Siena, Italy Protests Gran Turismo 5

Italy again? Our last story was on an Italian-American organization asking that "Mafia II" be delayed until all references to Italians be removed from the game, and now the city of Siena is asking that "Gran Turismo 5" remove material related to its Piazza del Campo level before release.

The Piazza del Campo is the site of a famous biannual horse race, the Palio di Siena. The historic course is used in "Gran Turismo 5" in its new kart racing mode, controversially using the same flags that represent each district/competitor in the horse race. Apparently the flags and symbols are the only controversial component, so hopefully they can be removed or have the issue otherwise resolved without further delaying the near-vaporware racing game's release in November.

[via Kotaku]

Italian-American Interest Group Protests Mafia II

Italian-American service organization UNICO is protesting Take Two's upcoming video game Mafia II for "directly, blatantly, and unfairly discriminating and demeaning one group to the exclusion of all others." Organization president Andre' DiMino demanded that the game's release be halted and cleansed of all references to Italians or Italian-Americans.

DiMino is currently undergoing an anti-discrimination push that fell much more toughly on MTV's Jersey Shore TV show and its portrayal of Italian-Americans as reinforcing a negative stereotype. MTV has actually responded to the complaints, to the point of making the second season contain less specific mention of Italian heritage or the word "guido."

Mafia II is set in a fictional city called Empire Bay between 1945 and 1957, based on a number of American cities but presumably most reliant upon New York. While there have been many organized crime rings that were not Italian in the United States, post-war New York was undeniably dominated by Italian-American organized crime, not Russian or Irish or anything else. Removing the Italian-American culture from a game told about post-war New York organized crime would be downright ahistorical.

Not to mention, "Mafia" is a very Italian word which has only come to describe organized crime in general since the dominance of Italian organized criminals in the early to mid-twentieth century. Famous Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi himself coined the term "mafiosi," which through a convoluted etymology later came to describe these criminals. The Yakuza series of video games obviously involves Japanese organized crime, without controversy.

Take Two responded, basically saying the game is based on a thoroughly-covered culture of movies, TV shows, and novels about Italian-American organized crime, and that Take Two balances free expression and social responsibility just fine, thank you very much.

[via Kotaku]

Educational Game Too Violent for Parents

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, a new video game used in schools to teach math has come under fire for being too "violent" for local parents. Local station KOAT Action 7 News had previously reported on the new math game after-school program, glowing with excitement over the technology. According to that report, kids were learning prime numbers! They never wanted to leave school! Fun and learning together, finally!

But the most recent report focuses on parent complaints about "violence." I've put "violence/violent" in quotes both times because the game seems to be almost entirely non-violent. From footage I've seen, it is a first-person shooter, but instead of shooting guns, kids are shooting abstract lasers at other abstract lasers with numbers over them. Also, the one parent the Action 7 News interviewed for the story really only complains that the game might make the children too addicted to video games, which doesn't have much to do with violence.

Both news spots are incredibly quick and lack almost any information, so it's hard to get a grasp on the situation. Presumably, this is a game that exists somewhere outside of Albuquerque, and I'd like to know what it's called so I can get a better look at the gameplay. In a way, this news encapsulates most controversial video game news: Excitement over amazing new technology followed by knee-jerk reaction by adults who have never played the game, and the knee-jerk reaction is always the better-publicized angle.


[via Kotaku]

Controversial Classics: "Postal 2"

Gary Coleman died last week, giving me a very thin excuse to talk about "Postal 2," in which you are able to kill Gary Coleman (who does contribute his own voice for the game). It's just one feature on an incredibly long laundry list of controversial elements you can find in-game. The game wasn't very widely released or critically acclaimed, but the controversy surrounding it has kept its name in the history books and even earned it a crappy Uwe Boll film adaptation. While it could possibly be defended for being a satire of game violence, the game is, on its face, likely the most immature entertainment you will ever endure.

"Postal 2" is the 2003 sequel to 1997's "Postal," which wasn't especially noteworthy. The game is a first-person shooter set in a suburban neighborhood. Your character must complete a list of mundane and not necessarily violent tasks each day, which will eventually be frustrated to the point that the player has to expend enormous effort not to "go postal." In order not to use violence, the player will have to sustain verbal abuse, wait in ludicrously long lines, and generally not have any fun at all playing.

The sheer amount of controversial material packed into the game is really too long to even recount. This gameplay video gives you a fair idea of what you're in store for, including the use of cats as gun silencers. Oh, and if you want to see a gamer suicide bomb Gary Coleman in-game, here it is. Pretty rough.

Chicago's Resurgent Video Game Industry on Time Out

My report on the Chicago game industry is online at Time Out Chicago now. Read about the companies that were (Midway, EA Chicago, Bungie) and the ones that are going to be (Wideload, Robomodo).

Red Dead Gets its Own Small Controversies

Two quick bits of news on Red Dead Redemption:

In a BBC interview, a Rockstar Games writer and voice actor named Lazlow Jones was asked this question:

Question: How do you feel about accusations that games such as yours are responsible for more violence among young people?

His answer: Our games are not designed for young people. If you're a parent and buy one of our games for your child you're a terrible parent. We design games for adults because we're adults. There's a lot of kids games out there that we're not interested in playing. Just like you enjoy watching movies and TV shows with adult themes and language and violence that's the kind of thing we seek to produce.

It's a pretty reasonable answer, but most gamers would have a little bit of trouble with how strongly he put it, especially the "terrible parent" line. A commenter on a Kotaku post about the story said exactly my first thought: "There goes some kid's dream of getting Rockstar Table Tennis."

A few days earlier, Red Dead Redemption was also accused of some rather old-fashioned prejudice for including the character pictured above, a town drunk named "Irish." An Irish Herald article on Red Dead pointed the stereotype out.

The article has several funny moments: The headline is "Irish 'drunk' sours launch of hit game," yet the article has all of three sentences on the actual character. Clearly, there's not a lot to talk about actually on-topic. The rest of the article breathlessly gives us details of how awesome and popular the game is, and why we should all go buy it right now. The game is "groundbreaking," "expected to sell four million copies this summer," "retail[ing] from €49.99 with enthusiastic gamers pre-booking their copies weeks ahead of the Irish launch tomorrow," with the "appeal [lying] in the huge detail." Very excitable for a news article on a controversy surrounding the game.

Red Dead Redemption and Rockstar's Reception

Only a few years ago, Rockstar Games just could not get a break. The "Grand Theft Auto" and "Manhunt" developers were firmly within politicians' radars, and it took serious effort for them to release a game without controversy being found within it.

For instance, in 2006, Rockstar developed four games: "Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix," an expansion to a mostly harmless racing game, even if it is about illegal street racing; "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories," which received little attention because it was developed solely for the Playstation Portable and didn't try anything new; "Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis," which confused everybody; and "Bully," which applied the basic story and gameplay structure of "Grand Theft Auto" to a theoretically less offensive private school setting.


Despite "Bully" being at its heart a toned-down "GTA," it still received as much if not more scrutiny from the press, politicians, and in particular Jack Thompson. Universally, ratings groups considered the game appropriate for 15 or 16 year-olds, but British politicians fought bitterly to label it for 18 year-olds, Jack Thompson sued to have the game's release blocked in Florida because it was a "public nuisance," and Brazil banned the game altogether.

The game was relentlessly taken out of context, and it just kept snowballing. In the end, a game about slingshot-and-cherry-bomb schoolyard hijinks was said to include sexual harassment, homosexual content, an implicit approval of bullying, implicit approval of violence, and it was even called "a Columbine simulator." It was as if politicians just knew something must be wrong with the game's content, because Rockstar made it, but they couldn't figure out what to object to.

Contrast that with what I found in The New York Times this morning. The Arts section is dominated above-the-fold by a huge screenshot of "Red Dead Redemption," which more or less applies that same "GTA" formula to a western setting. Seth Schiesel gives the game a glowing review, ending his review by saying "In the more than 1,100 articles I have written for this newspaper since 1996, I have never before called anything a tour de force. Yet there is no more succinct and appropriate way to describe Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar rides again."

Whereas "Bully," working from a similar concept in 2006, was intensely scrutinized for controversial scenes to pick apart before it was ever released, leading to endless courtroom battles and debates by people who had never touched a controller, here we are in 2010 with The New York Times praising a Rockstar game's writing and ability to immerse the player in a different world. It's always nice to look back and see how far we've come.

The Arcade in Kabul, Afghanistan

This past week, the Christian Science Monitor published a very short, 300-word story on a generator-powered arcade in Kabul, and it has to be the most wistful, sad gaming news story I've ever read.

Despite its short length, the article has plenty of almost implausibly sad quotes to choose from. The first quote is from a 14-year-old, who says "We come here to play games and relax from street-begging." A boy who claimed not to know his own name says the arcade is full of "beautiful machines." Another boy says "I don't want this game to finish, I want to keep on playing forever."

The article still sticks in one little dig at gaming for being violent, though... The only specific game named in the article is Mortal Kombat, and in the next paragraph we can find the line "For a generation that knew only violence growing up, these aggressive games offer a logical continuation to lives lived in hardscrabble conditions." That line goes against the grain of the rest of the article in an odd way. It's not exactly a condemnation of violent entertainment, but in the middle of a thousand optimistic quotes about how glad everyone is that these kids aren't stealing money and sniffing glue, we get this one line that the games' violence fits in well with their violent surroundings. Really? Mortal Kombat fatalities = Real life Afghanistan violence?

Unimportant side note: The above picture is reportedly from the arcade, and unless I'm hallucinating, it appears to be a Mario game. I'm pretty certain there were never any official Mario arcade games, so what is this? Not too important, but does anyone have an answer for this?

Cub Scout Video Games Belt Loop

The Boy Scouts of America recently introduced a "Video Games" Belt Loop and Academic Pin that can be earned by those at the Cub Scout level. The requirements to earn it are pasted below the main story.

I'm an Eagle Scout, so I have a little bit of perspective here. First of all, this isn't a merit badge. Merit badges are more rigorous awards for Boy Scouts (middle and high-school kids) whereas this is a belt loop/academic pin, a non-essential award for Cub Scouts (elementary school kids). All belt loops and academic pins are extra recognition for activities not actually necessary to advance to the next rank. Other new belt loops included this year are "Reading and Writing," "Skateboarding," "Photography," and "Good Manners."

The award requirements below have a real emphasis on edutainment, understanding the ratings system, and basically every form of moderation one can have in video game play. One funny part: The 7th academic pin requirement asks that you play a video game that helps with your math, spelling, or any other part of your homework. Well, math and spelling are specifically the educational skills I think video games are worst at getting across, because they involve a lot more pure memorization and less understanding of a general system. History and science can actually use the procedural rhetoric of video games to be better than textbooks at educating, but that's for another article.

Belt Loop

Complete these three requirements:

1. Explain why it is important to have a rating system for video games. Check your video games to be sure they are right for your age.
2. With an adult, create a schedule for you to do things that includes your chores, homework, and video gaming. Do your best to follow this schedule.
3. Learn to play a new video game that is approved by your parent, guardian, or teacher.

Academics Pin

Earn the Video Games belt loop and complete five of the following requirements:

1. With your parents, create a plan to buy a video game that is right for your age group.
2. Compare two game systems (for example, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii, and so on). Explain some of the differences between the two. List good reasons to purchase or use a game system.
3. Play a video game with family members in a family tournament.
4. Teach an adult or a friend how to play a video game.
5. List at least five tips that would help someone who was learning how to play your favorite video game.
6. Play an appropriate video game with a friend for one hour.
7. Play a video game that will help you practice your math, spelling, or another skill that helps you in your schoolwork.
8. Choose a game you might like to purchase. Compare the price for this game at three different stores. Decide which store has the best deal. In your decision, be sure to consider things like the store return policy and manufacturer’s warranty.
9. With an adult’s supervision, install a gaming system.

The History of the Madden Curse

It was recently announced that Drew Brees will be on the cover of "Madden 11," the next installment of the Madden NFL video game franchise. He was awarded the cover by fan vote, winning out over Reggie Wayne and Jared Allen online. Even in mainstream coverage of Brees' cover announcement, every story seemed to include a quick bit about the Madden Curse, and whether or not Brees was "worried." Brees was clearly aware of the phenomenon, saying he "[looked] at it as a challenge."

John Madden himself was on the cover of every Madden title until 1999. From every year there on out, a star player was put on the cover. Apparently nothing notable happened for the first few years, but here's a list skimmed from Wikipedia:

• Daunte Culpepper appeared on the cover of "Madden 2002" after leading the Vikings to the playoffs the previous year. He then proceeded to throw 23 interceptions and set a single-season record for fumbles, dooming the Vikings to a 5-11 record.
• Marshall Faulk appeared on "Madden 2003." The next year, he needed knee surgery and failed to really perform at the same level ever again.
• Michael Vick was on the cover of "Madden 2004." That year, he broke his leg in the preseason and the Falcons bombed. Needless to say, Vick would only go on to worse things.
• Ray Lewis was on "Madden 2005." He got a wrist injury and didn't get a single interception all year.
• Donovan McNabb was on "Madden 2006." That year, he had a hernia and tore his ACL.
• Shaun Alexander appeared on "Madden 2007." A foot injury took him out of six games that next year.
• Vince Young was on the cover of "Madden 2008." He suffered a knee injury and was replaced for a large part of the season by Kerry Collins.
• Brett Favre was on the cover of "Madden 2009," in what was originally seen as an effort not to curse any player that year. Favre had retired, but ended up coming back to play for the Vikings that year. He generally played well, but struggled through a bicep injury and had a disastrous last few games.
• Troy Polamalu and Larry Fitzgerald shared the "Madden 10" cover, in another attempt to switch up the cover design and avoid a curse. Polamalu was injured for all but about three games the next year. Larry Fitzgerald had an amazing year, but did miss out on the playoffs due to a ribs injury.
  

Not that I think this really needs debunking, but it should be pointed out that Sports Illustrated covers are also considered to have a jinx. Given that a similar status symbol within sports should have the same effect gives you a clue there's something else at work here besides a curse. Both "Madden" and SI covers are awarded to a player at the peak in his career, so any other season of theirs will look disappointing by comparison. It takes really special players to have a season worthy of landing the cover of "Madden" and keep up that legendary play the next year. Regression toward the mean, and all that. Still pretty fun to look at, though.

Infinity Ward vs. Activision: A Timeline and Summary

Amidst reports that their game had reached 25 million unique players and the upcoming release of an incredibly successful map pack expansion, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" developer Infinity Ward clearly had some sort of issue with their parent company, Activision, which led to the sudden departure of a large chunk of the development team.

(Note: If you're unaware of Activision's process with its "Call of Duty" developers, Treyarch and Infinity Ward alternate in developing new titles. Infinity Ward is considered responsible for the "Modern Warfare" titles while Treyarch develops World War II-themed (or possibly Vietnam next time) shooters.)

I've developed a timeline of this surprisingly intricate story, so it can all be seen in one place. A large portion of this comes via Joystiq and Kotaku.

• 3/1/10: A form Activision turned in to the SEC says that "The Company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation."
  
• 3/2/10: Sources claim that a "bunch of bouncer-types" show up at Infinity Ward HQ and are unwilling to divulge their purpose in being there. Infinity Ward studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West had not been seen since a meeting with Activision Monday morning.
• 3/2/10: Later in the day, Activision formally announces the departure of Vince Zampella and Jason West.
• 3/3/10: An internal Activision memo says Infinity Ward will remain central to the "Call of Duty" franchise... But also says that a new wholly-owned studio of theirs, Sledgehammer Games, will now also be developing "Call of Duty" titles, but action-adventure instead of first-person shooters.
• 3/4/10: Zampella and West file a lawsuit against Activision for breach of contract, alleging that they were fired to avoid being paid royalties for what was already the third best-selling video game of all time, "Modern Warfare 2." The suit asked for just compensation and, interestingly, control over the "Modern Warfare" brand.
• 3/4/10: Later in the day, Activision responds with a rather patronizing statement, expressing their disappointment with Zampella and West's "meritless" lawsuit. Activision vaguely alleges that Zampella and West failed to honor their obligations to their parent company.
• 3/5/10: Joystiq obtains Infinity Ward's court documents. They allege that Activision fired Zampella and West to avoid paying royalties, and take more complete control over the "Modern Warfare" brand. The document also complains about the increasing development pace forced upon the studio.
• 3/12/10: An anonymous source tells Kotaku that remaining Infinity Ward developers are only staying until they receive their royalty payments, and that morale at the studio is extremely low.
• 4/6/10: Two more development leads at Infinity Ward, Todd Alderman and Frank Gigliotti, quit.
• 4/9/10: Activision counter-sues Zampella and West in a shockingly juvenile-sounding lawsuit. They allege that the Infinity Ward execs took "a secret trip by private jet to Northern California, arranged by their Hollywood agent, to meet with the most senior executives of Activision's closest competitor [probably EA Games]." The lawsuit actually says that Zampella and West "morphed from valued, responsible executives into insubordinate and self-serving schemers who attempted to hijack Activision's assets for their own personal gain." Further allegations: That Zampella and West threatened to stop production of "Modern Warfare 2" in late stages of development for contract leverage; That they slowed pre-production of "Modern Warfare 3" for the same aim; That they refused to meet with Activision; That they "[engaged] in a campaign to portray Activision and its management in a negative light to IW employees in an effort to solicit those employees."
• 4/9/10: Zampella and West react, calling the counter-suit "false and outrageous." They continue the surprisingly juvenile tone of the argument, adding that any false allegations of insubordination can hardly have hurt Activision, given that "Modern Warfare 2" was the world's most successful video game.
  
• 4/12/10: Webcomic Penny Arcade chimes in with the comic below.
• 4/12/10: Zampella and West announce a new development studio called Respawn Entertainment, with a publishing agreement and funding coming in from EA Games.
• 4/12/10: Activision respond later, saying "this agreement comes as no surprise to Activision given the myriad of improper activities detailed in the cross-complaint filed on Friday against Jason West and Vince Zampella. We look forward to continuing to work with Infinity Ward's deep bench of proven talent on exciting new projects."
• 4/13/10: Three more IW developers, Jon Shiring, Bruce Ferriz, and Mackey McCandlish, all leave the company.
• 4/13/10: Later in the day, another four leave: Zied Reike, Steve Fukuda, Rayme Vinson, and Chris Cherubini.
• 4/14/10: Mark Grigsby and John Paul Messerly also leave Infinity Ward.
  
• 4/15/10: EA spokesperson Jeff Brown comments on a recent Activision Q1 report's bragging, saying "This is kind of like announcing: The race horse I shot last month has won the Triple Crown!"
• UPDATE 5/6/10: By now, around 35 former Infinity Ward employees have resigned and joined Respawn Entertainment. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says the studio is not going to be closed down, despite the huge personnel losses.
  

Controversial Classics: "Custer's Revenge"

Today's entry into my Controversial Classics series is heavy on the "Controversial" and light on the "Classic." I'll go ahead and say it's not a game worth defending by any means, but that above must be the best box art ever.

It's not a belated April Fools' Joke, no, "Custer's Revenge" is an actual 1982 game for the Atari 2600. There are a surprising number of pornographic games from that period, when you consider just how terrible the games look, sound, and play. There are very few now, (unless you count Japan, like the still-controversial "RapeLay"), which probably has more to do with the high cost of making a serious game now, rather than the presence of a market for this sort of thing. A gameplay video is embedded below, which I must warn you is crude in every sense of the word (well, it's not oil, but--).




If you don't want to see the video, or if you're not very good at charades, "Custer's Revenge" lets you play as a pantsless, erection-sporting General Custer as he evades arrows to rape/maybe-have-consensual-sex-with an Indian woman. That last distinction is important, for this vague depiction of... whatever was most controversial for depicting rape, even though maybe it's not, who can tell with so few pixels?

Wikipedia is a very entertaining source for this story. One cited source from Wikipedia claims that this game "generated many gang rapes of Native American women," following that quote up with a story about a Native American woman who was attacked by two white men, who apparently suggested that she play "Custer's Last Stand" [sic, I guess?] with them while assaulting and I assume raping her. I find many parts of that story bewildering, but let's move right along...

The game went through a number of other versions, including name changes to "Westward Ho," (heh, real funny) "The White Man Came," (dear lord) and a version called "General Retreat" in which the Indian woman apparently chases down Custer to have sex with him (empowering?). Trying to find the right gameplay video on YouTube, I found so many different versions of the same game, I can't even begin to count. The Indian woman was even made to beckon for Custer in later editions of the game, to guard against rape allegations.

As is usual with these controversial classics, the hoopla over the game's content actually served as a boon for those who made it. This was the best-selling game by far made by the porn game developer Mystique (they wouldn't last through the mid-80's game crash, though). I'm kind of sad for everyone involved in this game, including those who protested it so vehemently.

And Now... A Swiss Game Ban

Switzerland has now ratified a violent video game ban, but, according to an article translated by GamePolitics, a rather selective one, akin to Germany's current situation.

The ban will not blindly ban all violent video games (a difficult definition to pin down, when you consider fringe cases like "Madden" and even "Super Smash Bros.") and it will not ban games based on the PEGI rating standard, which acts like the ESRB for Europe. No, instead they will follow Germany's example, banning specific games that display "cruel acts of violence."

According to the article, this means that "Mortal Kombat" and "Manhunt" will be banned, but not "Counter-Strike." My first reaction to those examples is, of course, why must we always talk about such old games? Only "Manhunt" is from the 21st century, and it was released in 2003! "Mortal Kombat" developer Midway Games has gone bankrupt and become WB Games Chicago! It is incredible that such an old game can still be considered controversial, and it likely only reveals how clueless the politicians are who are ratifying the bill.

The violence standard here is a little odd, too, and doesn't really reveal their standard of "cruel acts of violence." "Manhunt" makes sense, given its snuff film stylings, and I can see how it is considered more harmful than "Counter-Strike"'s shooter violence. However, again, "Mortal Kombat" makes very little sense. If we're really talking about the original game, the pixellated fatalities are no more harmful to today's kids than "The Great Train Robbery" was to film-goers in 1903. More recent "Mortal Kombat" titles aren't really worth worrying about either, as the violence level actually hasn't significantly increased. There are much worse things to worry about.

Heavy Rain Retrospective

"Heavy Rain" has now been out for a little over a month, so it's time to look back and see the wake left by the game meant to change the industry as we know it. How was it received?

Critics: "Heavy Rain"'s Metacritic rating is 87. There's a mostly constant wave of review scores from 100 on down to 70, with three reviews giving scores in the 40's. If you consider that a 70 is about as low a score that reviewers will usually give a serious title, these scores run the gamut. Many reviewers loved it, many hated it, and so they resolved nicely into an above average score.

Positive words and short phrases critics used to describe "Heavy Rain": momentous, revolutionary, incredible, emotionally engaging, transcends the current definition of a video game, ground-breaking, not just a masterpiece but an ingenious step of its own

Negative words and short phrases critics used to describe "Heavy Rain": flawed, disappointment, technical issues, plot that's shocking but not sensible, not good enough, mediocre to bad voice acting, unexplained plot twists, the spectre of what might have been

Sales: I hate VGChartz because their actual sales numbers don't seem transparent enough, so I can't tell what's real, what's current, etc., but I don't have any other reliable way of finding sales for any game. Regardless, VGChartz has "Heavy Rain" as having sold a little over a million copies so far. Which puts it already at exactly the same sales that "Shenmue" had over its entire lifetime. So I'd say the sales have been pretty decent for an "artsy" video game.

Peter Molyneux: But of course, reviewers and sales don't matter when Peter Molyneux ("Fable," "Black & White," "The Movies") has an opinion! Molyneux the game offered a glimpse of the future, but he was unable to play it for more than 90 minutes because the game world was too dark and emotionally engaging for him. That last bit is what makes Molyneux a bit like Fry in "Futurama": His stories always go on one sentence too long.

Heavy Rain and Stanley Kubrick

Just a quick observation from playing "Heavy Rain" and being a huge Stanley Kubrick fan: I had heard before that Heavy Rain director David Cage was a Kubrick fan, and the game appears to have two clear allusions to Kubrick films.

First off, Norman Jayden sees an odd red-suited character while inside his ARI alternate reality system he uses to solve crimes. You can see what I'm talking about just briefly within the first thirty seconds of this video. Now, compare that to the bartender, Lloyd, who talks to Jack in "The Shining," pictured above. Start this video at 1:24 to see his role in the movie. Given that Cage is a Kubrick fan (in this interview, he says the game is inspired in part by Kubrick), this cannot be a coincidence that two semi-imagined characters in similar roles look so similar.

Now, there's also a similarity between "2001: A Space Odyssey"'s Louis XVI room at the very end of the film and Ethan Mars' fifth trial room. Skip all the way to 6:18 on this video if you want to see the final trial room, which I'll try not to spoil too badly here. Anyway, the room is completely unlike any of the other trials, being instead completely pristine and white. And if you compare the rooms side-by-side between "2001" and "Heavy Rain" it's just impossible not to see a similarity in their architecture and furniture.

The typical theory as to why the room at the end of "2001" has Louis XVI architecture is that the protagonist Bowman is trapped in an alien zoo that has tried to build their best idea of a human habitat. So why does "Heavy Rain" use the same sort of thing? Without spoiling it, I can't even begin to guess, and I'm not sure myself, anyway. Interesting, though.

The Game Review Timesink

I read about this little news story recently about Gamespot publishing then taking down a review of Global Agenda, an MMO. The game got a low score, and some readers apparently complained that the reviewer had not played the game for long enough to get any real sense of it. The reviewer had said he'd put in 15 hours of gameplay, but his data was online, and it turns out the real number was closer to six hours of evaluation.

In any video game without a natural story arc, it is very interesting to decide how long is long enough to have evaluated the game fully. I've reviewed the Baseball Mogul series before, in which case there are any number of variables to consider when making this decision:

• The game lets you go through it at any speed, from watching every pitch of a major league season to simply setting general lineups and simming the whole season in ten minutes. This choice is left completely up to regular consumers, and everyone has their own style. The game is naturally very different depending on which way to play it I choose, so do I have to try them all out, even though I know which way I enjoy the best?
• Playing through an entire season at my usual pace would take months. And a lot of the satisfaction of the game comes after playing through two or three seasons, as you start to see your draft picks develop and odd players set records.
• You can play any team from somewhere around 1900 on, or create your own fictional teams. Baseball has not been at all the same game over those periods, and in fact, the increased realism of older periods is a selling point to the game. How much of that do I need to evaluate?

The list goes on and on and on. Realistically, I won't be able to answer every question, well, ever. I am never going to play through an entire season, calling every pitch. I am never going to play a deadball era season.

So what did I do, in the end, writing without pay, mind, for a rather small reviews site? I played through six months of a Seattle Pilots '69 expansion team and played through six months of the 2009 Atlanta Braves' season. So I did not in fact complete a season until after the review was published. But I spent more than twenty hours just doing that much, and it wasn't really enough.

I've also reviewed movies, it turns out, and doing that feels like a breeze compared to reviewing a video game. You know exactly how much time you're putting in, probably between 90 and 180 minutes. Compare that to the timesink for reviewing a video game, which could easily be anywhere between 180 and 1200. For games without a storyline, 1200 minutes may not even be enough, but you have to stop somewhere. There are plenty of story-driven RPGs that will set you back more than 1200 minutes as well, especially if you have to be thorough like a reviewer, but 1200 is plenty enough to be shocking.

If the movie is bad, don't worry, you'll be out of there and ready to have fun ripping it apart in less than three hours. If a game is bad, and especially if a game is ridiculously freaking hard, then you don't know how long you've got left. A walkthrough may not even exist, because you're playing this before or at release time.

Sonic & the Black Knight was my least favorite game to review ever, and unfortunately, my review was for Kidzworld.com, so I couldn't really say whatever I wanted about it or use nasty humor or something. I just had to plod right through that crap, which was at first easy to the point that I thought I was missing something, then eventually became difficult in a really idiotic way. I just felt like I was wading through shit, playing levels that had zero fun content for the "reward" of cutscenes that made my childhood want to puke. Why, Sonic? Why? Then on the second or third-to-last level, I just couldn't move on. There was a point with insta-kill drops that I just couldn't move past, especially because I was already so infuriated with playing that piece of garbage. So, I threw the Wiimote down, and just wrote the review right then and there.

Thankfully, I didn't send it in immediately, because upon waking up and reading it the next day, I realized the review wasn't really appropriate for Kidzworld.

What's the answer, then? How can we reform video game reviews to make this process either more complete or more tolerable?

We can't.

Civilization V Announced: Is Canada in the Game?

"Civilization V," a new entry in perhaps my favorite video game series, was announced today. It will be released this fall. The details announced so far provide essentially no idea of what is new in this game, besides three pretty screenshots, and the announcement that this game will use a hex grid rather than a square one (which I am for). So, as you can imagine, the speculation on the 2K Games forums is crazy. My favorite thread is the one wondering who the 18 civilizations in the game are going to be. Why? Because of the arguments about Hitler and Canada.

In Hitler's case, some forum users want Hitler to be a playable leader of the German civilization in the next game. He hasn't been a leader in previous titles, even though other horrible leaders like Stalin have been. I can say pretty safely right now, though: Hitler will not be in "Civilization V." If he were, the game would be banned in Germany. German laws are very strict on the matter of keeping Nazis out of even historical titles, unless the game beats you over the head with the belief that Nazism was a bad idea. That's why there are no swastikas in the "Hearts of Iron" series.

More hilarious to me: There are tons of forumites who want Canada to be a newly added civilization. The first to make this comment knew it was an impossible suggestion, saying things like "Being a Canadian I also would love for this to happen. Poor Canada " and so on. But then, as people pointed out that Canada is probably not one of the eighteen most important civilizations in history, it got militant.

Someone said that Canada was unimportant, and really just a mixture of English and French civilizations, and the reply was: "Well it just so happens that Canada is very important to MY history. By the same Token the USA was just a British colony that gained independence, why should they get their own civ?" Others chimed in on the exact same note, saying that America was only a former British colony.

Another supportive opinion: "Canada has contributed as much to the world as America has and has been instrumental in some of the largest areas of modern life, from involvement in overseas military action, to political and economic stabilization in second and third world countries."

...and another one: "Canada should for sure be included.
It should have a high diplomacy factor, diplomatic unque building, and an idea for a unique unit is the pioneer!! Have the pioneer the same as any other settler but with an extra movement and defense point!
Canada and America were both colonies that gained independence..... THe only reason America is "stronger" is because of their greater population.....
PS: another idea for a unique building... ODR.. the outdoor rink "

It got more tangled from there. Someone recommended that we all see "Strange Brew" to find out why Canada isn't a civilization. My favorite anti-Canada post:

"Also, for those mentioning the great nation of Canada, be serious.

Russia- Great Revolution, Socialism/Communism, First in Space
America- Nuclear Bomb, Landing on the Moon, Hollywood
Britain- British Empire, Magna Carta
Canada- Bacon ?"

Great stuff.

Now Available on Amazon Kindle

This blog is now available for the Kindle. It costs $2 a month to get every post automatically delivered to your reader.

Pushing the Medium Forward

Has any medium's idea of what is acceptable for display moved as quickly as that of video games? Just two years ago, Mass Effect was universally hated (by people who had never played it) for including a "sex scene" which was actually just mild nudity. Now, Bioware's latest titles include the same level of mostly clothed "sex scenes," with virtually no public outrcry, despite these titles' huge mainstream attention. And despite not coming anywhere close to actually portraying sex, they're probably closer than the Hot Coffee mini-game was so long ago. Jack Thompson has disappeared, games are getting reviewed in the New York Times every week, and their perception as a children's medium is dying.

Video games can now have nudity and yet still be sold in Wal-Marts. That's a huge and recent development. Grand Theft Auto IV's DLC expansion The Lost and Damned was a strategically important place to get this done, and I think developer Rockstar North knew that. The Lost and Damned included a cutscene with a visible digital penis (belonging to a congressman), making it the first mainstream North American release to include male nudity. First of all, the game would not be released in stores to begin with, because it was download-only. The only people who could stop it from being sold were inside Microsoft. Second, as merely an expansion, the mainstream media attention wouldn't be overwhelming, so you get less people talking about a scene that they've never actually seen, which is important. Third, the DLC would eventually be sold in a disc format, after the attention had died away. Now we have stores selling a video game with frontal male nudity without controversy. It has now set precedent for all game releases in the future, and the medium has moved forward in the public consciousness.

Heavy Rain is now widely known as a game that's meant to move the medium forward, in many more ways than simply nudity. But, the fact that their nude scene is interactive makes an important distinction in the ongoing argument. One of the major reasons people will argue that video games should not have nudity while movies can is that video games are interactive. Nude scenes in games past have almost all been simple, non-interactive cutscenes, but in Heavy Rain, you can be seen as controlling the scene. The game hasn't yet been released, so I haven't played it, but it will be interesting to see exactly how it's handled. Regardless, the scene just isn't attracting the Fox News-class outrage we've seen in years past.

Maybe certain Japanese games like Rapelay put things in perspective.