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Industry Leaders Frustrated With Game Culture
Well known designer Warren Spector let his opinions fly in a keynote at the Montreal Game Summit, reports Edge Online. From the article: "While admitting that the largest part of the criticism stemmed from general ignorance and misunderstanding of videogaming by the 'cultural gate-keepers,' he noted that simply staying the course and waiting for mainstream acceptance to catch up could lead not only to political intervention, but a 'coarsening of our culture,' and 'eventual cultural irrelevance.' Instead, he joined a growing chorus in the development community by strongly advocating the diversification of games to be more inclusive of women, older gamers, and traditionally excluded ethnicities." Next Generation is covering a similar statement by ESA President Doug Lowenstein about his views on the gaming industry's image. Unfortunately, societal parasite Jack Thompson took Spector's remarks to be validation of his viewpoint. GamePolitics has that story.
"Or even worse, the sort of abstract slaughter of a civ"
To give it credit where the credit is due, Civilization 3 and now 4 made victory through peace much more possible. In Civilization 4 there are 3 seperate peaceful victory possibilities, winning by generating a huge amount of "culture" (points you get by creating wonders and promoting things like art), building the space ship and getting to Alpha Centauri or being elected head of the United Nations. In comparison there are only 2 military victory conditions, dominating the map or wiping out everyone else.
The peaceful victory conditions are completely viable, and it's quite interesting to play with these goals in mind.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Naturally, Jack fails to understand that Take-Two Interactive isn't just "GTA" this and "Manhunt" that. Think about it for a second...if Take-Two were really to go under (which apparently seems to be Jack's ulterior motive), not only would there be no more Grand Theft Auto, but we'd also lose games like Civilization, Pirates, and a bunch of great sim sports titles from the 2K Sports label. As much as he wants the non-gaming public to think otherwise, Take-Two does publish games that aren't over-the-top violent.