with the original culture. Thus, I would cease to identify myself as my race, political preference, gender, or whatever had been my primary identity, and merely refer to myself as a geek, which isn't far from the truth anyway. The internet plays to this especially by the lack of multimedia. When all you see is a person's handle, unless it is unnaturally descriptive, you think of them only as that name, and not with the particular stigmas might accompany whatever appearance they may have.
-Tannin Kal
Video Violence
Bloody Birthday
Violence Schmiolence
Let's Play Pretend!
And, probably the most ironic, hilarious, and appropriate one:
The Longest Line
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
Freshman? Funny, I always think of Katz as sophomoric.
And just to indulge you, Webster's dictionary defines the word 'sophomoric' as "conceited and overconfident of knowledge but poorly informed and immature." Bull's-eye.
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Have you ever travelled to a country vastly different than your own... e.g. from North America to India? Culture is not nearly as global as we sometimes think online. There's a reason the term "Culture Shock" exists... because attitudes and behaviours vary widely among different countries. While neighbouring countries might have only subtle differences, globally we still are very culturally diverse. We may be exposed to more ideas through computers, and have a better idea of what a different culture is like, but when it comes down to it, we are still largely defined by the country we live in. (This is obviously a generalisation, and not always true)
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
My brother is a netadmin and certified genius. He keeps trying to persuade me to play him in netquake. I suppose I'll just have to take him to school... though I'm much more interested in Final Fantasy than Quake 3, which I found nice to look at, but Not My Thing. Half-Life maybe, definitely not Q3A.
I hate the sun. Bad sun! Whenever I go outside, it tries to burn me. My job involves a basement with no windows. Damn skippy, no sun...
-Grendel Drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
would andover.net please hire an editor for jon katz?
Please moderate this down as redundant if you see fit, i'm sure dozens of people are screaming the same thing.
-mark
Yes, despite the fact that it comes with a powerful virus, I mean scripting language, generates executables ten times the size of what I get with gcc, is based on an extremely half-assed language that couldn't qualify as a gimpy toy in its first dozen incarnations and can't do low- or high-level programming tasks better than any given language made for those purposes instead of cobbled together to give a sense of skill to people who can't be troubled to learn an actual programming language.
The vast majority of people run Windows 9{5,8}; does that make it a 'serious OS'?
It just goes to show that people will pass up steak once a week for crap every day. (Apologies to Tycho and Gabe.)
-Grendel Drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Your observation should be a "+3, Duh!" Also, what's the deal with people lamenting the lack of "educational" games? Now, I had lots of fun with Oregon Trail on the Apple II+ in grade school, but when I got home, I thought I deserved to zap a few aliens. Don't these kids deserve a break? It's been several years since I was in school, but I seem to remember that it was a lot of hard work. Harder than working, frankly, unless you happen to have a job that requires like 50+ hours a week.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Shakespeare this, Shakespeare that. I am fscking tired of this inane, vapid culture fostering its own delusions of literary grandeur by rehashing a small subset of the classics. How many people who talk about how Shakespeare is the acme of literature have even heard of Ben Jonson? I personally think that Alexander Pope and John Milton could whup Shakespeare any day of the week and twice on Sundays, but that's just my personal opinion.
But to pay all this lip service to 'high culture' or what-have-you... grow up! The man, like Steven Spielberg, does not shit gold! There are other things worth your time! Pick up something new, different, daring, something that other people may have overlooked. Remember, most people that we consider artistic geniuses today were overlooked in their own day and age -- what has changed? We're incapable of judging for ourselves, we need a cultural consensus! Bah!
I repeat, for those in the cheap seats -- Bah!
See, now you've gotten me all worked up.
-Grendel Drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
First of all, I read a couple of the opinion pieces on the site, and frankly, they were mediocre. I've seen much better in PC Gamer and CGW many times...maybe even every month.
Secondly, while I've been glued to a monitor or TV for endless hours many, many times in my life, that hardly makes games high art. Rather, the allure is that you have a story and visuals that you can interact with in ways you can't do with books, movies, paintings, plays, etc. And that's a great thing, too...but you don't seriously believe that Command and Conquer, Starcraft, Myst, Unreal Tournament, Civilization (insert your favorite game here) are even remotely on the same level as a book by Hemingway, Phil Dick, Gene Wolfe? a movie by Stanley Kubrick? a painting by Picasso or a statue by Michelangelo? a play by William Shakespeare?
I think you need to take a step back and get real here. I know, I know...you're just saying that it is beginning to come into the realm of art as the technology advances and becomes more accesible. Web "art" can't possibly hold a candle to the fact of a real life painting on canvas with its brushstrokes bringing the artist's emotions directly into play. The story-writing in games may have improved since 1980, but it hardly qualifies as great literature, and while our conversation and actions on AC were pretty amusing last night, I don't think they will go down in history.
Perhaps you should save this story and post it again in 2020 when I might be able to see a glimmer of reality in your assertions.
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
>When I read a Katz article, I feel like I am
>wading through a sea of molasses, waves of thick
>prose washing over me, while I try to make out
>that faint searchlight of the point.
Damn. We've finally pegged Katz' writing style.
You know... I used to write like that; but not even as a college freshman, try a high school freshman/sopohmore.
Know why???
Word count requirements!
Surely, you remember having to toss in fluff to pad a point you could've made in 75-100 words into a 500 word minimum forced upon you by a sadistic english teacher who would take off a point from your grade for every word under the minimum or over the maximum??? So I'd make my point and start padding my paper with crap to get it up to the length requirement. Throw in definitions, broad generalisations, "insightful" quotations... and ya know what? It worked every time!
Do ya think that in one of his other gigs, Katz gets payed by the word?
john
Imagine all the people...
Examine modern competitive sports. Hazarding a guess, chess is probably the most popular purely cerebral competitive sport whereas soccer probably rules the physical world. Soccer certainly has more ardent fans than chess. Why?
Hypothetically speaking, people can relate to the physical sports on a primal level where most cerebral sports are wanting.
To leap ahead to a conclusion, I doubt that computer game enthusaists will ever reach the level of stardom as the current era athletes until such a time as computer games allow for complete and utter immersion.
Looking at games with a literary eye is on par with teaching a college course in Saturday morning cartoons. For the longest time, there has been the notion that video and computer games will advance into a form of art. But after years of this, games are a weird juvenile form of entertainment. There's been a constant notion of a certain type of games being for the kiddies, and then a "mature" type of games for people who are beyond that. "Mature" seems to be equated with top-heavy bikini babes, an obsession with blood and gore and weapons, and a fixation on dark futures. In short, fifteen year olds who want to separate themselves from the happy-go-lucky days of their youth.
At the same time, game design creativity has stagnated in a horrible way. Authors of fiction create worlds and tell stories and the results end up in bookstores. Typical authors don't start off a project by saying "Okay, that last Stephen King novel sold really well. I'm going to write the same book, only better." Yet this is what game developers always do. A game design starts out with "like Everquest, but..." or "Quake with a fantasy RPG element..." and we get the same old stuff. Yet we have no subversive element, just people writing more versions of old arcade games (but now they're Open Source).
Rather than discussing the current crop of games in an adult way, perhaps a better approach would be to try to foster a generation of game creators who can think for themselves and want to distance themselves from what's expected of the so-called game "industry." After all, it's common for writers and musicians to start out in a subversive way and grow into mainstream: Kerouac, REM, Hunter S. Thompson, Smashing Pumpkins.
"content (Score:0)"
I couldn't have said it better myself, man.
-Grendel Drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The next Shakespeare is probably clacking away on some Weblog or messaging system
You really have to wonder whether Shakespeare would have been held in such high regard, or would have even written the plays he did, if, if after every posting, he was hit with 4,000 flames and 500 requests for naked AVI's of Juliette.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Actually, I think it was the gratuitous use of the word 'poop!'.
Yes, that would definitely do it.
Notice that other people can express their opinions without using the fecal metaphor. Why not you?
-Grendel Drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This is modern computing. To even get to the point where you can create skilled works you often spend years learning mechanical programming skills in a structured environment. Worse yet, in every age prior to our own excess productivity resulted in a class of people who devoted their lives to nothing but the arts and philosophy. Today we watch TV, play videogames and browse porn on the web.
I think to move any further we must develop the tools to make the internet a natural extension of our creativity instead of becoming mechanics. At the same time we must be enticed to want to express ourselves in ways that create greater things.
When I read about this website called "MyVideoGames.com," I thought at first it was a repository for games created by amateurs. Instead it is another consumer-culture rag.
The game culture will be mature when many people are creating their own games, not sucking it up from the billion-dollar industry. Through the open-source development model, we can all build on each others' work and produce some astounding things.
No. There are several naïve assumptions about culture at play here. Culture does not organize itself organically around one's ethnic, economic or political identification or modern notions of the nation/state. This is a consequence of our need for naming and the pervasiveness of cultural critique informed by or patterned after demographic analysis. Nor can we speak of an original culture or a primary identity outside of a simple normative gesture. A gesture which, with its individuating obverse, is equally available to all and uninfluenced by questions of economic status or the availability of advanced digital communications.
To whit: the Bhagavad Gita quoting coker from W. Somerset Maugham's Razor's Edge or the trucker who once gave me a lift from Jackson, MS to Memphis, TN. He sang from operatic arias in three languages and I shared some of my shoddy poems with him.
To be sure, Katz's mythic modern Shakespeare is giving little or no consideration to such questions as he clatters over whatever he is clattering over.
illegitimii non ingravare
It's articles like this that make me happy that I leave my Katz filter off. As I mentioned in an earlier post, he has an excellent analytical ability and a fluid, narrative, writing style, but he tends towards sensationalism and sometimes seems like he is fishing for stories. This time, he reels in one of the most interesting and unique elements of Internet culture. He is trying to define an entire culture (which is a precarious practice) but his analysis is insightful and well-presented. I guess its fillet for all!
That being said, I think the most interesting questions that are raised by the gaming culture is the psychology of role-playing. While Katz points out that people take their fantasy "lives" very seriously (as evidenced by Ebay's Everquest auctions), he does not approach the question of the relationship between gamers' fantasy lives and their reality.
Do people turn to gaming as a way to express inner desires or attributes that cannot be expressed in the real world? Does this fantasy experience allow people to integrate what they learn about themselves into their real-world persona? Or, is gaming simply an escape from life's troubles that does not allow one to truly confront their problems in any meaningful way? While the answers to these questions will vary by individual, society will ultimately need to deal with a mainstream culture that is raised on video games, that will embody all of these characteristics to varying degrees.
As games become more immersive, I think it will become more difficult for people to balance their real and fantasy lives. If the fantasy and reality are disconnected, or if the fantasy is used simply an escape from a reality that is difficult to cope with, then is gaming really a productive activity? Perhaps the graph of immersiveness to benefits is somewhat like a bell-curve, where games that are not immersive have no positive effect on its players while those that are too immersive isolate their players from reality and prevent them from integrating what they learn about themselves in the game into their real lives.
Another interesting question is why people turn to games, and when they spend more/less time in these fantasy worlds.
I play multiplayer games only, and unfortunately I can only play for a few hours a week. I find playing against computer opponents to be exceedingly boring after I beat a game, as their behavior becomes predictable. But then again, perhaps the same can be said about human opponents (I once played a person in Quake, where, almost without fail, I would drop a grenade into certain empty rooms in a large level and he would enter the room and run into the grenade before it exploded), which brings up the other interesting issues about how peoples' style of play is an expression of their personality.
I was wondering if any "hardcore" gamers could lend some insight.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Maybe someday there will be enough decent games to have these kinds of discussions and to have a "Rolling Stone" of games, but for now there's only www.oldmanmurray.com.
If the future means respectability for games, then Old Man Murray's "crate test" will be a seminal piece of work, and Seanbaby will be a pipe-smoking, tweed-wearing, undergraduate-diddling professor.
That's actually the kind of future I'd look forward to.
The MA RMV! Been there, done that, burned the t-shirt to avoid triggering PTS flashbacks.
----------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Hamlet is not a Toffler-esque "The Future is coming!" screed. Katz, like the folks he started out with seems to think everything written about New Media must point to a transformative future with miraculous developments like jet cars, eternal life, and libertarianism. (Actually, to be fair, he didn't say as much in his article. Maybe I'm reading the futurist schlock into his article, but whatever, it's fun.)
Hamlet on the Holodeck is actually a fairly modest book that was written for people who care about writing, storytelling, and art. It's a book not about society, but about narrative and storytelling. I happen to ardently love good RPGs, digital or dice-based or whatever. I happen to have a near-religious belief in the impossible dream of collective authoring enabling all of us to be social, creative, and thus fulfilled. No jet cars necessary. I am a freak. This is a great book for me. It is not a book for everyone.
That said, the book does offer a lot of really cool background on narrative and storytelling in a lot of genres--including fiction writing and video games--that might be interesting to a lot of folks. In the way it offers a great overview of broad themes across art forms it is a lot like Scott McCloud's dazzlingly outstanding book Understanding Comics, which focusses on comic books but also contains the best 15-minute gloss on art history that I've ever encountered.
As for the site that Katz rhapsodizes about: please!
Just my $.02.
goodmike
NT
Also a good mud.
Vermifax
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On a lot of fun games. Any of the Zork games had great stories. Grim Fandango also has a great story. There are also a lot of rpg's that have better storylines compaired to some books I have read. (admittedly some rpg's have crap for a storyline, but this is why we wan't a better story) I guess my point is that not all computer games can be compaired to football or monopoly. Those are both relatively short term games. A good book/rpg can take a couple of days to finish (or more, I am a fairly fast reader). With the former, you have something you can pickup, play a game, and have an outcome in 4 or 5 hours. With the later you have something that you can pickup play/read for 4 hours, put it down, pick it back up, put it down. The whole time there is continuity (assuming the book/rpg is well written).
Vermifax
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It borders on grave ignorance to post an article on this issue that is but a mediocre plug for a single 3yr-old, much hyped book and an average gaming site. I can only recommend doing some journalistic homework before proclaiming the re-invention of culture as we know it in full-mouthed wired-style. Considering the rich scientific discourse on this subject and the wealth of interesting contributions from the gaming community, such as gamasutra or EDGE magazine, this could mean quite a bit of catching up for Jon Katz.
And to get back to the starting quote: Nicht alles was hinkt ist ein Vergleich. Please drop that "next Shakespeare" polemic! This is neither a good comparison or metaphor, nor does it touch the core of the subject in any way, even - actually especially - if it happens to be the transformation of literary culture!
Well that site had no information of any use to even a medium level gamer on it. I'm not suprised considering it wasn't even founded by a gamer... Fortunately sites like that will never succeed. Real gaming sites are built around community. That site will never develope a cummunity because it has nothing to offer.
Well, to think that games are not being taken seriously you'd have to ignore sites like thegia and mags like nextgen. they are well written sites made for hardcore gamers. i have never heard about myvideogames.com, and when i went there today it looked like a bunch of stupid editorials.
you might want to consider that games have been taken seriously by the mainstream ever since a little company called sony jumped into the game. now genres that used to be niche like rpg's are becoming mainstream,, well, some crappy rpgs coughfinalfantasy7and8cough, but there will always being the niche games like lunar, legend of mana, threads of fate, etc.
if games haven't been taken seriously till now, and some late-in-the-game site called myvideogames.com suddenly changed everything, well, i'll give you the 40 or so games i am buying this year. so in retrospect, don't write shitty editorials about things you have no idea about jonkatz, and we won't write remarks correcting everything.
'Mullethead. A hairstyle that's a way of life'
are the common threads between online gaming and sports.
My circle of Real Life friends is mostly composed of aging hard-core athletes, and online gamers. There is a large overlap between the two, based on appreciation of the above elements.
Chess and Football both require tactics and strategy as well as these three qualities. Ever listen to John Madden wax philosophical about the chess match being waged between offensive and defensive linemen? My favorite sport, fencing, is often referred to as "chess at x miles per hour", x being the best guess at the speed of the tip of a blade propelled by a fencer in full lunge. My best result to date (25th at U.S. Nationals) followed an injury-plagued year where my training regimen mostly consisted of gym work and obsessive quaking for my adrenaline fix. I genuinely think that quake served to keep my focus and "twitch" response in competition form.
I guess my point is that, if you ask anyone that is deeply into both (physical sports and online gaming) they will tell you that the sensations and rewards are similar. The only thing missing is the physical exertion. That is the feature I am waiting for. I look forward to the athletic gaming of the future: Mountain bike competition on the lifecycles at the gym and shadow boxing vs. computer opponents that actually requires you to perform the correct movements to win.
That should be no obscure subject. Yesterday + the day before yest. I tried to post 5 comments for 38 times. THIRTY-EIGHT.
Now, for not to say off-topic, a little provocation:
"The idea of cyberspace as culture (??) is a particularly bitter pill for many of the shapers of thought and opinion (??) -- educators, academics, journalists, writers, members of the clergy, the so-called intelligentsia (???) -- to stomach. In fact, Murray still has few colleagues supporting her contention that networked (?) computing (?) is re-shaping (????) culture in diverse (?????) and highly (????????) creative (????????????) ways."
Angry greetings.
I would say that gaming = computer gaming. Other forms of gaming would come under sports, board games, or some other previously existing title.
Gaming with storytelling in it may not be such a new idea, but IMHO home computers introduced a distinct variety. Connecting them through the internet has enabled more interactivity between people playing the games, usually enhancing the gaming experience. However, I am a bit too cynical to call it a new cultural form yet.
Also, I don't think storytelling is inherant in gaming. Yay Asteroids!!!
--Dead Lesbian Witches! Think about it!
-Dead Lesbian Witches! Think about it!
Although aluded to, but not directly mentioned, there is also a growing (and yes, I may be slightly biased here) LAN party scene happening all over.
http://www.lanparty.com/
or
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/lanparties.pl
for a link to a local LAN party near you.
--
Amarillo Linux Users Group
--
Time is on my side
Lets see: Internet changing the world. New World Culture being fashioned by geeks. Politicians and mainstream media don't get it. Columbine made those in meat-space suspicious of geeks.
Yes, Katz continues to beat hell out of the same old drums.
And, of course, there are always silly, completely unsubstantiated statements such as:
"a following as large or larger than that which follows many traditional forms of culture -- opera, classical music"
Most tellingly, in a story entitled "Taking Games Seriously" Katz doesn't mention a single such game by name! There are many (FO 1 and 2, PS:T, SS2, just to name a few from recent years).
Why so short on specifics? Katz is only interested in facts insofar as they provide him with an opportunity to preach about his pet peeves (see short-list above). He's not interested in, or is not capable of, giving the reader the facts, and allowing them to draw their own conclusions. Once again, Katz himself is proof positive that the "mainstream media" that he so frequently claims "doesn't get it" is still desperately needed. One good New York Times or BBC analysis of Internet related issues is worth any number of Katz pieces.
Just who are these new Shakespeares changing the way we think, play and understand video games?
Numero Uno, the obvious choice for computer gaming: John Carmack
I'm not here to kiss ass, but look at what the man has done. He's changed computer gaming ever since he thought that a first person shooter was a good idea. Then he believed Ray Tracing was a good idea (Wolf3d). Then he had another (better) idea including sprites (Doom 1/2/ultimate,etc). Then he had an even better idea about geometry and real 3d worlds (Quake 1/2/3). This last game just so happened (the first Quake that is) to basically invent the pure joy of deathmatching. Then it made the world (Internet) wake up to the fact that it was fun to play versus many other people whom you'll never know. Then he released the tools and specs for making levels and new weapons and new skins, etc. This made the game last far longer than any normal one would have ever dreamed (Quake1 still has thousands playing it daily). The sequels to said game weren't that ground-breaking, but just look how he single-handidly stopped the monopolistic ways of 3dfx (anyone remember the glide-only version of Quake out long before the opengl one?) by openly (publicly that is) supporting the OpenGL platform, one that is universal, rather than video-card specific? What else can the man do to influence computer gaming?
Think of it this way: When he dies, the world will mourn. Players will openly weep. A national day of recognition will be made, even if its just in the gaming community. He is not immortal, and someday this will happen. It will be like the death of Kurt Cobain (or Tupac, if you want to get into genres). The world will stop for a day, and see just what the man did. The Tim Sweeneys and the Brian Hooks and all the rest wouldn't be here if it weren't for John.
Think about it.
another shitty jon katz post
i'm a hardcore gamer (8+ hours a day of gaming)
games are just for fun yes, quake 3 shows that id is CLEARLY democratic. yes, Unreal Tournament is definitely for republicans. HOW POLITICAL! yes, games ARE SO POLITICAL.
slashdot is really desperate for meaningful content, wow.
Since then we've been living through almost two centuries of a bogus division between technical and humanistic cultures, mainly propagated by the humanists -but it can also be said that scientists have failed to understand the importance of humanities eg. only rational logical experimentation and deductive logic can present to us "Reality" -emotion, religion, the human condition are all scorned as not properly applying to this quest...
/. community someone mentions a religious idea or something shock horror "unscientific" and they are ridiculed for being for want of a better term LUDDITES.
Science has also done it's fair share of fence building. It is way to simplistic to say oh it's "THEIR" fault because you just happen to subscribe to the belief's of one side or the other.
Scientists have always read (and written) good novels, appreciated great art and music etc - yes but they don't believe that any of these things explain existence only SCIENCE does.
Just look at the
Because nothing explains things like SCIENCE does, I know you agree....
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
I got modded as funny for linking to the Dilbert Zone:)
I mean jeesh. where did i say that all vb programmers weren't serious ffs. I earn very good money once in a while programming VB. But what I wouldn't do is try and write a fps game using it. A decent fps game must be written by a serious programmer. That was my point and I thought it to be very plain.
wtf has compiled size got to do with anything
if you don't care about people's opions how do you get the energy to reply to them
jesus would never be anything because he's a fictional character from a faery story
The more I learn about vb (& I've been using it since v.3) the worse it gets particularly as the demand for networked programs grows.
For what it's worth my favourite widget glue is a python and wxPython combo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Jon--
;-) is there somebody really making a case that games aren't ever artistic?
You actually bungled your post by not including a single example of somebody who disagrees with you. I'm serious--I have no idea who this Intelligensia is that disagrees with your arguments; most of what I've heard which decries online culture seems to focus on the ephemeral nature of it--small emails, lousy grammar, everything archived temporarily, nothing archived permanently. Gaming itself has nothing to do with this cultural loss, though online gaming does introduce interpersonal communication and thus these worries. But you didn't really disagree with these cultural concerns, did you?
Outside of people screaming that games are too violent(Joe Leiberman's campaign comes to mind, and he's a congressman--not particularly intelligensia
Besides not including any reference to somebody who diagrees with you, you also posted this the day after Game Over magazine--pretty much the highest quality review site out there--put up Decency in Multiplayer Gaming--amazingly enough, a pragmatically harsh view of what you're talking about. They also gave a singularly awful rating to Panty Raider, which is more of a commentary on the paucity of pornography in games than anything else. Supply and demand is about the only reason we've paid an ounce of attention to that game.
Games should be taken seriously, and they have become a fascinating art form--what else so intrinisically bridges mathematics, computer science, physics, art, game theory, self-optimizing systems/AI, and mythological structure? The problem with your post is that you never really identified anyone who actively disagrees. I hate to say it, Jon, because overall you've avoided this problem...but ascribing opinions to a group without a single shred of evidence that such opinions are generally held by any individual ostensibly within the group(let alone by the group as a whole!) is, unfortunately, unprofessional. Such is the domain of demogogues and propagandists--I'd like to think we're better than that.
After all, as Weasel Boy pointed out, we are the intelligentsia.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
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