Holidays, Etc.

Hi! Hope you all have been having a nice Christmas-to-New Year's celebration. I've been taking some time off, enjoying lying around and doing absolutely nothing at all. Well, I have been playing games, of course -- inebriated Guitar Hero, for one. I've also indulged in my regular habit, which is OCD Harvest Moon. I'm just so pleased with my thriving cow-laden corner of heaven; I've recently made the connection that Warcraft is for some people what HM is to me. You check in, you mess with the land, you get incrementally a little richer and cooler. I can't seem to commit to any of the ladies, though. I married Leia the mermaid only to reload, after having second thoughts. I don't want a girl who lives outside in my duck pond. I want her to shuffle sweetly around my farmhouse and sleep beside me at night. I mean, the sleeping together thing -- that's important, kinda, right?

I must say, Umbrella Chronicles for Wii is a surprisingly fantastic lark for Resident Evil nerds when you have two players. Seems a little brutal in single-player, but a blast for two, and neat to get that continuous concept of the backstory. It's like RE-lite, and ain't nothing wrong with that.

I am also excited to report I was given my coveted Chocobo mug as a Christmas gift! I also got a package of brightly colored Sculpey clay, and made myself a small army of Harvest Moon animals. I can't figure out how to take pictures of them -- they're so tiny -- because the digital camera I got my friend for Christmas (so that I could take pictures of my Sculpey animals, of course) is inscrutable and complicated. I'll figure it out one of these days. Er, I mean, my friend will.However, as you can see, my dear little companion cube arrived from Valve a few days ago, just after Christmas, and it's adorable in person, so we were able to get pictures of its fluffy cuteness! Happy holidays -- I'll be back in full force over the next few days.

Bandwagon Whore

Hope everyone had a nice one with their families and, hopefully, with plenty of games! I've just recently gotten on the Guitar Hero bandwagon, and as a result, that seems to be all I'm capable of doing. For hours and hours at a time.

I'm prone to addictive behavior with my games, and I really think there's something to the whole gratification element of the rhythm-action genre. Elite Beat Agents is still one of my favorite DS games ever, and ends up getting regular play, and I think it's just because it feels so rewarding. Rhythm games in general incorporate a few different elements: there's music, of course, and then there's skill-based learning.

There's a curve to all of these games, as anyone who's played can tell you. At first, you really suck, and then, as you practice, you get better. No matter who you are, nothing short of legitimate physical handicap -- you don't have all your fingers, or something -- will keep you from improving if you keep doing it (and even then, you'll probably get a little better than when you first started). When you hit a beat or a note correctly, there's immediate sound and visual feedback, and I think your brain responds to that on a reflexive, Pavlovian level. It happens without you even thinking about it. As a matter of fact, nothing will make you choke at Guitar Hero faster than thinking too much. You just have to get in a zone where you automatically respond to the visual and audio stimulation.

The reward not only comes in the form of success and progress, but the fact that it's all music-based plays a role too, certainly. Zillions of studies have been done about human brain response to music, and it's pretty evident that listening to music affects people on a fundamental, physiological level. So when you're playing a game like Guitar Hero or EBA, this positive feedback loop starts -- hit a note or beat correctly, and the song plays on, flooding you with gratification and creating a positive association with the music. And the more positively you associate the song, the better you perform at it, creating a virtuous cycle. We're all better at songs we already like, right?

EBA is almost more reinforcing in this respect -- the stories that you're playing through during the songs are hilarious. People strive melodramatically, situations escalate, and people cheer wildly. The images you see make you feel even more positively than nailing the complicated beat patterns do.

My iPod is loaded with EBA music. Yeah, I know. Only other gamers would understand why Ashlee Simpson and Earth, Wind and Fire are on my iPod. But I go running most days during the week, and I find nothing gives me a boost like the music of fast levels. When I hear the songs, I recall the same adrenaline rush and sense of overcoming challenge that playing the game creates.

Of course, simple tasks -- pressing keys on a fake guitar or tapping the DS' touch screen -- that increase in complexity and provide instant rewards are a recipe for addiction. Ever get good at a rhythm game and find you simply don't enjoy simple, low-stimulation levels in that game after a while? Ever go to sleep at night only to see circles or colored dots zooming past your closed eyelids? Find yourself thinking about playing the game when you're busy doing other things, humming the songs that are stuck in your head all day? I really think the positive feedback loop in rhythm games creates psychological addiction, and I've really got it bad for GHIII.

When it comes to music, I'm never the first to discover a band; I end up finally hopping on the wagon and listening to things after enough of my friends force me to. Same with Guitar Hero -- I'm late to the party here, having never played any of the games more than occasional dabbling until I bucked up and bought a bundle for my Christmas present to myself. As such, I find it cute and fun because I don't have GHII to compare it to, and thus can't indulge in the "sellout" talk that's being thrown around. People say the third installment's lost some sort of nebulous cred over the previous two. Concern over the integrity of a videogame sequel is nothing new, but I think the discussion gains kind of nifty context when we're talking about a rock music game. Chris Dahlen, who when he's not writing about games writes for Pitchfork, thinks GHIII is fun -- but not cool, and others have made parallels between the game's whole "selling your soul to the devil" plot of the game and the fate of the series.

Personally, I think that games that make you play fake guitar in your pajamas while pumping your fist in the air because you think that you rock aren't really "cool" no matter what context they're placed in. I don't mind if the thematics are based on a hyperbolic, stereotypical and cheezy concept of what rock is, because as a plastic guitarist, so are you. Besides, the "true nature of rock" is one of the most irrationally controversial discussions that can be had among music critics and fans. Remember how worked up you used to get about it as an alterna-teen? (If your favorite track on the GHIII soundtrack is Even Flow, you know what I mean.) If a videogame sidesteps that argument in favor of a cartoony cliche-fest, I think that's fun, funny, and keeps things simple.

But sellout or not, Guitar Hero has been a bit more of an ambassador, I think, to non-gaming cool kids than even the whole cutesy Wii phenomenon. It's a game you don't feel bad about telling your friends you spent all weekend playing. It's the first videogame in a long time I've actually wanted to brag to my friends about spending all weekend playing. Is it worth the price of a game's "soul" if it helps people "get it"?

Also, why's everyone all about Judy? Midori is so where it's at.

Point-And-Kickass: Guest House

Apparently I've been living under a rock, because I've never heard of or seen the point-and-click "escape the room" puzzle games from Japanese developer Terminal House. Of these, Guest House is the latest and the best, and is seriously one of the coolest game experiences I've had in some time. It's just challenging enough, I think, without being obscene, and minimizes the often infuriating pixel-hunting that this genre sometimes forces you to do. The minimalist, cel-shaded art is really nice, also.

I recommend having the rather pleasing atmospheric sound on, and for maximum immersion, don't have any distractions. One more tip --because this is a point-and-click, make sure you try a few different clicks when you want to look on top of or behind anything before you decide for sure there's nothing there.

Please-please check it out, especially as Christmas Eve weekend with the fam can definitely put you in the mood for an "escape the room" game.

Letter To Valve

Dear Valve,

Please make me a ring tone of that samba-fied Portal theme that plays in the menu screen once you've beaten the game. I love you!

Leigh Alexander

Servant of the People, Etc.

I've said before I sometimes pay attention to the search terms people are Googling to get to SVGL, hoping that they find what they want here. That's the whole reason, of course, behind "The SVGL Collection" of Persona 3 hentai, and now I am called to action again. For some reason, someone has been googling "sexy shopkeeper in game" almost daily for two weeks. That's not a tall order, is it?

I had an appreciative eye for cute ladies in games even when I was a young kid. Little girls are fascinated with the images of women they may someday become; while other kids wanted to be Barbie nurses or something, my idol was a shopkeeper from the TG-16 CD version of Ys Book I & II. When I say that's my favorite RPG of all time, I'm perfectly aware that's utter pigheaded sentimentality, but I'd still sell my soul if it'd only appear on U.S. virtual console. Anyway, I sadly cannot find the sixteen bit shop photo of the blue-haired shopkeeper who sells some very expensive stuff at the foot of the ice mountain, but I have always remembered her. For years, I had Barbies named Zalem. That is her name, and I did find her as she appears in the I & II remake, Ys Eternal. So there you go, Mr. Sexy Shopkeeper In Game-searcher.

For the person who wants "sexy virtual dolls dress up free games online", try this fascinating exercise, or this one; for the person who wants "pimp mario", it's here, for the person searching for "sexy videos for seeing," I don't think you need my help, and for the guy who searches "i want sexy vedeo of all bollywood heroine," there's nothing I can do for you.

It's Hard To Overstate My Satisfaction

Well, Gamasutra has finished its year-end lists, and we've compiled a full feature with each of the top five the other editors contributed (as I said, I did significant characters and poignant moments), as well as our top ten games, with our number one pick, decided by consensus and written up by me.

Check it out. I think you'll be pleased with our choice! You knew I wouldn't let you down, right?

Slate's Gaming Club, Or My Momentary Fugue

Been meaning to point this out for quite some time, but I am for some reason quite proud to see N'Gai Croal and Stephen Totilo representing us admirably among the somewhat more mainstream media over at Slate, along with the NYT's Seth Schiesel and Slate's Chris Suellentrop, at the web mag's extensive roundup on the year in games. It's a bit stranger-in-a-strange-land for me to see -- after all, it's a enormously intellectual twelve-part discussion on games, and you rarely see stuff like that outside particular circles of dedicated non-traditional game writers (don't worry, Mr. Gillen, I will utter no sentences involving paternity or N.G.J.) What I mean is, it's interesting to see writers deal intellectually with games without being "games writers" per se.

How useful's that to us? Dunno. Suellentrop identifies two big themes of 2007: "The first is that this was the best year ever for video games, that never in the past 35 years has there been such an abundance of worthy titles. (Hey, game studios, wanna think about releasing some of those during the first half of 2008?) The second is a lingering sense of frustration that games aren't even better, now that the medium (and many of its players) approaches middle age."

This was the best year yet, but we want games to be better. Couldn't that be a theme for any year in our comparatively short history, really? I dunno, if I had to identify two big themes for 2007 (I already said accessibility's the watchword for 2008), I'd say casual-ization, firstly -- and I realize that's not really a word -- and networked gaming, secondly. I mean, the biggest commercial success of the year, Halo 3, is known for its multiplayer component above all. That says something, right? And I also feel Nintendo's E3 demo was sort of a pivotal moment. For me, at least, that's when I realized gaming would never belong solely to me and my complicated little niche ever again. Wii changed everything. And, as much as we resisted admitting it, so did Diner Dash, Peggle, and Club Penguin.

This may really be the best year yet for games. And while we had some killer titles -- maybe some of the best ever, true -- I think the significance this year lies more in who was playing them, and how they felt about it, and the discussion that was fostered.

Or maybe I'm just a little pouty and jealous because I was not invited to participate in Slate's Gaming Club. Aren't I "Fab Five," after all?

[Via Level Up]

Gamasutra's Best of 2007

The other Gamasutra editors and I put heads together to come up with our top ten games for the year, among the four of us. It was kind of tough to do, but I like our list. Yours truly was a champion for Persona 3 and Phantom Hourglass, as well as this year's #2 title. We'll be revealing our editors' choice number one game of the year tomorrow, but until then, check out the rest of our list!

Best MMO Ever?

We know that holiday events in MMOs are a big part of the season for us gamers, and online games large and small have been announcing theirs. As the snow begins to settle over the sparkling lights of New York City and Christmas fast approaches, I begin to long for an MMO that I can call my holiday home. Regular readers know I'm a roamer with no particular online world allegiance -- but as this press release crossed my electronic desk today, I think I may have finally found, in Elf Online, the game for me:

X'mas Carnival, Have a Rapturous Winter Vocation

Unconsciously, X’mas is approching again, Elf Online have prepared a series of exciting events to all players. New pets are available, Martian, Chief, Feline and Ares will follow you quest into the mysterious Elf Online World fighting against the evil darkness corps. A series of X’mas carnival are also wating for you. Santa Claus, Sled, Elk, Pets and numerous Gifts, Elf Online will give you a raptured winter vacation.

Brand New Pets

New pets are available, Martian, Chief, Feline and Ares will follow you quest into the mysterious Elf Online world fighting against the evil darkness corps.

X’mas Gam

Gifts, no problem, everyday, players will get a gift from christmas trees which contains fireworks. After using the firework. You may gain extra Exp and coins.

X'mas Busy Man

Santa Claus always has a busy time during X'mas. Now, he calls for help from all Elf Online players. Dilivering gifts, looking for reindeer and decorate the X’mas tree for him, Santa Claus will sure to reward you generously.

X'mas Treasure Box

What's that drop from the sky? Bravo, X'mas Treasure Box. What is hiding inside? I don't know, let's collect more to what you will get.

Want to experience more about the Elf Online Christmas Carnival? Just jump into and see.

For more details on Christmas Carnival, please click here

Official site elf.happymmo.com

Official Forum http://forum.happymmo.com

...I just don't even know what to say. I need to play this game. I swear, I did not make this up.

Pinatas Love Christmas Too

Aww, how cute is Rare's holiday card?

The Reason For The Season

I've prattled on a lot this year about moments in games that affect us, and in my year-end Top 5 this week at Gamasutra (doing double-duty as this week's Aberrant Gamer), I rounded up what I feel are the five most significant moments in games this year. You know, that time when you're playing something, and you just go, "hey, wow. This is really different and awesome."

These aren't the only five, and on such a subjective list people are bound to dispute. Don't even mention Episode 2 -- there are a bunch of reasons I left that out, notably because it's too spoileriffic (although the list, of course, contains some spoilers) and also because it's effectively a game ending, which is a whole 'nother animal.

One thing that I did want to include, but couldn't -- I didn't want to represent a game twice on the same top five list -- was the moment in BioShock when you're exploring Tenenbaum's safehouse. The experience can be completely different depending on what you have and have not done with the Little Sisters. I may talk about it at some point in an article with a big spoiler banner warning, but will avoid getting into it now. Believe it or not, there are still plenty of people interested in playing BioShock who have not yet done so.

BioShock, BioShock, BioShock. It makes the list again, as you've probably deduced, and so does another veteran of last week's Top 5 Characters, so check out this week's and I think it's clear what my pick for "game of the year" is down to. I haven't decided yet.

2007: The Year The Wall Fell?

You can now listen to internet radio on your PSP. How cool is that?

Speaking of accessibility, that was a big trend this year. It can mean a lot of things -- we've heard the word accessible a lot to refer to casual gaming, in that it has a much lower barrier to entry for non-gamers. My crowning achievement this year was getting my mother to play Wii Bowling. Now, I know the stories of parents gleefully flailing Wii remotes are manifold, but my mother has been historically particularly console-averse. Childhood memories abound of her vacuuming heedlessly over my controller cords while I fussed and tried to see around her. She does, however, love Snood. Like, she has Snood merchandise, a Snood coffee mug and a Snood T-shirt. My mother is crazy about freaking Snood.

A game like that, then, could be called accessible, because it's easy for just about anyone to find, play and become acclimated to; it's really just aim and click. This year's also seen the rise of the phrase "casual MMO," which would seem to be an impossible contradiction in terms. One of the year's biggest multimillion-dollar deals this year was Disney's acquisition of Club Penguin, which one could call a "casual MMO" -- for children, no less. Now there's something we probably wouldn't have anticipated just a few years ago. And kids aren't the only ones getting on board -- a veritable boom in smaller, free-to-play MMOs with much less time engagement and ruthless obligation than certain market-domineering titles with a couple of W's in them.

There's another meaning for accessibility in games, though, factoring in players' increasing desire to tailor their engagement. Some people don't mind diving into the console or PC experience for a few hours, and they don't mind if it's 20, 30 minutes at least before they can accomplish anything and save their progress. I know fewer and fewer such people, though, and am aware of a lot more who want to be able to play in small bites, when that's what they want. When they've got all night to hang with the guild, that's great -- but when they haven't, they don't want to be left out.

We increasingly demand persistence in our worlds -- game worlds that go on and evolve whether we're there or not -- but that can also mean you can feel left behind if you don't keep up, and that can make it feel more like a job than play. So one big trend to watch for 2008 is being able to port various aspects of your game experience to mobile -- maybe you can't camp using your cell phone on the commute to work, but you will be able, say, to log in and check the index of the in-world economy, maybe see if the item you put up for auction has been sold, see who's on top of the leaderboards. Maybe, for example, the next Final Fantasy will let you play gil slots on your mobile phone and chocobo-race against your buddies on your PSP -- and centralize it all back to the main PS3 title. Well, okay, perhaps all of that accessibility is a little too forward-looking to anticipate next year, but the key theme is this: lots of ways to get in, up to you how deep you dive.

All of this accessibility talk comes down to reducing barriers -- to entry, to engagement, blurring the line that separates gamers from non-gamers, the 'core from the casual. The goal is to make a game that both the 60-hour-per-week grind maniac and the bite-size session gamer can enjoy, with neither missing out; to bring gaming a little closer to mainstream entertainment -- and vice versa. It strikes me today that I'm using my PSP to listen to music, and I could be using my iPod to play games from major developers like Sega (it's true! Sonic for iPod!) and Harmonix (checked out Phase yet?) Sony would very much like you to use your PS3 to play Blu-ray movies, and Warner Bros. hopes you check out the I Am Legend: Survival multiplayer game it built in Second Life to get you excited for the film. Which is based on a book -- what a world!

One thing's clear about this year, though -- the era wherein the majority of games are being made for and marketed only to gamers is ending. I think we'll always have our 'core, our Crysis, our Call of Duty -- but Crysis, for example, saw underwhelming sales thanks to targeting solely that original-gangsta type of PC gamer who'd have the cutting-edge hardware needed to run it. The Wii's been a gateway drug for many -- my sister, for example -- who now have a resurgence of interest, or a new interest entirely, in not-so-casual titles like BioShock and Half Life 2. We are no longer able to divvy the world so tidily into "gamers" and "not gamers," as more and more people are finding themselves somewhere on a much more graduated spectrum of interest -- and developers are going to need games that can straddle as broad a segment of this spectrum as possible at any given time.

Granted, there's no possibility that Contra 4 on the DS, or Dracula X Chronicles on the PSP is targeting anyone but dyed-in-the-wool gamers. And indeed, this dissolution of barriers might be good for all of us, as there are always niches, and games strictly for punishment-loving, skill-driven, nostalgic gamers may actually become more prevalent as a counter-balance. What do you think -- was 2007 The Year The Wall Fell, for games?

Tired Of Playing Movies?

I recently discussed my "for-good-or-for-ill" decision to make "you" the character of the year, accounting for the recent trend in user-generated social gaming. And I've been thinking that this entire "do-it-yourself" gaming trend comes from a backlash against, say, the newer Final Fantasy games and their ilk. What a fall from grace FFVII and VIII have seen -- what once made young teens dream and weep now makes young adults tease and snicker. But in general, if you gathered up the library of the PlayStation 2, posterchild and champion of the last console generation, and added up all of the minutes of full-motion video scenes and spliced them together into a single long video, how much sitting and watching do you think you'd have to do to get through it all?

RPS hero-o'-mine Jim Rossignol recently declared a moratorium on cutscenes -- at least, whenever it's possible to convey information in an interactive way. "Once upon a time cutscenes were fabulous things," he says. "I ached for the CG because it was so beautiful seeing those sprites being brought to life as full 3D models." Ached is really the best way to describe it -- I'm sure I'm not the only one who can recall shredding the plastic off a new game in a frenzy, popping in the CD and sitting back, ready to have the breath taken away. In those days, cutscenes were actually a reward for playing -- accomplish something great, and suddenly see your flat little gameworld richened, so real you could touch it, or so it seemed back then.

And we still delight in that fantasy-realism. Though I sort of disliked this aspect of it, part of Galaxy's appeal is in seeing Mario and his world look brighter, more lifelike, more touchably vivid than ever before. Last night, I finally peeped the trailer for the FFIV DS remake (Squeenix's site has the kinda amazing full version). God, that game is old. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it little surreal and breathtaking to see those characters reimagined in this way. But I also got a scalp-crawl from the Crisis Core trailer, so maybe I'm just a little bit of a latent fangirl.

But largely we got sick of playing this way -- having the game tell us when to stop, and when to go. Good god, I generally do not hate video games. Even a bad game is just a bad game; I don't hate it, per se. But I hate Xenosaga. I freaking loathe it. And I hate it because every two seconds I had to sit through a twenty-minute movie, often after only a few minutes of playing something trite, completing a task the game wanted me to do -- walking my character from one place to another. I felt like a puppet; it was really, really despicably unpleasant. And I have a high tolerance for non-interactivity; many others can only tolerate action games.

And this whole "you're in charge" kind of gaming trend is supposed to be the salve for precisely this principle -- often, we all want something different, so why not give us control of our destinies?

That's nice, but sometimes what we want is to be able to surrender control. For some of us, that's the appeal. Sometimes we don't want to create; we'd rather destroy. Sometimes we don't want to collaborate, we want to be left alone. Because of that, we can argue that do-it-yourself gaming is a cure for these kinds of negative impulses. Why should games be about isolation and violence? Well, because we're human, and we have free will, and sometimes we want to explore darker things when we play, and if I'm told I have to collaborate, network, create and invent instead of experiencing a story and a character outside myself, then I'm still being forced, just as bad as Xenosaga forced me. It forced me, man. I was traumatized. You'd think I'm talking about intellectual rape, here. That is not hot.

Maybe having as little interactivity as Xenosaga did is a bad idea, and created a backlash. But on the other end of the spectrum we have something like Second Life, which I sure as hell hope is not the evolution of gaming. We'll probably all disagree on how much control is too much for a game, and how long a cutscene has to be before it's too long, or whether or not we should have them at all. And as I recently said, it's too soon to establish a baseline. We're all so different -- and the game audience is broadening -- that we may never establish one.

But just because we liked BioShock doesn't mean we're all about to become determinists. Maybe -- hopefully -- next year we'll have a really, really great character at number one on the year-end top five list, and it'll be great because of the way we chose, independently, to respond and relate to it. Maybe it'll be great because of how it responded back.

Please Take Good Care Of It

I found out these had gone on sale and immediately bought one. Happy day!

They've also got cute posters, and Aperture Labs coffee mugs, the latter I surely would have also bought had I not pounced retardedly on the cube before looking what else there was.

[Thanks Kotaku!]

'You' Suck

So some of you might've seen by now that, in my top five piquant characters list, I decided to identify "you" as the character of the year, nodding to the explosive trend we've seen in games and online worlds that demands we be able to personalize everything, to express ourselves through gameplay, to build and share stories rather than have a character imposed on us and a story given us to complete like a workbook.

In writing about virtual worlds a lot this year, I've learned that the promise of insane amounts of advertising dollars is motivating this drive to really pin down what makes people have fun with interactive media -- in order to keep them engaged and feeling positively about the experience as much as possible. The virtual worlds space is somewhat disparate from the game world, but that doesn't mean that these two spheres don't have heads together in spots. Virtual worlds folks are looking to game professionals for their experience in creating rich, lifelike worlds, and game folks are seeing that virtual worlds have (or at least have the potential to garner) something they don't -- millions and millions of users that encompass a broad range of ages, that can be fifty percent (or more) female, that are willing to personally invest in a world, take stewardship of building it, contributing to it, and creating the game-like content therein themselves.

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems with games these days is not necessarily with games themselves but with the relationship the audience has to them. We gamers are largely a professionally dissatisfied lot, and everyone's a game critic. I'm not sure when we came to have such high, vast expectations of games. I theorized recently that the hostility and negative attitude from some parts of the gamer community comes from having those expectations go unmet. And I'm not advocating we should not have high expectations of games, or at least certain kinds of games -- there's no experience quite like gaming, and I think we've only begun to scratch the surface of the manifold things we can do with them and get from them.

But, for example, the response to BioShock. The mainstream media loved BioShock, because they could finally put Ayn Rand into a video game article, as a cheap shortcut to making people understand the potential and depth of games. I loved BioShock, because it gave me an experience that hinged primarily on my own self-generated story, my intrinsic emotional response to things. I said a lot at the time that investing in the game, making the Little Sister choice meaningful, was the player's decision entirely.

And I don't ever foresee a day when we'll be able to sit in front of the screen, glaze out and have a game change our lives while we sit still and stare at it. But what surprised me about the way some people responded to BioShock was that they were angry that the game hadn't made that connection for them; because it hadn't, they were dissatisfied. Plenty of people, after participating in anticipation, speculation and excitement about the title's release for months, one week after it arrived on shelves, promptly tired of the topic and asked, "so what's coming out next?"

Which raises a crucial points about this whole Web 2.0, user-generated content, world-building age that some rather smart people are certain is the future of games. We don't all want to make our own stories, characters and worlds. To some, if "you" really is the "character of the year," it's not good news. And I've said I wish I'd added a "for better or for worse," clause in there, because haven't I just written a lot recently about how, as The Plush Apocalypse tidily put it, "'You' is an anonymous, homophobic, misogynistic dickhead?"

While I don't think I have quite so little faith in people, I do feel like this massive trend of open-world, do-it-yourself characterization that's been gathering so much steam might steam out before long. Like any big-big trend, we'll synthesize the useful lessons from it and integrate them into what we already know, for a neater and more subtle evolution on our familiar baseline.

The uncertainty comes in when you realize we're talking about a medium that is only a bit older than I myself am -- we're beyond calling games "nascent," but we could call them pubescent, maybe, even as of only this year. Gaming hasn't been around long enough to even parse out a single solid baseline; the idea of considering them with more depth than simple arcade toys is fairly new, if not for all of us, than for a good majority of us. So the crystal ball looks a little foggy.

But "you" is not the star for everyone. At the end of the day, we love games for the experience they give us and the worlds they create. If it were about us, and about other real people, we'd just go and play laser tag with our stupid friends, or something, and then bitch about them on the internet later.

It's The Most Wonderful Time

Year-end is toplist time, and since we're doing a neat series of editor top fives over at Gamasutra (see Simon's top downloadable games, for example) my Aberrant Gamer is doing double duty this week and next. This week, I picked out five characters of the year that I thought were significant or thought-provoking in gaming. It's obviously not a perfect list -- for example, has Wesker ever looked so cool as he does in Umbrella Chronicles? Those Galaxy Lumas are super cute! But I tried to zero in on those that I thought were not only gear-turning as characters, but who reflected an advancement on the way we've traditionally seen characterization in the medium. This has been a hell of a year for gaming, and I think we're all learning a lot of things. So check it out!

The reason I generally don't care for doing toplists is there's always some portion of the audience who thinks that your list is meant to be the be-all, end-all, and that you're proposing some undebatable, iron-clad perfect truth. There's always someone who will say, "BUT YOU FORGOT [insert element here]," or, "Hmm, no [insert obscure character here]?" I am merely one writer, and this is merely my opinion. What do you guys think -- who would you add to the list?

[I dunno who drew this picture, but if it's you, complain for credit!]

Happy 100,000, SVGL!

A couple weeks ago, Sexy Videogameland reached its 100,000 hit milestone, and to celebrate, my awesome pal Van Sneed made SVGL the fantastic banner I'm rocking. Thanks so much, Van -- and thanks, of course, to all the readers.

I Enjoy Being A Girl

MTV's Multiplayer blog has some absolutely fantastic interviews with Jane Pinckard and Morgan Webb, both of them talking about being a woman in the industry. It's funny; I don't really consider myself "in the industry" -- I'm a journalist, I kind of stand outside it and write a bunch of stuff. But I don't often consider my gender, either. I mean, obviously, I'm aware I'm in a male-dominated industry, but that never seems particularly significant or important to me. I don't discuss it much, because "woman" is only one of a long list of words that apply to me, and when I think about what I have to say to and about the game industry, it doesn't even make the top ten. But I really like both of these interviews, because Jane and Morgan are both quite even-handed and rational on a difficult topic.

Like anything, my general position is that gender and the treatment of women in the industry will cease to be an issue when we quit making it an issue. I don't really feel like there are a vast number of people who have malicious, aggressive prejudices toward females, especially in an industry where we tend largely to be a bunch of escapist, creative shoe-gazing types aside from an excessively vocal minority -- as Morgan says, "0.1 percent of people ruin it for everybody."

Definitely, there are incidents like Jade Raymond comic. Of course that disgusted me, and I wrote about it in a column. And no one can say that would have happened had Jade not been a female and attractive. But that's a sort of cruel and blatantly antisocial behavior that's horrible because Jade is a person, not because she's a woman, and that kind of behavior will attack and exploit anyone, regarding anything. One of my Australian readers once told me that there's a sort of social saying over there, something to the effect of "the tall flower will be cut down." Women stand out in the industry because they're in the minority, and as such garner the brunt of this sort of scrutiny and inappropriate treatment.

Morgan Webb points out that it might actually be more difficult for her to obtain the specific position she has (she's a TV host) if she were an equally talented male; they wanted a beautiful gal for TV, and since her qualifications fit she was plucked from the editing room and put on camera. Sometimes, after the fact, I wonder what the reception to certain of my articles -- like the one defending breast physics, or my reviews of manifold exploitive hentai games -- would be if I weren't female. As a woman I've had people say I'm even-handed, open-minded and tolerant for dealing with the subject matter that I do -- but if I were a man, do you think I could get away with it without being labeled a chauvinist or a pervert?

I don't see a situation like Morgan's or mine as fair or unfair; all individuals have their own personal advantages and disadvantages on course to their goals, and something that acts as a strength in one scenario would be a detriment in another. For every time I'm treated preferentially because of my gender, there will be an equal instance of being overlooked because of that. That's not just the game industry, and it's not just women.

If there's one thing that bothers me it's the mentality of feminist supremacy; an idea some women push, either intentionally or inadvertently, that women deserve special recognition for being women -- I despise all-girl videogame sites and the whole "grrl gamer" movement quite heartily. I'm quite in-touch with the fact I'm a girl, and even considered buying a pink DS because I thought it was cute and kinda sexy (but now I have THIS, hell yeah!). But I don't believe in willful self-segregation to delineate women from men. I don't think that empowers us or takes us any closer to achieving equal footing in this or any other industry. There are times when gender differences are relevant, allow people to share and contribute new perspectives. But I don't feel that those times are as often as lots of people would have us think.

I always feel that sure, yeah, certainly people have preconceptions about women -- but they have different preconceptions about men, don't they?

There Are No Corners In Space

In that Gamasutra writeup of Yoshiaki Koizumi 's discussion on Galaxy I did and have since been nattering about, he explained the challenges of transitioning Mario to 3D -- there were physical issues, like conceptualizing the character in an additional dimension, and there were design issues. Koizumi correctly noted that in Mario 64, players had issues judging depth and distance, making it difficult to jump on Goombas. I'll quietly put my hand up here. I hate Mario 64 -- actually, I hate the entire Nintendo 64 episode, for similar reasons. It was grueling when it didn't need to be; 3D was just frustrating to me, back then, with those games, with that controller.

Koizumi also mentioned that players could easily become disoriented or lost; it's not so easy to keep a mental map of a polygonal world when one's perspective is always shifting. It was these things he says he had in mind when conceptualizing the spherical design of Galaxy -- it solved a lot of those issues that have made 3D Marios more pain than pleasure. Adding the spin attack and allowing the seminal plumber to shoot Star Bits removes the need to jump, for those like me who don't like scrutinizing shadows, lip bitten down, hoping to land on a monster's head and not at that infuriating point directly in front of its face that results in certain injury.

I ended up playing a lot of older games, mostly Virtual Console stuff, over the weekend. Bonk's Adventure, Donkey Kong Country, and Super Mario World. I also recently played pretty much every portable Castlevania there is, including that rather excellent translation of Symphony of the Night on PSP as part of the Dracula X chronicles. This is kind of an odd pastiche, but the one thing they all have in common is they're all 2D (DK Country has 3D objects, but it's still a left-to-right with no level depth). I've been sick over the past few days, and I was just too fatigued for Galaxy or Mass Effect, both of which I'm not optimistic about actually completing.

Playing Mario World, I realized several things: first, new games really have effed my reflexes. Second, games that take skill are a lost art. Third, I don't really like Mario all that much. And finally, there is no good reason whatsoever for Mario to be 3D. Ever, at all.

I have to assume that the third dimension evolved into gaming to create immersion and realism. Those two words -- immersion and realism -- seem to have ended up clasping hands quite tightly over the ages, but do they really need to? Take another series occupying lots of my time lately, Castlevania. It's 2D and realistic is probably the last word I'd use to describe it, but immersive is one of the first. It has a few things in common with Mario; consistent themes that persist in the series' lifetime and are used to define it, familiar level designs, a single distinctive look and style, to name a few. And consistently, over the past few weeks, I continually preferred playing Symphony to Galaxy, even though according to the evolution of games such a preference flies in the face of reason. After all, it's 2D, it's old, and, here's the kicker -- I've played it already.

If you look objectively at my gaming behavior over the last month or so, you could make the case that I'm having one of those blind nostalgia-fests to which those of us who play for years are sometimes unfortunately susceptible. But the certain fact has become clear to me that making games 3D actually causes them to lose something; that in this quest for "realism" in our fantasy exploits (time paradox?) we're sacrificing a lot. It's like that generally unfortunate period in the history of PC gaming when suddenly everything was being done with live actors. Logic and the natural progression of the medium would dictate that going in this direction was a great thing to do, and yet, in practice, it didn't quite turn out that way. Now all we have to remember that era by are a bunch of old Youtube videos that look like Cinemax.

Koizumi's right that Galaxy's spherical design keeps me from ever getting lost. But it also deprives me of the satisfaction of mapping things out in my head, of creating a sense of having explored every corner. That's what I absolutely love about Castlevania -- watching my map fill out and spread from the point at which I began, seeing the ways disparate rooms eventually end up linking together, and finally, by the end, realizing I've looked at absolutely everything.

The fact it's played in two dimensions works for it. And I'd really defy anyone to state that Castlevania's sprites aren't visually compelling, piquant to the imagination, almost unparalleled in that respect. There's just something about them it's just not possible to achieve in 3D.

Mario's never been particularly visually interesting. Distinctive, sure, but the background, I think, was always meant to be exactly that. I remember first playing Super Mario World and loving the way the clouds and weird green hills layered over one another in the background, but thematically, it's been the same forever. But Mario's also never been about flashy looks, deeply interactive environments or riveting stories. It's about starting at the beginning of one level, navigating its hazards, and getting to the end.

I've realized, I think, why Galaxy leaves me feeling teased, perpetually unsatisfied -- in a sphere, there is no beginning, and no end.

I don't think I've been playing old games because I'm on some kind of nostalgia trip. I think it's that there are elements of 2D gameplay that can't be replicated in three dimensions. And I'm not saying I hate 3D or we need to immediately go back to 2D; there are a good deal of games -- maybe the majority -- that hinge on that dimension and do a fine job of it. But I didn't like Castlevania in 3D, and I don't like Mario in 3D, either. It's an excessive amount of trussing for a nonsense character in a nonsense world. I don't want Mario to be lifelike. I want Mario to be Mario.

Vanquishing The Monster

So I have been sick most of last week, hence the light posting, and when I could get out of bed I went and downloaded a bunch of games on Virtual Console (generally better ports, in my opinion, than XBLA) that I used to have on my Turbo Grafx when I was a kid.

Dragon's Curse came out about 1990, I think, which means I was eight or nine years old and in the fourth grade. It's a capital game, truly. It's a 2D action sidescroller, but it's essentially non-linear; all the areas are interconnected. Throughout the game, with every boss you beat you shapeshift into a different animal, and each one has a certain ability, like swimming, flying, or climbing, that allows it to access areas of the map that others can't. It also has RPG elements -- pick up gold and grab new armor and swords along the way, aiming to get the Legendary set. The goal is to defeat the big boss dragon and get the Salamander Cross so that you can end the curse and get your human body back. Hilariously, the game contains several allusions to the fact that saving the world from gruesome dragons is an afterthought; you just want your good looks back.

Really elaborate, fantastic music to this one, too. I think there was a Genesis version of this game that looked, as Genesis games do, a bit clunkier; everyone knows TG-16 was the nicest of the sixteen-bits, but that's a froth-mouthed soapbox rant for another time. In this version, anyway, the sprites were really fantastic; polished with just enough of a kooky Japanese vibe to make it appealing, to say nothing of the adorable faces of consternation they make when hit with a sword.

It was one of my faves as a kid, and I never beat it. I played it on and off over the ages, gradually able to play more competently as I grew older, able to get further. Last I remember, I could just about get to the last boss, but not quite. I moved away from home, leaving the Turbo Duo behind, and now I hear the old girl doesn't turn on anymore. Thank God for Virtual Console. I mean, you ever have those games that you still long for, still catch yourself humming the music in the shower, wish that somehow you could play again? This was one of those.

I just beat it, dude. I just beat Dragon's Curse, which I've wanted to do since I was nine, which would mean seventeen years of longing. The early-era credit roll was a nostalgia trip -- all the monsters were listed as cast members, for one thing. And for another, it ended with tiny hearts and the words "THANK YOU." Cheesy as it is, nothing can make you smile like those two words at the end of the game. It's the moment when you realize people labored forever on the thing you just enjoyed, and for one second you feel like they did it just for you.

If you have a Wii, go play that damn game. And if you absolutely refuse to play that game, go play Ninja Gaiden or Alex Kidd or something else you used to love and never finished. Screw next-gen; there is no rush like conquering a nearly two-decade grudge. Trust me.

Delirious Nights

I've been sicker this week than I can remember having been for some time, so this week's Aberrant Gamer is about Nocturnal Illusions, a game I've talked about before and some updates on points I made back then. Also, I have a raging fever, so it probably makes no sense. You'll forgive me, won't you?

Also, someone has painstakingly uploaded all of the hentai scenes from this game to a great big gallery here. This game is like, a decade old now, but flaws and all I think I like it better than any of the others I've played since. Not that I encourage piracy, but it's readily available on the web if you look for it. Just sayin'.

The Seasons March On

I really, really, really love the Harvest Moon series, and while I haven't finished it, I still periodically enjoy the Rune Factory spinoffs thereupon. I just admire the game design so much; recently at Gamasutra Ian Bogost explained why Harvest Moon is Zen gaming at its best, and still more recently, my excellent colleague Brandon Sheffield interviewed creator Yasuhiro Wada on his gentle ideals.

Thing I love most about the games is that you can essentially create your own story. For example, I spent more hours playing More Friends of Mineral Town on GBA than I've possibly ever spent on any other game -- except maybe Harvest Moon DS, despite its flaws. There's no reason why you have to hike to the peak of a snowy mountain in the winter to watch the sun rise. But I like that you can. I made a ritual of watching the stars every year on New Year's Eve, and always liked to see the flowers come out again in the Spring.

It's the simplest game mechanic, and yet the attention to all of these lifelike details that persist and evolve over time in the game world helps create a sense of place and story almost without needing to try, and it offers the player the opportunity to invest simple, repetitive behavior with meaning.

Anyway, Jeux France posted some scans from a Japanese magazine called Nintendo Dream from Rune Factory 2, apparently slated for a January launch in Japan. Come on, say it with me. "Awwwww!!!"

Freaking Out The Squares

You may notice that periodically, I wake up in the morning, and before I've juiced my brain with the hit of caffeine it requires to actually turn on, neurotransmitters stumble drowsily into my synapses, colliding rudely with each other like a New York City subway station at rush hour, and suddenly, I remember some old PC game that I used to love and begin harassing everyone I know to see if they have played it.

I would have guessed it was a decade ago, but Wikipedia says 1996 -- close! I played this 3D adventure game called Normality, and I recall it was maybe one of the first realtime point-and-clicks I played in 3D. It was the era of grunge, and I'm sure a lot of people dismissed this title as Interplay trying to cash in. I think the plot, if introduced today, would be dismissed as trite: You're an alt-teen revolutionary trapped in the city of Neutropolis, a gray and boring city capped with an oppressive pall of soot, and under the thumb of the Norms, a bunch of suits who don't like music, originality or creativity. Yeah, yeah, typical, but this game is funny, man -- for example, at the center of the city's suburban deathtrap mall, the decorative centerpiece is a large square "sculpture" with lots of small squares inside it. It's called The Waffle, and in your quest to mess with the squares and disrupt the rule of the Norms, you'll have to bug them out by painting The Waffle bright yellow.

Also, it was kind of hard, and full of some well-hidden, not in-your-face cultural satire, like the names of the mall stores or the CDs inside the music store, none of which I can remember, but all of which were sorta cleverly mocking my proud teenage identity. I remember one puzzle wherein you'd have to stand inside a toy store and "liberate" some barking puppy toys by flying them over the security alarm using toy airplanes. The puppy toys bark if you clap, so you'd need to find a CD that was all clapping and blast it on the speakers. Do so, the puppies bark and the security guard gets distracted so that you can go and spray-paint The Waffle, which ends up lighting on fire, somehow. Adventure games, how I miss you! Sierra, Cyan, save me!

Apparently, Corey Feldman did the lead character's voice, also -- I would never know, because I recall never getting the sound to work in the game, not ever. Oh, Windows 95, how you spiced up my PC gaming life.

Alright, brain-spasm over.

Getting Spliced Again

So doubtless the devoted have already heard about the new BioShock downloadables, right?

The new Plasmids and Gene Tonics, which allow the player to use or enhance special abilities, include the Sonic Boom plasmid, which hurls creatures and objects back with a blast of force; EVE saver, which enables Plasmids to consume less EVE; Vending Expert, which reduces prices of items bought at vending machines, and Machine Buster, which increases the amount of damage players deal to cameras, bots and turrets.

Let me ask you guys exactly what I'm asking myself -- for me, playing through BioShock was a pretty gut-wringing and exhausting experience. The whole thing was just so intense. I found it emotional for my own reasons, as I have detailed at length, and half the fun was solving the mystery. I am wondering -- are a few new tricks enough to make me play the game all over again, wringing my hands all the while over choice, fate, humanity and entropy?

I tend to think not, but then, mightn't it be fun, this time around, to play it through like the physics-defying, super-juiced splicer slaughter it is at its core, Little Sisters be damned?

And finally -- if these plasmids aren't enough to tempt you to resubmerge in Rapture, which ones would lure you back? If you could patch in any new plasmids you wanted, which ones would you add? (Ian Bogost thinks that your answers should be funny, as he would add "flatulizer" and silly string plasmids if he could).

Holiday Blue

I did a holiday article for this week's issue of the Escapist. The response to my first family-focused piece, Growing Up Gamer, was so kind and positive, so I figured people might not mind another sappy little look into my gaming family and childhood. Happy Hanukkah!

At The End Of The Day, The Bottom Line

I have to wonder a bit at GameSpot's recent statement on Jeff Gerstmann's firing. Why did they wait so long to make an official statement -- and then say pretty much the same thing they said when pressed mightily by Joystiq a few days ago? At first, they wouldn't say anything: "our policy not to comment on the status of employees," et cetera, and would only deny the decision was pressed by Eidos when pursued. Of course, they've been enduring an epic backlash since then -- Destructoid, which usually gets snubbed in the linkage department by its fellow consumer sites, has been getting some recognition for its Cashwh0res stunt, there's a 1UP group devoted to adamant GameSpot expats, and perhaps most devastatingly, the seminal tastemakers of Penny Arcade, who maybe have got more respect and influence in the gaming audience than any of the above, weighed in (actually, they were one of the first to comment out of the gate). Obviously, if I were at GameSpot, I'd want to try and put out the fire -- but why do so by maintaining the bottom line? The initial refusal to address the issue at all on their part makes it look a bit tacky when they address it by not saying much more than what Joystiq had to wrench out of them.

Though they deny Eidos influenced their decision, they wouldn't tell Joystiq's Kyle Orland whether Eidos attempted to. But apparently, some people are reporting that on the official Kane & Lynch site, the company displayed a graphic showing the game had received five stars from GameSpy -- when GameSpy in fact gave the game three stars. Moreover, the five-star graphic was accompanied by a quote that allegedly doesn't exist in the original review (which I admittedly haven't read). Apparently, a similar "spin" was put on Game Informer's review, showing a 5-star graphic (Game Informer gave it 7/10) and accompanied it with a quote from an early preview, not the actual review. I am synthesizing info second-hand here, but if this is as true as the screencap would indicate, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that Eidos has been willing to pressure the truth a little to make its score look better.

To be fair, I do not personally know anyone on GameSpot's staff, never met Gerstmann, don't know the situation. For all I know, it could have been a sensible firing coupled with some unfortunate timing and/or less-than-ethical (but unfortunately all-too-common) behavior on the part of a game company with some expensive ads. The whole thing just looks bad, though.

Silver lining? At the end of the day, sites and game publications won't make money if no one will advertise there -- and this debacle has demonstrated that losing ad dollars because you pissed off a game company may not be any more disastrous than the PR nightmare and reader exodus that occurs when you so much as appear to sell out. As much as I rail against internet gamer mobs, their backlash works in our favor this time around -- I'm pleased that the community has been so responsive in declaring, in so many ways, that they won't stand even for the appearance of compromised integrity. Would be nice, wouldn't it, if this results in some small sea change going forward?

Weekend Notes

I catch a bit of good-natured flak sometimes from readers who say I'm slummin' it when I post on Destructoid. And admittedly, the haphazardly drawn line between useful editorial and random, subjective opinion -- complete with attention-whoring stunts -- sometimes makes me cringe a bit and hug my career, promising it in whispers that it is all right, I will make the bad man go away. But dare I say I'm... seriously amused, and even a touch impressed, with their latest?

It was a bit of a sad week toward the tail end. Granted, I know nothing first-hand, and like everyone else, can only speculate wildly, but it sure looks like two people -- one, a game journalist and the other, a game developer -- got fired for criticizing something. Yuck.

My most recent Aberrant Gamer was about what I perceive as an escalation in hostility in the game audience; perhaps this hostility is actually echoing across the board amid the uneasy love triangle of game companies, press and players. I dug the assertion in this GameSetWatch article that game critics, knowing they can do no right, are becoming a bit lazy. If they score too high, they're cashwhores and sellouts; if they score too low (i.e, anywhere below a 7 for any game, ever) the vocal mob of mouth-breathers is going to crucify them in a flamewar, questioning their qualifications and their fitness to write reviews. It's really hard to do good work for an audience you know you can never please; I would not disagree with the assertion that a few game critics out there are feeling a little fatigued, if not outright passive-aggressive.

I think maybe reviewers have been unnecessarily harsh, actually, or maybe more unforgiving with their scores than usual lately, in general, as if in an act of defiance of the three-point-curve and the pressure from advertisers and psychotic gaming fanboys. In defense of those psycho fanboys, though, when I recently asked in my column if gamers are becoming more heatedly anti-social, I theorized that they have lately felt just as frustrated and resentful of this three-way stand off as writers do.

As that GameSetWatch article points out, the games press is less necessary. I really do hope we are approaching a breaking point with all this business lately, because I'd embrace an era wherein all of those identical fifty-post-a-day, cool-to-be-cynical blogs are weighed for what they are -- fan communities -- and there is actually a place for, y'know (gasp!) content and distinguished writing about games. Maybe then we'll quit asking when the industry will get its Siskel & Ebert, its Pauline Kael, its Lester Bangs or whatever, because, y'know. Content. I can't wait until it's all about the content.

In other news, perhaps it's a bit of fatigue on my part, too, that's to blame for the fact that I really am not getting all that into Galaxy or Mass Effect -- I love everything about Mass Effect except the actual gameplay, so I continue to press at it in the hopes that it's my sometimes awkward, inexperienced use of FPS controls on the 360 -- read: shitty aim -- that's to blame (but come on, Mass Effect's control scheme is bizarre, is it not?)

I continue to be amazed by the genius of Galaxy's design and implementation, but the experience also continues not to have any impact on me at all. You can eat up those little planets in two bites, and then they're over and done with, never to be seen again and having made no stamp on the memory. But it's Sunday, I'm tired and possibly a bit burnt out at the moment, so I won't go so far as to say that my opinion on either title is my final one.