A main reason why I think the PSP hasn't done as well as expected is that it's the wrong timing. Summer is _the_ season for portable game machines, because parents buy them for kids when they go on trips. At the EB where I worked, we would have to put the gameboy section at the front of the store come every May.
But the PSP doesn't really hit that crowd. The target audience, 18-40 males, doesn't have a summer off (or is driving when they do). The PSP might perform better come winter and Christmas, particularly if they drop the price $50.
Basically, what Steve Mallet did, creator of Del.irio.us, is take the design, the idea, and most of the features of delicious, and copy and paste them with a special "open-source" CTRL-V buttons (he's since changed the site layout and design it would seem - to none at all)
Not unsurprisingly, there has been a flurry of discussion about del.icio.us on the del.icio.us listserv. Most of it is fairly constructive and thoughtful. I think what bothers me the most isn't that yet another social bookmarking engine is springing up. Furl and Spurl have been around for a while and there are few minor ones. But each of these generally adds something new to the mix, such as private bookmarks, or longer comments, or better integration with the browser. Del.irio.us doesn't add anything new at all.
Except maybe open-source. Yay.
It reminds me of the goold ole days, when one friend who wanted to run a BBS copied all the files and ANSI from another friend who had been running a BBS for years. Morale of the story? The second, copied, BBS sucked and died because the "creator" didn't have any innovation or creativity in him anyway. That's my call on delirious.
Irrational, the devs of Tribes Vengence, are one of my favorite companies. Ken Levine is one smart cookie.
But it seemed that all of the sudden, they went from doing Freedom Force to juggling two more games that seemed little more than outsourcing. Judging by reviews and demos, it seems that neither Swat or Tribes are horrible, merely above average.
So I wonder if Irrational didn't just need some extra cash infusion to be able to self-publish Freedom Force: 3rd Reich, or hire more people for the upcomiing Bio Shock (unofficial sequel to System Shock II)? Or whether Sierra/VU publishing FF did not include somewhere in the deal some on-the-fly development on some festering properties if only to keep the body warm
I had a GRiD a few years ago I had bought off of ebay. True to the adverts, that thing endured a helluva lot. I used to to take notes in class on, and because I'd paid $30 for it and had heard about its durability, I treated it as such. I dropped it on cement more than once, left it in the car when it was below freezing - and it kept on working.
That is, until I left it on the floor in the room where we kept our ferrets. The next day when I went to use it, I noticed that one of our ferrets had taken more luxury with it than even I had and taken a leak on it.
It didn't work. After freezing temperatures and cement impacts it was ferret pee that did my GRiD in.
Remember how Jason Hall, once founder of Monolith (devs of Matrix Online - MO) and now head of the WB games division, went on some tirade about quality games a year ago?
Reviews haven't hit the web yet, but I wonder if Hall will hold his former company to the same standards he threatened. From advance press, my guess is that the Matrix Online will be sufficiently underwhelming to get any kind of decent score. So what happens then? Will Jason withhold royalty to his own friends and former co-workers?
Postscript: Ironically, didn't WB also just announce a second Matrix game by Shiny? Hall is still in charge right?
Yahoo apparently hasn't even used gmail at length. It's not about the gigabytes. I didn't exclusively switch to using Gmail because of the 1gb. I use gmail because of the magnificent search capabilities, because of the way it uses a flat hierarchy (labels -aka tags- instead of folders), and because the IM-like conversation view makes replies and discussions far more managable than in any other email system. Gmail is speedier and sleeker than even my outlook POP3 mail.
As far as I'm concerned, the only way Yahoo could possibly "beat" Gmail in terms of usability is by copying Gmail. And throwing in some free butterscoth toffee candies.
As an expecting father, this made me realize that I'd love to have the entire Bill Nye series for my kid. I loved the series while in college, and always imagined that with whatever band I'd eventually form up we'd know we'd made it when we had a song and music video on Bill Nye.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that there are no DVDs to buy of Bill Nye. For all the crap TV shows that are coming out on DVD this month, how is it possible that Bill Nye has not yet arrived on DVD?
If such a torrent link existed, now would be the time to share it, yes?
Could this be an idea to reinvigorate the movie-going experience? The last movie I paid $9 for meant overpriced food, stepping out for 5 minutes to find an employee to fix minor problems with the projector's focus on an overrun print, and then fellow-moviegoers who apparently paid $9 to answer cellphones and talk loudly to friends.
So what else is there? Digital theaters haven't taken off like Lucas obviously planned. While the quality of the theater experience has generally decreased, the quality of the home experience has increased. Add to this the increasing availability and quality of pirated movies, and what point is there in even going to the theater?
My copies of Pirates!, Kings Quest I, and Shogun all booted straight from the 5 1/4 drive. Back then it was called "Insert Floppy, Wait 5 Minutes For Loading, And Play." It was awesome. Those 5 minutes gave you ample time to try to understand the copy protection scheme.
I read the blog of Scott Miller, CEO of 3DRealms, quite frequently. He's a really smart guy. If companies followed the advice he dishes out on his blog, they'd be much better off. He's especially keen on marketing. For example, he has some great ideas on naming games and on avoiding using long titles like Star Wars Dark Forces II Jedi Knight III etc. Very smart stuff.
So why he has so f-ed up the marketing on DNF is beyond me. Frankly, I think he's betrayed the relationship between developer and fan more than nearly any other gaming single company. The problem is not that they've taken so long. If they had never released any information at all about DNF but simply announced the game and released it a year later after a PR blitz, it wouldn't have been a big deal. People might've wondered why it took so long, but they'd probably be too busy playing the game to care.
Instead, Miller and 3dr has arrogantly strung their fans along by surfacing every 2-3 years with a carrot of information or screenshots or an E3 preview. Then, when the enthusiasm level is just enough to maintain a slight knowledge of the game, they dive back into the murky depths of "when it's done."
"When it's done" does not inherently violate the relationship between developer and fan. But as soon as companies like 3drealms start relying on fan enthusiasm and fan network news distribution, they owe more to them than to snub their nose at the fans, say in a British Lord accent, "When it's done," and then walk away backs turned. DNF is a perfect example of this elitism.
There was a sociological study done a few years back that showed that the time people wait for things demonstrates the level in society of the two groups of people. This study was talking specifically about people waiting in doctor's offices or at a government institution. The longer people waited in these offices, the more important the person was they were waiting for - either a doctor or an institution. The longer we sit in a waiting room, the more we need to be in the waiting room. Doctors and buerocrats can get away with that because of their level of importance in society. Simply, we need them more than they need us, and that's why we wait.
But there's a discrepency in this when we apply this same theory to gaming. We don't need a DNF as much as Scott Miller and gang need us. We've been getting along fine without them. And perhaps Miller and 3drealms have enough money that they don't need to work quickly on the game, but if they have other aspirations for DNF - for it to become a benchmark, or just known as a really fun game - they're going to have to drop this elitist "when it's done" attitude and do one of two things: a) shut up about the game and stop releasing any kind of information like this, or b) set a date for the game and stick to it as best as they can.
Some of the more succesfull studios get away with "when it's done," namely id and Blizzard to name a few. This is just the validity of the sociological study; that we actually do "need" a game from id and Blizzard and are willing to wait long enough. Why this works for id and Blizzard and not 3drealms is that the first two companies have never betrayed the trust. While utilizing the fan network and and fan ethusiasm, they have never taken advantage of fans to maintain momentum while they diddle-dally on a game. 3drealms has violated that relationship - time again and time again. Gamers are a very forgiving bunch - throw a great screenshot their way and usually all is forgiven - but I think that DNF has broken a cardinal rule, and "fans" may relegated it to special level of gamer hell.
Good for you, that you manage to completely ignore race in your life. We should all be so lucky.
I'm not suggesting that African Americans enjoy games less because their avatar is always white. In fact, when given a choice, studies have shown that they more often choose white avatars over black, even when there is nothing more than a cosmetic difference. Of course, I'd venture to say that 90% of the hot, buxom leather clad females in WoW are actually not hot, buxom leather clad females in real life. In both cases there are issues of race and gender identity that we could write dissertations on (and people are). As far as not intentionally spiting black people, you're most likely right. But even if you don't intend to misrepresent minorities doesn't make it right when you do.
I don't have the time right now to download the multiple papers on this subject from JSTOR, violate copyright and post them on my webspace for slashdot to leech. Suffice it to say that there is plenty of discussion on this topic, both "high" and "low," and I pretty much echoed the current consenus, if admittedly a little crudely. That doesn't necesarily make me right and you wrong, but I'm certainly not an "idiot." Check out the film "Game Over," the Children Now study on race in video games, and work by Darnell Cornelman of Chicago State University, There's plenty more out there on this - heck, just google african americans and video games.
You astutely noted Asian developers. Smarter people than you or I have written smarty stuff on why modern Japanese pop culture idolizes white Americans and I'd be doing it an injustice by trying to summarize it since I haven't read beyond the abstracts. If you're interested, I can point you in the right journals.
I guess what I'm saying is: research before you call someone an idiot, please. Or think. Thinking would be nice too.
Maybe the many, many white developers finally realized that African Americans are - and have been- playing their games. Or maybe studios finally started hiring minorities, although probably the former is more true.
There is a long standing tradition of ignoring minorities in video games, save perhaps sports, so it's nice to finally see them being more inclusive of urban culture, even if they are motivated only by profit. Personally, I fail to see how "millionaire ex-drug dealers" are any worse than the ultra-violent, womanizing main characters that have almost universally plagued video games since the PSX.
Good points, but I have to admit to little Bobby having been something of a trick question. The most recent issue of Computer Games Magazine sports an editorial by a parent writing that his son does, in fact, learn financial skills by playing WoW. It's a great editorial, and has nothing to do with game violence, and well worth the read.
The two events you list - the police station and the tree chopping - are substantially different. Chopping a tree takes strength, and if video games do anything with regards to physical ability they're in widening the stomach, not the muscles. But quickly stealing a gun from an officer that is not expecting it, shooting three officers at point blank range with the handgun, taking the keys, and stealing the cruiser requires little physical effort. The barriers in this particular stiuation were purely psychological in nature. Stealing a gun was probably the most physically demanding part. The kid had surprise on his side, and so shooting three officers probably wasn't that difficult. Handguns aren't hard to use anyway, and shooting anything within 3-6 feet is a no-brainer. So the barriers that stop most people from trying this inside a police station are purely pyschological, not phsyical like the chopping of a tree. Simply, fear probably stops most people. But in this case, it didn't.
Why? Well, I think it's too simplistic to blame on exclusively it GTA. But somewhere in there, mixed in with all this emotional baggage, the kid had practiced it all before, even if it was just with polygons and dual shock controllers.
I had a friend who was a drummer, and it always got on her nerves how he would air-drum to songs. He didn't have sticks, he didn't have drums in front of him, and he wasn't hearing a response from his own direct actions. Yet, he said doing it all the time helped him become a better drummer when it came to playing the real thing. Are you claiming that practicing, like actors practice without props and costumes and sets, or like atheletes practice outside of the actual field and without the official uniforms and screaming crowd, doesn't help people prepare for the real thing?
They should be troubled. Troubled that somebody has such a blind vendetta that they'd make such tenuous and silly accusations. The one fact about virtually all the allegedly video-game related crimes is that they are, all in all, not particularly unusual crimes in and of themselves.
The Flight Simulator one is a stupid correlation. It's like blaming 9-11 on bagels because the terrorists ate bagels the breakfast before they boarded the planes. While Columbine's correlation to Doom and Quake is more substantial, they weren't planning to shoot floating demonic heads. But the cop killing that I saw featured on 60 Minutes was almost step for step the same mission in GTA, minus the blocky graphics 80s music. This kid played GTA hours a day for two years. Hell, I'm a very psychologically healthy person, I am well aware of the difference between fantasy and reality. Yet I use a computer for hours and day, and there are times where I find myself instinctively applying computer behaviors to the real world, like trying to cut and paste a phone number from one side of the room to a piece of paper on the other side, or thinking that I can tivo something someone just said. Who knows how blurry that line becomes when you're in a situation of extreme stress, like being arrested, sitting in a police station, and seeing a cop's gun just sitting there waiting to be taken - all of which are part of a scenario you've virtually acted out time and time again in a video game.
Would he have acted differently if it were Dance Dance Revolution he'd been practicing hours a day instead? I don't know - but I do know that for myself, I wouldn't be instinctively thinking about cutting and pasting real world info if I was a farmer and not working with computers.
I'll believe it works when I see the Army outfitting its troops with mouse-controlled machine guns that have zero kickback at all and tanks whose controls consist of "W A S D" buttons.
First, you'll get no argument from me about Jack Thompson. He's an ass. 'Nuff said.
However, the army was one example. Say an 8 year old plays WoW. Would you dispute the fact that WoW could teach little Bobby how to barter? How our economic system works? Wouldn't Bobby learn - in the video game - how to save up for things he wants instead of blowing the money on the first shiny thing he sees? What about working together, relying on a team? Could WoW do all these good, great things even though it's not really American dollars Bobby is saving, and even though he'll never work together to slay a dragon, and even though he'll never trade 4 swords for a chainmail suit on real life?
The moment you say yes, the second you admit that Bobby could actually learn good things from a video game - and I think you'd have a hard time denying that - than we have to admit that little 8 year old Bobby might also learn bad things from video games. Like, perhaps, murdering 3 cops in a police station and escaping in a cruiser.
It's good to see Gamespeak hearing from all sides. We need this kind of dialog. It'd be nice, though, to hear someone answer one of his more pressing questions with a "I don't know." I'm hoping for something more from Bungie later in the week. But so far, I've been disappointed with the gaming response on Gamespeak.
So let's get two things out of the way: it's clear that it is not just games that causes violence, it is games + X, where X = unstable childhood, major psychological problems, etc. Secondly, I think everyone would agree that in most cases, if the person didn't use a game as inspiration, they would've used rock n' roll, or Catcher in the Rye, or Pulp Fiction.
But nevertheless, we need more intellgent responses than talking about brothers losing in Mario Kart and the differences between guns and controllers. Not only that, but the game industry should be as troubled as anyone that many of the last decade's most heinous tragedies have had some kind of connection to video games, even if it is as tenuous and silly as the 9-11 to Flight Simulator connection.
The most recent 60 Minutes had a segment on video game violence, and specifically the police shootings associated with GTA. When the show compared the walkthrough of the shooter in the police department with one of the missions in GTA, it was eerily similar. If I were the brother of the slain cop, I would've sued Rockstar as well.
In the Gamespeak article, Ramsoomair, who probably planned his answer overnight, speaks to the causality of video games by responding, "this one time my brother punched me in the arm when I beat him in Mario Kart." Other defenders of video game violence often cite that people have played Pac-Man, but no one is running around gobbling yellow dots.
But it is physically impossible to shoot people with bananas and pick up large blocks and eat powerpellets and fruit in a black maze with neon walls because they don't exist. There is a chasm between the fiction of games like Mario and Zelda with reality. That chasm disappears in GTA. There are police stations. There are real cops. There is such a thing as shotgun, and people do die in both reality and in the game when you point it at people and shoot them. There's a reason why the US Army uses video simulations, like Full Spectrum Warrior for example, to train its troops: it works.
Jack Thompson is an ambulence chasing idiot. But the responses on our side have been as equally unintellegent and insensitive. Billion dollar companies, like EA and Take 2, must be overjoyed to have so many advocates like Ramsoomair working for them for free (EA especially likes unpaid work).
We need to think about this more. We need to start answering these interviews with "I don't know"s. We need to be more sensitive to the victims of crimes that are associated with video games, especially when the relationship between the video game and the violence is so brutally direct, as in the 2003 police shooting. If we'd done this earlier, if we'd developed a more intelligent response than screaming the first amendment and making games like Manhunt, maybe there wouldn't be a place for assholes like Thompson. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should. "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial."
I really thought that "Lord Vader took some time to visit the troops in the field" meant that George Lucas had stopped by SOE and didn't bother clicking on the link. When I saw the post linking to a dozen photos of the event I thought it was kind of weird why someone would take that many pictures of George Lucas.
Of course, who knows - maybe the Darth Vader that visited in-game was George Lucas?
Despite a few articles claiming the article is gaming "journalism," nowhere in the document does it ever claim to be "journalism." Rather it's important because it is one of the first widely read MMORPG folk tales, ala Bunyan or Ichabob Crane. It meets the criteria of a folk story: like authors of all folk stories, this writer knew enough about the subject matter to make it sound plausible. Secondly, he (or she?) is addressing several major concerns with the game. For example, the studio's involvement is portrayed as hurting the honest players in the game. The player starts out wanting to play honestly, but then discovers that it is nearly impossible to do so. "The Big Scam" also paints the biggest power players in the game as arrogant and aggressive, but easily duped. And finally, it shows just how easy people think it is to scam innocent players in the game.
There's a lot of themes running through this story, and whether the actual facts are true or not isn't what makes this important. The issues the article addresses - and the resulting discontentment - are true, and that's why this is an important document. Plus, it's funny as hell.
Look, our agenda should be good games, not who's going to smash whom. Let's be honest, if we're blowing our time reading games.slashdot.com, most of us will probably - eventually - own all three systems anyway. So why the bantering? Let's start now, be proactive about this thing so come Christmas we're not throwing monkey poo in the shape of our favorite console at each other.
A Simple To Do List for Fanboys, 2005-2006
* Pick a console that you will pay $300 that has the best games you like,
* Buy good games
* Instead of wasting your precious time posting on forums about which console is better, play good games,
* Buy the next system when you've given enough blood and saved enough lunch money,
* Buy more good games,
* Find an issue that really matters.
The Xbox can't chew gum. The PS3 is like a banana. Therefore, I am a fanboy with nothing better to do that decry good video games everywhere.
Come on, can we at least save the one lined "PSx ROXXOR, XBOXX SUXOR!" until we've actually seen the games and consoles? Is that so hard?
Honestly - the worst part about this stupid cycle is just when you think the fanboy chatter has retreated to the furthest reaches of the xbox-is-my-god.com forum posts, they start crawling out into the light muttering unintelligent crap like this.
Console fanboyism is as rabid and narrow-minded as racism on a KKK level, only it's about things that don't f-ing matter at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Vanilla Ice has announced that he is dedicating his 1990s hit song, "Ice Ice Baby" to David Bowie and Queen.
-cough-
A main reason why I think the PSP hasn't done as well as expected is that it's the wrong timing. Summer is _the_ season for portable game machines, because parents buy them for kids when they go on trips. At the EB where I worked, we would have to put the gameboy section at the front of the store come every May.
But the PSP doesn't really hit that crowd. The target audience, 18-40 males, doesn't have a summer off (or is driving when they do). The PSP might perform better come winter and Christmas, particularly if they drop the price $50.
Suddenly the .us domain name registration costs are going up.
Too bad Pirated Sites is down.
Basically, what Steve Mallet did, creator of Del.irio.us, is take the design, the idea, and most of the features of delicious, and copy and paste them with a special "open-source" CTRL-V buttons (he's since changed the site layout and design it would seem - to none at all)
Not unsurprisingly, there has been a flurry of discussion about del.icio.us on the del.icio.us listserv. Most of it is fairly constructive and thoughtful. I think what bothers me the most isn't that yet another social bookmarking engine is springing up. Furl and Spurl have been around for a while and there are few minor ones. But each of these generally adds something new to the mix, such as private bookmarks, or longer comments, or better integration with the browser. Del.irio.us doesn't add anything new at all.
Except maybe open-source. Yay.
It reminds me of the goold ole days, when one friend who wanted to run a BBS copied all the files and ANSI from another friend who had been running a BBS for years. Morale of the story? The second, copied, BBS sucked and died because the "creator" didn't have any innovation or creativity in him anyway. That's my call on delirious.
Irrational, the devs of Tribes Vengence, are one of my favorite companies. Ken Levine is one smart cookie.
But it seemed that all of the sudden, they went from doing Freedom Force to juggling two more games that seemed little more than outsourcing. Judging by reviews and demos, it seems that neither Swat or Tribes are horrible, merely above average.
So I wonder if Irrational didn't just need some extra cash infusion to be able to self-publish Freedom Force: 3rd Reich, or hire more people for the upcomiing Bio Shock (unofficial sequel to System Shock II)? Or whether Sierra/VU publishing FF did not include somewhere in the deal some on-the-fly development on some festering properties if only to keep the body warm
I had a GRiD a few years ago I had bought off of ebay. True to the adverts, that thing endured a helluva lot. I used to to take notes in class on, and because I'd paid $30 for it and had heard about its durability, I treated it as such. I dropped it on cement more than once, left it in the car when it was below freezing - and it kept on working.
That is, until I left it on the floor in the room where we kept our ferrets. The next day when I went to use it, I noticed that one of our ferrets had taken more luxury with it than even I had and taken a leak on it.
It didn't work. After freezing temperatures and cement impacts it was ferret pee that did my GRiD in.
Remember how Jason Hall, once founder of Monolith (devs of Matrix Online - MO) and now head of the WB games division, went on some tirade about quality games a year ago?
Reviews haven't hit the web yet, but I wonder if Hall will hold his former company to the same standards he threatened. From advance press, my guess is that the Matrix Online will be sufficiently underwhelming to get any kind of decent score. So what happens then? Will Jason withhold royalty to his own friends and former co-workers?
Postscript: Ironically, didn't WB also just announce a second Matrix game by Shiny? Hall is still in charge right?
Yahoo apparently hasn't even used gmail at length. It's not about the gigabytes. I didn't exclusively switch to using Gmail because of the 1gb. I use gmail because of the magnificent search capabilities, because of the way it uses a flat hierarchy (labels -aka tags- instead of folders), and because the IM-like conversation view makes replies and discussions far more managable than in any other email system. Gmail is speedier and sleeker than even my outlook POP3 mail.
As far as I'm concerned, the only way Yahoo could possibly "beat" Gmail in terms of usability is by copying Gmail. And throwing in some free butterscoth toffee candies.
Looks like he's not the only one wishing for cell shaded Zelda. He should play this instead.
As an expecting father, this made me realize that I'd love to have the entire Bill Nye series for my kid. I loved the series while in college, and always imagined that with whatever band I'd eventually form up we'd know we'd made it when we had a song and music video on Bill Nye.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that there are no DVDs to buy of Bill Nye. For all the crap TV shows that are coming out on DVD this month, how is it possible that Bill Nye has not yet arrived on DVD?
If such a torrent link existed, now would be the time to share it, yes?
Could this be an idea to reinvigorate the movie-going experience? The last movie I paid $9 for meant overpriced food, stepping out for 5 minutes to find an employee to fix minor problems with the projector's focus on an overrun print, and then fellow-moviegoers who apparently paid $9 to answer cellphones and talk loudly to friends.
So what else is there? Digital theaters haven't taken off like Lucas obviously planned. While the quality of the theater experience has generally decreased, the quality of the home experience has increased. Add to this the increasing availability and quality of pirated movies, and what point is there in even going to the theater?
3D, if Lucas and friends have their way.
My copies of Pirates!, Kings Quest I, and Shogun all booted straight from the 5 1/4 drive. Back then it was called "Insert Floppy, Wait 5 Minutes For Loading, And Play." It was awesome. Those 5 minutes gave you ample time to try to understand the copy protection scheme.
I read the blog of Scott Miller, CEO of 3DRealms, quite frequently. He's a really smart guy. If companies followed the advice he dishes out on his blog, they'd be much better off. He's especially keen on marketing. For example, he has some great ideas on naming games and on avoiding using long titles like Star Wars Dark Forces II Jedi Knight III etc. Very smart stuff.
So why he has so f-ed up the marketing on DNF is beyond me. Frankly, I think he's betrayed the relationship between developer and fan more than nearly any other gaming single company. The problem is not that they've taken so long. If they had never released any information at all about DNF but simply announced the game and released it a year later after a PR blitz, it wouldn't have been a big deal. People might've wondered why it took so long, but they'd probably be too busy playing the game to care.
Instead, Miller and 3dr has arrogantly strung their fans along by surfacing every 2-3 years with a carrot of information or screenshots or an E3 preview. Then, when the enthusiasm level is just enough to maintain a slight knowledge of the game, they dive back into the murky depths of "when it's done."
"When it's done" does not inherently violate the relationship between developer and fan. But as soon as companies like 3drealms start relying on fan enthusiasm and fan network news distribution, they owe more to them than to snub their nose at the fans, say in a British Lord accent, "When it's done," and then walk away backs turned. DNF is a perfect example of this elitism.
There was a sociological study done a few years back that showed that the time people wait for things demonstrates the level in society of the two groups of people. This study was talking specifically about people waiting in doctor's offices or at a government institution. The longer people waited in these offices, the more important the person was they were waiting for - either a doctor or an institution. The longer we sit in a waiting room, the more we need to be in the waiting room. Doctors and buerocrats can get away with that because of their level of importance in society. Simply, we need them more than they need us, and that's why we wait.
But there's a discrepency in this when we apply this same theory to gaming. We don't need a DNF as much as Scott Miller and gang need us. We've been getting along fine without them. And perhaps Miller and 3drealms have enough money that they don't need to work quickly on the game, but if they have other aspirations for DNF - for it to become a benchmark, or just known as a really fun game - they're going to have to drop this elitist "when it's done" attitude and do one of two things: a) shut up about the game and stop releasing any kind of information like this, or b) set a date for the game and stick to it as best as they can.
Some of the more succesfull studios get away with "when it's done," namely id and Blizzard to name a few. This is just the validity of the sociological study; that we actually do "need" a game from id and Blizzard and are willing to wait long enough. Why this works for id and Blizzard and not 3drealms is that the first two companies have never betrayed the trust. While utilizing the fan network and and fan ethusiasm, they have never taken advantage of fans to maintain momentum while they diddle-dally on a game. 3drealms has violated that relationship - time again and time again. Gamers are a very forgiving bunch - throw a great screenshot their way and usually all is forgiven - but I think that DNF has broken a cardinal rule, and "fans" may relegated it to special level of gamer hell.
I humbly submit that not all of these facets are useful in determining race. I'm a historian dammit, not a linguist.
Good for you, that you manage to completely ignore race in your life. We should all be so lucky.
I'm not suggesting that African Americans enjoy games less because their avatar is always white. In fact, when given a choice, studies have shown that they more often choose white avatars over black, even when there is nothing more than a cosmetic difference. Of course, I'd venture to say that 90% of the hot, buxom leather clad females in WoW are actually not hot, buxom leather clad females in real life. In both cases there are issues of race and gender identity that we could write dissertations on (and people are). As far as not intentionally spiting black people, you're most likely right. But even if you don't intend to misrepresent minorities doesn't make it right when you do.
I don't have the time right now to download the multiple papers on this subject from JSTOR, violate copyright and post them on my webspace for slashdot to leech. Suffice it to say that there is plenty of discussion on this topic, both "high" and "low," and I pretty much echoed the current consenus, if admittedly a little crudely. That doesn't necesarily make me right and you wrong, but I'm certainly not an "idiot." Check out the film "Game Over," the Children Now study on race in video games, and work by Darnell Cornelman of Chicago State University, There's plenty more out there on this - heck, just google african americans and video games.
You astutely noted Asian developers. Smarter people than you or I have written smarty stuff on why modern Japanese pop culture idolizes white Americans and I'd be doing it an injustice by trying to summarize it since I haven't read beyond the abstracts. If you're interested, I can point you in the right journals.
I guess what I'm saying is: research before you call someone an idiot, please. Or think. Thinking would be nice too.
Maybe the many, many white developers finally realized that African Americans are - and have been- playing their games. Or maybe studios finally started hiring minorities, although probably the former is more true.
There is a long standing tradition of ignoring minorities in video games, save perhaps sports, so it's nice to finally see them being more inclusive of urban culture, even if they are motivated only by profit. Personally, I fail to see how "millionaire ex-drug dealers" are any worse than the ultra-violent, womanizing main characters that have almost universally plagued video games since the PSX.
Especially that Mario guy and his "princess."
Good points, but I have to admit to little Bobby having been something of a trick question. The most recent issue of Computer Games Magazine sports an editorial by a parent writing that his son does, in fact, learn financial skills by playing WoW. It's a great editorial, and has nothing to do with game violence, and well worth the read.
The two events you list - the police station and the tree chopping - are substantially different. Chopping a tree takes strength, and if video games do anything with regards to physical ability they're in widening the stomach, not the muscles. But quickly stealing a gun from an officer that is not expecting it, shooting three officers at point blank range with the handgun, taking the keys, and stealing the cruiser requires little physical effort. The barriers in this particular stiuation were purely psychological in nature. Stealing a gun was probably the most physically demanding part. The kid had surprise on his side, and so shooting three officers probably wasn't that difficult. Handguns aren't hard to use anyway, and shooting anything within 3-6 feet is a no-brainer. So the barriers that stop most people from trying this inside a police station are purely pyschological, not phsyical like the chopping of a tree. Simply, fear probably stops most people. But in this case, it didn't.
Why? Well, I think it's too simplistic to blame on exclusively it GTA. But somewhere in there, mixed in with all this emotional baggage, the kid had practiced it all before, even if it was just with polygons and dual shock controllers.
I had a friend who was a drummer, and it always got on her nerves how he would air-drum to songs. He didn't have sticks, he didn't have drums in front of him, and he wasn't hearing a response from his own direct actions. Yet, he said doing it all the time helped him become a better drummer when it came to playing the real thing. Are you claiming that practicing, like actors practice without props and costumes and sets, or like atheletes practice outside of the actual field and without the official uniforms and screaming crowd, doesn't help people prepare for the real thing?
They should be troubled. Troubled that somebody has such a blind vendetta that they'd make such tenuous and silly accusations. The one fact about virtually all the allegedly video-game related crimes is that they are, all in all, not particularly unusual crimes in and of themselves.
The Flight Simulator one is a stupid correlation. It's like blaming 9-11 on bagels because the terrorists ate bagels the breakfast before they boarded the planes. While Columbine's correlation to Doom and Quake is more substantial, they weren't planning to shoot floating demonic heads. But the cop killing that I saw featured on 60 Minutes was almost step for step the same mission in GTA, minus the blocky graphics 80s music. This kid played GTA hours a day for two years. Hell, I'm a very psychologically healthy person, I am well aware of the difference between fantasy and reality. Yet I use a computer for hours and day, and there are times where I find myself instinctively applying computer behaviors to the real world, like trying to cut and paste a phone number from one side of the room to a piece of paper on the other side, or thinking that I can tivo something someone just said. Who knows how blurry that line becomes when you're in a situation of extreme stress, like being arrested, sitting in a police station, and seeing a cop's gun just sitting there waiting to be taken - all of which are part of a scenario you've virtually acted out time and time again in a video game.
Would he have acted differently if it were Dance Dance Revolution he'd been practicing hours a day instead? I don't know - but I do know that for myself, I wouldn't be instinctively thinking about cutting and pasting real world info if I was a farmer and not working with computers.
I'll believe it works when I see the Army outfitting its troops with mouse-controlled machine guns that have zero kickback at all and tanks whose controls consist of "W A S D" buttons.
First, you'll get no argument from me about Jack Thompson. He's an ass. 'Nuff said.
However, the army was one example. Say an 8 year old plays WoW. Would you dispute the fact that WoW could teach little Bobby how to barter? How our economic system works? Wouldn't Bobby learn - in the video game - how to save up for things he wants instead of blowing the money on the first shiny thing he sees? What about working together, relying on a team? Could WoW do all these good, great things even though it's not really American dollars Bobby is saving, and even though he'll never work together to slay a dragon, and even though he'll never trade 4 swords for a chainmail suit on real life?
The moment you say yes, the second you admit that Bobby could actually learn good things from a video game - and I think you'd have a hard time denying that - than we have to admit that little 8 year old Bobby might also learn bad things from video games. Like, perhaps, murdering 3 cops in a police station and escaping in a cruiser.
It's good to see Gamespeak hearing from all sides. We need this kind of dialog. It'd be nice, though, to hear someone answer one of his more pressing questions with a "I don't know." I'm hoping for something more from Bungie later in the week. But so far, I've been disappointed with the gaming response on Gamespeak.
So let's get two things out of the way: it's clear that it is not just games that causes violence, it is games + X, where X = unstable childhood, major psychological problems, etc. Secondly, I think everyone would agree that in most cases, if the person didn't use a game as inspiration, they would've used rock n' roll, or Catcher in the Rye, or Pulp Fiction.
But nevertheless, we need more intellgent responses than talking about brothers losing in Mario Kart and the differences between guns and controllers. Not only that, but the game industry should be as troubled as anyone that many of the last decade's most heinous tragedies have had some kind of connection to video games, even if it is as tenuous and silly as the 9-11 to Flight Simulator connection.
The most recent 60 Minutes had a segment on video game violence, and specifically the police shootings associated with GTA. When the show compared the walkthrough of the shooter in the police department with one of the missions in GTA, it was eerily similar. If I were the brother of the slain cop, I would've sued Rockstar as well.
In the Gamespeak article, Ramsoomair, who probably planned his answer overnight, speaks to the causality of video games by responding, "this one time my brother punched me in the arm when I beat him in Mario Kart." Other defenders of video game violence often cite that people have played Pac-Man, but no one is running around gobbling yellow dots.
But it is physically impossible to shoot people with bananas and pick up large blocks and eat powerpellets and fruit in a black maze with neon walls because they don't exist. There is a chasm between the fiction of games like Mario and Zelda with reality. That chasm disappears in GTA. There are police stations. There are real cops. There is such a thing as shotgun, and people do die in both reality and in the game when you point it at people and shoot them. There's a reason why the US Army uses video simulations, like Full Spectrum Warrior for example, to train its troops: it works.
Jack Thompson is an ambulence chasing idiot. But the responses on our side have been as equally unintellegent and insensitive. Billion dollar companies, like EA and Take 2, must be overjoyed to have so many advocates like Ramsoomair working for them for free (EA especially likes unpaid work).
We need to think about this more. We need to start answering these interviews with "I don't know"s. We need to be more sensitive to the victims of crimes that are associated with video games, especially when the relationship between the video game and the violence is so brutally direct, as in the 2003 police shooting. If we'd done this earlier, if we'd developed a more intelligent response than screaming the first amendment and making games like Manhunt, maybe there wouldn't be a place for assholes like Thompson. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should. "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial."
I really thought that "Lord Vader took some time to visit the troops in the field" meant that George Lucas had stopped by SOE and didn't bother clicking on the link. When I saw the post linking to a dozen photos of the event I thought it was kind of weird why someone would take that many pictures of George Lucas.
Of course, who knows - maybe the Darth Vader that visited in-game was George Lucas?
It doesn't matter if it's true.
Despite a few articles claiming the article is gaming "journalism," nowhere in the document does it ever claim to be "journalism." Rather it's important because it is one of the first widely read MMORPG folk tales, ala Bunyan or Ichabob Crane. It meets the criteria of a folk story: like authors of all folk stories, this writer knew enough about the subject matter to make it sound plausible. Secondly, he (or she?) is addressing several major concerns with the game. For example, the studio's involvement is portrayed as hurting the honest players in the game. The player starts out wanting to play honestly, but then discovers that it is nearly impossible to do so. "The Big Scam" also paints the biggest power players in the game as arrogant and aggressive, but easily duped. And finally, it shows just how easy people think it is to scam innocent players in the game.
There's a lot of themes running through this story, and whether the actual facts are true or not isn't what makes this important. The issues the article addresses - and the resulting discontentment - are true, and that's why this is an important document. Plus, it's funny as hell.
Look, our agenda should be good games, not who's going to smash whom. Let's be honest, if we're blowing our time reading games.slashdot.com, most of us will probably - eventually - own all three systems anyway. So why the bantering? Let's start now, be proactive about this thing so come Christmas we're not throwing monkey poo in the shape of our favorite console at each other.
A Simple To Do List for Fanboys, 2005-2006
* Pick a console that you will pay $300 that has the best games you like,
* Buy good games
* Instead of wasting your precious time posting on forums about which console is better, play good games,
* Buy the next system when you've given enough blood and saved enough lunch money,
* Buy more good games,
* Find an issue that really matters.
The Xbox can't chew gum. The PS3 is like a banana. Therefore, I am a fanboy with nothing better to do that decry good video games everywhere.
Come on, can we at least save the one lined "PSx ROXXOR, XBOXX SUXOR!" until we've actually seen the games and consoles? Is that so hard?
Honestly - the worst part about this stupid cycle is just when you think the fanboy chatter has retreated to the furthest reaches of the xbox-is-my-god.com forum posts, they start crawling out into the light muttering unintelligent crap like this.
Console fanboyism is as rabid and narrow-minded as racism on a KKK level, only it's about things that don't f-ing matter at all.