We’ll see how this goes, but I’d like to occasionally post in this manner to let you know what I’ve been doing.

Just before Halloween, I spit back at violent video game legislation for Technologizer. This piece could use an addendum with today’s news of a supposed link between violent gaming and long-term aggression in children. I haven’t read the study itself, but the CNN article doesn’t say whether the findings indicate a problem that’s worse in games than in other media. The study’s author, Craig Anderson, has made a name for himself in this line of work, and has made that assertion before. Still, a talking head in CNN’s article (Anderson’s input is notably missing) says that desensitization and imitation by “children who watch violence” are the main issues here. That could well apply to other, less-persecuted mediums as well.

I tried my hand at writing for The Game Reviews, where I mostly function as an editor. With a feature article that involves World of Goo creator Kyle Gabler in the works, I wasn’t sure whether a review of the game would be prudent. In the end I found it too difficult to restrain my enthusiasm. See my glowing praise for yourself.

Finally, this is older, but worth mentioning. Someone paid me to write a semi-humorous article about The 5 Worst Mega Man Weapons of All Time. What a blast.

Newman, Indies, Humour, Violence | 2 Comments »

Tom Endo is the guy who says whether your story pitches to The Escapist live or die. gulp. But last week he moonlit as a feature writer for the “high brow” gaming e-mag, turning out a thought-tingling article on video games’ treatment of guns.

Endo argues that games have failed to capture the iconic myth of the gun in the way that movies have. It’s tough to nutshell the whole thing with block quotes, but here goes:

A single gun can provide all the power and tragedy that an arsenal of dozens ostensibly brings. The movie Dirty Harry, a love letter to the .44 Magnum, shows the fruition of this idea. As much as the movie is about a vigilante cop, it’s also about the iconic tool that allows him to wreak his idea of justice upon San Francisco. Harry Callahan and the .44 Magnum become one in the same. An AK-47 might offer a higher body count, but to imagine Harry wielding it is blasphemous, an affront to the Magnum’s status as the modern-day descendant of the Peacemaker.

…

Guns in videogames lack this focus. And if they have effectively acknowledged any larger cultural axioms, it is the dogma that bigger is better. The Doom favorite, the BFG, is the embodiment of this ideal.

The argument continues to say that foes in shooting games are the other part of the problem, functioning more as ducks in a virtual shooting gallery than opportunities for emotional impact.

The constant repetition of the skills a game demands lie at odds with the gun’s mechanical simplicity, put on full display in the showdown. In this situation, the gun’s power to end life is absolute. Emotional tension ends the moment you pull the trigger. Guns can change everything with one bullet and videogames’ refusal to address this reality weighs heavy on their ability to provide the deeper examinations of violence the medium demands.

That’s the meat of it, and I’ll be damned if this doesn’t resemble my argument against death-as-punishment in the same magazine’s pages, though Tom’s is better-reasoned and coming from the other side of the barrel. Not only are our protagonists dying too often, they’re killing too many people.

Not surprisingly, there’s the same backlash in the article’s forums. You’re hard pressed to find people agreeing with Endo outright, and plenty of commenters challenging his opinion. Fenixius writes:

Honestly, I don’t want to kill something. Otherwise I’d be a murderer instead of a gamer. I want to play with my friends, have fun, and kick their ass in a nonliteral fashion. That I achieve these joyous feelings by defeating my enemies isn’t a crime on behalf of game designers, in my opinion, since not only would any other weapon than a gun do just as well, but I never think even for a second that I’ve killed my opponent. I’ve merely defeated them in a contest. And that’s all I set out to do.

Let’s step back and say not all games should take up arms (pun!) the way Endo suggests — certainly not all movies do that either, Hard Boiled coming to mind in particular — but there’s certainly room to treat the firearm, and their victims, with a little more maturity.

Theory, Violence | No Comments »

At this point, this series could use a re-introduction. As my journalism work (currently) does not require me to play and review the latest games in a timely manner, I’m often in catch-up mode, writing about a game weeks, months or even years after their release. In a way, this provides some distance from writing actual reviews and allows me to focus more on critiques. In Late To The Party, you’ll rarely find me listing pros and cons. Instead I’ll look at particular aspects of a game and explain why they’re interesting — to me at least.

Straight to the point, Ninja Gaiden II is a Gamer’s Game, and slashing through it made me realize how long it’s been since I last played one. It’s got action, decapitation, linear levels with steady learning curves, a throwaway plot, terrible dialogue, scary bosses and objectified women, I spend a lot of time thinking about how repetitive and dull that stuff gets, but I sort of forgot that, when applied correctly, it’s still a lot of fun.

Before I go on, please know that I hated this game’s prequel. I bought a used copy, spent an afternoon with it and brought it back to Gamestop to take advantage of their “exchange it within seven days” policy. Mostly, this was because of one pet peeve that obviously bothers no one else: Ninja Gaiden combined Saves and Lives — two standard respawn mechanisms that, when combined, break the whole system. It forces the player to leave his state of immersion and wonder “Should I quit the game and load the last save point, or sacrifice a precious Life?” This happened to me in the second level. I had no idea whether to keep expending Lives to challenge the boss or load an earlier save point and try to preserve my stock. After going back and forth a half dozen times, my brain self-destructed and I decided Splinter Cell would be a better choice for my money.

Needless to say, I was not expecting much when I opened the Gamefly envelope this time around. But Ninja Gaiden II has a way of coaxing you into its world. The bands of ninjas that surround you at every pass are easy enough at first; with enough button mashing, you can sever all of their heads (and most of their limbs) and emerging from battle with only a scratch or two. After a couple levels, the enemies get bigger, slimier, more plentiful. It’s no longer sufficient to simply tap the “Strong Attack” button repeatedly. Slowly, the game forces you to change your methods and play with different techniques. As with the last game, you’re still stringing together combos, but the attacks have a natural flow to them, which takes some of the emphasis off memorization — another pet peeve of mine.

Hand-eye coordination is placed on a pedestal in Ninja Gaiden II. There are no puzzles to solve, and the storyline — some people released some demons — is negligible. The payoff for surmounting each challenge is implicit; it’s not so much “now I get to see what happens,” as it is “wow, I defeated all those bad guys.”

I’m into Chapter 5 now, so we’ll see how my interest in the game evolves. These balls-to-the-wall action games, however fun, tend to wear on me slightly past the half way point. I know, that’s another subject entirely, so we’ll save it for another day. For now, chef recommends!

Xbox 360, Violence, Late to the Party, Teh Hardcorez | No Comments »

Here’s another essay of mine for The Escapist, out this week. It questions why so many games use death as the main consequence for failure. In keeping with the week’s theme of indie games, I’ve pointed out a few examples (Passage, Karoshi and Urban Dead) that use character death for completely different means, instead of the usual die-and-respawn model.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the article, though it was a real challenge to avoid turning it into an essay on video game violence, lest my original intent be tainted. You can see in the forums, however, that there’s a consequence to leaving that stone unturned — people still think of video games in terms of shooting everything that moves and slaying villains before they kill you, and in this context the die-and-retry model still makes a lot of sense, so people have mixed feelings on whether death-as-failure works.

But ultimately, violence is another convention that needs to change. Indeed, my appreciation for Karoshi and Passage deserve praise for punking that mode of play as well.

Newman, Indies, Urban Dead, Violence | No Comments »

Hooray for Google Analytics, reminding me that 3 months without any posts begets no visitors. If you don’t know me, you probably don’t know I am moving to San Diego in a couple of weeks. I already quit my newspaper job and will be heading across the country after a brief respite.

So, the arts department at the paper never got to publishing that GTAIV article I mentioned earlier, because I never got to writing more articles to prove that I was a consistently capable writer. (I guess they saw the blog. Sigh.) So here we are:
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If I worked for a publication that exclusively covered video games, I’d probably be excited to review Grand Theft Auto IV. It’d be a chance to state an opinion that really matters, not just to gamers, but to all the concerned parents, casual players and culture junkies who might be reading.

So it’s not surprising that when reviews finally dropped for the latest installment in the series, which requires players to commit many felonies in the service of organized crime, out came the “games are art” argument and comparisons to Goodfellas and The Godfather. Perfect review scores abound on several gaming Web sites, and one critic for GameZone even called GTAIV “the masterpiece of this gaming generation.”

Look, I’m firmly in the “games aren’t second-class media” camp, but if you believe all the lavish praise, you’re missing half the equation.

Popping in the disc, I found the shimmer of the opening scene, the sweeping score, the dialogue, mesmerizing. When the plot advances, it seems GTA has matured, leaving behind the senseless violence and murder for which the series is known.

But when you’re left to wander the city on your own, it’s the old GTA. I needed to travel, so I stole a car. I’m not a great driver, so I hit a few lampposts — and people — along the way. Just to see what would happen, I shot a homeless person. The main character, Niko Bellic, who seems so likable in cutscenes, can also resemble the nameless, faceless, morally empty character that starred in Grand Theft Auto III.

I thought about criticizing Rockstar, the series’ developer, for giving us two completely different games in the same package before I realized it had to be this way. Without the version where you can blow up cars, shoot innocent people and jump off buildings, you could never sell the one where the characters talk about their feelings and develop relationships.

You wouldn’t have the media hype either. I know this, because my non-gamer friends know nothing of the games that really do have artistic merit. In a way, it works out; the mainstream media frets over the violence, sex and drugs and how your kids will probably do all those things because they played a video game, and the gaming press responds by pulling the “games as art” card.

If I were one of those critics, I’d probably do the same.

Xbox 360, Games as Art, Player Choice, Violence, Late to the Party | No Comments »

Welp, I just turned in a tight little column (420 words) on the concept of “two GTAIV’s” to the assistant features editor at The Hour, where I’m a news reporter. This is some form of trial column, I understand, for video game musings, similar to the “Late to the Party” kinds of reviews I’ve had before. Hopefully it works out and I can get the good gaming word out to the common folk.

If they’re not pleased, of course, I’ll post it here, and if it’s published I’ll post a link.

Newman, Media, Violence, Late to the Party | No Comments »

Moll and I were just watching a Fox 5 local newscast (don’t ask) that included a story on the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. Ultraviolent, not suitable for kids, yada yada yada — I’ll spare you the rant on television news’ treatment of video games. The industry might as well just accept bad press as the standard and work from there, like Big Tobacco.

But the cross-section of gamers that Fox found on the street today didn’t help. We in our little Internet gamer circle love talking about high-minded theoretical stuff, and it makes me feel better about the medium sometimes, but dude, the Man On The Street is killing us. Check the video, not from the newscast we saw, but they used the same interview reel. Here’s what Noah Eisenberg has to say:

“You can do everything you ever wanted to do in New York City. If you’re driving and you get pissed off, you can take care of them, so to speak, and it’s just what everyone has wanted to do in real life.”

Goddammit. I guess it was too much to expect a pithy quote on the merits of player choice and how it applies to your ability to kill hookers and take their money. Instead I have to look at this kid’s goony face while he paints us all as psychopaths with road rage. For the record, I’ve never felt the impulse to: a) steal a car, b) kill people, c) punch hookers. Why do I play GTA? I dunno, just to see what the fuss is about. Plus, I do like building empires in virtual worlds, albeit criminal ones. What do I really want to do in New York City? Live in a bigger apartment and pay less for rent. Let’s see a video game do that.

—

That’s a perfectly good place to end my little outburst, but I do want to give a shout out to “big kid” Owen Long, as Fox calls him, who caps the story with what the reporter bills as a “philosophical approach to the game,” obviously taken out of context considering how little airtime he got.

“Just like real life, you either choose to do it or not. You don’t have to do it,” Long says.

Presumably, he was talking about player choice and hookers. Hookers. Just wanted to make sure I wrote “hookers” five times in this post, ’cause they’re controversial. Good night.

Media, Rants, Player Choice, Violence | 1 Comment »

Instead of going to bed on time, I just finished playing through Karoshi 2.0, the title derived from the Japanese for “death by overwork.”

Each level of this game contains one way to commit suicide, and the player must find it to advance. At its simplest, you jump on some spikes, explode, and respawn elsewhere. After a few stages, though, Karoshi takes a diabolical turn and repeatedly tries new ways to mess with you. There aren’t many examples I can divulge without spoiling everything, but at one point the game feigns exiting to Windows before popping back on and reminding you it was just kidding.

Indies, Free games, Violence | No Comments »

Kotaku has a post about several journalists and game-related thinkers weighing in on whether video games will ever grow up. Steve Gaynor, N’Gai Croal, John Walker, they’ve all got a take, but the guy who best articulated my feelings on the matter is Armimaan, a commenter who’s thoughts were spotlighted in the blog’s “A Week in Comments” section.

Here’s what Armimaan had to say:

I think the primary reason gaming is in danger of being forever infantilized is the industry’s reliance of violence as the primary gameplay factor. 99% of games out there involve shooting, bashing, stomping, cutting, and so forth. Even the ones with great, mature stories — BioShock and Mass Effect, for example — require you to go blasting away through waves of enemies to get to it. When a game comes out that doesn’t feature violence, it’s derided by the fanbase and met with low review scores, while games that overemphasize violence are lauded. It’s the same thing with comics. There are exceptions to this, of course, but those are too few to make an impact on the overall perception of the industry.

The majority of books and movies, on the other hand, focus on drama. Sure, there are lots of action movies out there, but there are a lot MORE comedies, dramas, mysteries, thrillers, and so forth, that rely on character and internal conflict, instead of pure power fantasy. For every violent action film that gets released, there are ten non-violent films.

Quality of content aside, this is why movies, books, TV and music are viewed as being “legitimate” forms of entertainment: they address a broader range of topics about the human condition, and they do so in a manner that doesn’t evoke the image of a three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum.

Remember: violence is considered juvenile, and while being juvenile isn’t a bad thing, being TOO juvenile is. Currently, the gaming industry is too juvenile — we focus too much on violent gameplay. Things are changing, but we do have to tread carefully, otherwise we WILL end up permanently living in the kiddie ghetto with comic books and no hope of moving on up.

One need only look at lavish mainstream praise for Guitar Hero and Rock Band to see how ready the media is to flock to video games as a cool cultural artifact. The industry simply hasn’t given them enough fodder.

Media, Violence | No Comments »