JT Vs. Utah
*SNICKER*

Okay, not that several people on my state legislature don't deserve prosecution - for failure to pull their heads out of their butts, if nothing else. But one would think that these kinds of antics showing the man's stripes would have a proper effect on his credibility.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:56 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
The DMCA Eats Kittens. I Have Proof.
Well, okay, I lied. Maybe not kittens. YET. But maybe cars:

Right-To-Repair Act Proposed... for Cars

So apparently a non-dealer car shop breaking the encryption on your car engine's computer so they can repair it is a violation of the DMCA. Yeah. Encrypting the diagnostic chip in your car engine to lock out non-dealer service people. Brilliant. Ever get the feeling that in the war of the pirates and rip-off-artists versus the businesses, creators, and producers of the world, the consumers are the ones taking the most casualties?

You know, what's really needed here is consumer education. This is the first I have heard of this practice. Why is that? You'd think that the competition would have a field day making this known - unless they all do the same thing.

Hat tip to GamePolitics.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:22 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Germans to Ban Paintball?
Ye gods.

This reminds me of a story I heard about a family friend who wanted to make sure her children grew up in a household free of suggestions of weaponry and violence. Then she discovered that her children were trying to shoot each other with the foam letter "L" - held like a pistol.

Paintball is not a sport for young, impressionable children, anyway. But neither is Counterstrike. I wonder --- after everything is banned, what will they blame the next shooting on?

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:34 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
I Hear Wal-Mart is Still Hiring Greeters
Sucks to be out of a job in this economy, but it looks like Jack Thompson will remain "disbarred for life."

U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Jack Thompson's Appeal.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:54 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Political Minute
Sometimes I feel that if we put all our elected officials in a room together, the collective IQ of the room still wouldn't exceed that of a bowl of Cool Whip. But then I get reminded that yes, some of our leaders in my state and country actually pay attention and really do have detailed, intelligent discussions on all kinds of surrounding issues. And then they vote "wrong" anyway... :)

But I was very pleased to learn last night that the latest Utah anti-videogame bill, HB 353 (the "let's punish retailers who try and do the right thing" bill), was vetoed by Governor Huntsman. The linked site has his letter to Speaker Clark and President Waddoups explaining his rationale for the veto, which includes concerns about constitutionality and the "unintended consequences" of the bill.

On a totally unrelated front, I've become a fan of my district's congressional representative in Washington DC. As a freshman idealist in the minority party, his days may be numbered. But Rep. Chaffetz is tech-savvy, has leg-wrestled and played Rock Band (badly) with Stephen Colbert, and has "cot side chats" posted on You Tube weekly where he talks about what he's doing in Congress, how he's voting on certain issues, and why. Oh - and the cot: He is one of several members of Congress who live frugally and sleep in their office during the week rather than renting an apartment in town.

Chaffetz recently sent me an email detailing his opposition to a bill which was extremely straightforward and blunt. I liked that - and not just because I am unhappy with the bill. :) (It's totally non-game related: HR 1068, the so-called "Let Wall Street Pay For Wall Street's Bailout" act - which was really more of a "Let Wall Street's CUSTOMERS - and their customers' customers - pay for Wall Street's Bailout" Act).

Anyway - I'm thrilled the stupid bill got vetoed. But like popular-but-vapid first person shooters, I expect there to be a sequel coming out next year.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:52 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Utah Bill a Setback for Parents, Retailers
Utah HB 353 passed overwhelmingly last night - a bill which, as far as I can figure - is nothing more than a stimulus package for down-on-their-luck lawsuit attorneys. It punishes any store (or, with senate additions, internet site - potentially like this one) that tries to do the right thing. Which to me, means: "Don't expose yourself to liability by trying to do the right thing." Or if you try, don't commit to it in public in any way, shape, or form.

Sounds like it made for cheap "family values" points for politicians who are tilting at windmills trying to fix something that isn't broken. And it sounds like what it will really accomplish is the opposite of its stated intention.

The bill was penned in part by disbarred lawyer and general whack-job activist Jack Thompson, and apparently our brilliant politicians decided to regurgitate his self-serving, fact-deficient hyperbole as arguments during the proceedings.

While El Whack Job insists that companies can't "opt out" of even the vaguest commitments now that the underlying rules have changed beneath them. I guess they found that suspending the Constitution for this medium was too challenging, so we've now got this new backdoor for trial lawyers looking to make a buck, and when "open season" gets declared it's not about the facts - it's about dealing with the legal fees to defend yourself.

In all honesty, I don't know if, when this gets signed into law, anything will ever happen directly. It's stupid, useless, and weak, but it's really a set-up for future legislation. I actually suspect that it's real intent is to punish those who attempt to do the right thing as a set-up for future legislation in a few years that will take retailers to task for not doing the right thing. Sorta like stealing a knife, stabbing yourself with it, and then suing the person from whom you stole the knife for the injury.

Reminder: Rampant Games' official policy is... to not have a policy regarding age. Ambulance chasers and corrupt (or stupid) politicians have warped what should have been a valuable tool for parents into a disease-ridden bag of political poop, and I won't be party to it.

Nor will I be voting for my current state representatives when they run for re-election.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:43 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Should Game Ratings Be Enforced?
Sigh. Another week, another rant about game age ratings, I guess. I'm normally a fan of John Walker, but his latest essay left me cold:

Should Gaming Age Ratings Be Enforced?

Frankly, the very suggestion that parents should be imprisoned for allowing their child to play a game of an "inappropriate age rating" is abso-freaking-lutely ludicrous and disgusting to me.

Granted - there are some shamefully negligent parents out there who I feel shouldn't have been allowed to spawn progeny in any society. And I reluctantly agree that the state and community needs some level of authority to rescue children from parents who are abusive, negligent, or otherwise clearly screwed up. My reluctance comes from the feeling that I don't feel I could trust the government to hold a carton of eggs for five minutes these days, let alone trust them with these kinds of decisions.

But somehow holding a gun to parents' head over something as stupid as what really amounts to extremely broad and general age guidelines? Disgusting. At least the film industry was smart about how it named its ratings here in the U.S. - "PG" for "Parental Guidance." The government tends to get target fixation on the name and ignore the underlying meaning.

As a parent, if I feel my 10-year-old is capable of handling a PG-13 Harry Potter movie, then that's my call. I really don't think the government knows my ten-year-old better than I do. And I'm really glad my mom figured I was capable of handling PG-rated Star Wars when I was only eight years old. If dorks like Bill Hastings were in charge of things in 1977, that awesome experience would have been punctuated by her being arrested and me being sent to a foster home or something.

Walker does suggest that his favor of game ratings comes from a desire for grown-ups to be able to play their games. And since adult gamers outnumber the children by a substantial margin, that is significant. Being able to say, "This is a kid's game" versus "this is a grown-up's game" helps keep things a little clear in walnut-sized brains of government officials, who have the retention capability of Dilbert's pointy-haired boss. I used to agree with this attitude. Until I saw that categorization being used to hurt us, rather than help us.

Sorry, New Zealanders. I offer you sympathy. You guys have bad law on the books, and an idiot pushing for its enforcement. I fear my own country isn't too far behind.

On the other hand, I can't think of any better way to make video games seem cool than to make them an outlawed pastime. Booyah!

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:17 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Rampant Games Official Statement Regarding Age-Appropriate Game Sales
Just in case you didn't know, Rampant Games sells games.

I know a lot of you just come for the blog, and that's cool. But I sell games, too. I don't sell nearly as many as I'd like. I make way less than minimum wage doing this. But it's a labor of love.

I've got quite a few games on the website. Especially adventures & RPGs. If I ever find time again, I'll be adding more. And, of course, I'm spending much of what would have been "free time" writing new games that I hope you will enjoy.

I'm a Utah-based game seller. Yesterday, the state house passed an idiotic and counter-productive Utah bill penned in part by disbarred lawyer "Wacky" Jack Thompson. I figure there's a good chance it will become a law - even if a short-lived one - here in my state. Our house reps are apparently idiots, and I don't expect the state senate to be any better. Since it could theoretically affect me, I wanted to make an official statement of policy here. I want to advertise myself truthfully here, so that the local psychotic busy-bodies and ambulance chasers might not attack me on a technicality:

Rampant Games makes NO promises as to the age-appropriateness of these games for YOUR children. Nor will Rampant Games commit to enforcing its - or someone else's -opinions on age-appropriateness on customers.

I do not know your children. I do not know your standards. I've got my own standards for my own kids, and that's my responsibility. Your children are your own.

Games sold by Rampant Games are generally not rated by the ESRB. That system does not serve small independent game developers. And in truth - I prefer it that way. As we can see from this bill (and a whole bunch of failed bills before it...), the rating system has become corrupted and abused by people in power as a way to attack an industry they don't like or understand.

Now, I do try and add suggestions in many of the descriptions as to whether or not I, personally, consider the game to be "family-friendly." I really don't sell "kids' games." I sell the kinds of games that I like, and that I assume my visitors like. I do like - and sell - a lot of games that I feel are appropriate for my own children. But I also sell some that aren't.

Parents: I am not your babysitter. I am not your nanny. Nor do I think the government has any right to be.

Between stupid bills, technological limitations, and the nature of my business, I am not going to commit to policing my personal views on age appropriateness for the games I sell. Nor will I attempt to enforce some arbitrary politically-motivated "official" ratings system upon my customers, making it more difficult and confusing to purchase games online than it already is.

If your kid somehow has their own PayPal account or authorization to use your credit card, I would suggest that you keep an eye on how they use it. You really ought to make sure they aren't paying for porn access, funding terrorist groups, contributing to the Jack Thompson presidential campaign fund, or... oh, yeah.... buying inappropriate video games.

But I won't force my personal beliefs and opinions on you.

I think you, as a parent, should take an interest in the entertainment your child is exposed to. This can be difficult, especially when your ten-year-old ends up playing HALO or watching The Dark Knight at a friends' house. That's just life. You do what you can. I know it's challenging. I'm right there with ya. I think it is completely asinine that our politicians think they can hand-wave those issues away - especially by attacking a barely-related non-problem in the name of "doing something."

Ultimately, watching over your kids is your job as a parent for your children, just as it's my job with mine. As a seller of videogames, I am not going to attempt to second-guess you as a parent. If you think Fatal Hearts is appropriate for your eight-year-old, that's your call. If you don't think your fourteen-year-old is mature enough for Aveyond 2, that's also your call. You know your kids. I only know my own.

Now, if you have questions, please feel free to contact me and ask. Now, due to government regulation, I cannot commit to assisting you in any way, shape, or form. But I will say that in the past, I've either been in a position to answer said questions, or to contact the developer (many of whom I'm acquainted with via email, and some of whom frequent this blog and the Rampant Games community forums) and ask for assistance - whether it's been technical support, a gameplay question, or a question of content. I am happy to offer my own opinions and suggestions - so long as you, the customer, understand that is strictly my own opinion or suggestion and may be of no use to you.

I do this because I believe that this is the sort of thing that should be handled informally by parents and their chosen community and those they do business with - and not by grandstanding politicians, special interest groups, and jackass lawyers (disbarred for bad conduct or otherwise).

I hope that my customers feel the same.

On a side note, I don't feel that any of my games are appropriate for Jack Thompson, Utah Representative Mike Morely, or Utah Eagle Forum kingpin Gayle Ruzicka. I really don't think they are mature enough to handle them. But true to my non-pledge, I won't prevent them from purchasing games on my site, either.

Thanks for listening.

Labels: Biz, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:51 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Jack Thompson's Two-Part Utah Videogame Attack
So if you rob a man, steal his gun, try to shoot the man with his own gun, and it blows up in your hand, can you then sue him for your injury?

Apparently, Jack Thompson is trying to do that here in Utah.

His first step - which just passed committee - is to smack down any retailer that tries to do the right thing. You can still try and do the right thing, but you'd better not admit to it, as then you can be liable.

Assuming this passes, the camel's nose is in the tent in two ways:

Possible Step 2 A: Wacky Jacky's plan is to use the "fact" that the videogame industry us no longer "attempting" - or admitting to attempting - to police itself (for fear of massive fines if they ever fall short of perfection) to push for the government to take over that job.

Possible Step 2 B: Wacky Jacky now has a law which has not been Constitutionally challenged (or better, challenged and failed) as a tiny, tiny example of where the government can step in and make the game's industry's VOLUNTARY ratings system designed to assist parents in making decisions concerning their children's entertainment, and make it mandatory and enforceable by law. At that point, the sky's the limit.

And my idiotic legislature is probably gonna just let the thing through. Because, you know, who really gives a fig?

Which is why I'm not in favor of any kind of voluntary ratings system on downloadable / indie games - something that is discussed occasionally. No good deed goes unpunished. Selfish old lawyers and politicians will figure out a way to line their own pockets by turning it into a weapon against you.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:33 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Benefits of Videogames
Since some locals in my neighborhood have been freaked out by the recent BYU study that found that (my interpretation) excess solitary gaming can effect you as badly as any other excessive solitary activity, I figured I'd pass along this link from Edge:

The 15 Clearest Benefits of Gaming

Many of these benefits can also be obtained via *gasp* other, more conventional activities... just as the problems associated with gaming are associated with many other more conventional (and accepted) activities.

Go figger.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:24 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Jack Thompson Seeks Refuge Amongst Utah Extremists!
I can't tell if this is supposed to be horror or comedy, but I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie before. And it sucked then:

Jack Thompson Vents His Spleen in the Deseret News

Jack Thompson Finds Sucker to Sponsor His Bill in Utah

Not freakin' again. Jack Thompson was disbarred over - among other things - making false statements in tribunals and professional misconduct. In other words, the court system has determined that he is a liar and all-around douchebag.

I guess he's right at home hanging out with politians and nutcase extremists.

We'll see how far Rep. Mike Morley can carry this sack of toxic manure before the bottom falls out and covers him with stink.

Can I just say for the record, as a Utahn - most of us aren't that freaky. At least not in that way. Yeah, in general we're a pretty conservative state - but outliers like the Eagle Forum folks are out there even for Utah.

I personally have a lot of respect for our AG, Mark Shurtleff - who has himself picketed a local videogame company (where some friends of mine have worked) and protested violent videogames. He has expressed that he feels it is his right and responsibility as a citizen - but he also feels that what has come out so far in terms of legislation against videogames has been unconstitutional and unenforceable, and has indicated (at least to my ears) that he feels it is a responsibility that belongs in the hands of parents, not the government.

But of course, disbarred-lawyers and authors with political aspirations can't use THAT as a platform to further their careers and get rich.

Hat tip to GamePolitics for the heads-up.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:32 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Taking the Safety Off
Scott Jennings, the blogger formerly known as Lum the Mad, has posted an outstanding article that really hit home with me. It's about subject matter. The taboo subjects that games are apparently not allowed to contain:

Broken Toys: The Real Hitler Problem

This article refers to some equally well-thought out essays entitled "The Hitler Problem" and "Dealing With the Hitler Problem."

I feel unworthy and unqualified to comment on this, but that rarely stops me. But I'm afraid on this topic, I have more questions than answers.

I'm one of the people who wasn't particularly impressed with Super Columbine Massacre RPG. Not necessarily because of the subject matter, but because of its treatment (and what I felt was a disingenuous explanation by the author for his treatment of it).

But I am a supporter of games dealing with real-world issues. Including the uncomfortable ones. But we've got a medium that has a legacy of silly, over-the-top, juvenile power-trip fantasies where morality is usually painted in stark contrasting colors. We have journalists and politicians and grandparents who are being forced to notice video games only because of the sheer ubiquity of the hobby, and they are still expecting Pac-Man. Instead, they see Grand Theft Auto.

And granted - I don't necessarily want to deal with real-world ethical conundrums when I play games. When I'm slicing and dicing buttloads of enemies in Ninja Gaiden II, I don't want to think, "Oh, what about this guy's pregnant girlfriend sitting at home alone tonight wondering why he's late tonight? Should I really have dismembered him like I did?" I want the comic book fantasy. Not that comic books are all about black-and-white morality, either. But you know what I mean. I want to just be playing a game. No repercussions.

So do we sterilize history, and our stories, to help the player enjoy an evening of guilt-free, more kid-friendly pleasure? Or do we go ahead and have games that deal with the subject of slavery in the Age of Colonization, and the real horrors of war? Can games deal with real evil, instead of the Saturday morning cartoon evil?

Can we take the safety off?

Will it be commercial suicide to do so? Can only indie games (which are already taking the lead in this respect) really afford to ignore the dogmas of political correctness?

Can we, as in the original Star Trek series, deal with real-world issues more appropriately only by concealing them within metaphors? Are we doing ourselves an injustice by limiting ourselves to this?

Does the interactivity of games enhance our points, or dull them? By putting you in the shoes of a "bad guy" - a real bad guy - do we magnify the impact of the horror, or desensitize the player to it as he mechanically goes about his tasks? Do we promote understanding, or promote sympathy for the Devil?

And is whitewashing the issues of the past and present even worse?

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:40 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
More Anti-Videogame Legislative Wrangling in Utah
Courtesy of GamePolitics.com:

Jack Thompson Working on New Game Legislation in Utah?

Yeah. Working with the ultra-freaky Utah Eagle Forum. Utah has its share of nutjobs, to be sure, but too often this ultra-right-wing group ends up portrayed as representing the entire state. They are largely irrelevant here, but they are frequently used for sound bites on local news programs simply because they are quick to have something extreme to say.

But it gives Thompson credibility, I guess, since most people outside of Utah (and most people IN Utah) have no clue who these people are. So I guess it makes him sound like he's working in some official capacity. And unfortunately, some local Utah lawmakers might go along. I've come to discover that many of them aren't exactly swimming in the deep end of the pool of intelligence and talent in this state.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:43 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Best Defense Against Piracy: Enforce Existing Laws
Rock, Paper, Shotgun writes about the state of Russia's thriving (and growing) videogame industry - once threatened by rampant, open piracy:

The pirates were making a lot of money and weren’t likely to be stopped easily. They were mass-producing packaged copies that looked like real games, and were competing directly with the actual, licensed publishers for commercial product. 1C went as high as they could: to President Vladimir Putin himself. The man from the KGB soon realised just what value this burgeoning industry would be to his vast, developing country. The punishment for commercial piracy is now up to seven years in prison. A Russian prison. As disincentives go, it’s a good one.

With 300 people a year now jailed for software theft, piracy is rapidly disappearing quickly in the major cities of Russia. The Russian government have even managed to close some of the major torrent sites, and have published an anti-piracy guide to help retailers avoid getting burned by illegal distributors. It is a tough regime, but the Russian government know that they can’t allow crime to dominate their development: in gaming as much as anywhere else.

You can read part 1 of the article here.

This is a little different from what we're facing in the U.S. (fortunately for American software developers). People who consciously rip off software developers' livelihood for their own profit are a particular kind of scum quite worthy of staring at cell walls for a couple of years. This is obviously not the same case asa middle-schooler who swaps MP3s with her friends.

But it does illustrate the problem - piracy is generally considered a "risk-free" crime. There's a much greater risk of disappointing your friends by not sharing.

I'm as nervous of the idiocy of crackdowns as the next person, particularly with technologically illiterate grandmothers and young girls getting caught in the "stings" of the past by the RIAA.

But I think we need better enforcement of our existing laws (though can we get rid of the horrible DMCA, please?) by the folks who are supposed to be enforcing the law. This obviously drove piracy further underground in parts of Russia, as the risk outweighed the reward. The better we can do this, the more we can leave software companies free to actually reward real customers, rather than wasting their time and money and pissing off their customers trying to enforce the laws themselves with draconian DRM measures.

I dunno about you, but I'd much rather they spent those hundreds of thousands of dollars adding more content or performing a little better testing before releasing a game rather than implementing stupid DRM schemes that are more likely to prevent legitimate customers from playing their legally purchased games than stop pirates.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:46 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
The Economy As An MMO
It seems you can't go ten waking minutes these days without hearing someone talking about the awful state of the economy. Alas, now my blog is no exception. But as a gamer, it can get a little confusing to hear all about subprime mortgages and credit default swaps and stuff. So I figured I'd create an extremely loose analogy in MMORPG terms.

This will probably only serve to add to the confusion and chaos - in which case, my job here has been done.

The Game
So let's say there's an MMORPG out there that has been all the rage. It has been praised for its incredibly complex (yet cool) economy, which includes the ability to loan money to other players with a built-in system for charging players monthly payments with interest. As cool as this is, there's an even more cool and powerful guild system. You can even have subguilds-within-guilds, which has allowed for major "uberguilds" to pretty much take over the world, fashioning themselves as nations and collecting regular dues from all their members.

Guilds in this game gain bonuses for specialization amongst its members, so you have specialist sub-guilds that organize along the lines of crafting guilds and financial guilds. The financial guilds have grown very powerful lately, and a few big ones effectively merged in a bunch of smaller ones simply because they were so successful and so powerful - everybody wants to be with the winners.

This game also has an extremely deep and far-reaching end-game that doesn't require constant raiding - if you have the best possible gear (and really cool - and expensive - mounts). This stuff requires constant maintenance in the form of monthly gold payments, but at really high levels it is no problem keeping up. When you are killing dragons instead of giant rats, gold comes easy.

Finally, like Ultima Online, the game lets you buy land and build on it. Not only is owning a headquarters required for all the guilds, but having a place to call "home" - whether rented from another player or owned outright - greatly increases your character's stats. The bigger the home, the more powerful your character. However, in-game houses and land also cost a regular monthly maintenance fee proportional to their benefits.

The Situation
In an effort to recruit more members (and make sure their members are more l33t with higher dues-paying potential), the uberguilds have been working in conjunction with the financial guilds to help members get their own houses, and to twink them in higher-level gear which they normally couldn't afford or pay the maintenance costs for. This helps power-level new characters so they progress quickly to higher levels where they can kill dragons instead of giant rats - and thus easily afford equipment and house maintenance AND the loan payments.

So even characters still in single-digit levels are getting offered gear suited for level 50s (no problem, since this game goes beyond level 200), and houses which were originally intended to be barely affordable by characters level 70 or above. The financial guilds work with the uberguilds to loan newbie characters the money and equipment that they need, since they both benefit. The uberguilds get more money from the dues that higher-level characters can pay from dragon-killing rather than rat-killing, and the financial guilds get constant loan payments - which they in turn use to finance the absolute BEST gear and houses they can get in the game.

For a while time, it works fabulously well. Characters are advancing quickly through levels, hitting level 100 in under a year (the designers intended it to take at least 3 years to hit level 100). Since land and houses are a limited resource, prices keep climbing through the roof with every rat-killing newbie expecting to get into a house. The supply of gold seems nearly infinite, as is high-level equipment. The uberguilds are getting fat, regular dues, and the financial guilds are making money hand-over-fist with their loan payments.

The Problem Arises
The amount of money and high-level gear in the game doesn't seem right. Some of the gear comes from pretty rare drops on extremely high-level mobs. There should only be a few dozen instances of these items on the entire server, yet there are thousands. The programmers and designers do some digging, and find that there has been an incredible wave of duping of gold AND items by players.

The programmers implement a retroactive fix. All duped items - AND all duped gold - will slowly begin to expire. Not all at once - it's a slow process, starting with the most recently duped items and gradually "unwinding."

The problem is that most players don't even know whether or not their items (or their gold) was duped, as the item may have gone through three or four owners from the original duper. So they begin hunting around for replacements very quickly, just in case. But they can't even be sure their replacements are non-duped.

The Collapse
For twinked newbie players, the disaster comes swiftly. As their high-level twinked gear starts disappearing, they find their uberguild sponsors aren't offering free replacements. Suddenly equipped with nothing more than a newbie loincloth and rusty knife, they find every copper piece they earn being taken up by loan payments to the financial guilds. "Screw this!" they say. And they quit the game.

Suddenly, there are a bunch of properties left vacant in the game. The drop in demand drops housing prices all over the server. Players get mad because they are stuck paying maintenance and loans to the financials based on the original cost of their properties - and funds are pretty tight because they are frantically trying to get replacement gear for their dupes.

So a lot of them either sell off their property at a loss (and have no money left over to pay the uberguild dues), or just quit the game entirely.

The financial guilds, for their part, are no longer loaning money to people. Which really sucks because people are getting a little desperate for funds to "tide them over" so they can get replacement equipment that lets them fight dragons again. Everyone assumes the tighter loans are due to all the people who are quitting the game and no longer paying back their loans. But secretly, the financial guilds have a much bigger problem.

See, the financial guilds were the worst of the money-dupers. A lot of what they loaned out was "duped" gold. They never overdid it, because they feared this day would happen, and that the exploit would be turned off and the duped gold might go away. They'd hoped that by that time there'd be enough of a stream of legitimate gold coming back to their guild that it would not be noticed. After all, every duped gold coin was returning four legitimate gold coins every few months in payments. But as time had gone on, they'd gotten more greedy, duping more and more gold to increase their earning potential. When the dupe-purge came, they found themselves deeply "in debt" to the game, and the money wasn't coming back fast enough to keep their guild from getting disbanded.

At first, they thought they'd be okay, because they'd hedged their bets by buying "insurance" from other financial guilds called Gold Default Swaps. The insurance would be enough to cover any duped-gold losses. The problem is that the insurance sold to them was by other financial guilds who had duped gold problems of their own, and can't pay up all the insurance they'd promised.

So suddenly, all this duped gold goes away, AND the income from loans goes away, AND the insurance that was supposed to cover the losses also goes away. The financial guilds are about ready to quit playing.

The uberguilds try to step in, though they are also in a world of hurt because their own dues-collecting potential is getting clobbered. They loan a ton of gold to the biggest financial guilds, planning to increase the dues of all their members at some point in the future to compensate. But they realize that if they don't do something fast, this whole game that they have been the masters of is going to turn into a ghost town.

Unfortunately, the loaned money doesn't often go for more loans to the player-base - the financial guilds instead use it to buy up some of smaller financial guilds who never participated in duping. This helps keep the financial guilds from collapsing, but doesn't help the player-base, which is rapidly becoming armed with newbie loincloths and rusty daggers. The dragons are no longer being killed, because very few people have the necessary gear anymore. And everybody is afraid to buy new gear until the slow dupe-purge is complete.

And they are all royally pissed at the uberguilds and the financial guilds for causing the problem in the first place - even though everybody enjoyed it when the gear and loot were plentiful.

The End?
And so the MMO collapses under its own weight.

The analogy is far from perfect. I kinda look at the duped money thing as leveraging. You can look at the duped items as a combination of jobs and investments. And the Gold Default Swaps are an incredibly simplified version of Credit Default Swaps. I left out the part about all the bad loans being re-packaged and sold as good, income-generating loans to unsuspecting investors.

And in real life, you don't just get to quit when the game ceases to be fun.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:23 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Mama Kills Animals
In time for Thanksgiving, and in protest to Majesco's very popular Cooking Mama game series, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has released a parody game called "Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals."

In the game, you pluck, disembowel, and chop the head off a still-bleeding turkey, make stuffing with eggs that bleed and are filled with feathers, stuff the bird, and prepare a thoroughly unappetizing meal with dirty hands as the "Mean" Mama, getting points for being "meaner" than mama by beating the clock. After this, Mama apparently gets disgusted by her own actions, goes vegan, and runs through a similar exercise preparing a Tofu Turkey. Which, I must say, looks no more appetizing to me.

Judging by many responses, the game unfortunately miscalculated its audience. I guess gamers are used to entirely unrealistic gibs, beheadings, gore, and lots of blood from games, and found the turkey-cleaning segments quite entertaining. On the plus side, though, the game is well-made, does provide an alternative in the second half, and provides little videos and text links to explain their rationale.

I am very much a carnivore, and not a big fan of PETA. I've spent some time on a farm and have had to do the killing and cleaning myself the old-fashioned way. But while I'm not swayed by the message, I do have to hand it to them on the game front. The game is pretty well done.

And so - if you are ready for a gore-filled holiday culinary experience - enjoy!

Cooking Mama Kills Animals

EDIT: Replaced the embedded game with a link, since there is no volume control and the scream & music can get annoying.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:33 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Federal Court Srikes Down Software Patents
This is kind of a big deal, as several games and game technologies have had patents issues on them over the years.

Federal Circuit Decides Software No Longer Patentable

To be completely honest - while my name has been on some patent applications in the past with some former businesses - I actually don't think this is a bad thing, and I hope this decision holds up. The system has been horribly abused in recent years. Rather than protecting a small inventor from predatory, better-financed companies who could beat him (or her) to market, it has become used by those predatory companies as an offensive, anti-competitive weapon.

Update: As pointed out in the comments, this may not be the sweeping end-of-the-world-to-the-software-patent-industry destruction that several patent lawyers on some sites are making it out to be. Bummer. It's a bit more limited in scope, but still a pretty interesting change in how patent law gets applied to software.

Case in point, a couple of years ago several indie software developers (and bigger firms) were told that their Solitaire games on the computer infringed on some soon-to-expire computer Solitaire patent --- never mind a mountain of prior art that existed previous to the patent's issuance --- and that they all had to pay some hefty licensing fee to the legal office that had bought the patent. Somehow I don't think Microsoft paid up... (though they are one of the biggest offenders in building up a colossal stockpile of questionable patents).

I'm a diehard defender of software copyrights - naturally, since it is what feeds my children - but software patents are a whole 'nother can of worms.

Labels: Biz, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:39 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Jack Thompson: Unemployed!
Joining the ranks of the unemployed next month may very well be our favorite game-hatah, "Wackie" Jack Thompson. He has been officially disbarred in the state of Florida, effective in 30 days, though he does have a chance to appeal. And he has already filed for a stay of the order. So nothing is for sure.

According to GamePolitics, Judge Tunis reported, "Over a very extended period of time involving a number of totally unrelated cases and individuals, [r]espondent has demonstrated a pattern of conduct to strike out harshly, extensively, repeatedly and willfully to simply try to bring as much difficulty, distraction and anguish to those he considers in opposition to his causes. He does not proceed within the guidelines of appropriate professional behavior, but rather uses other means available to intimidate, harass, or bring public disrepute to those whom he perceives oppose him."

Sometimes there is justice in the world. It may be slow, but it is there.

I don't know if that will affect his standing with Fox News in the slightest. I'm not really sure they check credentials for their "experts" anyway. And I'm sure he's going to remain an activist. He just no longer stands to make a mint off of legal fees by being a jerk and chasing ambulances anymore. He'll have to find a partner who is both as crazy as he is and in good standing as a legal professional to do that.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:07 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
My Bank: Seized By the Feds, and Sold!
Wild times we're living in, huh?

Apparently my bank, one of the "four horsemen of the financial apocalypse," was seized by the government last night and sold off to JP Morgan Chase.

My wife and I had been reading up on what happens if this occurs last week, so we weren't too worried. Since I've been paying attention to the stock market lately, I noticed that Washington Mutual's share price started dropping like a rock at about 11:00 our time. I figured some people in the know were running for the door.

I figured they'd take it over on Friday evening - as they typically do - but I guess they wanted to hasten the timetable. I had to check the site to see if there were any changes at this early stage - and there was this welcome screen.

Oh, yeah, and all my money was still there, too. Well, what little I'd had in there earlier in the day. Not that I was worried or anything. :)

Trying to look on the bright side of the disasters going on in Washington and on Wall Street, I can say this: Unlike two years ago, the campaigning politicians this year have far, far bigger fish to fry than attacking video games!

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:30 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Class Action Lawsuit Over Invasive DRM in Spore
Gamepolitics has the scoop.

I have no clue whether or not this is a legitimate problem with Spore's DRM. But the ramifications of the lawsuit could be huge. It's a big ol' can of worms, with lots of unintended consequences that could result from it (not the least of which could be EA swearing off PC games forever).

This comes after the loosening of installation restrictions by EA. Game publishers embracing DRM claim that this is only an extension of existing practices in the digital space. I beg to differ.

I am currently playing (and enjoying) a seven-year-old PC game that I bought off E-Bay published by a company that no longer exists or supports the game. If this game had been saddled with the type of DRM schemes embraced by companies like EA, I would not be doing so.

According to EA, I'm in the obscure 1% of customers that they'd rather ignore. I'm used to that. I'm a PC gamer. I like games where I get to use my brain. I'm more impressed by well-designed gameplay and storylines than extravagant special effects. I like games that have new ideas instead of retreads of creaky old hits. Apparently, those things put me completely outside of the target audience most mainstream game publishers are targeting.

Labels: Biz, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:57 AM (Permalink) 14 comments links to this post

 
$700 Billion
We interrupt our regularly scheduled talk about games 'n stuff to just to say this:

Seven Hundred BILLION Dollars.

This is for debt packages of subprime and related crap that were so horrible they couldn't find legitimate buyers for it anymore. So now they want to force U.S. citizens to buy it. That's about $2700 of additional debt for every man, woman, and child in America.

Granted - it might not all be worthless. Hey, at some point, some managers snowed their bosses into believing it would actually be profitable. But this whole situation sounds like it has more in common with an Ayn Rand novel than Bioshock. (There - I had an obligatory gaming reference!)

Sometimes real life just makes you pause and say, "Woah!" At this point, I'd only be half-surprised if both of the major presidential candidates held press conferences next week and said, "You know what, on second thought... screw this! There's no way I'm taking this job."

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:10 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Game Design: Do Not Want!
Back when I was in college, I established a medievalist group in Provo, Utah. We were in the park every Tuesday and Thursday night, wielding padded swords and using a rule system based on that of Dagorhir - a group I'd been involved in as a teenager.

It was a lot of fun, and great exercise.

At first, it was only a few friends getting together on those evenings to smack each other with padded swords and daggers (which only resembled their real-world counterparts if you squinted really hard - in the dark). We used those weapons because - well - it was all we had made. We were starving college students, after all - spending $10 or $20 on materials to make a new weapon was pricey. I was making some chain mail by hand - usually while watching TV, but that took months to put together.

Slowly, other players began to join us. They heard about the activity in the park, and wanted to participate. We helped them make their own padded weapons, as well as making a few extra to pass around to first-timers who showed up. Soon we had groups of 20, 30, or even 40 people playing in the park twice a week. We got the cops called on us monthly - but soon they knew who we were, knew that those were the two nights they did NOT have to worry about gangs or drug dealers in the park. They'd respond to the call, note that it was us, and would sometimes hang out for ten or twenty minutes to watch us.

One week, several of us decided to make shields. Shields - like the weapons - were heavy padded things, for safety. But - they could be used to block weapons. When we brought them, a big cry came up from the group about how unfair they were. In fact, the first night, we faced something of a mutiny. Most players wanted shields OUTLAWED, forever, right then and there. They were unfair, they claimed.

Having played Dagorhir in my youth, where roughly half the fighters used shields - I knew better. I knew that they were not as easy to use as they seemed. I knew all kinds of ways to defeat people with shields. I couldn't believe that these kids were screaming at me to outlaw what I considered an integral part of the game. I refused. A bunch of people threatened to quit over it, but I don't remember if anybody did.

A few weeks later, there were lots of shields. Nobody complained about them anymore. It was part of the game.

Shortly after the shield incident, I'd finished my chain mail. Well, "finished" is a loose term - it was still evolving. I don't know that I ever finished it - it just went from being a chain mail vest to a chain mail short-sleeved shirt to a slightly longer short-sleeved shirt. And once again, the cries went up. Unfair, ruining the game, all armor should be outlawed, etc. etc. etc. Once again, I had considered armor to be an integral part of the game, having played similar rules systems back east. I ignored their cries, and also patiently explained to people that they couldn't just wrap aluminum foil over some cardboard and call it armor. It had to be the real thing. They hated that.

The armor took longer for others to adopt, but within a few months there were lots of folks running around in various types of armor, and it was an accepted part of the game - in spite of the previous cries that it should be made illegal.

By far the biggest cry of outrage came when we introduced bows and arrows to the game. The bows were restricted to no more than a 35 pound pull, and the arrows had very specific rules for construction lifted directly from Dagorhir. They had big padded heads on them which basically made them "Nerf Arrows." They were not the first missile weapons in the game, but they had better range and speed than the javelins, and they made the battlefield far more interesting. They made the shields even more important. They made mobility more important. They made the lives of archers very, very short. I knew from past experience that archers often spent more of their time fleeing than fighting. But they made the game more fun.

But no - the players demanded - multiple times - that archery be made illegal in the game. It was horrible and no fun and ruined the game. My ideas were a failure. Even though I told them they weren't my ideas, and I'd played with archers in the game for years, they refused to accept that. Either archery was going to go, or they were going to go. Period.

A few weeks later, not only had these players not left, but some of them were using bows on the battlefield. We had a lot of great times playing. And though I haven't played in years, I have heard that this little group has grown and is still thriving down there in Provo. They at one point joined an offshoot group of Dagorhir, and even have had battles with players from other states. And they are still playing in that same park, over a decade later. They don't know why they are playing in that park (it's because my old apartment was right across the street), and I doubt any of them have a clue who I am, or why I made the decisions I did.

And none of them, I think, know that most of what they play would have been outlawed if their predecessors had had their way.

I guess the moral of the story is twofold. First off, gamers often think they want things that they won't really enjoy. For example, I always think I want nothing more than to win all the time when I play games, yet that makes the games easy and boring. Then there one game we were working on where the players kept complaining that there wasn't enough ACTION. We cranked up the action of the level, only to have players complain that it was now way too hard - yet they still thought it was too slow without enough action. Then we moved things back to their previous level, and changed the music to something more energetic. Suddenly, the testers loved it, thought it was exactly right, and said things, "I don't know what it is you changed, but you nailed it! The action is much more frantic now, but not so difficult."

Sometimes it's trying to dig through what the players are saying to find out what they really want. Or - sometimes - it's just a reaction to fear and uncertainty, particularly when you are modifying a "live" game with participants who care about it. The MMO designers should know all about this particular issue.

Secondly - it doesn't take very much effort at all to draw the parallel to politics. As we entering the final inning of the presidential election year madness here in the U.S.A. With people suffering from an economy going into its irregularly-scheduled downward cycle with some pretty major repercussions in long-standing bastions of the financial institutions, to a lingering conflict in the middle east, to silly and trivial things like videogame violence, we have politicians outdoing themselves to outlaw this, regulate that, and to socialize this other thing. Because there's always that slim chance that this time, government intervention might not make a bad thing far worse.

Try not to be influenced by knee-jerk reactions, and try to dig past the surface to discover the real issues.

Labels: Game Design, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:03 AM (Permalink) 12 comments links to this post

 
Time To Welcome Our Cylon Masters
No matter which way November goes, we're gonna have a Cylon in the Oval Office.

Pretty much explains everything, doesn't it?

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:58 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
RPG Design: Making the Tough Decisions
When I lived in the Washington DC area, I loved to go to the National Air & Space museum - it's literally my favorite place in the city. I once spent one Saturday a month for an entire summer exploring that place, and I'm still not convinced I had seen everything. Many years ago, I got to go to DC with my wife on vacation. She wanted to hit the museums - particularly the natural history museum - but I convinced her to come to the Air & Space Museum with me for a few hours.

As luck would have it, that season they had a wing devoted to a Star Trek exhibit. My wife wasn't nearly as excited about rockets and jets, but she loves Star Trek. Since the original TV show was older than either of us, we never really understood a big part of what made the show awesome. We didn't realize its history.

And we had no clue how insidiously revolutionary Star Trek really was.

Sure, we'd heard that the first interracial kiss on television was on Star Trek. But we didn't think about the fact that George Takei became a key cast member during the height of the Vietnam conflict, when all Asians were being stereotyped as something far different from Sulu's friendliness and professionalism. We didn't realize that in the late 60's, you just couldn't deal with topics such as racism, or the Mutual Assured Destruction policy in the cold war era, or any of these charged topics directly on television --- but Star Trek's science fiction metaphor allowed it to explore these topics indirectly.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun had an article yesterday ripping into a particular moral choice in Bioware's sci-fi RPG Mass Effect, called Morality Tales - Bioware Versus the Issues. John Walker gives props for the issue being an interesting one with real-world moral or ethical implications. he indicates that it is a step in the right direction. But he also expresses his disappointment that the issue takes place inside a vacuum - and he's not meaning outer space. Without the full means to explore the issue or any significance on the game itself, the decision does not become meaningful.

I've not yet played Mass Effect (I was waiting for the PC version, but the DRM made me hesitate...), so I can't discuss this matter specifically. But as a general statement of things, I'd have to agree with Walker.

Video games have the same power as television, movies, and books to explore important issues - and to allow players the chance to actually explore the "tough decisions" in a the safer analog of the game. This is especially true in such story-driven genres as RPGs. But we can't just toss these kinds of issues around off-handedly or in a trivial manner, and expect critical acclaim.

For all of its faults and poor design, at least Super Columbine Massacre RPG! did try to tackle these kinds of issues head-on, with no masking metaphor at all except for the shocking transposition of a real-life tragedy into the made-up gameplay of a 16-bit style RPG. But there are other, better examples. RPS also explored a little bit of darkness in a relationship and difficult decisions (with real meaning and consequences) in the article Heather And Me, about the critically acclaimed but woefully overlooked RPG Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

I guess it would be silly to suggest that the successful RPG-making powerhouse Bioware seek to emulate the dead-and-buried Troika Games. But I don't know that tough, meaningful decisions would either contribute or detract from commercial success. But the metaphors of video gaming - like Star Trek in the late 60's - can provide designers and audiences with a safer, less stressful context in which to explore real-world issues.

I'm not really suggesting that Star Trek was the high point for television as a cultural medium. But for being such a "silly" science fiction show that people tended not to take seriously, I think it probably had a greater cultural effect than we give it credit for (and I'm just not talking about the geek culture, either). I strongly believe video games could do the same thing. We just need to learn to do it in such a way that it is neither trivialized nor heavy-handed.

Labels: Game Design, Geek Life, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:03 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Eight Myths About Videogames Debunked
It looks like PBS has decided to play "Mythbuster" with eight assumptions people make about video games. They address misconceptions in two categories - the "video games are just for nerdy little boys" area, and the "video games turn kids into raving psychotic monsters"

* The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.
Flying in the face of the dramatic decrease in violent crime since the release of Doom.

* Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.
Also linked: the alignment of the stars and planets with your likelihood of getting a traffic ticket today.

* Children are the primary market for video games.
Because the industry doesn't want all that filthy disposable income from the twenty-somethings.

* Almost no girls play computer games.
That's right - Bejeweled, The Sims, and Peggle are exclusively played by testosterone-laden boys in-between sessions of clubbing each other with tree branches in the back yard. Oh, and no girl could possibly have the mental capacity and skills necessary to pwn your newbie ass in Counterstrike.

* Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.
AKA the "David Grossman has convinced enough people to repeat him that it must be true" fallacy"

* Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.
But toilet seat art is.

* Video game play is socially isolating.
Because we gamers hate playing with each other, and we would never talk to each other about what games we play.

* Video game play is desensitizing.
This one may be true. It's desensitized me to television.

Anyway, the article is much better-written than my commentary. Check it out here:

Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:53 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
McCain Supports 4th Edition D&D: Polls Drop
Man, first Goldfarb makes a crack about D&D players living in their parents' basement and supporting Obama, and now this:



Dude, come on! 4th edition? Sheesh. Yer just diggin' yourself a deeper hole, here!

(Picture taken from here. Warning - highly political website!)

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:20 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Pac-Man Clone Takes On Packaging Waste
The non-profit environmental group The Dogwood Alliance has released a new flash-based game designed to help make people aware of the wastes and cost of packaging in fast-food, video game, and other industries. They are campaigning for individuals to petition corporations to use more post-consumer recycled paper, use less paper packaging, and stop using paper for packaging from endangered forests.

You can check out the game here:

PackagingMan

Now, whether or not I agree with the message, I am interested in seeing how video games are being used as a medium for the communication of serious messages. It's been done very well. Even by beginners. It's also been done very poorly.

This game is a three-level Pac-Man clone written in Flash with ripped sound-effects and modified graphics - mixed with some pages explaining the message. The power pills are recycling icons. The ghosts wear jackets and ties as apparently corporate monsters. Instead of fruit bonuses, you get to save bunnies, squirrels, and turtles. The word "Saved" appears to make it clear you didn't eat the little woodland animals, which is probably important. As a game, well, it's a three-level Pac-Man clone in flash. Does it succeed at its goal of effectively marketing a message and a call to action?

Maybe. You can try it out and answer that question yourself. But I do have a few suggestions:

First of all, the lengthy exposition before getting to play the game detracted from the lure of the game. The game itself should provide the exposition. You want people to come for the game, but stay for the thinking.

Pac-Man might not have been the best choice. Sure, there's a little bit of word-play between Pac and Pack / Packaging, but the gameplay doesn't offer the strongest of metaphors for their message. I mean, eating a recycling icon lets you devour the corporate ghosts? What does that mean? It's a little muddled.

(As an interesting side note: Rumor has it Pac-Man was originally going to be entitled Puck-Man. In a rare show of marketing genius, they changed the name after considering how kids would vandalize the machine by making a small modification to the letter 'P'.)

A better approach that has worked for my brain, at least, is to shine a spotlight on the issue itself. In Airport Security game, the ridiculousness of the ever-changing regulations in the name of counter-terrorism is lampooned. Harpooned is a very bloody arcade game which mocks the pretense of scientific study that is exploited under Japanese law. "Propaganda" is kind of an ugly word, but that's pretty much what we're talking about, and it doesn't mean they are wrong. They do it fairly well, keep it simple, and the metaphor and message is obvious and delivered by the game without much need for additional exposition.

And finally, while having a game as a tool for communicating information and a message is great, I'd want a little more detail before taking action. At the end of the game, it only offers options to play again or to take action. A "More Information" button that takes the player to the fact page would be better. I'd also prefer to know more about the alternative practices mentioned to on the website, and what their impact would be. Hey, if recycled paper would not increase the cost of my tacos at all (or better yet, make 'em cheaper), I'm in favor of it!

Labels: Biz, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:22 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Controversial Indie Games Get Fair Coverage
Citizen Gamer has a refreshingly even-handed look at controversial indie games, such as Super Columbine Massacre RPG! and Operation Pedopriest. Columnist Winda Benedetti is pretty indie-game-savvy, having published several articles about them in the past.

These Games Really Push Our Buttons on MSNBC

The quote of the week goes to David Kociemba, an art professor at Emerson College, in the documentary movie "Playing Columbine," about Danny Ledonne and the making of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!:

"The controversy should be that there aren’t more games like ‘Super Columbine Massacre RPG!’ that are as demanding and as artistically innovative... Why is it permitted for Michael Moore in 2002, to make ‘Bowling For Columbine’ — a film essay on this subject — and to use far more graphic footage than Danny Ledonne does three years later in a primitive low-res video game? Are we really going to say that video game designers are the one set of artists that do not have the right to engage in contemporary political issues?"

Not that I personally feel that Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is worthy of such honors. But I'm not exactly a fan of Michael Moore, either. But I am glad to see people - including Ledonne - at least trying to tackle controversial issues using video games as the medium for discussion.

Tip o' the hat to GamePolitics for the heads-up.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:50 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Any Anti-Videogame News Is News
A friend pointed out this article to me:

Combat Simulation at Duluth Air Show Criticized

Apparently, "some" are calling for a boycott of the air show because there's an army recruiting videogame - specifically, America's Army - Virtual Army Experience - available for visitors age 17 and over.

While "some" are referred to in the article, only one person is sited. Maybe her husband agrees with her, making it plural. But I didn't see any confirmation of what is hinted at being an organized protest. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But if I were to guess, I'd say this is simply an artifact of the fact that in any significant sampling size of a population, you are going to get some fringe element of nut-jobs. I mean, aren't there certain folks who ALWAYS protest air shows for various reasons (particularly military air-shows, which are major recruitment drives)?

The interesting thing to me is that the news media continues to manufacture controversy around video games. Now, to be fair, there have also been plenty of positive articles about games in the media too. But news media thrives on shocking and frightening its audience, which is right now only barely a generation ahead of the kids raised on Nintendo who would laugh at this kind of thing.

Mocking may be warranted.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:03 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
We Threw a Class Action Lawsuit, But Nobody Came!
Remember the Hot Coffee case? The big scandal that rocked the games biz? The one that causes the latest uproar that has given politicians and madmen ammunition to snipe at the games industry for years? The New York Times reports that the settlement has been reached for all of the meager 2,676 people (out of millions who bought the game) who joined the class action lawsuit. The total defense fees, including settlement but not including charitable contributions (which the company may have been planning on making anyway), amounted to around $30,000.

That makes it a lot harder for the lawyers to recoup the $1.3 million in expenses they are claiming, doesn't it?

My take on this? Okay, Hot Coffee was a major screw-up, no question about it. And I really have to question the maturity and taste of the people involved in it who actually implemented it and ... until a point ... thought it was a good idea.

But I think this case indicates that for the game's intended audience, it was largely a non-issue. The people who were really freaked out over it were non-gamers who neither played it nor bought it for someone in their family to play. And it seems like a sizeable subset of the people in the class-action thought that the graphic violence that was part of the core gameplay was okay for their underage little darlings... they just objected to the possibility that said angel could log into the Internet, bypass all the porn that's there, and instead download and install a patch that would enable them to see non-anatomically correct sex.

To be honest, I'd have expected a lot more people to have participated in the class action lawsuit, too. But really, the issue itself isn't really over leaving content in that would change the rating from M to AO (I mean, that's a difference of ONE YEAR... meaning 17-year-olds couldn't buy it for themselves). It's really about people - parents and family, mainly - not understanding or caring what the ratings mean, and thus making uninformed decisions, in spite of the best efforts of the ESRB and retailers to make this clear. And I think that's really only something that will be resolved with time and persistence.

Hat Tip to Game Politics for the scoop.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:05 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Buy GTA IV For Your Kid - Go To Jail
At least in New Zealand, if you buy Grand Theft Auto IV for your kid because you personally don't feel it's any worse than what they are exposed to at school or on TV, you could potentially face three months in jail.

New Zealand: Illegal for Parents to Buy GTA IV for Kids

At least here in the U.S., no similar law has come close to passing Constitutional muster. And even in New Zealand, the law under which the Office of Film and Literature Classification has couched its opinion has never been enforced.

Ah, unenforced / unenforceable laws.

I find that, over the last couple of years, I've grown to realize that this kind of political backlash is inevitable against anything that becomes mainstream in the younger generation and threatens cultural change. What control the older generation has, it uses to lash out to preserve the status quo. Yes, even the same "baby boomer" generation that was so anti-establishment and revolutionary in the 60's and early 70's. My generation is starting to do the same, and the kids after us will probably have the same knee-jerk reactions against whatever comes next that changes THEIR children's and grand-children's world.

Well, gamers and game makers: Keep fighting the good fight. Time is on our side... the longer we can hold out and keep games free in the face of mounting opposition and stupid regulation determined to marginalize games as nothing but children's entertainment, the closer we get to victory.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:27 AM (Permalink) 10 comments links to this post

 
Piracy & DRM: Grab a Shovel
As a guy who's livelihood depends upon IP rights, I naturally have a beef with piracy. I realize that, as with any crime, it's never going to go away, though I want to be supportive of measures that reduce it. But the latest round of "anti-piracy" news has left me feeling pretty ... I dunno... defeated? Embarrassed? Frustrated?

Pretty much all of the above.

Sony BMG Gets Caught Pirating
Sony BMG - the guys who thought rootkitting your $1600 computer was okay in the name of protecting their $16 CD - got caught pirating.

Now, okay, this wasn't a formal company policy, I'm sure, and Sony BMG as an organization had no clue that this was going on. Hey, I've been there. We once had a manager pocket the funds to purchase a site license for a software and install a pirated copy instead. We only found out after he had been let go and we contacted the software vendor for product support. Woops! And yeah, the last time I heard about said former manager, he WAS wearing an orange jumpsuit.

But I believe this little "black eye" underscores the fact that piracy is everywhere, and demonstrates that draconian measures sometimes supported by certain media groups and the politicians they fund are completely unwarranted.

Support Piracy, Support Terrorism!
Stiffer laws might be in order, but in a recent speech U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey linked piracy with terrorism. Now this doesn't get me quite so up-in-arms as it does some bloggers, as this was simply part of a side-point in a speech and wasn't trying to present some iron-clad case. But I'm personally getting a little tired of using the "fight against terrorism!" excuse for everything, from illegal demands to turn over customer records to treating baby formula as a weapon by airport security. I don't think I'm the only one. Claiming that software piracy helps terrorism just weakens the whole argument, in my opinion. Does it happen? I'd not be surprised. Guess what? Terrorists can and will make money any which way they can, legal or illegal.

Protection of IP rights is vital to the U.S. economy and interests enough all by itself without saddling it with lame anti-terrorism propaganda, 'k?

Don't Sell This Game, Or Pirates Might Play It For Free!
Apparently, DRM development is delaying Atari's new RPG expansion. Mysteries of Westgate, the new module for Neverwinter Nights 2, is being held back for apparently no other reason than the development of a custom DRM solution. There's been sufficient commentary on this issue by both Shamus Young and Scorpia (among many others, I'm sure) that I don't know if I have much to add.

I wonder if Atari isn't actually working on some kind of competitor for Steam (or at least an attempt to make Atari independent from Steam), and using MoG as bait. We'll have to see.

Dealing With Piracy
Now, actual profiting from trading of pirated software should be treated more harshly, I agree. Jail time and lawsuits to cover damages to the IP holders? Sure. And I personally believe that the laws protecting IP rights need to be revised, and enforcement does need to be stepped up.

But in general I feel that copyright infringement - as a legal violation - has less in common with grand theft and more in common with speeding on the freeway. Nearly everybody does it or acknowledges that It Is Done, and that it is a Bad Thing if it gets excessive. But the threat of fines, points against licenses, and raised insurance premiums - combined with (usually) sufficient spot-checked enforcement - keeps things reasonable.

The goal isn't to stop piracy or punish pirates. The goal is - or should be - to allow creators of intellectual property to profit appropriately from creating these things, so that they might continue to do so, for the benefit of all.

Labels: Biz, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Videogames Made Me a Criminal!
A national British newspaper is bribing criminals to attribute blame for their actions on video games. Offering "hundreds of pounds to the right person," they are soliciting people to "Write a few lines about how computer games turned you to crime and if it’s something we like, we’ll call you straight back."

Unfortunately, the ad was taken out last week, so it is not an April Fool's joke. Bruce On Games had the scoop.

In the spirit of April Fool's Day, I thought I'd offer my own story. Hopefully they'll get a bajillion of these:


VIDEO GAME MADE ME THE "TRAMPOLINE BANDIT"
I found the arcade game "Mappy" in a pizza restaurant in Maryland. The game appeared innocent and cute - as a mouse police officer, you'd chase criminal cats around a house filled with trampolines, stopping them from stealing tons of expensive electronics equipment and artwork as you and they bounced from floor to floor.

But the thing was - you were a mouse chasing cats. What's wrong with this picture? Inevitably, the cats would catch you, and your career as mouse-cop would come to an end. The cats always won in the end. After hours of playing the game, it all became clear to me. The cops were mice, chumps that always lost. The bad guys were the predators, and always won in the end.

After spending hours and hours trying to beat the second level of the game, something snapped. I couldn't distinguish reality from the lurid fantasy of the game, so great were its graphics and compellingly realistic my actions. The game trained me, over the hours, to look for things worth stealing, teaching me lessons from the cats' actions.

The next thing I know, I found myself at a sporting goods store, buying one of those exercise trampolines. I told myself hat it was just for exercise, but even then I knew subconsciously that there was no reason anybody to have an exercise trampoline except to commit trampoline-crimes. I'll tell you straight up, these devices, like videogames, should be banned outright. Don't fall for the "trampolines don't steal stereos, people steal stereos" crap the trampoline-industry-funded lobby groups try to use as smokescreen for the real issues.

It wasn't a week later that I found myself inside an apartment in my own neighborhood when the owners were gone, jumping on the trampoline and stealing all of their paintings, TVs, and stereos. I admit, it was a little harder to do than I had been taught by the videogame, but the seeds had been planted. After I got away with the apartment, I found myself breaking in and jumping and robbing two other houses, and finally a department store.

It was the department store that ended my life of crime. I thought it was a terrible mistake, but in the end I call myself fortunate I was stopped when I did. It was too hard to jump to the second floor in a single jump, but since they had several of the exercise trampolines in stock, I assembled them on-site and arranged them carefully on the non-running escalator steps using stacks of catalogs to level them out. I tried to jump back down the line of trampolines while carrying a Sony Betamax player (this was the early 80's, after all), when one of the stacks of catalogs collapsed, sending me flying off the tramp over the side of the escalator, landing on a cosmetics cabinet. Neither the cabinet not the betamax survived the ordeal, and I broke my leg and lost consciousness due to the overwhelming oder caused by spilled contents of six broken perfume bottles.

When I came to, I was surrounded by paramedics and police officers. I realized then that the police officers didn't resemble mice at all, and I'd been living a lie. During the next two years in juvenile detention, I wasn't allowed to play videogames. The habit was broken, and the smell of perfume finally faded. I have no doubt in my mind that the creators of this videogame purposely built it to warp young minds to cause crime and mayhem.

I have now served my time and my community to make up for my misdeeds. I only wish these video game creators could be forced to do the same...

Labels: Politics, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:51 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
How Piracy Can Break An Industry - A Case Study
GameProducer.net puts things on the line about the impact of piracy in Brazil, in an article full of sobering anecdotes, statistics, and links. In a nutshell - it's gotten so bad most game companies have given up trying to sell anything there. The vicious cycle is mature there, where people are forced to pirate because they have no legal means to obtain products. It's ugly.

Local game developers, according to the article, "have only four options to survive as developers: subscription-based online games, mobile gaming, advergaming or exporting."

After the rest of the world follows in Brazil's footsteps, the fourth option will be unviable for everyone. Then what? That's the multi-billion-dollar question.

As a gamer, I personally do not relish the idea of having to either pay a monthly fee to play my favorite game (or having the game become unavailable after it gets "too old"), nor do I want to have to endure a bombardment of marketing messages in order to play a game.

There has got to be a better solution.

But as the article indicates, waiting for the government to jump in and help is useless. I think that applies as well to any other government as Brazil. Nobody's going to wave a magic wand to make the problem go away. This one is firmly gonna be in the hands of the game makers and the customers to solve.

GameProducer.net: How Piracy Can Break An Industry - The Brazilian Case


(Vaguely) related shallow thoughts:
* The Real Cost of Piracy?
* A Better Way to Fight Piracy?
* A Pirate Story
* PC Game Publishers: Please Hurt Me Some More!

Labels: Biz, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:00 PM (Permalink) 9 comments links to this post

 
Utah Gives Disney Video Games the Red Carpet Treatment
It's so nice when my state actually shows that they have a clue:

Utah Wooing Disney Game Biz with Huge Tax Incentive

Though it's no wonder my Day Job has started making people sign a non-compete (though they granted me an exception for Rampant Games, a requirement for me signing on in the first place.)

Labels: Biz, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:25 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Fox News Launching Multi-Front War Against Games
So ... let's see... in the last month Fox News has claimed:

* Mass Effect is a fully interactive, customizeable orgy.

* Video games can trigger flashbacks in injured veterans and cause them to freak out

* Video games are destroying the environment. Yeah, there's been a decrease in outdoor activities while video games have increased in prominence. There must be a causal relationship. During the same time, there's also been a steep decrease in violent crimes. But no, no, there's certainly no correlation!

Lest we think it's only a problem with Fox News here in the U.S., we've got a pop-psychologist TV shrink in the UK effectively writing legislation to restrict video games. And a Times Online article calls the XBox "Crack For Kids."

You know, it's very, very hard to convince myself that this isn't just "old media" lashing out desperately to defend itself against competing new media.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:47 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Out of the Mouth of Babes: A Thirteen-Year Old On Games and Violence
Well, in this case, a very well-spoken thirteen-year-old girl, writing a very articulate post about video games and violence and how it affects her:

Violent Video Games and Kids

I've known the author since she was a newborn, and she's one of my daughter's best friends, so I really enjoyed reading her perspective on the issue. It also amazes me that these kids (who I still have a mental image of which is about six years out of date) can form rational opinions.

And maybe that's the problem too many of our legislators have.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:44 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Cooper Lawrence Admits Mistake Over Mass Effect Sex Scene
According to an interview Friday with the New York Times (link likely to get archived in the near future), Cooper Lawrence - the "expert opinion" used by Fox News Live Desk to speak out against the console RPG Mass Effect, treating it as pornography, has admitted that she was mistaken and misinformed. She states:

"I recognize that I misspoke. I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke. Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography. But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit."

Score one for the truth.

And score one for Ms. Lawrence. My opinion of her just shot up several points. Yes, she was stupid to have not done her research on the subject before the show. She let herself be manipulated by Fox News. But at least she took two and a half hours of time to research the subject after the fact, and then made the effort to admit her mistake, publicize her apology, and to do what she could to correct it.

Okay, so she's not said anything yet about her misunderstanding about the game-playing demographic (where she stated her opinion as fact that parents don't play video games, only their children... another blatantly false bit of misinformation that she should have done her research on first). Or anything about her claims that some U of Maryland study proves boys can't tell the difference between video games and reality - what the heck was that about? And maybe her actions were motivated by legions of gamers trashing her book ratings on Amazon.com, in their own non-violent version of mob justice (which I think everyone understood would eventually blow over).

I still think it took both guts and class for her to come out with this apology and correction, and I commend her for it.

Fox News Live Desk, for its part, so far seems to be just waiting for things to blow over. Requests for correction have gone unanswered, though they have invited a representative from Electronic Arts to appear on the show. Considering that they have proven that they will just make up allegations out of the blue and hurl them at people, and then cut them off when they try to deny whatever line of garbage Fox News had invented, I can understand EA being a little bit hesitant to accept the invitation.

I gotta say, it's entertaining to speculate as to what might happen next. And I doubt sales of Mass Effect were noticeably damaged by the rumor of it having pornographic content.

So - why was Fox News so eager to trash one of the best-selling games of the season? Are games just such a convenient, politically powerless target for a random sensationalist piece? Or do they actually feel threatened by this rapidly maturing medium, and are actively looking for opportunities to manipulate public opinion against what they perceive as competition? Or a little of both?

And will gamers reciprocate and retract their attacks against her book?

UPDATE: For further hilarity - when it is obvious to Jack Thompson that the whole thing is a load of manure, saying "This contrived controversy is absolutely ridiculous," you know Fox News has really topped itself.


A tip o' the hat to GamePolitics.com and Kotaku for this update.

Labels: Politics, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:34 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
By Fox News Standards, Top Gun Was Porn
This was all over the web over the last day or so. On Monday, Fox News Live Desk effectively fell for what I'd consider a hoax. The ol' telephone game has taken place, and a short love scene from Mass Effect, regarded by everyone who's actually played the game as more tasteful than what you'd see in many rated "R" movies, has been trumped up by certain ill-informed non-gaming voices into being some gigantic porn simulator.

Fox News took that at face value, swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, and produced a pretty embarrassingly bad pretense at journalism. And they roped poor Geoff Keighley into it.

Unfortunately, it looks like Geoff was suckered into the classic "Have Your Quit Beating Your Wife?" question. While he thought the question was about the love scene in question in a rated "M" game, the REAL question they were asking was, "Why do you think this interactive porn game is appropriate for 13-year-old boys?"

So he tried to play a defensive game, the sole person in the segment actually concerned with getting facts straight, while everyone else was laughing off his question as to whether or not they actually played the game and knew what the hell they were talking about.

I haven't played Mass Effect, so I probably don't know any better than the talking heads what I'm talking about. But I have seen the scene in question, which left almost everything to the imagination - quite to the contrary of MacCallum's allegation - and was less steamy and not much more graphic than the love scene in the movie Top Gun. Now unless there's some hidden Hot Coffee-esque secret version that I've missed (and, knowing gamers, if there was we would have heard about it by now in graphic detail...), Fox News was really just making crap up. At a certain point, people, what you call an "exaggeration" is indeed a lie.

And then Cooper Lawrence chimed in with some 1981-era demographic knowledge by claiming that even grown-ups were buying it, they certainly weren't playing it. Right. And before you know it, TV shows are going to show couples sleeping in the same bed and lead to the downfall of civilization as we know it.

Now, I'm not going to defend the appropriateness of the love scene in Mass Effect. As far as I know, it's a gratuitous bit thrown in to stir up exactly this kind of controversy (and to send sales through the roof). But the incredibly shoddy journalism and double standards shown by Fox News Live Desk is just begging to be mocked.

And my sympathy goes out to Geoff Keighley. The battle was unwinnable. Maybe he would have scored more points if he went on the offensive and said, "Are you both on DRUGS? What game are you talking about here? Where can I buy this porn simulator you guys are referring to, because I've played all through Mass Effect and all I got was one two-minute PG-13-ish love scene!" But he might not be invited back, and there are undoubtedly less stupid battles to be fought in the future.

I guess with the writer's strike still ongoing, people are desperate for fiction on TV.

UPDATE (7/24): EA (Now owner of Bioware) has sent a letter to Fox News requesting that they retract their blatant falsehoods, explaining very clearly exactly where they were ... shall we charitably say, "misinformed?"

Story At Kotaku

The silly thing about this is that the Live Desk segment, while increasing the bizarre (but, I hope, increasingly marginal and impotent) anti-videogame hysteria amongst similarly misinformed viewers, probably helped give Mass Effect's sales a nice boost. A public retraction would probably do the same. So EA, Bioware, and Microsoft are probably enjoying a win / win scenario.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:07 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Guest Post: Artistic Merit... And Manhunt 2
Manhunt 2 has been in the news quite a bit the last few months - which to me smacks suspiciously of very deliberate marketing, and manipulating the ESRB and other ratings bodies as unwitting pawns in their attempt to milk controversy for publicity. And of course, Rockstar (owned by Take Two) - the creators of Manhunt 2, and the equally controversial Grand Theft Auto series - are falling upon a First Amendment / Freedom of Artistic Expression defense. The latest controversy surrounds a player-created hack, vaguely reminiscent of the "Hot Coffee" scandal, which reveals material that had earned it a harsher "Adults Only" rating before it was edited. Today's guest blog comes from JenaRey, a game reviewer, member of the Rampant Games community here, and the author of the Eeps, Meeps, and Ipes gaming blog. She talks about Manhunt 2 specifically, but also more generally about games as art. So here's her lovely rant...

For the past several months there has been a lot of debate and concern over the rating of Manhunt 2, Take Two’s hyper violent horror game. Initial ratings put the game at an AO, which lead to pouting and editing to earn the M rating. The game was released on Halloween, appropriate for a horror flick, and immediately hacks were found that removed filters which had been put in place to create the afore mentioned editing. Now…I could go off on the rating process. Or I could tirade about Take Two’s policies, and the suspicion that they knew gamers were smart enough to hack such a simple edit. But I’m going with the subject of Artistic Merit and sticking to your guns.

Artistic Merit is defined as: an English language term that is used in relation to cultural products when referring to the judgment of their perceived quality or value as works of art. (Definition gleefully yoinked from Wikipedia and online dictionary.) So it’s the value put on something as a work of art. Long has the debate raged over whether video games could be considered works of art or only works of entertainment due to their interactive nature. I personally have no argument that video games are art. Many of them are beautiful in storyline and graphical execution and all represent a creative effort on the part of their creators. I think art can entertain, regardless of form, so it’s not a problem for games to also be entertainment. Argument solved…truth in the middle of the extremes.

From Plato the point of art is what he calls Theios phobos or sacred fear. Art should move something within both the viewer and the artist and it will not always be comfortable. This is why a vast number of artistic works through the centuries have been censored so that they were available to a small audience that was prepared for this sacred fear instead of visiting it on the uninitiated or uninterested. In video games this is done through ratings which provide guidance for consumers and parents as to the nature of the art involved and grounds by which to make informed decisions.

Whether the governing bodies should get involved as far as distribution is a subject that I’m still on the fence about because I understand the intention, but also believe that we should be trusted as people and parents as to the type of art that we bring into out homes and what sacred fear we choose to experience and to allow our children to experience. However, because of distribution restrictions that come with a given rating there is always grumbling in the ranks when a given artistic endeavor is given a rating of AO no matter whether it is an appropriate guideline or not. Well, guess what boys and girls… distribution restrictions aren’t anything new either. The nice thing about the current political climate is that artists that are seen as having gone beyond the ‘safe’ boundaries of social acceptance aren’t beheaded and all copies of their work aren’t put to the fire. They’re just stamped with a restriction and then companies are given the option whether to publish or not.

If you are taking a stance that your work should stand as art then let it stand and suck it up. Stick to your guns. If you’re going to choose to edit, then that is your new stance and the obligation is to create art at that level. It’s juvenile to only half do the job while sticking your tongue out at the establishment - like a child asked to clean his or her room that shoves everything under the bed with full intent of pulling it back out once the adult has left (Particularly when the same child has already done this once before).

So all in all…if Manhunt 2 is about art, then it should be unedited and appropriately rated. Those with interest will find their way through appropriate channels to experience their chosen sacred fear, and the stance of sticking to what you’ve imagined is much more respectable than grudgingly changing, leaving in hacks and whining. If you’re just in it for the cash…well…I hear casual games are doing well. Match three for Take Two?

~J

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:56 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Pliers And Nuts Don't Mix (In An M-Rated Game)
So Rockstar made some changes to Manhunt 2 in order to make the game appropriate for 17-year-olds, and not just 18-year-olds. As reported by IGN: "When we first wrote about Manhunt 2, we referenced a particularly nasty death sequence, in which Danny could use a pair of pliers to literally rip the testicles off a hunter. That murder has been completed [sic] removed from the updated build of the game. Not a big deal for us, as it only amounts to one kill out of dozens."

You know, almost every time I play a game I think, "Wow, you know what would REALLY improve this game? If you could rip off some guy's nuts with a pair of pliers!"

Halo. Zelda. Dance Dance Revolution. Tetris. These games could all use some graphic castration-with-blunt-tools sequences! It's a frickin' gold mine, here, and the ESRB is just being a bunch of meanies about it!

Seriously though: All of us game developers make jokes around the office of what sort of horrendous content we should put into whatever game we're working on. The more tired you are, the funnier the jokes become. And hey, I appreciate a little bit of morbid / black humor as much as the next guy. But at what point did the this thing go from being a bad joke to a "good idea" in the minds of Rockstar developers? Possibly the same point that doing soft-core sex mini-games in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas seemed like a good idea. After one too many beers, I'd guess. Or hits on the ol' crack pipe they undoubtedly pass around over there.

And the really sad thing is, it's probably going to sell at least an order of magnitude more copies than some far more deserving indie titles, like Depths of Peril (which has been a little like crack here at Rampant Games, I'm afraid...)


(Vaguely) related violence performed with fingernail clippers:
* Manhunt 2 Banned In U.K., Rated A.O. in U.S.
* Why Are There So Many Violent Videogames?
* Oblivion: The Flower-Picking Simulator
* Free Adventure Game: Emily Enough
.

Labels: Mainstream Games, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Jamie Fristrom on Why Games Are Important
Jamie Fristrom of Torpex Games - a man who has had a long and illustrious career stretching back to the old Magic Candle series - has posted a substantial article on why games are important.

His conclusion? Games help you learn about learning. They rarely teach you anything about the subject matter they supposedly represent. A first person shooter will - if anything - teach you horrible habits with respect to using guns in combat, and Guitar Hero won't teach you much about being a rock star. But they will teach you lessons in what he calls "meta-learning." Learning how to learn.

His full article can be found here:

Why Are Games Important? One of Many Reasons

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:54 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Establishing the Legitimacy of Games
Brian "Psychochild" Green of Near Death Studios has published an outstanding article on RPGVault entitled "Taking Games Seriously."

In it, he discusses three types of "legitimacy" for artistic forms, how they impact freedom of expression, and how they are achieved. He takes it a step further and explains why you, the gamer, should care. Tired of games that are mere clones and sequels? That is because while games have achieved financial legitimacy, they have not yet achieved cultural or artistic legitimacy.

He also notes that while the legitimacy of computer and video games as an art form is inevitable and automatic, there are things that can be done to hasten it.

Comparing this to Roger Ebert's little rant from earlier this week was very refreshing.

Check it out here:

RPG Vault Soapbox - Taking Games Seriously



(Vaguely) related ill-advised illegitimate literature:
* Ebert Vs. Barker On "Are Games Art?"
* Games As Art: Media's Double Standard
* Do Games Matter?
* How Do I Get Past the Harpies?
* Game Design: Fixing Interactive Storytelling

Join the Discussion Already In Progress on Games As Art in the Forum!

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:07 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Ebert vs. Barker on "Are Games Art?"
Roger Ebert, the notorious film critic who went on record many moons ago as stating that "video games are not art," has written an article countering arguments by famed horror novelist Clive Barker to the contrary.

To his credit, Ebert at least amends his statement by saying, "games cannot be high art."

Whatever the heck that is supposed to mean. I checked Wikipedia, and it seems that high art is pretty much restricted to "traditional" art forms, only recently allowing cinema into the old boys club.

Personally, I think he does have a point about interactivity, but I don't think that in any way prevents games from being art. Sharing the artistic effort with the audience definitely makes for a different experience from traditional media. But face it --- how many games REALLY put that much of the story in the player's control, anyway? I think games suffer from being overly linear in their presentation as it is, borrowing too much from traditional forms of artistic expression.

And how much cinema and literature are really "high art," anyway? Everybody likes to invoke Shakespeare, but that was four centuries ago! How about Stephen Kings' novels and the Harry Potter books - are those "high art?" I don't know, but I suspect that those will be artifacts of this generation's culture that will endure much, much longer than the words of pretentious critics of the day.

Anyway, you can check out Ebert's defense here:

Games vs. Art: Ebert vs. Barker


(Vaguely) related nonsensical revelations:
* Games As Art: Media's Double Standard
* Do Games Matter?
* How Do I Get Past the Harpies?
* Game Design: Fixing Interactive Storytelling

Read or Post Comments on the Forum

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:00 AM (Permalink) links to this post

 
Iranian Game Developers Make Anti-U.S. FPS
So some Iranians made an FPS game with U.S. and Israeli troops as the bad guys called, "Rescue the Nuke Scientist."

Big deal.

Okay, the propaganda angle does annoy. I haven't played the game, and as far as I know it could be very offensive to me. But every single communications medium in history has been used for propaganda purposes. Including games. I think this just validates the contention that games must be protected free speech.

I don't relish the idea of yet one more medium that portrays Americans as "The Enemy" in the Middle East, but who else would you expect them to use to portray as the ultra-powerful enemy? And after all, we Americans have been blowing up our own military forces in our own games for years. Whether it was because they were sent there to "pacify" the Black Mesa facility in Half Life I, or we were locked in aerial combat in various flight sims, nuking ol' Abe Lincoln in Civilization or Rise of Nations, or we find ourselves on opposing side in multiplayer Battlefield games - we take pretty much equal glee in blowing up our own forces as anybody else's. We just need to take a look at our allies' uniforms (or the color of their names) before leading the base, and we're ready to rock.

Is that any different from, say, enjoying the wild naval adventures of Alexander Kent's Richard Bolitho novels, fighting on the "opposite" side of the revolutionary war (from an American point of view)? I think its usually a healthy thing to take a look at events and views from opposing perspectives.

Which brings us to another interesting point. Mohammad Taqi Fakhrian is quoted as saying that this game was created as a "defense against the enemy's cultural onslaught." What does this mean? Are Iranian kids playing Rainbow Six Las Vegas, Gears of War, and America's Army right now (while watching downloaded episodes of The Sopranos, Lost, and The Family Guy)? Is this an attempt by Iranian traditionalists to stop the "Western Drift" of the younger generations? Do they see video games as a means of reinforcing official state dogma? Or is it simply an angry reaction to being portrayed as bad guys in modern military games like Kuma\War?

And then there's the more important question that is undoubtedly on many gamers minds right now: Is this game actually any good?

Probably not, based on the gameplay footage (can U.S. soldiers walk through walls and pillars now? Cool!). That is more likely to earn gamer ire than political offensiveness.


Hat Tip to GamePolitics.com for the link!

(Vaguely) related vacant expressions
* Why Battlefield 2 Sucks
* Games As Art: Media's Double Standard
* I Would Have Made Deathmatch Maps of My School, Too!
* Games As Editorial Content
* Do Games Matter?

Wanna Talk About It? Visit the Forum!

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:41 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Manhunt 2 Banned in the U.K., Receives AO Rating in the U.S.
Manhunt 2 - a game about violent murder - has been effectively banned in the U.K. - because the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) has refused to assign it a legally mandated rating. I guess it has joined such lofty ranks as the movie "A Clockwork Orange" and the song, "Relax", by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

It has also received the dreaded "AO" (Adults Only) rating from the ESRB here in the United States, which is the kiss of death for sales.

My personal opinion? Bravo ESRB, shame on the BBFC. Of course, the initials "BBFC" was originally for "British Board of Film Censors," so maybe they've gone back to their roots with videogames.

Take 2 Interactive and Rockstar Games continue to push the boundaries of taste (okay, in my opinion, they blow way past the boundaries) with respect to violent content. So they should expect to have to deal with the AO rating. In fact, I am sure they anticipated the likelihood. I don't think they are going to release under the "AO" rating for artistic reasons... I think they, like Running With Scissors, are all about controversy, not art. I expect they'll go back and change the game to make it better conform to "M" rating guidelines. Or try to appeal.

But the BBFC's refusal to rate it... I dunno. It smacks of a knee-jerk reaction to media hysteria. A UK murder case was blamed by the media on the first game, in spite of the murderer having never played it, and police claiming no connection in any way. Now, I personally wouldn't really want to play the game. But it's not my job to do so (well, at least I hope not to be assigned that particular task...)

Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding the game will probably only serve to increase its sales and popularity.

How many more years do we have to endure the politicizing of games? Too many more, I'm afraid...


(Vaguely) related rumblings and grumblings:
*I Would Have Made Deathmatch Maps of My School, Too
* BYU Study Links Bible Passages to Aggression
* Why Are There So Many Violent Video Games?
* Australian Book-Burning (er, Game-Banning)

Oh, and a forum discussion on the subject (Thanks Brickman):

Labels: Mainstream Games, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:26 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Games As Editorial Content
Yesterday, Persuasive Games announced (via the Water Cooler Games blog) that their games will begin being featured in the New York Times online edition as editorial content. Effectively filling a similar niche as political cartoons. Their first title, Food Import Folly (subscription required to play the game, but that link has a description and screenshots), concerns the extremely limited FDA inspection of food imports. The website notes that the number of food import shipments increased from 2 million to 9 million over the last decade, but the FDA resources and personnel has remained roughly constant.

You may recall my evangelizing of one of Persuasive Games' previous titles, "Airport Security." I think this is an important step for games --- a new area where game-makers can and should explore. It is another potential market, albeit a small one. I don't know if the online games will help the TimesSelect subscription rates, but I'm pleased to see them embracing more of the potential of being an online news service. But more importantly, this is another small step for computer games in demonstrating their power - and importance - as a medium of communication.

And for rapid development buffs - Food Import Folly was created in Flash in only one week.

Congratulations to Persuasive Games!


(Vaguely) Related Attempts At Being Political...
* Airport Security Parody Game
* Games As Art: Media's Double Standard
* Do Games Matter?

Read or Post Comments on the Forum

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:19 AM (Permalink) links to this post

 
I Would Have Made Deathmatch Maps Of My School, Too
Last week, 17-year-old Paul Hwang was investigated by the police and kicked out of school for the crime of being a creative and talented gamer. He's a victim of the paranoia surrounding the recent Virginia Tech tragedy. He had created a Counterstike map of his own school for he and his buddies to play in, and some concerned parents - undoubtably swayed by FUD campaigns by alarmists profiteering from tragedy, alerted the authorities.

It might have been bad timing on Hwang's part, as he probably finished the map before the VT incident took place. But as he seemed to match the media-image profile of the Virginia Tech killer (who was of asian heritage, but not - as too many believe - a gamer). The police launched an investigation, reportedly grasped at a few straws to justify themselves by labeling him a "terrorist threat", but finding nothing worthy of a criminal case, they recommended disciplinary action on the part of others. You know, something that doesn't require the burden of proof of an actual criminal case.

The school board took up the flag, acting in their best Minority Report fashion, and proactive punished the imagined "pre-crime" by kicking Hwang out of school, transferring him to an "alternative education facility" (part of the Fort Bend County Juvenile Justice Program), and prohibited from attending his own graduation. While some board-members later expressed misgivings that they'd overreacted, others patted themselves on the back for a job well done, and covered their butts by saying that they were only doing their job in this dangerous day and age.

Now I get to don my old geezer hat and say, "You know, when I was a high school student, I never made Counterstrike maps of MY school." The main reason was because we had dinky little 8-bit machines that didn't have enough horsepower or colors to even display a decent-resolution JPEG image of the school, let alone anything resembling a first-person shooter like Counterstrike.

Instead, back in my teenaged era, what was going to ruin society and turn out an entire generation of bloodthirsty, psychotic, devil-worshippers was called "Dungeons and Dragons." And you'd better believe there were battles in D&D taking place between adventurers and monsters bearing the names of principals and least-favorite teachers through imaginary facsimiles of our schools!

The key difference between then and now was that what we were doing wasn't so photorealistically OBVIOUS to low-imagination, paranoid authority figures. Well, that, and the game hadn't hit the mainstream consciousness hard enough to become the default scapegoat for all of society's ills. Many enlightened individuals vociferously predicted the horrors that would befall western civilization should this game, like rock music, continue unchecked. But there were still some people who naively ignoring the D&D connection with certain tragedies, and instead focusing on such embarassingly old-fashioned influences like drug addiction and long histories of mental illness.

Frankly, if we'd had games like Counterstrike back then, you'd better believe I'd have been making maps of my school, my house, and the local mall. And sharing them with my friends. Instead, the closest I came was making a "Space Invaders" game where - with my limited art skills - the invaders all resembled a particularly strict instructor (who I eventually came to like, incidentally). But I had a slight thrill exploding bald-headed aliens for about fifteen minutes after I finished the game. Oh, hey, and I also had a bunch of mostly ornamental weapons in my room too - out in plain sight, after a little parental rebellion streak one evening. Perhaps not unlike Paul Hwang's collection of ornamental knives found by the police in their investigation.

Was I actually an emotional powderkeg ready to blow at any minute? I really don't think so. In spite of my geek tendencies, I think I was a relatively happy, well-adjusted kid. I had good friends, good parents, and even grades that didn't suck. And let's get real here... who DIDN'T fantasize about blowing up their school at some point?

When you are a teenager, you are in this transition stage where kids are craving empowerment, but aren't quite responsible enough (or emotionally grounded enough) to handle it. I know that I would have little bits of rebellion to seize some level of empowerment - some measure of control over my destiny in a world where I felt largely subject to the whims of adults. The draw to videogames (and D&D) was a feeling of that empowerment in a make-believe world. In a D&D game, I could play a calm, cool, always-in-control hero to help counter feelings of being very much the opposite in the real world. I was allowed to pretend to be an idealized version of myself.

Of all the settings a teenager would want to portray himself as the competent superhero (or supervillain, as the case may be) , it is only natural that his high school would be at the top of the list. Where else would they feel in more need of empowerment - even if only in an imaginary alternate reality? High school, as much as I enjoyed it at times, was one of the most threatening, self-esteem-crushing experiences I can recall. It was a nasty social Lord of the Flies experiment, complete with violence (though never the lethal kind - at least in my school - though there were always rumors). For the average middle-class American youth not coming from an abusive or dangerous home life, the halls of their high school is probably where most of their personal demons live.

And in Paul Hwang's case, he was able to apply his talents not only in a way to help him cope with this (and make a pretty decent-looking level, I should add), but also apply in a way that would be enjoyed, appreciated, and respected by his peers.

But now we're on the verge of criminalizing that sort of thing in our hysteria.

Maybe I'm projecting too much. I don't know Paul Hwang from Adam. I haven't heard anything yet to suggest that he's anything other than a decent, pretty normal kid who got caught in a witch-hunt. I wish him well, and I hope this incident doesn't discourage him or other young aspiring game designers and mod-makers from exercising their talents.

I'm just glad I didn't have to grow up in their world.


(Vaguely) related yammerings of an obviously corrupted and yet naive adult...
* Teenager and Dungeons & Dragons
* Games As Art: Media's Double Standard
* Why Are There So Many Violent Videogames?
* Rules of Combat According to FPS Games

Read Or Post Comments On the Forum

Labels: Politics, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 PM (Permalink) links to this post

 
Cashing In On Tragedy
Capitalism is a great thing, but it doesn't dictate morality. And you really have to question the morality of a scumbag like Jack Thompson who evidently hears the cash register ring as soon as hears of a tragedy like yesterday's Virginia Tech horror, and then immediately goes on the air explaining (indirectly, of course) why the deaths of dozens of people means he ought to be paid hundreds of millions in cash... angling once again for a class-action lawsuit on the most ludicrous of premises.

Just in case you thought ambulance-chasing couldn't get any lower.


(And yes, I do recognize the hypocrisy of mentioning this on a blog with commercial links, but dang it, I had to say something. Again.)

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:47 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Making Games In A Kinder, Gentler, Politically Sensitive World...
Many Winters Ago, Desslock interviewed Tim Cain (who was one of the founders of Troika, and one of the principle guys responsible for Fallout) about the release of The Temple of Elemental Evil, a turn-based RPG using the 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons rules (and based on an ooooold classic module for 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, penned by Gary Gygax himself).

The full text of the interview was never used - only snippets for a PCGamer article. It's now been released on Fallout 3: A Post-Nuclear Blog. It's an oldie, from back when ToEE was first released (four years ago?), but still interesting.

The focus of many of the comments was on the realities of releasing an RPG in a post-ESRB world - the political sensitivities of today, and how different (and how restrictive) they are now as opposed to even as little as a decade ago). I remember all too well where the Avatar (if a male) could get involved in a romantic interest, which could result in a glimpse of a flesh-toned sprite jumping into bed as the screen went dark. And I remember how there were topless females enabled by default in the second Elder Scrolls game (there was an option to turn them off), and while I'm sure it raised a few eyebrows, I don't remember it being a big deal. Nowadays, somebody comes up with a hack to remove the top, and it becomes a big political hooplah.

Once upon a time, Richard Garriott decided to experiment with twisting emotions by putting in monsters with the graphics of children in a room in a dungeon. Wolfenstein 3D was "voluntarily rated PC-13... PC for Profound Carnage!" as a joke about the amount of pixellated blood and guts in the game. Nowadays, its no laughing matter as certain ambulance chasers seek a legal foothold to wipe out the entire industry in a career-climaxing class-action lawsuit over game violence.

Apparently, Troika was dissapointed over removing content in ToEE, but was compelled to do so in order to avoid the "M" rating, which would restrict its audience and its sales.

This included removing children from the game. Because - in a truly interactive game that included violence - there's nothing preventing the player from doing violence to the children. He can do violence to anything else in the game, after all. And if the developers made the children completely invulnerable to damage, a mind-control spell would turn the children into unkillable battle-slaves for the players - an easy way to cheat through the game. They could make the children immune to EVERYTHING (including spells), but then an aggressive act could result in the children ATTACKING the player, and being an unbeatable game-ruining encounter. Or you simply turn the children into little more than props, and remove interactive options from the player entirely around them (as is done in most Japanese console games).

The very fact that a game is a game, and allows the player freedom to choose, and (theoretically) can be different for everyone who plays the game, kinda undermines the whole game rating system idea, doesn't it? Not that it invalidates game ratings... but I think it shows once again that it's merely a tool, a simplified gauge on a much more complicated issue than other media.

An excerpt from the interview:

Desslock: Since you have to account for concerns raised by Publishers; content licensors (WotC); ESRB rating concerns that may affect the availability of games in key distribution chains like WalMart; conversion/localization issues given the stringent requirements of some foreign markets such as Germany; and even civil litigation concerns given the tendency of some individuals and groups to blame criminal acts on violent games — how much do you feel those considerations compromise your creativity, or your ability to create open-ended RPGs?

TC: There’s no question that they do compromise our creativity and reduce our ability to create entirely, open-ended RPG’s. The issue with children is a perfect case in point: our games can either feature no children at all or children that are immune to harm. This means no kidnapped children, no imperiled orphanages, and no possibility for an evil player character to even threaten a child, much less harm one. Since we at Troika enjoy dealing with the gray areas of morality and player choice, such limitations can certainly feel stifling at times.

But, of course, there are a number of very valid reasons why those decisions do in fact need to be made and I think you cited several in your question. As a creative developer we want to ride the bleeding edge and in some cases go well beyond it, but we’re also very aware of the importance of reaching wider audiences with our products. So we understand that sometimes content must be changed.

They also talk about working with Hasbro / Wizards of the Coast, and even with Gary Gygax himself on creating the game. Check it out here:

Desslock Interviews Tim Cain
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Labels: Game Design, Politics, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:41 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
The Rampant Games Rating System
Courtesy of GamePolitics.com --- apparently a proposed New York Bill will "Provides the Courts the power to confiscate any materials that do not bear a rating and/or label clearly displayed." (Materials referring to video games).

What label? What rating? Brick-and-mortar retailers in New York only, or online storefronts that do business with New York residents as well? I guess we'll wait and see what the actual bill's wording will provide. But most games don't have and can't afford an ESRB rating. There are certainly some FREE, self-proclaimed ratings systems out there. Would those suffice?

Hmmm... maybe we'll have the official "Rampant Games Ratings" (RGR, pronounced "Roger"):

There are only three rating levels in the RGR system:

Rated P: Parental Review Recommended!
It's probably okay for your kids, but sheesh --- do you really trust your kid's safety (and - ahem - education) to some strange media provider and their dumb rating system?

Rated W: We Really Mean It - Parental Review Recommended!
This game is probably okay for a teenager or mature pre-teen, but dang it, Mom and Dad, please freaking pay attention before you give it to your eight-year-old!

Rated Y: You Got Nobody To Blame But Yourself - Parental Review Rcommended!
It's your own business if you think your sixteen-year-old is mature enough to deal with it, but the game is really intended for people who are legally no longer their parent's responsibility.

So there you go. Feel free to use it, at no cost! And worth every penny!

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:05 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
BYU Study Links Bible Passages To Aggression
Apparently, my alma mater, Brigham Young University, conducted a study very similar to one of the studies that linked violent videogames to aggression. In fact, one of the researchers was on the team that did the research most often cited linking real-world aggression with violent videogames. But instead of videogames, they used the Bible as their violent medium of choice.

The findings? Very similar to the videogame studies. Biblical passages about violence and, more specifically, justifying the violence were linked to an increase in aggression.

The story is in today's Deseret Morning News (the same paper that generally took a favorable attitude towards the anti-videogame legislation being promoted by local lawmakers). You can check out the full report here:

Research Links Scripture to Some Hostile Acts

As a religious university, BYU is obviously already feeling some concern about the political unpopularity of the results of this study. BYU takes scripture study very seriously, and requires 14 credit hours (basically a full semester) of religion classes to graduate --- including study of the Bible.

Professor Robert Ridge, explaining his findings, said, "We're not saying that just in and of itself violent media is uniformly bad but oftentimes there is no redeeming context to it. If one reads the scriptures with an understanding of context, both historical as well as with a (desire) to hear what God is trying to teach us, you can read it in a different way. But if a person dives into (a violent passage) without the context, you could probably get some increased aggression."

Well, I guess that just about explains the Crusades. We just can't have nice things, can we? People will twist any belief, philosophy, or ideal to justify their actions. I mean, I used to joke about militant Buddhists, but apparently that's no laughing matter, either. That Buddha was a meanie, huh?

But seriously, just like the videogame study, I take this study with a grain of salt small Siberian salt mine. Not that the results of the research are wrong - it's just that it can be something of a stretch to form a larger correlation about real-world aggression or violence based on the results of these studies. I guess it's a news flash that --- hello! - We're all influenced by the world around us. Be it media, scriptures, some guy cutting us off on the way to work, watching our favorite team win a basketball game, or having a coworker say, "Good job!"

Not exactly a news flash, but I think it helps put the previous study in perspective.

Hmm... think anyone's gonna try and push through legislation to criminalize selling the Bible to minors now?

Tip o' the visor goes to GamePolitics.com for the scoop.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:58 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
My Term as President of the United States
Based upon my popular views concerning the investigation of bobblehead doll scandal (nicknamed "Bobblegate" by the press), and my outspoken support of the war against the Cylons, I have been elected President of the United States. It's time to give every chicken a pot or something like that. And most importantly, I get to decide who lives and who dies! I can hardly wait to start some scandals of my own!

All it took was booting up the game Democracy, the best-selling indie game from Cliff Harris of Positech Games. I mean, how hard could it be? I should at least be able to do better than my... ahem... recent predecessors.

Inauguration
I start out with my party (the ... hmmm... we'll call it the Frat Party) in charge of both the House and the Senate. Score! That, and I'm on my "honeymoon period" as the new electee. Time to kick some butt and take some names.

Cool.

The ol' state of the union isn't looking too hot right now. Pollution is rampant, and kids are suffering an asthma epidemic on account of it. The national debt is over 10 TRILLION dollars. The roads are clogged with congested traffic pretty much everywhere. Equality and air quality are extremely low, car usage is at extreme levels (I guess that's bad), and the people are complaining about how cheap imports are ruining the economy. Oh, and tax evasion is high.

On the plus side, unemployment is a low 6%, and the economy is doing pretty well overall.

The commuters and environmentalists despise me - but they represent a small portion of the population, right? Should I worry? The Socialists aren't too fond of me... but I'm not a socialist. Apparently they are 24% of the population, so I should worry. More importantly, the liberals (representing 27% of the population) are furiously opposed to me. Trade Unionists don't like me, either. And good ol' Middle Class America? 41% of the United States are Very Unhappy with me. Strangely, both the wealthy and the poor love me.

Okay. So this will be interesting. In theory, I just have to solve most of the problems in the country without causing more than I solve, and I should win the next election, right?

I guess one way to solve air quality is to get more motorists off the road and into public transportation. The problem with that is that public transportation sucks. I mean, I hate the busses here in Utah. I took the Provo - Salt Lake City "express" bus when I started my career at SingleTrac. "Express" meant they meandered through every little stop between Provo and Salt Lake, turning a 45 minute commute into an over 2 hour commute EACH WAY. At least I got some extra sleep that way, with a newborn at home and everything.

So --- how about I increase the investment in Bus Lanes on roads? That should encourage the use of busses, and make those nasty long commutes shorter, and therefore more acceptable to people who'd otherwise drive. And I'll pay for this with... hmm.... ah! An increase in gas taxes! Which should also make public transportation a more palatable option!

Since the increase in gas tax increased revenue more than the cost in bus lanes, I end up making a tidy profit and reduce the budget deficit. And it will reduce gridlock, reduce pollution, which will also deal with the asthma epidemic, all at once! Hey, am I a friggin' genius or what? This is easy!

Second Quarter
Unfortunately, it takes several months for the new policies to take effect. And the U.S. government is still hemoraging money, in spite of the fact that income grew about $160 billion / month more than costs. To top it all off, there was a sweatshop scandal that rocked my administration, only three months in. I increased the tobacco tax to try and reduce smoking and improve government income. The smokers won't be too fond of me... but I'm early into my campaign, so they'll just have to live with it for four years. I also implement trade tariffs.

Third Quarter
Government income drops, and spending increased. Commuters hate me, and motorists aren't too happy with me either. Car usage has dropped 13%, and my overall popularity has dropped 18%. The fax machine next to the Oval Office has been busy sending out resumes.

Yeah, this is going well.

I implement a new national monorail system. Sure, it'll take nearly a decade for it to complete, but I'm sending a message that I AM HERE TO STAY. I also implement a national minimum wage. Strangely, I guess the U.S. didn't have them until my administration. I correct that and implement the law, to the chagrin of business owners everywhere.

I also implement car emission limits at a national level. Maybe that will put a dent in pollution, huh?

Fourth Quarter
My first year as President is almost done! Things have finally changed with the budget - it is now in "good shape," but it'll take some time to get the debt down to more manageable levels. Still, it is the sweet taste of success, as income skyrockets.

The bus lanes have finally started to pay off, and the commuters are starting to warm up to me. This drivers are even happier, in spite of their more expensive vehicle ownership, because I've finally ended the gridlock situation across the nation.

Unfortunately I'm still dealing with an asthma epidemic, pollution, cheap imports, and tax evasion (which is probably because of the two primary means of taxes - income and corporate tax - are hard to enforce). Don't people realize I inherited all these problems? These things take TIME to fix, durn it!

Year Two
Going into my second year, I'm seeing a decrease in the government debt, but it's still slow. Security is warning of "green" terrorist attacks by the unhappy environmentalists. Didn't they hear about my national monorail system? Grrr.... My approval rate is dissapointing.

I chose a weak welfare "minister" (Should be cabinet member in the U.S., shouldn't it?) My approval rating amongst the poor is great, and the socialists seem to really be warming up to me, too. So I think this move will help appease the capitalists and wealthy. And that also offsets the fact that I've dropped their beloved tax shelters down to more moderate levels.

The pollution level is beginning to drop (as is the Asthma epidemic), though both are still at critical levels. The GDP has all the capitalists and self-employed folk dancing in the streets and singing my praise in spite of my reduction of their tax shelters. I make it up to them by dropping the corporate tax. Things might be bad, but they are improving.

I also lower the national sales tax (since when did the U.S. have a national sales tax, anyway?)

I get a strong budget surplus, the debt begins to fall rapidly, and the concern about cheap imports goes away.

Right before the end of year two, I decide to let a convicted terrorist starve to death rather than give into his hunger strike. I also do a headcount reduction on the CIA. This might appease the liberals a little bit, and it also saves me about $10 billion per month in savings. Why do we need those spies, anyway? We're not in the cold war anymore, right guys?

Year Three
Unfortunately, my dissapointing ratings resulted in my loss of the U.S. House of Representatives, but the Frat Party retained the Senate. This means the House will delay the implementation of all of my policies. Fortunately, my most important policies were already put in place, and many of those are just now starting to get results.

Parents and middle-income Americans have nothing good to say about me. I decide to add a child credit to taxes, to see if that'll get Moms and Dads off my back for letting their children having to use inhalers because they can't breathe outside. Besides, I can't afford a true cut to income tax yet, as I'm still getting the national debt down.

It's not quite enough, but my ratings overall have improved. I'm now having "confident" quarters. The economy is going like gangbusters. Pollution levels continue to drop. Environmentalists are no longer burning me in effigy, but they aren't exactly putting me on their Christmas Card lists, either. Speaking of which, my friends amongst the religious voters seem to be dropping a little bit, too. Since they represent about 44% of the voting public, this is a concern.

The liberals are fanatically opposed to me. The smokers are a little more neutral towards me... but they are diminishing. Smoking is on the decline - I guess it's too expensive of a habit. I figure this is a good thing. Either that, or my ignoring of health care is resulting in all of them dying off with lung cancer. I'm not sure which.

I compromise my principles once more, blocking the merger of two major retail chains into a major mega-store (Hmmm... I wonder if it would have been called "WAL*MART"). This earns me some more allies amongst the self-employed, as they weren't looking forward to the competition. But it really is an artificial restriction to free trade. I wouldn't have done it if the economy wasn't already rocking.

I oppose a book-banning, which drops me off a few more Christmas lists amongst religious America, and it's probably too late to win a popularity contest with the liberals. Ah, well, I'm sticking to my idealist guns for a change, I guess.

Year Four
Unemployment has reached historically low levels. The poor love me. The wealthy are indifferent. The patriots and conservatives celebrate me as the hero of the nation. I increase spending on prisons, which helps everyone. The conservatives and patriots would love me even more if they could go above 100%. Even the liberals are grudgingly giving me a little bit of credit for what I've done with the economy. I drop military spending a little bit, just to keep things going. I want to give everyone a big bonus this year of reduced income tax.

My ratings have climbed to nearly 60% in the polls. With the November election rapidly approaching, I'm already preparing my acceptance speech for my second term.

And Then, Disaster Strikes.
More specifically, terrorists stike. A car bomb goes off in the middle of Washington DC, killing three and wounding a dozen. Apparently my cuts to the CIA a while ago had something other than just political effect.

The patriots and the conservatives, who thought I could walk on water the previous quarter, have almost completely deserted me. My approval rating quickly sinks down into the low teens.

I hope it'll blow over quickly, as the GDP is amazing, pollution is almost down to non-crisis levels, air quality and life expectancy are up, and the country is - by almost all measurable levels - much better now than when I inherited it.

I drop income tax. By a tremendous amount. It'll cost me hundreds of billions, but I've been running at nearly an $800 billion surplus for several months now. Hopefully people will start feeling the additional weight in their wallets just as the elections begin.

The following quarter, some of the antagonism over the terrorist attack does blow over. The patriots and conservatives grudgingly give me back some of my approval, but it's nowhere close to my near 100% level they were giving me before. More like around 25%.

The reduction in income tax hits JUST before the elections. The Middle Class perks up, increasing my approval by 15% just in time for the elections. Is it enough?

Nope. Apparently not. Still blaming me for the terrorist attack, America decides its time for a new President.

I get one more quarter to sit through and see the final results of what I'd built over the last four years. I see parents, liberals, and socialists all increase their approval rating. Just as they boot me out the door.

Hmmm.... I wonder if Germany needs a new President. I've got experience...

--- Former President Rampant Coyote




Think you can do better? Check out the free demo of Democracy at Rampant Games! (And yes, I have done better on subsequent games... assuming I can avoid a terrorist attack in an election year).

Download DEMOCRACY

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Labels: Game Moments, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:49 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Viacom Shotguns YouTube - Indie Gets Caught In Crossfire
A couple of days ago, a training video for the indie 3D game engine Irrlicht was removed from YouTube after a complaint by Viacom that ... uh... they own the rights to the video, and it was in violation of the DMCA.

And exactly HOW does Viacom own a homemade tutorial video for working with the UI of some indie developer's own software, where all the art and resources were created by him or his user community? I can't wait to hear the explanation for this one...

In all likelihood, this was just a mistake. Somebody goofed. It had nothing to do with him being an indie game (engine) developer (but as a developer interested in Irrlicht from a few years back, this caught my notice).

This is apparently one of 100,000 complaints Viacom just filed demanding take-downs of DMCA-protected videos, so how can anyone expect them to make sure that this tactical nuke isn't causing some "collateral damage?" What, they should actually double-check all 100,000 of their computer-generated search results for accuracy to make sure no innocent people get accused of copyright violation?

In the grand scheme of things, I do not believe that this is a Big Deal. I'm sure there were many other innocent YouTube customers who were caught in the blast of 100 tons of spaghetti (man, am I full of metaphors tonight or WHAT?) that Viacom chucked at YouTube. This is simply a case of a major media company flexing it's muscles a bit, and simultaneously getting in a press release about how they were the victim of 100,000 counts of piracy. I doubt they'll reduce that number to account for after all the victims of THEIR neglegance - even the ones willing to jump through the several hoops YouTube forces you to go through when your video gets a copyright complaint. They'll just round up to the nearest 100,000.

Now, I'm pretty anti-piracy myself, and I believe Viacom has every legal right to order the take-down of media that belongs to them. But I'm also pro-consumer rights, and this indiscriminant attack strikes me as being pretty dang bad, especially if there are a bunch of stories just like Niko's. It seems to me that Viacom ought to be subject to some sort of liability over false accusations like this.

Otherwise, what's to stop some goofball like me claiming that I own the copyrights to EVERYTHING on YouTube, and get the entire site shut down?

Oh, wait, I don't have Viacom's money. Question answered. Nevermind.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:02 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Is Anti-Game Legislation Becoming Politically Dangerous?
Last year, the bill to tack videogame violence onto the anti-pornography law in Utah slipped through committee, passed almost unanimously on the floor of the Utah House of Representatives, and only failed because the state senate ran out of time to consider it (perhaps deliberately). It was a relatively quiet bill, only earning one article of praise from one of our newspapers (the Deseret Morning News), an editorial by me blasting it (in the same paper), and one letter to the editor of complaint.

That bill was one of a rash of anti-videogame legislation that came out in several states last year, and all but one that passed were struck down in the courts as unconstitutional. The one that passed was actually supported by the ESRB, as it simply subjected video games to the same restrictions as other media, including movies - hardly an "anti-videogame" law.

Since then, court costs have mounted for states passing these laws. People have started asking why the states keep paying hundreds of thousands in legal fees for bills they've already been warned won't pass Constitutional muster. The media has started listening to someone other than Jack Thompson (who, at this point, is now facing a disciplinary hearing concerning his antics). Lieberman and Clinton have apparently backed off a bit from their previous anti-videogame stances.

Locally, our state Attorney General Mark Shurtleff - an opponent of violence in video games, has gone on record stating he believes that these anti-gaming bills will continue to fail on Constitutional grounds in court, and he has put public support behind the existing ESRB system. The court decisions - with a little help from the publicity surrounding this year's Slamdance debacle - the question has been raised even in "mainstream" media: Should games be considered a protected form of free expression?

The Utah bill returned this year as House Bill 50, and now it came to light that the bill was drafted by everyone's favorite grand-stander, Jack Thompson. But this year, things have gone differently. And this time, the lawmakers backed off. And they are getting criticized by the newspapers (in particular, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Provo Daily Herald) for considering it in the first place.

Is the tide turning? Are politicians feeling a real backlash against their "nanny state" bills targeting video games? Is anti-videogame legislation no longer a "freebie" when trying to earn family values points for the next election? Is the public finally becoming aware of games being a medium of communication (and even an art form) that should be protected? Will 2008 not be a repeat of 2006 with respect to anti-videogame bills? Will video games not suffer the same fate as comics several decades ago?

Maybe. I'm not getting my hopes up too high. But it seems that there may at last be a light at the end of the tunnel. It's encouraging to see the difference in the political climate surrounding what was effectively the same bill in Utah between this year and last.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:19 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
No Indies In The Indie Competition?
I guess The Behemoth has now withdrawn Castle Crashers from the Slamdance "Guerilla Game Developers" competition (which begins today) - right on the heels of DigiPen forcing its students to re-enter the competition.

The DigiPen thing is interesting to me. Based on my understanding, the school owns full rights to everything that its students create. As DigiPen is not a major publisher, I guess the game is still technically an independent game, just as Saga is technically independent (but from my standpoint, it was still contract work for my studio). But it really stretches and makes me reconsider my definition of "indie."

Undoubtably DigiPen provided valuable training and resources to its students. But why should the school, and not the game creators, own the result of the students' labors? We can see that the developers themselves are not in control of their end product. Is it still "indie?" It seems very strange to me, as unlike a traditional publisher / developer arrangement, it is the students themselves who are ultimately funding the product, through their tuition, "lab fees," and everything else. Maybe that's common in film schools and music academies, too, but it seems really screwed up to me.

I think it is interesting that two of their remaining seven competitors are "DigiPen Owned" games. Obviously, they are shooting for getting some awards for their school, and feel its more important than the desires of their students. With only half the original number of finalists, they have excellent odds this year.

As to the competition itself, the official statement from Slamdance concerning the pulling of Super Columbine Massacre RPG! has changed in the last couple of days. Rather than citing moral grounds as they did previously, they are now stating their concerns about possible lawsuits that they couldn't afford to defend themselves against.

This is a legitimate excuse - the game has a bunch of copyright violations (unlicensed content grabbed from Doom, Marilyn Manson, and Nirvana) that could have possibly gotten the competition in legal trouble for supporting. It's a safer explanation than the alternatives. It doesn't paint the sponsors or Slamdance as the villains. But it sounds to me like rationalization after the fact.

Which is kind of how Danny Ledonne's explaination for the purpose behind SCMRPG's creation sounds to me, too. But once again, others differ strongly from my position. In fact, Wired Online just published a very good article about the game, critiquing it as a work of art. Once again, I don't deny that it's art... I just don't think it happens to be particularly good or worthy art. Regardless of its original purpose or stated purpose, one thing the game has managed to do is generate discussion about games as a medium of art and expression. And that is a good thing.

This whole controversy is certainly causing me to ask a lot of questions. Here are a few:

Will Slamdance organizers decide that games are more trouble than they are worth, and cancel the Guerrilla Gamemaker competition in the future?

Will they try to stay the course and act as if nothing happened, and rely upon people's short memories (and the willingness of schools like DigiPen to force submission of student projects to garner prestige for the school)?

Or will Slamdance renew their commitment to games as an art form and take advantage of the "controversy surrounding the controversy" (and the press it has generated) to make indie games a more significant aspect of the festival?

Will DigiPen actually lose more potential students than it gains by not only making it clear that they own all rights to their students' creations, but are willing to use said ownership against the wishes of the artists?

And should we start referring to game developers as "artists" (as I just did) in acknowledgement of the the validity of games as a medium of art and expression? We do that in other media (particularly music), why not games?

Should the term "indie" only apply to those games which remain in the control of their original creators (ahem, "artists")? That would disqualify a bunch of indie developers who are willing to sell their IP rights to publishers after self-funding a title.

What do you think?

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:56 AM (Permalink) 9 comments links to this post

 
Utah "Games As Porn" Bill Temporarily (?) Pulled
According to the Herald-Journal online, Representative Wyatt has pulled HB50, the newly reintroduced "Games Are Porn" bill, from the House Public Technology and Utilities agenda today. Citing Constitutional concerns, he says he intends to re-evaluate the bill to make sure it'll pass Constitutional muster. He's apparently meeting with Utah A.G. Mark Shurtleff to discuss options.

The original bill, introduced last year, categorizes violence in videogames as obscene and amends the "Materials Harmful to Minors" law such that videogame violence is treated the same as pornography in this state. Good ol' "Wacky Jacky" Thompson apparently helped pen the bill, and found a dupe in the form of former Representative Hogue to push the bill through. I It expired quietly in the state senate last year. A much cheaper way to go than the similar Luisiana bill, which went through a costly court battle before being ruled unconstitutional.

I feel hopeful that Rep. Wyatt, who is a lawyer, is taking Constitutional concerns seriously. And I am very happy that he is meeting with Mark Shurtleff, who has proven to be an ally of the ESRB system, and while he's personally opposed to extremely violent videogames, he has expressed the opinion that it is a matter for education, not legislation.

Although his final statement in the article DOES have me worried. Rep. Wyatt says, "Any bill that somebody brings forward with the support of their constituents is not a waste of time, because they raise issues and create awareness." Excuse me, but haphazardly making laws as a way to "send messages" sounds like VERY poor government. The whole point of Representative Democracy, as envisioned by the founding fathers, was to prevent that kind of "mob rule" so that cooler, wiser heads could prevail. If you are taking that attitude, we might as well go to a direct democracy system.

Well, okay. There's my naive political rant for the day. Maybe the week. If I'm lucky, the whole month. Gee, I suddenly feel the urge to play some Democracy for some reason...

But I am pleased with this turn of events, and it sounds like Wyatt is behaving reasonably. This is a bit better than the horrible job they did last year, where they rubber-stamped "No Constitutional Impact Concerns" and "No Private Industry Impact Concerns" concerns on the bill right after hearing testimonies as to those very concerns that same day...

As always, a hat tip to GamePolitics.com which almost always has the latest dirt on ... well, games and politics!

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:11 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Democracy Now Available From Rampant Games
I get political often enough on this blog, so I guess it's about time I made a game about politics available on the website.

Democracy is the best-selling indie political game by Cliff Harris of Positech Games. In Democracy, you are the newly-elected leader of a major democratic country. You can choose from the United States, Britain, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Poland, Australia, Spain, and France, though the demo version restricts you to the U.K. You have a few years to make your mark AND prepare for re-election. Democracy doesn't impose term limits, so you can try your hand at being President or Prime Minister for Life.

It's not easy.

Democracy uses a very sophisticated AI system to model voters (under the hood, it implements a neural network), and even includes such factors as voters cynicism and grudges. In Democracy, it's all about policy decisions and implementation - not re-election campaigns. It's all about how good a job you do running the country (man, what would it be like in the real world?!?) But "good" is a very relative word with so many different voter groups all wanting different things. To make it even more tricky, you've got the same voters belonging to multiple groups. So while you might make the American economy just hum along towards a new era of plenty for all, you are undoubtably going to anger a lot of folks who see you destroying their way of life. You can cut taxes and raise benefits to generate some short-term goodwill, but when the long-term bill comes due you are going to have to figure out how to avoid bankrupting your country.

You'll have to deal with such "quality of life" factors as crime, average lifespan, poverty, Gross Domestic Product, unemployment, and equality. And as far as I can tell, it's not possible to max out all of these factors.

It's all up to you. You can try and be a political idealist and see if you can stay in office long enough to see your country achieve a golden age. Or you can try to avoid rocking the boat and do what you can to become the world's most popular leader. Or you can just experiment and see what could happen if you, say, try and convert the U.S. into a socialist state. However, even the best plans can get snarled as you will be forced to deal with events outside your control.

One story from the game comes from reviewer Mortitz Voss of GameTunnel.com: "In one game, I was the prime minister of Great Britain. I did away with all the silly traditionalist legacies and made it a country where there were only very few unemployed or homeless people, where health care was free and universally available, and whose universities were among the world's best. I carefully worked to reduce alcoholism and drug addiction among the general populace, and I downsized the military and spent that money on education and stem cell research. I cut the national debt in half and still experienced a great surplus of income ... despite massive tax cuts that everybody loved me for. Wait... everybody? Ultimately, two thirds through my second term of office, some patriot nutcase shot me in the chest for betraying our heritage and for not doing what's 'right' for England. Ouch! "

So maybe running a country isn't as easy as it sounds... :)

Oh, and if you are curious, I do not know if the ability to ban video games is currently implemented in the simulation. :)

Democracy was the winner of the "2005 Best Indie Sim Game of the Year" award from GameTunnel.com, and was also voted one of the top ten games of the year. If you haven't tried Democracy out yet, give it a try by checking out the free demo here:

DEMOCRACY

As always, have fun!

Labels: Game Announcements, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:03 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Games As Art: Media's Double Standard
In San Francisco last month, a student magazine was banned from circulation by an art institute, allegedly over a story involving videogames. In the story, three African-American men address each other in vulgar street slang and then go on a spree of rape and murder. At the story's end, the three men are revealed to be videogame characters played by three white middle-class boys. It's a statement against the use of racial stereotypes in videogames. Without having read the story, it sounds to me like something that needs to be addressed.

The student's teacher, Robert Ovetz, was fired when he protested the book's removal. According to him, the library wasn't even allowed a copy for its archives. (Note: The school has now, a month later, relented).

Curiously enough, California State Senator Leland Yee has jumped to the defense of the teacher and the publication. He sponsored legislation last year that criminalized censorship of college media last year. But in 2005, he also sponsored legislation that essentially censored videogames, which was struck down last year as a violation of Constitutional rights.

Then we've got the Slamdance flap. Now, my opinion of the game in question is not very high. And I'm apparently not alone in my opinion. But even those who dislike the game and feel it's a pretty poor representative of gaming OR art have taken exception to its removal. Initially, I thought that it was a result of pressure from sponsors, and it seemed like an act of survival for the festival. But with Slamdance's president claiming its removal was on moral grounds, and not a result of sponsor pressure (I still don't believe that), this is setting a dangerous precedent.

As expressed by N'Gai Croal:

'It's almost impossible to imagine that a festival bold enough to show movies like "Neo Ned" (a fictional romance between a neo-Nazi and a black woman who believes that she's Adolf Hitler reincarnated), or "Forgiving Dr. Mengele" (a documentary about a Auschwitz survivor's decision to forgive her former oppressors) would have knuckled under so easily if the object of its backers' ire was not a game, but rather a film like Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" or Gus Van Sant's "Elephant."...

'This is a recipe for the continued infantilizing of a young medium whose potential, for all of the compelling works already released, still remains largely untapped.'

In other words, the message from Slamdance is that games are not as deserving of serious artistic consideration as other media (specifically, film).

We now have a total of six games that have withdrawn themselves from the competition in protest (and one SPONSOR, which is even more interesting). Together with SCMRPG, this represents half the finalists originally chosen for the competition. This is a hard decision for many of them, as it's a chance for exposure, publicity, and critical acclaim that very few indie games ever receive. They aren't doing it because they think Super Columbine Massacre RPG is a good game - several have the same general opinion as I do, that the game is of poor quality.

They have sacrificed this opportunity on the principle that computer gaming is a an actual art form, a medium of expression and communication just as important and with as much potential as any other, and should be treated as such. The courts in the U.S. have recognized this so far in the last year. But it's slow being recognized as such by journalists, politicians, the general public... and the very people who are out there who are leading the fight to promote freedom of expression in other media.

Including Slamdance.

The double standard is no surprise, and it accompanies the creation or increasing popularity of any new medium. And I wouldn't really expect John Q. Public to start taking any new medium seriously until it has gotten around to proving itself in some way. However, I would expect the crusaders trying to protect or promote artistic expression and freedom of speech to be a few steps ahead of Mr. Public. Instead, Senator Yee and Mr. Baxter have reinforced the double standard, showing clearly greater respect towards older media.

In an interview at NextGeneration.com, Danny Ledonne (author of Super Columbine Massacre RPG) said, "Of course there is a double standard. This is all-too obvious. Michael Moore wins Oscars for his Columbine film. Gus Van Sant wins the Palm d'Orre at Cannes for his Columbine film. Danny Ledonne's videogame on the very same topic is kicked out of Slamdance. All three have critical content that looks at the possible causes for the shooting. One of them happens to have 16-bit graphics and a modicum of interactivity. One of them is called a 'videogame.' So there you go. "

John Brownlee of Wired.com today posted an interesting thought experiment, which he's wrapping his head around these issues in preparation for a more in-depth article. He asks a series of questions taking the negative view: IF games are not as valid a form of expression as other media, what makes it different? Since interactive entertainment includes all of the features of film, music, and the written word (after all, you can include movies, music, and text in games), then it MUST be the interactivity that sets it apart (a view espoused by famed movie reviewer Roger Ebert). This is also the feature that many politicians, lawyers, and journalists use to justify why games are more dangerous than other media.

Brownlee's next question is this: "If interactivity is what makes games less deserving of the right to be a medium of free artistic expression than other mediums, what are the repercussions for the future of art, which — with the evolution of cheap technology — continues to become more interactive in nearly all of its forms?"

Where do you draw the line? I've played a handful of videogames in the past which have had less interactivity than some major motion picture DVDs. Do movies on DVD lose their status as art, or do games with few interactive options magically become art?

I think the conclusion is obvious. If anything, the artistic potential of games is so broad that we have had a very difficult time harnessing it. The silver lining of all of this is that the debate may get some real attention. And maybe --- just maybe --- we may see this double standard start to dissapear.

In the meantime, I think Slamdance is going to have to consider carefully its position on games before deciding whether or not it will include the "Guerilla Game Developer" competition in future years.

Also, following indie games have withdrawn from the competition in protest, and I'd like to encourage folks to take a look at them and spread the word. They gave up a rare opportunity to take a stand. Not all are currently available, but at least some of the judges (many of whom are also indie developers) have found them worthy by way of their innovation or artistic merits:

* Braid
* flOw
* Everyday Shooter
* Toblo
* Once Upon a Time.
* Book And Volume


(Vaguely) related grousing:
* Do Games Matter?
* More Weigh-Ins On Super Columbine Massacre RPG
* Super Columbine Massacre RPG Too Hot For Slamdance
* Congressman Matheson Defends Anti-Videogame Bill

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Labels: Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:51 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
More Weigh-Ins On Super Columbine Massacre RPG:
More Super Columbine Massacre RPG fallout:

Greg Costikyan offers a rather different opinion from mine on the game. I disagree with him on a few points, but I respect his opinion. His contention is that SCMRPG is art, and I can agree with him there... just as I'd say the drawings of my 12-year-old daughter are art. Maybe not (yet) good art, but art. I feel that a lot of the value that he attributes to the game are elements that he brought with him, and are not inherent with the game itself.

Of course, that's the value of any kind of art --- it can act as a mirror to reflect one's own soul. But I'm also reminded of an old "Doctor Who" episode in which the TARDIS was left in an art gallery (thanks to Milieu.Zero for the YouTube link). In a cameo, John Cleese and a woman are commenting on the incredible artistic expression of the old police box, when the Doctor (and party) rushes into it and it vanishes. Cleese and the woman are unphased, and after a few moments the woman states, "Exquisite! Absolutely exquisite!"

It's kind of an old joke about art, that sometimes what we see and value are really just things we ourselves attribute to the work. Authors interviewed and confronted with such things often just shrug and admit they didn't consciously put this in there, but they also admit that such things may have been subconsciously part of their story. Author Stephen King only realized after his book was published that it was really his own cry for help, a metaphor for his drug addiction.

But where Costikyan sees the fantasy elements as something of a critique on game conventions, I see it as a lack of focus that weakens the proclaimed message of the game. And the Hell levels pretty much kick the legs out of any credability the game had. Even Costikyan agrees that if there are criticisms to be leveled at the game, this portion is the most worthy. My contention is simply that the game is a poor representative of how a "serious" game dealing with a controversial issue such as this should be done.

I'm not saying that Danny Ledonne shouldn't have tried (again, assuming his professed goal was truly his intent from the beginning). Again, I try and be supportive of indie gamemakers, especially those attempting to tackle more "grown up" subjects. But I think it was too tricky of a beast to handle for a first-time effort. It was just poorly done. It's really not the game I'd like to see put on a pedestal and granted the spotlight as a demonstration of how "serious" games can address sensitive topics.

Some other interesting developments and opinions have come up in the last 48 hours or so:

Ian Bogost and N'gai Croal (who hasn't played the game) have weighed in with opinion that the Slamdance opinion was cowardice, and the unwillingness of president Peter Baxter to accept games as a medium for anything more than "kid's stuff." In Bogost's opinion,

"In short, Baxter pulled the game because he was afraid of what would happen if he didn't. He pulled the game because he didn't want difficult, yet groundbreaking videogame-based expression to get in the way of his film festival. Baxter's actions reveal that videogames, in his mind, simply do not deserve the experimental, independent venue he provides for film."

This may be true. Bogost is a founding partner of Pursuasive Games, the guys that brought us the "serious parody" game, Airport Security. He's been a defender of Super Columbine Massacre RPG for a while, and a fierce contender that "interactive entertainment" can be a powerful medium of not just entertainment, but also of the communication of ideas.

I feel the same way.

I just feel that Slamdance backed the wrong horse in their exuberance to stir up some controversy. I'm not very comfortable with it being the poster child for how games can deal with important social issues.

UPDATE:
The game Braid was removed in protest to Slamdance's decision to drop SCMRPG. The creator, Jonathan Blow, admitted that while he personally did not like SCMRPG either, and while he supports the sponsor's decisions to not fund something they find morally reprehensible, he is protesting out of principle. As he writes:

"If left unchallenged, the expulsion of the Columbine game sets a precedent in the wrong direction. Dropping Braid out of the competition, while not a huge act, is the strongest protest I have the power to make."

Way to go, Jonathan!


(Vaguely) Related Weeping, Wailing, and Gnashing of Teeth:
* Super Columbine Massacre RPG Too Hot For Slamdance
* Do Games Matter?
* Indie Game To Get Blamed For Shooting Spree
* Why Are There So Many Violent Videogames?
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Labels: Politics, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:04 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Super Columbine Massacre RPG Too Hot For Slamdance
Kotaku is reporting that for the first time in its thirteen-year history, SlamDance (the controversial, irreverant counterpoint to the Sundance Indie Film Festival) is actually PULLING a finalist from its competition because it is too controversial. (The follow-up article is here.)

The culprit? Super Columbine Massacre RPG. The reported favorite game of gunman Kimveer Gill, who went on a shooting spree in Montreal last year. Reportedly, the game's designer didn't pursue the Slamdance competition - it was Slamdance coordinators themselves who requested that he submit his game. It sounds like the game's removal was a purely financial decision. Two of the festival's financial backers had pulled support because of the inclusion of this indie game among the finalists. Removing the game sounds like an obvious move to win back their support. Of course, the official claim is that it was on moral grounds. Slamdance president Peter Baxter claims, "There are moral obligations to consider here with this particular game in addition to the impact it could have on the Slamdance organization and its community"

So where do I stand on this?

I don't blame Slamdance for removing the game. You gotta do what you gotta do, sometimes, to survive. But I *will* say the blame is squarely on their shoulders for other reasons. Read more and I'll explain why.

About The Game
As far as Super Columbine Massacre RPG --- well. A few months ago I said I had no interest in playing it (which was true), and had no intentions to do so. But I was being asked by people about my opinion on the game, and I didn't want to offer one until I tried it for myself. So I downloaded it and tried it out for myself.

Danny Ledonne states that he intended the game to provoke thought and discussion, and to improve understanding of the event and what led Harris and Klebold to do the unthinkable. "The question at the center of the storm was an elusive one: `why did they do it?'... The lingering question—that grand burning query so many have tried to answer—is one I believe this game allows us to at least access in a more honest way," he states. "At the end of the day, the understanding of the Columbine school shooting is deepened and redefined. That is the real object of the game."

Great goals, and I applaud them if that was his true intention. Execution-wise... well. Lessee:

The students and teachers fight back, often with magical spells. Damage taken by the killers in these "fights" can be healed with hamburgers and hot dogs that are "dropped" by enemy students, which act as healing potions. Oh, and they gain levels through rapid succession of endless slaughter through the classrooms (potentially racking up a body count far in excess of the real event, as the police never show up until you are ready to end that phase of the game, and everyone in the school just waits around to fight you). I finally quit the game after the "aftermath montage" of photos and quotes from the real world... when the two boys are transported to HELL, where they get to fight a bunch of demons and zombies, with graphics and music lifted right out of the game "Doom." The boys even make a comment about how cool it is, and that it is just like their favorite videogame.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And this is supposed to be a thought-provoking and "honest" exploration into the minds of Klebold and Harris HOW, exactly? Maybe if I'd kept playing, I might have actually found a real answer to THAT question, but by that time I was bored and disgusted. Perhaps Ledonne was attempting to show that the boys lived in a fantasy world, and this was how they saw things and imagined what their demise would be like. But it really just comes off as a very amateurish mishmash of history, fantasy, and stuff pulled out of the air or thrown in because it was an RPG convention (you gotta face magic-users who can heal the enemies, right?). Playing it was about like sitting through a first-time writer's "soul-baring" reading of their Star Trek fanfic. You pray you can come up with a plausible imaginary emergency as an excuse to leave the room before too many others beat you to the door.

So as a game, it's crap. As an accurate depiction of the events at Columbine High School that day, it's pretty far from its mark. If I was to play the game without knowing anything about it, I'd assume it was a product of a high-school student's dark fantasy to relive the massacre as the killers. And as such, I'd say that while it was horrible, it was probably a healthier outlet than some other means of living out those fantasies. But I wouldn't recognize it as a tool for promoting discussion and understanding.

Ledonne claims that it has promoted a good deal of discussion on his website, so maybe the game actually succeeded at its stated goal. Maybe you don't need to hit very close for it to be "good enough." And to Ledonne's credit, he actually finished the game, and it's better than what I've seen from many first-time game developers. And, hey, it was even better than Trespasser!

So How Did It Become A Finalist?
I don't think Super Columbine Massacre was made a finalist on the merits of the game itself. I think it was pursued by Slamdance organizers, and selected as a finalist, purely for the sake of sensationalism and controversy. I don't know what games were submitted, but there were a lot of GREAT (and even thought-provoking) indie games that came out this year that would have been far worthier of the spotlight.

What I think happened was it was made a finalist not because it was good, but for the sheer sake of the fact that it was "edgy" and "controversial." It was a gratuitous bit of "naughtiness" to generate a stir. It would make publicity. It'd give them more of a "bad boy" image.

And it turned out to be too much for them.

Unfortunately, now we have a precedent set. If someone actually creates a GOOD game dealing with a uncomfortable / difficult theme, it will probably not be accepted because of the threat to pulled funding. And this may end up applying to film, as well.

Is it time to get an alternative-alternative indie festival? Probably not. But it's definitely a time for Slamdance to hunker down and figure out exactly what they are offering and why, and make sure their sponsors (and the public) understand this.

(Vaguely) related thought-jumbles for your descrambling:
* Indie Game to Get Blamed for Shooting Spree
* Airport Security Parody Game
* Why Are There So Many Violent Videogames?
* Do Games Matter?

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Labels: Politics, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:09 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Will I Be Taxed On My Holy Avenger Sword?
The big to-do this week is an article on C/Net News entitled, "IRS Taxation of Online Game Virtual Assets Inevitable." It quotes Dan Miller, a senior economist with the U.S. Congress' Joint Economic Committee. He said, "The question is when, not if, Congress and the IRS start paying attention to these issues (of the real-world monetary value of in-game items)." In other words, sooner or later, governments are going to start figuring out how to tax you for your entertainment. Well, beyond how much they already tax you.

Do Items In A Computer Game Have Real-World Value? Part 1.
Courtesy of "RMT" or Real Money Trading, it's very possible to calculate the value of virtual property in online, persistent games (specifically Massively Multiplayer Online games). I think companies engaging in RMT are the ones that are at greatest risk of becoming extinct.

I did an exercise about a year ago with a FREE, web-based game, "Kingdom of Loathing." While it was free, you could get a unique item (limited-edition, only available for one month only) by donating $10. In Kingdom of Loathing, the currency of the realm is meat. (Yes, it's a very silly game). These "Items-of-the-month" routinely sold in auction for about 6 million meat at the time. So you could figure an exchange rate of 600,000 KoL meat to the US Dollar. Though I don't know how many people actually "cashed out" and sold items for real-world money to make the exchange two-way. But still, it was a neat idea.

And freaky.

Do Items In A Computer Game Have Real-World Value? Part 2.
But that's largely academic to me. And, I suspect, to the majority of players out there.

The only money that I exchange in these games is my monthly subscription bill, which has already been taxed when I earned it, thankyouverymuch, and I'm sure it gets taxed on the other side. While certain virtual worlds might be the exceptions to the rule (I'm thinking Second Life and Entropia, specifically), I think the vast majority of players are like me. We're playing for entertainment, not to earn cash. The idea that I would get taxed by the IRS for defeating a dragon and getting my new magic sword of uberness would be more than enough to make me quit Massively Multiplayer Online games altogether. I doubt I'd be alone.

While my Sword of Uberness may theoretically have some monetary value at some auction site, I'm only dimly aware of it. For me, the grand total of the value of the sword to me is how much it helps me lay the smack down on some virtual monsters.

What's A Poor, Downtrodden Tax Agency To Do?
Technically, if you are in the U.S.A., you already have a tax liability if you sell your Boots of Butt-Kicking for cash. In practice, I doubt many people actually report it on their income taxes each year. Although as the article points out, according to a 1913 provision in the U.S. tax code, even bartering goods or services which have inequal worth on the open market is technically a taxable event. Difficult and expensive to enforce, of course, which is why they don't bother unless it's a very large exchange. But they brought up the case of the guy who exchanged the paperclip for a house.

I expect that if Miller is actually a fan of virtual worlds, as the article claims, then his comments shouldn't be interpreted as a cry to invite the IRS to set up office in Azeroth, so much as an announcement to the community to make preparations so that we can frame it in a way that's favorable to us. More likely, he's looking to limit what could be considered "taxable events" to actual cashing-out. So we non-gold farmers don't have much to worry about. He's simply stating something that we already know: Hoping the U.S. government doesn't notice is not the answer, and trusting the U.S. government to "do the right thing" when it does get around to it is about like trusting your average five-year-old to guard a plate of cookies all day.

Why I Am Not Worried
The problem is in enforcement. I mean, if I'm a Chinese "player" (or run a sweatshop in China employing "players" to farm gold for me at pennies an hour), playing a game based in the U.S., and sell a power-leveled character to some guy in Germany for Euros... who do I owe the tax to? And even if the U.S. government decides it is owed a piece of the pie, how will it collect?

It's the answer to THOSE tricky questions that makes people worry abut intrusive measures being instituted in online, virtual worlds by tax agencies. Could every gold piece (or unit of meat) you acquire get reported to Uncle Sam (or, likely, multiple tax agencies). Could a Swedish player in an American game getting twinked by a Brazillian guildmate could theoretically be surprised by three different countries (not to mention local tax agencies) claiming he's liable for taxes?

I doubt it, at least without LOTS of additional legislation happening in my country. For two reasons:

Number one - the costs of setting up enforcement in this wild, unfamiliar territory are prohibitively high for tax egencies. Unless they expect the revenue to exceed all the effort they have to take dealing with multiple countries, currencies, tracking tons of data and values of items, it's not going to be worth it. It's far easier and cheaper to try and capture what they can on "cash out" events, even though it suffers from decentralization. A couple of high-profile audits should do the trick.

More importantly, if I was running an MMO and found myself having to face the cost of complying to government tax regulations for in-game items, I'd realize that it would kill my business two different ways (cost of implementation, and 90% of my player base leaving for the greener pastures of non-persistant gaming). So I'd quickly make RMT against my terms of service, slap "Intended fo Entertainment Purposes Only" on the box and splash screen, claim that NOTHING in the game has real-world value, and let the IRS worry about hunting down the violators.

Problem solved for the game, and problem solved for most players. The only ones who are now out-of-luck are the guys profiting from RMT, and the tax agencies. From the perspective of the tax agencies, that would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Either way, the players win.

Labels: Mainstream Games, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:14 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Combat Games Trigger "Fight Or Flight" Insticts. Media Shocked.
The study itself seems like it was performed in a lab built upon the slopes of Mount Obvious. The SPIN on it by the media is... predictable but annoying.

"Violent Video Game Effects Linger In Brain"

So these videogames trigger the "fight or flight" response. Ummmm.... well, mission accomplished, pat the designers on the back, as that was the intention. Just as thrill rides at the amusement park are designed to trigger these instinctive reactions. The most interesting and noteworthy part of the study quoted in the article is that other high-excitement games (like racing games) don't trigger the same emotional response. That's not exactly surprising, but I tend to think that adrenaline is adrenaline.

But of course, the spin hints that this primitive reflex which enabled our ancestors to survive being eaten by tigers is turning teenagers into violent, angry machines. I'm exaggerating the title and the opening sentence, but that's definitely where it's going. I mean, it "lingers in the brain," and increases "activity in areas of the brain linked to emotional arousal and decreased responses in regions that govern self-control."

Somehow this reminds me of the science fair project about the Dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide, which was actually a little psychology experiment about how gullible people are. Forty-three out of fifty people surveyed favored banning water after hearing the shocking facts!

In other political news, Illinois has failed in its appeal of its anti-videogame law. The courts have once again demonstrated that just because the medium is new and popular with the younger generation doesn't make it an exception to Constitutional law. But the state of Illinois apparently doesn't have much respect for the court anyway, as they still haven't paid up the over half-million dollars they were ordered to pay BY said court to cover legal fees for the. According to this article, they haven't provided an official reason, but some of the excuses sound a little bit like, "Oh, I left my wallet in my other pants." (Hat tip to GamePolitics.com for that one)


(Vaguely) related junk
* Illinois Video Game Ban Ruled Unconstitutional
* Why Are There So Many Violent Videogames?
* Congressman Matheson Defends Anti-Videogame Bill

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Attack of the Zombie Game Legislation!
Oh, boy. Here we go again. The "Videogames Are Porn" bill is back here in Utah. Swell.

Won't someone please shoot this horrible piece of attempted anti-game legislation in the head? Because, zombie-like, it keeps rising from the dead.

It died in committee. They changed some "ors" into "ands" and snuck it back through when nobody was looking.

It died on the Utah Senate floor. Hogue anticipated bringing it back.

Then Hogue lost his bid for state senate (THANKFULLY). So he got a buddy to introduce it for him, all the while spouting almost verbatim Jack Thompson hyperbole as if it were fact. And now it's passed committee again. In spite of warnings from the Attorney General and others that it would most likely, like the similar state bills before it, get overturned for being unconstitutional after an expensive court battle.


(Vaguely) related tales of battling this undead monster:
* Games As Porn Bill Quietly Fails
* Games As Porn Bill Passes House
* Fragged the Bad Bill
* Cool! I get to be a FELON now!
* My Rant Is Printed

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:03 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Gamers Lost The Election
Game Life has a great rundown of just how horribly gamers (and taxpayers) lost Tuesday's election in the United States.

A quote: 'Did any significant number of American voters actually cast their ballot yesterday based on what the candidate thinks of video games? Likely not. But free-speech advocates still face an uphill battle in the months and years ahead as long as censorship in the guise of "protecting the children" remains a politically winning issue.'

It continues with a detailed run-down of the results.

It's dissapointing. Two more years of blowing through taxpayer money to defend laws that attack the Bill of Rights. Joy.

Gamers: Your Election Results

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:31 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Don't Forget To Vote.
If you are a U.S. citizen and registered to vote... tomorrow's your big chance.

The average gamer is around 30 years old. Maybe not a very politically active age, but old enough to vote and make a difference. Tired of having games and the freedom of speech attacked by political leaders seeking a quick grab on "family values" points? Make your voice heard!

For a couple of guides as to who may be the most and least friendly towards technology and gaming, here's some useful info:

http://news.com.com/Technology+voter+guide+2006+-+Grading+Congress+on+tech+cred/2009-1040_3-6131719.html

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/13/the-political-game-do-game-laws-help-or-hurt-candidates/

Alas, in my state, the "digital Joe McCarthy," Orrin Hatch, looks to be ahead in the polls against democratic challenger Pete Ashdown, a technologically savvy business owner (AND A GAMER!). Too bad. I don't expect an upset... but it would be cool.

As always, have fun!

UPDATE:
As another resource, here's today's column at GamePolitics.com,
"Election Day Special Coverage - Races We’ll Be Watching”

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:23 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Jack Thompson: PWNED!
So Wacky Jacky Thompson had his "major coup" in court, when the judge ordered Take 2 to present the game to him and let him actually PLAY the videogame before deciding whether or not it should be banned in the state of Florida as a public nuisance. After only two hours of play, with some cheat codes provided by the publisher, he reached his verdict.

Quote from Niero over at Destructoid.com:

The judge said “There’s nothing in the game that you wouldn’t see on TV every night,” and that he “wouldn’t want his kids to play the game, but that shouldn’t mean that the game won’t ship.”

The quick-and-dirty rundown here:
http://www.destructoid.com/jack-thompson-ruling

A more complete version is being live-blogged at this very moment:
"Ship It, WalMart - Bully Is No Worse Than What You See on TV Every Night."

Many thanks to GamePolitics.com for keeping everyone up-to-date on this interesting event.

UPDATE: Jack Thompson Calls Judge's Actions "Childish" and "Spiteful"
Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man. THANK YOU JACK THOMPSON! Not only is this guy worth his weight in gold to Take-Two marketing, but I find it hard to believe that these antics do anything but harm his position. But they keep putting cameras and microphones in his face, so maybe they don't.

Also, this came in this morning from VideoGameVoters.com, who has asked this to get posted on various gaming blogs :

In a ruling issued October 11, 2006, Judge Robin J. Cauthron, US District Judge,
Western District of Oklahoma, handed down a preliminary injunction halting the
implementation of Oklahoma's law which prohibits the sale of video games depicting
"inappropriate" violence to minors. In the decision, the Court stated that
plaintiffs presented strong arguments that the Act contains unconstitutional
content-based restrictions and that the Act's language is unconstitutionally vague.

"This marks the ninth Court decision in the past five years to enjoin restrictions
on video games," said Doug Lowenstein, president of the ESA, the trade group
representing U.S. computer and video game publishers. "We're grateful for the
preliminary injunction and look forward to prevailing in the effort to permanently
strike down the law."

Judge Robin J. Cauthron, US District Judge, Western District of Oklahoma also
stated, "It was apparent that Plaintiffs [video game advocates] are substantially
likely to prevail in this case even if the Act is subjected to a lower level of
scrutiny."

So I guess we're now 10-and-0, if you include this afternoon's victory against Jack Thompson's attempt to get Bully banned. Nice winning streak, though I fear what will happen if we can't keep a perfect score.

You know what would be awesome? If the politicians wanting some election-year "family values" points and ambulance-chaser lawyers looking for a big class-action score would just shut up and let us play.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:31 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Couldn't say it better myself...
Tycho and Gabe over at PennyArcade have an excellent political comic and commentary on the proposed "Truth in Video Game Ratings Act." It's entitled, "Censorship Made Easy."

Good ol' Lum the Mad expressed his opinion in an even more concise post which unfortunately only makes sense to the choir he's preaching to. But it's dead-on.

I don't know if I can add much to what is being said. While I don't necessarily agree with Tycho's conspiracy theory, he's very right in that controlling the media to a large degree controls (or at least powerfully influences) public opinion. I don't give Congress that much credit for being so forward-thinking. But there are already several games out there that lampoon or criticise U.S. politics and policy --- that's what Free Speech was REALLY supposed to be about in the Bill of Rights, anyway.

Sure, the ESRB system could be improved. We can find better / cheaper ways to do it. Like most of the videogame bills coming out of the national and state legislatures this year, this one is a ham-handed piece of political grandstanding that misses its intended mark. We're getting them because they are considered to be "low political risk" because of the belief that gamers don't vote.

Get out there and let your elected officials and political candidates KNOW how you feel about this.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:05 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Banned Book Week
Man - let's hear it for Freedom of Speech. Libraries are having a "banned book week" - a celebration and selected readings from books that have been banned in the U.S. over the years.

Banned Books Week
September 23-30

During the week, bookstores and libraries across the nation feature special displays and readings from books that have been banned or threatened throughout the years. Among the frequently challenged works are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the Bible, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and the Harry Potter series. Open your mind to a banned book and celebrate your freedom to read – not only during Banned Books Week but every week.

This isn't directly videogames-related, and I don't expect to see "Grand Theft Auto" so celebrated 50 years from now. But it's nice to see a triumph of freedom of speech once in a while.

By comparison, I was listening to the Utah judiciary comittee broadcast last night (the MP3 version, courtesy of GamePolitics.com, since I have avoided installing Real Audio on any of my machines), and listened to one lady protest that we should spend "whatever it takes" to protect our children - citing A.G. Shurtleff's note that anti-videogame legislation has failed in every state and cost lots of taxpayer money.

While that's a great battle-cry - I mean, who WOULD disagree with protecting children regardless of cost? - one has to ask, "Protect them from what?" I mean, sure, maybe we should spend billions of dollars protecting them from the monster under the bed and in the closet, too. I think that threat is just as real as the "threat of violent videogames" - after all, once in a blue moon, the boogeyman is frighteningly real (and only barely classifiable as human). But I'd rather concentrate our efforts and money at targeting those real threats than wasting it tilting at windmills.

So the book-banning mentality is alive and well. Ah, well.

Anyway - enjoy a banned book this week! Maybe I'll read some of the Bible. Though it's pretty violent, full of rape and murder, undoubtably inappropriate for children according to this tidal wave of legislation.

And I wish J.K. Rowling would hurry up with the next Harry Potter book!

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:50 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
So much for that idea.
I knew it would happen, but I still held out some vain hope that maybe, just maybe, this time would be different. Maybe this time the media and anti-videogame folks would see that:

#1 - Gill, the shooter, was an ADULT, not a minor.
#2 - His writings showed deep-seated mental disturbance that went far, far beyond his attraction to violent media,
#3 - The videogame in question was one amature designer's indie effort intended to help increase dialog and understanding of the event, clearly not some slick product designed to generate millions by marketing it to minors (not that Gill was a minor),
#4 - The sensationalization of Columbine by the media was probably as big a factor as anything else in Gill's disturbed psychology (not that I blame the media coverage of columbine either - it's just that happened to be the seed that lodged in Gill's diseased brain).

But no... reading even the local news, it takes only three sentences before launching into a discussion of whether or not playing videogames is what caused Gill to go on a shooting spree. Although, to give some credit, it at least offers a balanced set of views. It's just bizarre that you'd get people in this day and age still blaming demons, and claiming (as Jack Thompson recently put it in response to a Business Week article) that we're "an industry with blood on its hands."

News Flash: It's the 21st century. Conventional media is blaming games for their drop in popularity - true or not, that is how pervasive videogames have become. At this point, I'd be far more surprised to find in a random, small sampling a male under the age of 30 who ISN'T at least an occasional game-player. It's like finding someone who "never" watches television.

Note to baby-boomers: You guys had Woodstock --- we have Mario. Get over it. It's a different world now. What IS the same is that there are screwed-up people all over the planet - always have been, and always will be barring some miracle.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:48 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Indie Game To Get Blamed For Shooting Spree
Well, it hasn't yet, but I expect it will. (Update: Yes, it did. See below.) The video game connection to another school killing spree is already getting highlighted in the press: Click for the CNN report.

Kimveer Gill, age 25, decided to do a shooting spree at a Montreal college, leaving one woman dead, six people in critical condition, and twelve others wounded. He was killed by police gunfire, apparently the way he claimed he wanted to go out of the world on a website, in a hail of bullets. And it also sounded like he had a fascination with the Columbine killings of seven years ago.

He posted on a forum that one of his favorte games was "Super Columbine Massacre," (I expect the website to dissapear within HOURS, but as of right now it's up). Super Columbine Massacre is a free indie game, an "RPG" based around the infamous 1999 event. Now, first off, I've never played it. I've read the review by Amber Night, who I must give kudos to for braving the game. She's apparently a bigger man than me.

The game was created with RPG Maker, the same engine that was used to build the wonderful, kid-friendly indie game, "Aveyond."

I expect to hear Jack Thompson say something within hours. I expect that some of the sympathy for poor struggling indies against this tide of anti-videogame legislation is going to evaporate. Or, it could be that because this was a game created for free by hobbyists and NOT some great big corporation with lots of lawsuit potential, it could simply dissapear. Only time will tell. I would love to believe that the media and politicians will simply understand that Gill's fascination with the game was a symptom of his mental illness, and not the cause. But I won't hold my breath.

In the "Artist's Statement," the developer of Super Columbine Massacre explains his purpose for creating the game :

"The question at the center of the storm was an elusive one: `why did they do it?'...

"The lingering question—that grand burning query so many have tried to answer—is one I believe this game allows us to at least access in a more honest way. Beyond the simple platitudes and panaceas of gun control, media ratings/censorship, bully prevention programs, and parental supervision remains a glaring possibility: that the society we have created is deeply moribund. This game asks more of its audience than rudimentary button-pushing and map navigation; it implores introspection. This is why the game’s forum is equally important to the SCMRPG project. Through it, people from six continents and all walks of life are discussing the game itself and the incident it is based on. Some of them confess childhood pain or share personal feelings on the shooting. Some of them sustain vulgar diatribes or accuse the creator of wrongdoing. Some of them discuss the game’s social implications in a broader context. At the end of the day, the understanding of the Columbine school shooting is deepened and redefined. That is the real object of the game."

As to the depiction of the events, the author claims:

"I knew I had to be true to the events of the Columbine school shooting—as true as I could be while maintaining respect for the tragically deceased; it was a more delicate balance of personal morality than many of my detractors imagine I took. Since 1999 so many mistruths have been spoken and political postures have been struck in the wake of the shooting that I didn’t want to fall into the speculative pitfalls of much of the media’s coverage. The game had to be told from the perspective of the shooting’s greatest enigmas of all: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. They left behind many of their thoughts—some frightening, some deplorable, some comical, and some deeply enraged."

Amber Night's review indicates that in her opinion, the artist failed in his mission, but that the game poses some interesting questions of its own:

"And yet, while I believe the execution to have failed miserably, I cannot help but wonder if the attempt was at some level worthy... So I pose the Super Columbine Massacre RPG Paradox: Could it be that Super Columbine Massacre RPG had to be made, in order for us to understand that Super Columbine Massacre RPG shouldn’t have been made? A couple of weeks ago I thought I knew the answer. But as distasteful and poorly executed as I find the game, I just don’t know."

Me? I was in the videogame industry when Columbine happened. We'd done some games with some somewhat cartoony violence about cars with guns in a car-combat tournament - the Twisted Metal series. And of course, the media locked into the fact that one of the kids was a big fan of DOOM (shoot, what kid with a computer in the mid-90's WASN'T a fan of Doom?). Because so much about the kids, neighborhood, and the school seemed, on the surface, like the stereotypically perfect Cleaver kids that white middle-class America imagines as its ideal, the hunt for some reason behind the murder spree went turned into a frenzy. The videogame connection was the one "abnormality" (at least to press and politicians), and it included guns and violence.

Like everyone else in America, I was astonished and horrified. The anti-videogame sentiment hit a high swing, and we were hit like a ton of bricks. Our publisher for a current game in mid-development quickly came in with a demand that we completely revise the game, re-creating its design from scratch. On top of that, if I mentioned my profession to people at the time, I was frequently met with stares as they tried to fathom whether or not I was deliberately turning their children into psychopathic monsters. It was a hard time to be in the games industry.

At work, we quietly asked the question of each other (again, with no answers), "What if Twisted Metal had been those kids' favorite game?"

So now it's seven years later, and it's an indie game. An indie game very specifically depicting the violence of that day in 1999 - a game that puts you in the shoes of Harris and Klebold, inviting you to see the world from their perspective. A game that not only tells the story of the murder of innocent people, but invites you to participate in the telling.

Sorry, I can't take it. It's too much for me. The scars are still too fresh. That's a little bit to close to home. I can't bring myself to watch the new movie about the World Trade Center for the same reason.

But here's where I'm gonna go out on a limb and I'm going to probably get flamed for it. But I'm going to say it anyway. I have zero interest in playing Super Columbine Massacre. I had zero two months ago, and I still have zero today. But I personally cannot pass judgement on the game, having not played it. Maybe the artist's statement is genuine, and maybe it was just a smokescreen. Maybe it was in poor taste to release it, regardless of intent. I don't know.

Either way, I am vehement in my position that WE MUST LIVE IN A SOCIETY WHERE WE ARE FREE TO MAKE GAMES LIKE THIS.

We must live in a society where people can use the powerful medium of interactive simulation and storytelling to provide serious messages. Like this newly announced indie game about drunk driving. Or maybe the messages may be simple, kid-friendly themes like the value of friendship, and being brave in the face of adversity. Or it could question the nation's methods of fighting the war on terror (as did one web-game I played about a year or so ago). Or maybe they are religious messages inviting the player to discover Jesus or Allah or Buddah or The Great Green Arkleseizure.

Or maybe it simply invites the player to take a walk on the dark side and play a car-stealing hoodlum. Or whatever other purile garbage you can come up with. People can call painted toilet seats art, too.

You may not agree with the message. You may not think of it as art or worthwhile communication. You may certainly believe (and I *DO*!!!) that many of these games are not appropriate for children, for whatever reason. That's fine. You SHOULD take a stand and form an opinion, and pass judgement for your own sake (and feel free to communicate that judgement to others). I certainly disagree with a lot of the messages found in books in the library or movies in available at the DVD store, too. I dislike the easy availability of pornography and the trend towards gratuitous violence across the whole spectrum of media in this country.

But I believe strongly that people should be free to communicate these messages - even if they do it poorly and clumsily. And I believe that video games are a powerful medium for doing just that (Especially the poor and clumsy part). It's got at least as much potential for good as for evil.

And the indies, who have more artistic control over their products with their tiny (often one-man) teams, are perhaps better positioned to take advantage of this medium and use it to explore more difficult (and grown-up) topics.

Kimveer was obviously a man who was deeply disturbed. I am horrified by his actions, and my heart goes out to the victims and their families. I wish there was some simple answer that we could uncover that would help us understand not only how something like this could happen, but also to prevent it from ever happening again. I have to trust the scary world and my children as I send my two daughters off to school every morning. Events like this scare the crud out of me. It boggles my imagination, and I don't even want to think about it, retreating instead to a false belief that, "Oh, it could never happen to me or my family."

It does scare me. But I also know that there are no easy answers. There hasn't been for all of human existence on this planet.

Scapegoats are not solutions. Just this once, can we avoid hunting for one?

UPDATE: Ah, well, can't say I'm surprised...

Labels: Politics, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:19 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
Congressman Matheson Defends Anti-Videogame Law
Time to wax political again!

Yesterday I received a snail-mail letter from Congressman Jim Matheson, who represents my state of Utah. I expect a lot of people from the state of Utah who have expressed concern about the Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act received the same letter. I thought I'd share the bulk of it here, as well as my concerns which remain unaddressed by this letter. For the most part, it reiterates the same rhetoric being bandied about in defense of the laws that are being enacted (and, so far, universally shot down as being Unconstitutional) in states throughout the nation. It contains some major inaccuracies and rather offensive comparisons, but I'll include the text here for people to read on their own.

Bolded sections are my own emphasis.

-----------

"Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding video games. I appreciate your interest in the issues facing our country and state, and I am glad for the opportunity to respond to your inquiry. By contacting me on issues important to you, you help me better represent Utah in Congress.

"I understand your concerns about the Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act. Parents should be the first line of defense when it comes to children, but parents simply cannot be with their children at all times and I believe there is a reasonable place for the government and the industry to work together to help families.

"Today, video games are by far the most popular activity for kids, and most games are probably fine for anyone to play. However, given that 190 million video game units were sold in 2005 in the U.S., there's ample room for concern as to what young kids can actually buy in the store. As you know, most video games are labeled with a rating determined by an industry panel called the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB). Ratings range from "EC" for Early Childhood to "T" for Teen, while games rated "M" for Mature are not intended for those under age 17 and the "AO" or Adult-Only rating, is for those 18 and over. Yet, young children are still widely able to gain access to video games without parental consent.

"A 2004 Federal Trade Commission report found that 69% of unaccompanied 13-16 year-olds in the study were able to purchase "M" rated video games from retailers. The nonprofit National Institute on Media and the Family recently published its tenth annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card. The report card included the results of a survey of more than 600 students ranging from 4th - 12th grade, conducted in classrooms. Almost half (45%) said they have bought M-rated games and 7 out of 10 children reported playing M-rated games.

"For my part, I have introduced bipartisan legislation with Congressman Rick Renzi of Arizona called the Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act. I think it presents a simple approach to ensuring that kids can no longer purchase adult-rated content. It also keeps th e government out of the business of assessing content by using the industry's own ratings system.

"The Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act, HR 5345, would require all retailers to check identification of any children trying to buy or rent Mature-rated or Adults Only-rated games. It also required that ratings system explanations be posted in stores. However, the Video Games Ratings Enforcment Act does not prevent a parent or any adult from buying any available game nor does it legislate which games can or should be stocked in retail outlets. It simply helps to ensure that children may only purchase age appropriate content without parental permission. You may also want to read a copy of the actual bill, which you can find at http://thomas.loc.gov/.

"Most Americans are very comfortable insisting that retailers verify the age of people who want to purchase alcohol or cigarettes because we have decided as a society that those products are only appropriate for adults. I know that as a parent, I am glad that retailers help me by performing this service. I do not doubt that at one point in time, many retailers objected to point of sale restrictions for alcohol or tabacco, but I believe that retailers would now readily acknowledge the value of this important service."

"In the case of video games, the entertainment software industry has itself acknowledged that some games - many of which are best sellers - are really only for adults. Therefore, it seems reasonable to insist that retailers only sell adult-rated games to adults. The industry and retailers have tried to develop voluntary policies to address some of these issues which is commendable, but I believe that Congress should do more to help families."

"Again, thank you for sharing your concerns with me. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact my office. "

-------

Okay. These bills have have been breeding like bunny-rabbits during this election year, because they are not yet considered politically damaging yet. After all, only kids play videogames (right?), and kids don't vote. Well, in the minds of our leaders, I suppose.

So I'm pretty much reiterating the same points I've brought up before, but here I go again:

"I believe that there is a reasonable place for the government and the industry to work together to help families"

There is, for the industry. And it's already there and doing it. As to the government coming in and mandating it - I'm sorry. I'd rather be allowed choose my own babysitters; the price the U.S. government charges is FAR too high.

"Most video games are labeled with a rating by... the Entertainment Software Ratings Board."

WRONG. Most video games are NOT SO LABELED. Most video game makers cannot afford it. The ESRB rates "over 1000 games per year." For one game, Neverwinter Nights, we exceeded that number in free, fan-created modules alone (some of which very well should have earned an AO rating, I might add!). There's at least an equal number of free FLASH videogames coming out in the United States alone. Even if you restrict it to just commercial games - I have no actual numbers, but Big Fish Games has been advertising a new game every day on their site, almost none of which are rated by the ESRB. Even modestly assuming that represents maybe a third of the non-retail-store games that are released each month (most of which are crap and will be lucky to sell a single copy), that would mean that half the games sold in the U.S. do not carry such a label, and many could not afford to do so. And that's not including the "free" video games that are being used for commercial or political advertisement.

The proposed bill states quite clearly:
"(a) Conduct Prohibited- It shall be unlawful for any person to ship or otherwise distribute in interstate commerce, or to sell or rent, a video game that does not contain a rating label, in a clear and conspicuous location on the outside packaging of the video game, containing an age-based content rating determined by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board."

In other words, anything that can be called a "Video Game" is ILLEGAL to be shared with another person in any way (well, across state boundaries, but the states are already trying to fix that loophole) unless it contains an ESRB rating, which costs a minimum of $5,000 (and you KNOW the price is going to go way up if this bill goes through, which I pray it does not).

This bill is obviously targeting what gets sold at Wal*Mart - but that represents only a slender fraction of what is becoming a MAJOR MEDIUM of not only expression and entertainment, but for communication of ideas, marketing, and yes - political commentary and campaigning. The bill is more than a chilling effect on an entertainment medium - it is the out-and-out destruction of a Constitutionally protected, increasingly popular and powerful medium of expression. Only those who can gain a significant buck out of it will be allowed to participate, thankyouverymuch.

Shall we apply these same standards to other media? How about we start with a written word?

"Video Games Ratings Enforcment Act does not prevent a parent or any adult from buying any available game nor does it legislate which games can or should be stocked in retail outlets. "

Directly? No. Indirectly? Big time! It's called "The Chilling Effect." Look it up.

"Yet, young children are still widely able to gain access to video games ... 69% of unaccompanied 13-16 year-olds in the study were able to purchase "M" rated video games from retailers. "

Okay, I guess we're dealing with semantics here. When I think "young children," I'm not thinking of of those in the upper 25% of the age bracket that constitutes a "minor." I have trouble calling a 16-year-old a "child" unless I'm feeling particularly snarky, but whatever.

"Almost half (45%) said that they have bought M-rated games and 7 out of 10 children reported playing M-rated games."

In other words, nearly half (2.5 out of the 5.5, or about 45%) who didn't buy the games themselves still ended up playing them? So how did they get access to them? Borrowed from a friend? Wouldn't that make the friend a distributor, and subject that friend's family to a potential $5000 fine per violation under this bill? Well, okay, not unless the friend's family lives in another state, and maybe not if no money changed hands.

But still, this has so MANY levels of wrong. But there's more that's not being said...

The other thing these studies are also showing (and there have been SEVERAL of them) is that the industry is improving in its voluntary efforts at enforcement. So is the movie industry, which for many years allowed anyone who wasn't obviously a ten-year-old access to rated "R" movies. This is all VOLUNTARY - the movie industry is policing itself. And depending on who you believe, game sales are doing MUCH of a lot better than, say, DVD sales of inappropriately-rated material.

But that's why the polticians are striking now. The iron is hot but cooling rapidly, and they are most likely well-aware of the fact that the issue won't be nearly as full of political capital in 4 years.

"Most americans are very comfortable insisting that retailers verify the age of people who want to purchase alcohol or cigarettes because we have decided as a society that those products are only appropriate for adults."

HELLO!!!!! We're talking SUBSTANCES here which have been proven to be physically addictive AND can can cause damage to one's health, and judgement, which can cause death! And you are trying to compare these to Pac-Man?

We're not talking substances here. And we do not require that everyone who serves someone else a glass of water submit reams of paperwork and pay a $5000 fee to have that water labeled to prove it's okay to serve it to a minor when the neighborhood kids come to play with your children.

We're comparing apples to power-drills here. And I'm a little dismayed to see this hyperbolic comparison get made.

"The entertainment software industry has itself acknowledged that some games ... are really only for adults."

Right. And many writers will acknowledged that their books are only intended for adults, too. For that matter, this blog is not intended for young children, either, even though I do keep it relatively clean. This is NOT an invitation to have the government step in and regulate things at the expense of writers and publishers everywhere!

I am frankly astonished at this attempt at legislation, but I'm getting used to being astonished these days. I will attribute this more to ignorance than malice in many cases, but it is the job of our leaders to adequately research these issues AND to understand possible unintended consequences before drafting potential law that will shape our future. And it clearly hasn't been done with these instances of knee-jerk legislation.


(Many thanks to GamePolitics.com for the useful links!)

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:41 PM (Permalink) 13 comments links to this post

 
Take-Two Should Put Jack Thompson On Their Payroll
Seriously.

If they haven't already.

This is totally the kind of publicity they need: Protest March Against Take-Two?

This will probably increase Bully's sales by 25%. And a whole bunch of kids will want it, because it's so FORBIDDEN. Jack Thompson is the one marketing it to kids, fer cryin' out loud!

Oh, well. If he can be in charge of a self-fulfilling prophecy, then he can assure himself a position in the upcoming class-action lawsuit. Because you KNOW he can't wait to blame every bit of schoolyard violence from now until his own funeral on this one videogame. The sooner he raises the stink about it, the sooner he can get the lawsuits going.

But in the meantime, he's really boosting Take-Two's pre-sales. Well, as soon as Wal*Mart will offer it for pre-sale. Guess he wants them to have as much money as possible so he can sue them for it later.

What a weird world we live in!

Labels: Mainstream Games, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:51 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
40% of TV Viewers Are Addicted
An in-depth study, performed by my offices over the last FIFTEEN years, have now found conclusive proof that 40% of all Television Watchers are actually ADDICTED to television.

As part of this study, we've also developed a therapy program that has cured over 90% of television addicts!

If you suspect that, or someone you love, MAY be addicted to television watching, please GIVE ME YOUR MONEY and we'll help! Our program will not only determine if you are an addict, but we will also be able to determine when you are cured. Do not trust anyone else to make this determination, we've spent FIFTEEN YEARS at this, we're the experts. We even bolded the number FIFTEEN. Sure we were doing all kinds of other things during those fifteen years, but we thought about it at least once or twice during that time.

I expect the media to pick up news of this moneymaking scheme.... er, I mean, this astounding discovery... any minute now and quote these statistics as FACT. Just like they did with this quack... er, I meaned, this esteemed researcher. Because I, too, am an expert. I have a college degree, and I've seen people watch TV my whole life.

I mean, isn't it brilliant to be both the one to diagnose an invisible illness AND be the one to provide treatment? If Doctor Maressa Orzack can do it, why can't I? I can pose for photos, too, with my hand under my chin in a "Thinker" pose.

Isn't this EXACTLY the same scam that unscrupulous "fortune teller" con artists perform on their believing customers? They keep predicting dark fates that can be prevented if you pay them money to perform cleansing rituals and crap?

Yeah. I expect to become rich and famous any moment now. Any moment....

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:32 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Political Intrigue!
The latest anti-videogame bill (co-written by the wannabe King of Torts himself, Wacky Jacky Thompson) in Louisiana has just been blocked by a U.S. District judge. Apparently applying fuzzy, subjective definitions to violence in videogames and then throwing it in a bin labed 'porn' just isn't going to cut Constitutional mustard. The politicians keep sending up these horrible laws, and so far the industry has managed to keep knocking them down. But we shouldn't have to.

I'm fairly convinced, after seeing some of the deception that took place with a similar bill that almost passed here in Utah, that the politicians really don't give a crap about the real issues, but are simply garnering "family values" points that seem to be free of political consequences. After all, only children play videogames, and children don't vote, right?

But you've heard me rant about this before. Once or Twice (*GRIN*). Ranting on a blog is all fun and everything, but this year we took things a little bit further and contributed in a hopefully-not-too-insignificant way to givin' the ol' First Amendment a hand.

Crashing the Party Party
I found out that David Hogue, who sponsored the Utah bill that lumped violent videogames into the "Materials Harmful to Minors" (read: pornography) law, was running for the state Senate the same day they were having the Republican Caucus meetings here in Utah. Well, I'm not a Republican. But I figured I'd do what I could to help get him removed from any position of authority so he could threaten more harm.

So I crashed the Republican Party party. It was just around the corner, at my neighbor's house. So my wife and I, having NO clue what to expect (I vaguely remembered hearing about how those worked in a political science class in college and a civics class in High School), showed up. There was free food and lots of fliers and handouts. Oh, and a request for donations. Knowing that the donations could go to support Orrin Hatch's bid for re-election, I didn't donate.

Every time they said, "fellow Republicans," I felt a twinge of guilt. I'm not from a rival party trying to spy on anyone or anything (like that would have done any good!) I'm just independent. I had heard that you didn't NEED to be a registered Republican to attend these meetings, but as the meeting continued I began to worry if you could go to Federal prison for Impersonating a Republican.

Fortunately, the rules were reiterated so I could breathe a sigh of relief. You did NOT need to be a registered Republican in order to participate in this caucus meeting, but if you were elected as an officer or a delegate, you had to either be a member or sign up for the Republican party at the end of the meeting. I deferred. However, I did get to cast my vote for delegates and officers, and I was asked to help count the ballots after the votes. BOY did that feel weird. Fortunately, we had no pregnant chads or hanging chads or anything like that. The worst we had to deal with was some really sloppy handwriting, but that was my own vote, so we were eventually able to make it out.

And - most excitingly - I was able to speak up on what I thought was the most troubling issue: The rash of anti-videogame laws that fail to solve the problem, threaten to cripple a growing U.S. industry, and the very questionable actions that had been taken to try and force them to pass. The rest of the people in the room looked at me a little puzzled, as they were all there to argue about policies about public schools and stuff, and here I was bringing up videogames right out-of-the-freaking blue. But they politely asked me some appropriate questions, and didn't treat me like anyone's idiot nephew. And if videogames weren't on anyone's radar before, at least they were aware that there was at least ONE complaint out there.

I left the meeting feeling very, I don't know... civic? And I figured we'd done our little tiny insignificant bit to help preserve a new creative and artistic medium. And there were a couple of delegates that we'd elected that learned that this was an issue that their neighbors cared about.

And We Get To Be Even More Political
The GREAT news was that whether or not my emotional speech to our delegates from our little corner of the district had any bearing or not, Hogue failed in his state senate bid. Not a big surprise, going up against an incumbent.

Because we put our name and phone number on a piece of paper at that meeting, we're getting calls by a bunch of campaign groups who are basically doing "market research." They often ask us what we consider the biggest issues for this election. I guess they figure we're politically active now, and suddenly we've become important. Now if only we'd contribute money to them, I'm betting we'd be a lot more important.

We tell 'em. Preserving the first amendment and freedom of expression for videogames is usually not on their list. But hopefully, after my wife and I have given them an earful, it might be put ON a couple of lists.

A Visit From A Candidate
Saturday, we were visited in person by Carl Wimmer, who is running for Hogue's soon-to-be-vacated seat. His opponent, Dennis Sampson, is an old friend of David Hogue's, and Hogue is acting as Sampson's campaign manager. My wife got a chance to speak with Mr. Wimmer at length on our porch. Not so subtley, she brought up the question of his stance on videogames and all this legislation attempting to regulate it.

Wimmer, a longtime law-enforcement officer, said that he was opposed to violent videogames, but he believes the government has no right to try and regulate it. Which is how we feel. I mean, sheesh - nobody in their right mind wants to see gruesomely violent videogames being sold to children! That is not what this is about. It's about the "chilling effect" of government regulation on a powerful new medium of expression.

Between Wimmer's response, and the fact that he's running against David "Videogames are porn!" Hogue's chosen replacement, we decided to let him put his sign on our lawn. Of course, we're in a cul-de-sac so I don't know if very many people will actually SEE this sign unless they have gotten very lost or have driven all the way to our house just to see a sign next to our mailbox. But hey, it's there. Maybe that's why all our Democrat-leaning friends never visit us anymore...

But I am hoping that in a very tiny way, the anti-videogame stance is hurting some politicians in this election.

And maybe next time I'll crash the Democrats' caucus meeting. My wife can hit the Republican one (I think she's actually registered). We can compare notes, and see which one served better food.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:07 PM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Why Are There So Many Violent Videogames?
I was reading the transcript of Brian Moriarty's "Entrainment" lecture which I had the pleasure of attending at the 1998 Game Developer's Conference. As weird as it reads in print, it was even weirder in person, let me assure you. But it was also effective and thought-provoking. I recommend giving it a read, but it is pretty long.

In the lecture, Moriarty pleads for game developers to be responsible and thoughtful in the placement of violence in our games. This was a noble call to action, but I don't think many people heeded it. I'd guess that more than half of the people or more that went to that lecture aren't even working professionally in the games industry anymore. 8 years is a long time in this business. For people, anyway. For our games - well, the people animate more realistically, and the blood is much more believable, but the top games that we're playing now are pretty much the same games that we were playing in 1998. I think the first Grand Theft Auto game hit the shelves in 1997.

Ignoring the explosive growth of the "casual games" industry (which emphasizes simple, non-violent games), why are the bulk of our games still centering around violence - blowing stuff up, killing things, and gaining new powers and pick-ups so that we can blow bigger stuff up and kill bigger things? There are three reasons: Violence is Easy, Violence is Powerful, and the derivative of the first two: Violence sells.

Violence is Easy
Violence is the simplest of human interactions to simulate on the computer. You play a death animation, trigger some bleeding, trigger some other event, and you are done.

That is orders of magniture less complex than trying to create a dynamic, interactive romance scene. For more comlex social interactions, you have to do one of the following:

#1 - Invent software capable of winning the Turing Test, which will play a fully realized, believable character capable of responding to the player in any weird way possible.

#2 - Borrow from the movies and books and have interactions with the NPC's occur in non-interactive "cut scenes" (Which are now no longer a real part of the game, but rather an interruption of the game).

#3 - The middle-ground between the two - script up some level of believability to the NPC and proper reactions to expected situations, and hope the player forgives you when he does something unusual - like try to talk to the same character twice, or after a certain game-shaking event has occured.

#1 is impossible, #2 is a dodge that players will get irritated with if you over-use it. The sole advantage of #3 is that while it sucks, players are used to it and fairly forgiving.

But simulating violence? Piece of cake. You don't need to have conversations with a guy and understand his hopes, dreams, and relationships to shoot him in the head with a sniper rifle.

Violence is Powerful
Violence is, unfortunately, pretty close to a universal human experience. Whether it's being involved in a scuffle on the playground in third grade, having a loved one sent off to war, or simply turning on the six o'clock news, we are exposed to it constantly. Our brains are hard-wired to react to it. We instinctively fear it and must assure our own survival if it occurs to or near us. Simulated violence in media can fire off an emotional fight-or-flight reaction with the player. In particular, in video games, it gives the player the illusion of competence in a deep, dark part of the brain that expects us to go hunting mastadons with our spears any time now.

Admittedly, after a bit of flying Falcon 4.0, a very silly, illogical part of my brain was telling me "Hey, if the balloon goes up and they are in desperate need of more pilots to fast-track through the fighter pilot program is READY, baby!" Well, not really, though the good flight sims really are apparently pretty good training for the real thing. After all, the Air Force ordered a special version of Falcon 4.0 for training. And the Marine Corps ordered a special version of Operation: Flashpoint for their training. And I remember reading that even Starcraft was used by Air Command & War College for combined-forces training.

So some part of our brain thinks it's practicing survival skills when we play these games, and it reacts in a primitive way that gives us pleasure as we do so. It's how we are wired. Learning to throw a ball and play catch does the same thing. I do not accept "Wacky Jackie" Thompson's assertations that these games train you to commit murder, any more than playing catch teaches you to kill people with rocks. But the primitive parts of the brain still think of these things as training survival skills, and reacts in a powerful fashion as a result.

And you know what? It's not wrong. Apparently playing first-person shooters DOES help your survival skills in the modern world... but not in the way our politicians would believe. Paul Kerney recently discovered in a recent study that players who frequently play First-Person-Shooters have much improved cognitive and multi-tasking skills over those who do not.

Violence Sells
For the same reason the "summer action flicks" with cookie-cutter plots and rotating action-hero casts keep drawing the crowds, violent video games keep selling. Audiences react well to it. And because violence is once of the easiest things to simulate on a computer, this means the bang-for-the-buck value (pun unintentional, but it works!) is huge.

Short of a radical change in consumer habits with respect to violence (unlikely, considering it's been a constant throughout recorded history... what do you think they used the colliseum for in ancient Rome?) , video-game violence is here to stay.

What Do We Do About It?
While this may be a controversial thing to say - I don't think it's a bad thing. Yeah, I vote with my wallet and I choose not to support games with gratuitous violence and no real socially redeeming virtues. I won't let my children play games that I think are inappropriate for them.

But if you want a society that produces great art masterpieces, you have to have a society that allows any idiot to paint a toilet seat and present it as art.

Moriarty contended in 1998 that the power of the video game for a medium of expression, communication, and education was far more powerful than previous media. "We can not only describe the horrors of Auchweitz. We can put your hand on the lever of the gas chamber." Powerful, heady ideas - and stuff that thrilled me to speculate. Since then, we've had a video game that re-creates the David Koresh / Waco standoff, a game that puts you behind the scope of Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle on that November day in 1968, and - the most stomach-turning of all to me - a game that lets you re-create the Columbine High School Massacre by Harris and Klebold in 1999.

Moriarty's message? "This new kind of authority is not for the careless." Maybe. I could never bring myself to play any of the above games. They had their stated, lofty goals - their higher purpose - which might have been genuine, or simply done to deflect criticism that these are nothing but sensationalist crap.

Which is it?

Which was Hugo's "Les Miserables," when it was published in 1862? Or, as Moriarty notes, Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring?"

Labels: Game Design, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:46 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Oblivion Re-Rating Translated Into English
So for those who don't quite get the whole "Oblivion" thing, or who haven't heard: The ESRB decided to re-rate The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion as rated "M" (for Mature - 17 or older) instead of rated "T" (For "Teens"). This move resulted from some prior events, such as the "Hot Coffee" scandal, which I won't go into here, and the ever louder cry from politicians that in the name of family values they want to take control of the multibillion-dollar industry.

Here's the highlights (sound bites) of "Obliviongate" translation into English:

Senator Hillary Clinton: “Today's report is yet further proof that we need to make sure parents have the tools and support they need to make informed decisions for their children.”

Translation: Hmmm... can I help my career by legislating a new, thriving industry and exciting art form out of existence? Only if can do it before the people who really know and care about it learn that they are old enough to vote!

Senator Joe Lieberman: "We do want to ensure that these videos are not purchased by minors. Our bill will help accomplish this by imposing fines on those retailers that sell M-rated games to minors.”

Translation: Let's make the ESRB a new federal legislative body so their rules become LAW, punishable by fines and imprisonment!

ESRB president Patricia Vance: "ESRB recognizes that parents must be made aware of the change as quickly as possible so they are certain to have the most current and accurate information."

Translation: See? We are responsive! Better than most government legislative bodies!

ESRB: "The content causing the ESRB to change the rating involves more detailed depictions of blood and gore than were considered in the original rating, as well as the presence of a locked-out art file or 'skin' that, if accessed through a third party modification to the PC version of the game, allows the user to play with topless versions of female characters."

Translation: Parents are complaining that the game's got boobies. But let's cover our butts by noting the blood and gore, too.

ESRB (Patricia Vance, I assume): "It is increasingly important for parents to realize that PC games can be altered through the use of downloadable programs created by other players called 'mods' (short for modification), which are broadly available on the Internet and can change the content of a game. Since players create them, it is impossible for ESRB or any rating service to consider them in assigning a rating. However, some mods can alter a game in ways that may not be appropriate for younger players and may be inconsistent with the ESRB rating, so parents should be aware of their existence and, as always, do their best to monitor their child's gameplay."

Translation: We are not the clueless n00bs. We know about mods. If you don't watch what your kids download, it's your own fault, not ours! And by the way, Senators, you couldn't do a better job at this either, 'k?

Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association: "As evidenced by the most recent FTC study, the nation's leading retailers now require identification for the purchase of Mature-rated games at approximately the same rate as the movie theatres do for R-rated film admission. When we were notified of the game's ratings change today, we alerted our member company representatives who communicated to their stores the change in the game's rating. The effective change in sales policy was immediate... Of note in this matter is the speed at which retailers reacted and parents were empowered..."

Translation: We can take care of ourselves, Senators!!!! See how good we are? Please don't legislate us out of existence!

Bethesda Softworks (developers of Oblivion): "Bethesda, not its co-publisher, developed the game, handled the ratings application before the ESRB, and stands behind it."

Translation: Please don't take your grudge against Take-Two out on us!!!

Bethesda Softworks:"We will not contest the ESRB's decision to re-rate the game as Mature, nor will we change the game's content to keep a Teen rating... No product recall is being directed."

Translation: As long as Wal*Mart will still carry it, it's cheaper to leave it this way!

Multiple Oblivion Fans: "Props to Bethesda!"

Translation: Mmmm... boobies!

Bethesda Softworks: "Bethesda didn't create a game with nudity and does not intend that nudity appear in Oblivion. There is no nude female character in a section of the game that can be `unlocked.' Bethesda can not control tampering with Oblivion by third parties. "

Translation: Oh CRAP! I thought we removed that texture from the release build!

Bethesda Softworks: "We gave accurate answers and descriptions about the type and frequency of violence that appears in the game. We submitted a 60-page document listing the explicit language, acts, and scenes in the game. Oblivion packaging already contains warnings for 'Violence' and 'Blood and Gore.'"

Translation: You said that the violence was okay, you just didn't want us to have any boobies!

Bethesda Softworks: "We value the role of the ESRB and believe the rating agency plays a valuable role in regulating our industry. As always, we will continue work in good faith to comply fully with the ESRB's standards and policies."

Translation: We can take care of ourselves, Senators!!!! See how good we are? Please don't legislate us out of existence!

ESRB President Patricia Vance: "Though Bethesda may believe their submission was 'full, accurate and comprehensive,' our investigation proved otherwise, forcing us to correct what was found to be an inaccurate rating."

Translation:It's not our fault!

California Assemblyman Leeland Yee (who's anti-videogame law was struck down on Constitutional grounds several months ago): "The ESRB again has failed our parents and clearly has shown they can not police themselves. Plain and simply, the current rating system is drastically flawed and here is yet another reason why we need legislation to assist parents and protect children."

Translation: And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for that danged Bill of Rights!

Labels: Mainstream Games, Politics, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:27 PM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Do Games Matter?
So our little industry has come under fire pretty constantly this year by politicians, journalists, and ambulance-chasers looking to win big fame and money in class-action lawsuits. They have made attacks against videogames that they'd never dare make against other, more "established" media. Some media, such as novels, survived similar attacks in the past. Others, like comic books / graphic novels, haven't fared so well.

One of the things that is missing in games' defense is the question of whether or not games are important, or have anything to "say" as a "serious medium." Are they worth defending, or are they simply a worthless distraction?

Cinema Parallels
Roger Ebert last year went on record as saying that he considered video games as being inherently inferior to movies, and that "... the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art." This is because the artist is not in control - the interactiveness of the medium which is the greatest strength of video games is a liability, according to Ebert.

I was at a GDC talk by Brian Moriarty several years ago where he talked about "Entrainment." Throughout his talk, he superimposed two clips. One was a clip from "The Great Train Robbery" - the final moment where the robber points his gun at the audience and fires. This was followed up by a short clip of a scene from Quake II where the player (looking down the barrel of his pistol) shoots and kills an enemy Strogg warrior. These two four-second clips replayed over and over throughout his talk, morphing into a hypnotic pattern over the course of the hour.

One of the many points he brought up was that early motion pictures originally leaned too heavily upon their spiritual ancestor, the stage. The camera was effectively placed in a single position (front and center) and simply followed the stage play. Effectively, movies were made into nothing more than a cheap imitation of real theater. "Inherently inferior to the stage," one might say.

Another point he brought up was that as movies evolved, they survived on spectacle. The final seconds of The Great Train Robbery were thrown in simply to shock the audience. The sight of someone pointing a pistol directly at them and firing was a thrill akin to hitting the loops in a roller coaster. Reportedly, it had audiences screaming in terror. Nowadays, of course, it's no big deal. Once the key thrill of the show, the same scene bores us today. As audiences became used to these sorts of spectacles, they had to grow in intensity to maintain the same thrill. This practice couldn't continue forever (though the device is still utilized to a smaller degree by the summer action blockbuster). And so were movies dragged kicking and screaming into evolution as an art form.

Also interestingly, movies were not considered an "art form" and thus subject to First Amendment protection until 1952, with the Supreme Court ruling on Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson. This was well into the history of American cinema, and even after cinema's "Golden Age."

It's hard not to see the parallels between the movie industry and the videogame industry, including our over-dependence on mimicking movies in our games, and our dependence upon increasingly expensive technical "spectacle" to thrill audiences (which seems to be failing, based on polls showing an increasing apathy towards the next generation of games).

What Kind of Game Would Shakespeare Have Designed?
When you discuss literary and dramatic masterpieces, the name that invariably comes up is William Shakespeare. One element of Shakespeare's brilliance was that he knew how and when to play to the "cheap seats" (the groundlings) with the cheap thrills, tawdry jokes, and violence. Yet even so he told a timeless human story that left the audience pondering and discussing it HUNDREDS of years later. It's a delicate juggling act, yet his mastery of it makes his stories more powerful to modern audiences than almost all modern creations (only time will tell if any of today's artists managed to equal or surpass him).

There's a great article by Jessica Mulligan called, "Just Give Me a Game, Please." In it, she contends that in his day, William Shakespeare was not considered one of the great artists of his day. He was not respected by "serious" critics. Mulligan goes so far as to call Shakespeare "the Aaron Spelling of his day." He was just a guy making a buck by writing simple entertainment designed to please the masses. It's only with a few centuries of hindsight that we now consider his creations high art.

Admittedly, most games haven't gone far beyond trying to appeal to the cheap seats. Those that demand the most real "thought" on the part of players are often doomed at the cash register. Modern designers haven't learned Shakespeare's balancing trick yet, I guess. But is it possible in games? Why not?

Are Stories Or Games Important?
Why do we have stories? Are they important? Well, a great deal of the world would say so, citing the stories of religious scripture (including many fictional 'parables') as the basis of the entire structure of their lives. Stories teach. Maybe they don't always teach the right things, but they do teach. Much of our childhood is full of cautionary tales (some of which evolve into 'urban legends' or simply 'fairie tales') which reinforce cultural patterns. Why don't you talk to strangers on your way to Granny's house in the deep dark woods?

Stories teach us. Stories let us celebrate being HUMAN. Stories let us connect with the rest of the human race. Popular stories give us a common experience with others in the human race, allowing us to connect and communicate. Just watch two perfect strangers who are also Star Wars geeks get into it. Sure, finding a cure for cancer would people to survive, but I argue it is in our art, entertainment, and communication of emotions with each other that allows us to LIVE. That is why we put such a value on Shakespeare and Mel Gibson and Bach and "Must See T.V."

Many videogames tell stories. In fact, some tell pretty dang linear stories. The player is in charge of running a gauntlet of challenges between storytelling points, and gets rewarded with a storytelling sequence. Some games allow you to tell your own story, and derive your own lessons from them. The quality and content of the lessons are very much rooted in the game designer's own vision. The stories are often pretty simple, with themes such as "Love Conquers All" or "Protect The Earth!" (Play the Final Fantasy series to get beaten over the head with that one). The lessons aren't always obvious, and rarely have clear parallels with reality. Video games are the among the first "games" that have been able to blend storytelling with play. While it's often a very turmoil-filled, rough marriage, it's there and sometimes even works.

We also learn and grow from play. Simulation is a long-recognized and respected training tool. I will never forget my first game of "Supremacy" and how much I learned about international politics from that single session that hadn't been drilled into my head after reading weekly issues of Time and Newsweek for years. The crude, simplistic boardgame simulation didn't teach me what I would need to be to be the leader of a real-world superpower, or how to best survive a limited nuclear war. Just as putting hundreds of hours into first-person shooters won't teach you how to handle a real-world gun.

No, what I instead came to 'grok' were more abstract concepts like the value of keeping forces in reserve. Or some basics of negotiation. Or just WHY researching a purely defensive technology would get an entity that honestly doesn't intend you any harm (probably) really really mad at you - as it robs them of their negotiating power and makes them feel very, very vulnerable.

Multiplayer games are shrinking the world and forming REAL relationships, communication, and understanding between people. I'll never forget a story I read back in the early days of multiplayer gaming where some flight sim enthusiasts from the UK decided to re-enact the Battle of Britain against some players in Germany. The twist was that the German players were playing the beleagered RAF, and the UK players got to hop into the attacking planes.

And there are countless stories of people making real friends online, finding future business associates or even spouses in multiplayer games. Sure, there are tons of stories of scary weirdos out there too (it's those important CAUTIONARY TALES, remember! They are there for a reason!), but there are real success stories as well. Playing together brings people together. That's a HUGE inherent advantage games have over movies --- though it might not make games "Art," I think it makes them important.

And can video games reduce the debilitating effect of age or Alzeimer's on the brain? I'd say that's pretty important.

I think games matter.

Personal Importance
And is MAKING games important? Sure! As important as, say, searching for a cure to AIDS or Cancer or fixing the ozone layer or helping feed children in third-world countries? I wouldn't think so. But everything's got its place.

When I was making games for a living, it was satisfying just to know that my efforts were helping feed my family. I could think of a lot worse ways to earn a living than programming the flight pattern of fictional swarm-missiles.

My last couple of job had me working on handling distribution of nutritional supplements. The one before that had me working on security software to help protect enterprises from malware and intruders. Both sound kind of "important." But I was so insulated from the people I was supposed to be helping that I didn't get that feeling of satisfaction for "doing good" that I thought I would. Almost the only time I heard from the end-users was when something had gone wrong.

Contrast that to the feeling of satisfaction I have received reading "fan mail" for some of the games I've worked on. It's not some earth-shatteringly great thing I've done for people. But I've helped add a little bit of extra joy and fun to their lives - enough that they felt compelled to write the game-makers and say "Thank You! I had a lot of fun playing your game!" - That is an awesome feeling.

And that matters to me.

Labels: Game Design, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:36 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Video Game Voters Network
Okay, everyone and their cousin is talking about this - but since I've been talking about the constant barrage our hobby has taken in the last few months from politicians anxious to score family value points regardless of the cost, I'd be remiss if I didn't post this here:

http://www.videogamevoters.org/

We'll see where this goes. Basically, it's an attempt to get gamers to come together as a political force. Politicians haven't come to realize yet that videogamers are well within voting age. Hopefully we'll prove that our "interactive" tendencies means we're not only ready, willing, and able to make out voices heard at election time, but that we can be enthusiastic about doing so.

In addition, this site looks to be a clearinghouse of information on current antivideogaming bills, and articles in the press concerning politics and law as it relates to the videogames.

I guess this was inevitable. When networks blame declining ratings on the rising popularity of videogames, you know something big is happening. Has Happened. I was at the Game Developers Conference (then the "Computer Game Developers Conference") in 1997 or so and heard a great talk by Brian Moriarty about videogame violence, "entrainment", and parallels between the early days of the motion picture industry with the videogame industry. He closed out his talk by reminding us that we were not just "videogame developers," but that we were the pioneers of the dominant entertainment medium of the 21st century.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:30 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Videogames Are A Disease.
The whole thing about Clinton and Lieberman spending $90 million of taxpayer money to divert CDC resources away from real, deadly diseases to study the effects of violent games really left me feeling like the whole "Videogames are Evil" thing are one big expensive practical joke being played on the poor U.S. citizens. I mean, I coulda sworn I heard JOKES about this kind of thing happening in the 1980s. While I wouldn't mind yet another study demonstrating the link between violent videogames and real-world violence are tenuous at best, I also know that even the weakest of links will be perverted and exploited by these politicians to match their agenda (which is wholely to pick on weak targets to make themselves look big). And it's frustrating that so much time, money, and resources that COULD be going into --- I don't know AIDS research maybe? --- Is instead going into seeing if Mario turns little Johnny into a bloodthirsty zombie.

Now I am not an artist, nor am I very skilled with The Gimp, but the whole situation reminded me of the tagline from the 1980's Sly Stallone movie "Cobra" (which was otherwise a very forgettable movie), and it stuck in my brain. So I put my meager Gimp skills to work while pondering the very UNIQUE and (to me at least) unexpected ending to the second Battlestar Galactica season. And this is what I came up with:

Probably only my wife and I were amused by this, but oh, well.

In other news - the Rampant Games website was down for a few hours. Apparently our ISP's ISP had some minor disaster that left it without power (I cannot confirm or deny that a backhoe was involved). We've gone up and down a couple of times, so we may be a bit spotty today.

Work continues on THREE game fronts. I'm feeling stretched pretty thin (but not so thin that I don't have time to make really crappy doctored movie posters, apparently). The game with the Flying Cows is making a lot of progress - and showing it around to people has resulted in some very positive feedback. It's silly, dumb, but fun. I'll post some in-development screenshots soon, but bear in mind that it's still largely stand-in content.

Coyote Out.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:51 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Games as Porn Bill Quietly Fails
I wrote pretty much every senator covering the Salt Lake City region with my thoughts on Representative Hogue's bill, HB0257. I am completely disgusted that it passed with a nearly unanimous vote in the house. I am also equally disgusted that, in spite of receiving emails AND a detailed list of concerns from the Utah Merchant's Association to the contrary, the house Judiciary Committee decided to provide a fiscal note that there would be "no fiscal impact" for the business and individual impact.

Yeah, guys losing their jobs and businesses moving out of Utah is no fiscal impact. While I'd like to chalk it up to incompetance, I'm afraid this sounds like outright lies to me. These guys were informed of the impacts, and chose to ignore it in order make the bill look pretty.

As far as I can tell, the Senate decided to kill the bill quietly by letting it expire rather than being viewed as "anti-family." A full report can be found here:

http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/219058.html

This COULD have been somewhat motivated by a recent guest editorial by two legal scholars, Clay Calvert and Robert D. Richards, co-directors of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Ammendment, which appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune at an opportune time.

There was an outstanding commentary by W. Jayson Hill on the reason that videogames have become giant target for every politician and ambulance-chasing lawyer looking to make a name for himself. The article can be found here:

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/myturn/?id=11981

One excerpt that really drives it home:

"As we reevaluate our adversary, we have to accept that legislators are not really interested in resolving this issue. They pay lip service to working with the industry, but this is an issue politicians have framed as "child safety", and it is too valuable a soapbox to abandon. These legislators have distorted the industry and the ESRB to make their constituents fearful and exploited that fear for votes."

His point is that appealing to the lawmakers is ultimately going to be a dead-end because the videogames industry is FAR TOO USEFUL AS A SCAPEGOAT FOR ALL SOCIAL ILLS. This is a war they are fighting against an illusionary enemy. The rise in violent crime in America (which doesn't exist - violent crime has been dropping dramatically over the last twelve years) is directly linked to violent videogames (which also hasn't been proven), which are being marketed to children (also untrue in MOST cases - the average "mainstream" videogame player hasn't been a minor for nearly 10 years). By claiming to be fighting on the "front line" of an "intense battle" that the average American can't even see, they can make themselves look heroic and pro-active.

Because, you know, solving REAL problems is way too much work, involves way too many compromises, and doesn't gain you nearly as much political clout.

Bottom line (according to Mr. Hill) is that we need to do an end-run around the politicians and go straight to the people at the grass roots level. People fear what they don't understand. So help them understand. Letters to your government leaders are good. But letters to the editor in the newspaper may be better. And getting an "expert" to come to community / PTA meetings and explain the ESRB rating system, and replace FUD with FACTS might be even better.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:39 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Games As Porn Bill Passes House
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=11949

Crap, crap, crap. And I thought that bill was dead. I'm overwhelmed by the idiocy of my state government to pass this bill.

They've ammended it to define things EXTREMELY narrowly - which means you can't call me a pornographer yet. But I also know how certain extremists love to sneak in after the fact and make ammendments to laws (like they did with this one) and slowly mutate it. "Oh, we'll just change a couple of 'ands' back to 'ors' - that's not a big deal is it?"

I'm both embarassed by my state, and frustrated. And very angry.

I don't think hyper-violent games are things kids should be playing. NO KIDDING! I don't believe that they'll turn kids into violent sociopaths, any more than playing the board game, "Operation" will turn them into qualified surgeons. But I still don't want to expose my kids to that sort of thing. But I don't want the government regulating it with their usual ham-fisted (lack of) panache. HOPEFULLY this will not pass the Senate (but at a 56-8 victory in the House, I have lost all faith in the intelligence of my state leadership), but if it does, I have little doubt it will die horribly at the judicial level.

I just wanna know who's running against Representative Hogue in the next election, and how can I help his or her campaign?

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:52 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Australian Governmental Book-Burning (er, Banning)
Is it just me, or are government officials completely missing the irony of a national government BANNING a game that's about fighting an oppressive totalitarian government?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/graffiti-game-banned/2006/02/15/1139890798010.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

All this anti-videogame legislation (and lawsuits) really just comes down to the book-burning mentality finding a brand-new target. It's no longer politically correct to burn books these days. But videogames don't yet have the connection with knowledge and ideas that books have. So hey, let's build ourselves a pyre and have at it without all the political ramifications!!!! Bring hot dogs and marshmallows!

On the flip side, you just can't BUY publicity like this. I hadn't even HEARD about this game before today, but now I feel a strong desire to at least check it out. Maybe it'll make me feel all subversive and stuff.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:36 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Fragging the Bad Bill
I alerted everyone I could about HB 0257, the proposed ammendment to the Utah "pornography" law (officially the "materials harmful to minors" law, though they have YET to find any kind of real link between videogame violence and long-term "real world" violence, though they have CERTAINLY tried). I e-mailed the representatives of Utah's House Judiciary Committee, and actually got responses from two of them (one was a form letter, the other was a very short note that she was also concerned about the bill).

Naturally, I didn't get an email from Rep. David Hogue, who is my district's rep., and who sponsored the bill.

The committee met on the bill while I was at work, but a friend of mine listened in on an Internet broadcast of the hearing. According to him, the Utah Retail Merchant's Association was there to complain bitterly about the bill. One of their points was that there is a 30-day MINIMUM jail sentence associated for violators of this law, which could happen JUST FOR advertising a game or movie in the newspapers, or displaying it on a rack. They also noted that the newspapers themselves could be in violation of the law for going into the details of a violent crime yet failing to report on the consequences (because the consequences haven't occured yet), OR they could be in violation for only reporting the consequences of a brutal crime.

Apparently they tried to salvage the bill at the last second by creating a quick-and-dirty ammendment (trying to get it passed so they could then QUIETLY re-ammend it later once it's already a law) by changing a bunch of "Or" clauses into "And" clauses - restricting the definition of what constitutes inappropriate violence.

The modified bill came EXTREMELY close to passing through the committee - it was a six-six split. Since the majority did not favor it, the bill could not pass out of the committee with recommendation, so it's pretty much dead. If it HAD passed, I guess it would have gone on to a general vote. But I think at this point it's dead-dead-dead. Until someone resurrects it under a new name and slightly different language.

The summary of the rise and fall of this incredibly bad bill can be found here:
http://www.le.state.ut.us/~2006/status/hbillsta/HB0257.htm

I am just nervous about how close this bill came to actually passing through committee. Six committee members voted in favor of it.

Man, I've never been this political before. As I am also a part-time computer game developer, I look at everyday events in life and ask, "Could this be turned into a computer game?" So how about the whole process of getting a bill through city, state, or federal legislative process. Until it was something I cared about, the whole thing sounded dry as toast. But as the TV shows "The West Wing" and "Commander-In-Chief" have shown, the whole political and governmental process can be punched up to become nicely dramatic and juicy, full of backstabbing, spinning, wheeling, and dealing. There's disguising really crappy laws with all kinds of "pork" in them with titles and overall 'summaries' that sound really, really good to voters. It's a "Protection of Family Values" bill, or an "Election Reform" bill, when really it's a "Make More Exceptions To That Pesky Bill of Rights" bill that also grants congressman raises, forces the military to buy tanks from a factory in a sponsoring congressman's home district, and raises taxes in some minor way that they hope nobody will notice.

Would that be interesting fodder for a game?

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:21 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Cool! I get to be a FELON now!
I moved to Riverton, Utah, about two years ago. It's a quiet town, on the edge of the urban Salt Lake City sprawl. The city is torn between two worlds - it is trying to hold on desperately to its rural roots while being absorbed into the metropolitan community. We've got wars over new commercial districts going in next to horse pastures. Like many Utah communities, there are a LOT of kids, and it's a pretty safe neighborhood to let them run around in. During the summertime there's a constant ebb and flow of kids wandering from yard to yard, playing ball or biking in the street.

It's a nice place to live. It's a place where the folks in the neighborhood actually know each other, and look out for each other. I'm pretty happy here. It's a good place to raise my kids.

But I could very soon end up being one of those "dark secrets" of the community myself - an unrepentant FELON living just outside of the heart of the city. A corrupting criminal influence in their neighborhoods, sitting with them in church on Sunday, even teaching Sunday School! Now THERE is a scandal.

My crime? Apparently, I could end up being a seller of pornography to children. Not because I'd actually do ANYTHING like that... the thought turns my stomach. But our dear State Representative from my home of Riverton, Utah is pushing a bill to classify videogames as porn. Representative Hogue is trying to ammend a long-standing pornography law that very loosely classifies violence as porn.

I sell a game called Mythic Blades on my site - a 3D fighting game with all kinds of nasty little weapons set in ancient Greece. It's unrated - but according to HB257, it could theoretically be interpreted as:

* is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors;
* taken as a whole, does not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors;
* is glamorized or gratuitous;
* is graphic violence used to shock or stimulate;
* is graphic violence that is not contextually relevant to the material;
* is so pervasive that it serves as the thread holding the plot of the material together;
* trivializes the serious nature of realistic violence;
* does not demonstrate the consequences or effects of realistic violence;
* uses brutal weapons designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain and damage;
* endorses or glorifies torture or excessive weaponry or . . .
* depicts lead characters who resort to violence freely.

IT IS A FIGHTING GAME. It's not even bloody. It would probably get a "T" rating if it was to get an ESRB rating (which isn't going to happen, because getting that rating is prohibitively expensive for small, indie game developers!). My personal opinion is that the violence is unrealistic and toned-down (it's very similar to Soul Caliber in that way). But thanks to Rep. David Hogue, there is a remote chance that if a 17-year-old downloads this game from my site, I could get arrested on felony charges, and go to jail. I'm sure that by paying a lot of money to a semi-competent lawyer I'd get off, but this would still be a DISASTEROUS law if it passes.

I run a site which is, in my opinion, relatively "family friendly." I personally believe that all of the games on my site would be appropriate for a ten-year-old. That might not always be the case - I have a game in development that will deal with some slightly more grown-up topics, more appropriate for teenagers (15 and up?) and adults than younger audiences. But I have no intention of ever selling a game like Grand Theft Auto on my site (I'm sure that game series, and 25-to-life, which was developed by Avalanche in Salt Lake City, are undoubtably the true targets of this ridiculous bill).

PLEASE - spread the word around folks. Write to your government leaders. Write to your newspapers. Educate your co-workers and neighbors. Take an effort to VOTE. Right now, our politicians in the U.S. and other countries are using videogames as a cheap scapegoat to beef up the "Family Values" ratings on their ticket in preparation for re-election, out of a belief that videogames are politically "safe." You wouldn't see them trying to write similar laws about, for example, movies. Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't be pushing bills that defined nearly every movie he ever made as pornography, but he supported a bill - while not quite as bad as this one - still criminalized the sales of videogames in pretty much the same way.

Let these politicians know that videogames are not 'safe' targets of bad law! This is reaching insane proportions. Let the baby-boomers currently sitting in office know that their kids who grew up on videogames have been of VOTING AGE for quite some time now. Maybe they did such a crappy job parenting that they figure it is okay for the state to take that job away from their children --- but we have to let them know we won't stand for it.

Our hobby and industry has been coming under continuous attacks as we enter a new election year. Blame Rockstar for pouring blood into the water and attracting every political shark for thousands of miles for a feeding frenzy if you want to, but the fact is we've got to deal with it.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:48 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
My Rant Is Printed
The Deseret Morning News published my rant, apparently. I can't see the print version since I'm down in Cedar City this morning, but I'll be back tomorrow. They trimmed it down a little bit, but they do have it online here:

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635175840,00.html

Kudos to Deseret News for printing it, at least.

The full text of what I submitted is as follows:


Videogames burst onto the public scene in the mid 1970s with blocky graphics and intense action that mainly appealed to young men under the age of 16. Times have changed, those early gamers have grown up, and the gaming market has matured. Regrettably, much of the industry and public understanding have been slow to keep pace with these changes, as evidenced by the Opinion article on January 8th.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, the average videogame
player is 30 years old, and the average videogame purchaser is 37. Only 5%
of computer game purchasers are under 18. The adult female gamers (age 18+)
outnumber the young male gamers (age 6-17) by 4 to 3! The fastest growing
segment of the videogame industry is, in fact, women in their late 30’s and
older playing “casual” games, such as matching games and solitaire.

Obviously, videogames haven't been "kid's stuff" for quite some
time. But that hasn’t stopped them from being labeled as such to be used
as a convenient scapegoat for society’s ills by anyone with a need to add more
“family values” padding to their bullet-point list of accomplishments.

Based on public demand, the videogame industry has already adopted
a voluntary rating system (modeled after the MPAA’s movie ratings system).
Despite Representative Jim Matheson's recent ill-informed assertions to the
contrary, major game retailers - including Wal*Mart, the single largest seller
of new videogames in the U.S. - have already made age validation for "M"-rated
games standard company policy. These retailers often have no such policy against
selling other “mature” media to minors – videogames are getting special
treatment and scrutiny. If retailers are already voluntarily adhering to the
ratings system, why should we throw additional tax dollars to accomplish the
same thing?

The ESRB rating system is a private ratings board,
which the government should not turn into an effective lawmaking body. Beyond
that, it is a flawed system, a fact made noteworthy in the media last summer
with the “Hot Coffee” scandal. By giving this private ratings system the gravity
of federal law, this would make any attempt to move to a more reliable or
informative ratings system in the future nearly impossible.

There
are more downsides. There is a rapidly growing "independent" game development
segment of the industry. These makers of these games are usually small
business owners often operating out of their garage or college dorm room. Their
budgets are far, far below that of their mainstream, “triple-A” cousins that are
advertised on TV, and usually do not allow them the significant expense of
obtaining an ESRB rating. These games include small, non-violent “casual” games,
as well as religious, educational, experimental, and “family-friendly” titles.
Forcing them to ante-up with the deep-pocketed big publishers for ratings would
run most of these small, struggling companies out of business. It would also
greatly increase the ESRB’s ratings load each year, potentially causing greater
cost and decreased quality and reliability of their ratings.

Most importantly, the proposed federal enforcement of ratings
compliance fails in its aim to protect children. Many surveys demonstrate that
parents are buying age-inappropriate games for their children – either by an
informed judgment call, or in ignorance of the posted ratings. Children also
trade, borrow, re-sell, and even (unfortunately) pirate videogames from many
vectors outside of domestic retail and rental channels. Console manufacturers
have already announced plans for future consoles to add a parental lock-out
control, thus solving the problem where it should be solved: in the home. The
push for federal mandate of ratings is really just a race to see whether the
politicians can get their expensive paper victory before technology solves its
own problem.

THAT version is trimmed down a bit from what I first wrote after reading the editorial Sunday. I had several additional points that were less valuable to the argument (and made it less likely to be printed). Mainly I tried to say three things:

#1 - Videogames aren't any more for children than television or movies or books are for children - more adults play games than kids, so quit pretending that these games are being marketed to 8-year-olds.

#2 - Federal (or State) mandation of ESRB ratings, and enforcement at the retail level (especially Matheson's attempt to do it on the Internet as well) has LOTS of unintended consequences that will hurt the industry as a whole (and our industry is struggling already in the U.S., in spite of appearances of the mega-publishing giants).

#3 - Making the ESRB ratings part of federal (or state) law at the sales channel will not achieve the goal of protecting children from inappropriate material in the first place.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:28 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
There Goes Utah
Sigh. We already had Senator Orrin "Digital Joe McCarthy" Hatch embarassing Utah with his technological illiteracy and pandering to the big media moguls (except for their videogame interests), but now Utah Representative Jim Matheson is jumping on the unconstitutional bandwagon to pad his own "Family Values" bullet list. And one of the local newspapers is jumping right aboard, perpetuating the myth that videogames are "kid's toys," completely ignoring the economic, legal, and even ethical considerations of government enforcement of a rating system that is STILL recovering from a huge black eye from its obvious flaws last year.

Their logic flies completely in the face of studies which ruled no conclusive linkage between videogame violence and real-world violent behavior, not to mention the fact that the average game player is about three times older than the "children" that our grandstanding politicians are claiming to be trying to protect.

I'm in the process of formulating a letter to the editor, but I am trying to formulate a reasonable response between being both infuriated and frustrated. I don't buy rated "M" games very often, but the last time I did (to purchase "F.E.A.R.") - from the LARGEST retail seller of new videogames in the country - I was carded! That's right, the verified I was over 18 (I've been getting gray hair since I was sixteen, so maybe that isn't a great indicator). Face it, kids borrow, trade, re-sell (and, unfortunately, pirate) videogames all over the country - the only place to REALLY keep kids away from inappropriate media of ANY kind is in the home, where it should be.

And sorry, Representative Matheson and Senator Hatch are not invited in my home.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:55 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
And now it's Indiana's Turn
Hoo boy. Seems every day some government official wants to step in and make it the GOVERNMENT'S job to be parents to kids. This time it's Indiana:

http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2006/IN/IN0135.1.html

Man. Thank you, Rockstar, for being irresponsible and causing the whole "Hot Coffee" debacle thing which was partly responsible for this mess.

Now every friggin' baby-kissing politician in the country who needs to move their "family values" poll numbers up a few percentage points are taking potshots at the videogames industry, because they know the people who do the voting are generally ignorant of the issues anyway. I don't think they really CARE that these bills are getting CONSTANTLY shot down by judges. I don't think they care one bit about the crappy laws they keep trying to pass --- all they care about is getting a photo op and some sound bites to use when they run for re-election. "Look, right here, that proves that I'm all about protecting your kids from smut, SEE?!?!?!"

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:39 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
California Video Games Law Struck Down (for now)
SWEET!

First the Illinois law, and now California's. At least there are SOME judges in the United States who have some sanity and a willingness to stop Bad Laws.

The news is on Gamasutra - I'm sure it can be found elsewhere:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7602

The rationale behind the injunction is that the research behind the law did not demonstrate any sort of causality between video-game violence and real-world violence, and it doesn't compare videogames to other forms of media which have NOT been so restricted, even though they've been around for much longer.

Me? Hey, I'm slow to give praise to Wal*Mart, but the last time I bought a rated "M" game from them, they carded me. I'm clearly not seventeen anymore (sadly...), but they still carded me. No big deal. I'm glad they are voluntarily complying with the ESRB rating system and doing their best. That's what the ESRB system is for - it's a voluntary rating system for consumers, and obviously retailers make use of it as well and CAN incorporate it into their policy. So if stores are already doing what the California law is trying to enforce, what's the problem?

The problem is that places like Wal*Mart tend not to screw around much with possibilities of fines. To avoid taking those kinds of hits, there's a good chance they will just pull all rated "M" titles from their shelves completely. That's why almost nobody is producing rated "AO" (Adults Only ... 18 or over) titles - nobody wants to deal with having to sell them, so it's the kiss of death. They've done that kind of thing before.

If that happens, what we'd end up with is videogames getting relegated back to being the "kids toys" that they were back in 1980 (grown-ups were playing them too, but it was mainly kids that were adapting to the new technology). But get real, guys! The "Nintendo Generation" is those people who were 6-16 back in 1990. It's been 15 years. They are 21 - 31 years old now. The 14-year-old kids who played one of my first games, "Twisted Metal" (which was still rated T... barely) are now 24 years old! And they are STILL playing games.

Just because when YOU, the Lawmakers, were young parents you didn't get that newfangled videogame crap doesn't mean that it was something that only 12-year-olds get today! This hasn't EVER been strictly "kid's stuff", and it' hasn't been "mostly" kids stuff since the Gen-X'ers started going to college.

And what about small, indie games that MIGHT be able to make it onto the store shelves of Wal*Mart but we can't afford to have the ESRB rate our game?

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:56 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Illinois Video Game Ban Ruled Unconstitutional
Two days ago U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly overturned the Illinois ban on videogames that was supposed to go into effect on the first of the year. The news can be found HERE - well worth reading. I wish Senators Clinton and Lieberman would read it, as they are proposing a very similar FEDERAL law.

One great quote: "In this country, the state lacks the authority to ban protected speech on the ground that it affects the listener's or observer's thoughts and attitudes" - Judge Kennelly

I will once again go on record to say I do not approve of games with heavy violent or sexual content being played by children. Heck, I'm enough of a prude to say that games with excessive sex or violence shouldn't even be played by adults! And while there's no real evidence supporting the claims by lawmakers and delirious ambulance-chasers that playing violent games leads to violent real-life behavior, any more than excessive playing of Super Mario leads to people jumping up and hitting their heads against the ceiling in an obsessive attempt to find coins. But it has been proven over CENTURIES that games are among the most powerful learning tools, and though what people may learn by playing these games may not remotely resemble the obvious, it does lay some tracks down in neural pathways that may run counter to socially positive behavior. If I watch a lot of shows or read books with excessive swearing, I find such words come a bit quicker to my mind when I'm trying to express myself forcefully, which can color my choice of language in a way I'm not particularly proud of (though the day job can cause that without ANY additional stimulation).

Be that as it may, not only is it not the government's job to regulate this, but the government is WAY TOO INCOMPETENT to handle it fairly. It's the book-burning mob mentality at work, that would see copies of Huckleberry Finn in a bonfire, or restrict high-school students from reading that subversive Shakespeare. These blanket regulations would lump Schindler's List (a "morally serious, aesthetically stunning historical epic" - TV Guide) in the same category as Booty Call (a "wall-to-wall exercise in bad taste" - Roger Ebert).

Now, I don't think we yet have the "Schindler's List" of videogames out there yet. Or the Gone With The Wind, or the Casablanca... heck, I haven't seen "Doom" the movie yet, but I'd guess the quality of plot, characters, and dialog are probably still greater that 95% of the videogames out there. But I think even though games are now pretty "mainstream," we are STILL exploring the boundaries of the medium. Right now there are a lot of games out there that are seeing how far they can push the "shock value" without getting smacked down (thank you, GTA team, for screwing up our whole year with your Hot Coffee FUBAR).

But the day will come. I have heard and seen little bits and pieces of attempts to cover serious topics, though they have had little in the way of marketing fanfare behind them. But it's gonna be a lot harder to make it happen if the government steps in and classifies games as children's toys and scares away people from addressing mature topics out of fear of being fined or being unable to find a retail or distribution channel.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:07 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post