About a month ago, the New York Times ran Charles Herold's video game review which explained perfectly the core of why The Sims Online has gotten such colossally horrible user reviews.

If you can measure the importance of an industry by the number of trade shows and events it has, then the video game industry is definitely on the rise. In the United States, there's Game Developer's Conference (GDC) in San Jose next week, and then Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles in May. The former is a developer-centric event, and the second is more for publishers. In the midst of those add a wide range of small academic events (tracked by Gonzalo).

Today and tomorrow there is another entry in the range of developer/publisher events, a "summit," the second annual D.I.C.E. from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, hosted at the hipish Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. GDC is a sprawling geekfest, I guess the people behind DICE felt there might be some draw from a celebrity-game-designer driven discussion of broad game design concepts minus programming. D.I.C.E. is single-track, meaning there's only one speaker at a time. Add a limited attendee pool, no sub-800$ registration, a strong selection of luminary designers, and it's likely an entertaining, perhaps enlightening, if slightly endogamous chance to develop thinking about games.

at the upcoming 21st Annual San Francisco International Film Festival, one of the films is "bang the machine" a documentary by tamara katepoo that takes the viewer "into the fascinating social world of video gamers in the bleached-out suburbs of America..."

i havent seen a good video game movie since "the last starfighter."
ive already reserved my tickets.

A manifesto posted to the new-ish site Ain't It Cool Games (a sister site to the one about movies) criticizes mainstream console games for not being innovative.

Oh, really?

I have been reading a little of Gamecritics and it's quite interesting. It's part of the new breed of accessible, intelligent writing on games and game culture. Haven't gotten through all the articles yet but I am most intrigued by the Zelda: Link to the Past piece which experiments with applying Joseph Cambell's ideas of mythology to one of the most popular classic Nintendo games.

Steven Johnson wrote a fun piece for Slate on the expansion of game space:

L3 takes place in virtual space, while the Go Game unfolds on actual city streets. But they share a common denominator: the widening of the game environment. Most forms of entertainment are defined by their edges: the outline of the Monopoly board or the dimensions of a movie screen. To enter the world of the game or the story, you enter a confined space, set off from the real world. Play-space doesn't overlap with ordinary space. But Go and L3 don't play by those rules. Go colonizes an entire city for its playing field; L3 colonizes the entire Web. These are games without frontiers.

Seen on GameStop today - Grand Theft Auto 3 for the Game Boy Advance. How would that work?

(I guess maybe it's been cancelled - maybe - I still want to know how someone planned to translate the expansive world of GTA3 to a pinched, dark GBA screen. I guess there would probably be less risk of confusing GBA GTA3 with reality!

This year's GDC Experimental Gameplay Project is looking for participants! If you're an indie game developer, a basement tinkerer, a conceptual artist, or a total amateur with a totally awesome idea, here's your chance to present what you've been working on among a community of like-minded folks. So polish off that dusty code and get yourself to the GDC!

Fresh take on DDR by Kathy Walker for Shift:

We're at the dawn of an epoch of activated culture. We're watching the closing scenes of the age of the couch potato. The question of "activation" isn't limited to physical movement; it's also about how our imagination is involved in video games. Most videogames are highly dependent on narrative -- the goal-based story is as much a part of the game as the graphics and sound. But these new aerobic Benami games are without narrative. The progression of simple shapes and arrows is closest to the minimalist geometry of the Tetris interface. Does a story-less game activate the mind? Or, does it merely signify that we are now completely comfortable with the absolutely mindless?

Pretty nice AP story on social protests in online games. The article quotes Raph Koster as saying, "If someone started walking around in the San Diego Zoo screaming profanity or handing out Nazi leaflets, the park would remove them form the premises. We need to be able to do that also." Hm, interesting extremist observation from Mr. Declaration of Players' Rights. Sounds like he's firmly inside the party line, to be sure. An interesting development in online gaming, because of course it means people can meet and gather without having to travel real distances. The possibility for a global meeting, global protest and communication, in fact. But who, besides the guys the run the servers, is going to care? One reason that real-life protests are effective is their obvious visibility to non-protesters. So the efficacy of protesting a war online seems limited at best. But if your aim is the complain about the game, in game is surely one way to make the server owners take notice - although they might simply kick you off.

Gizmodo reports that a member of parliament in Norway was caught playing a handheld electronic game during an important debate. He promised, "I'll never do it again."

That's right, mister! Or we'll just have to confiscate that from you!

[via anil dash]

It looks like a fighting game for the Xbox ranked mediocre in most reviews is now being recalled from the U.S. and Japan because of potentially offensive religious content.

Supposedly, this martial arts fighting game Kakuto Chojin includes bits of the Koran being read as part of the soundtrack. A muslim friend once refused my request to use his "Call to Prayer" tape on my radio show - it was sacred music to him, and not supposed to be used for entertainment.

Kakuto Chojin recalled at GameSpot doesn't give much info, but it's about as much information as anyone seems to have. Penny-Arcade has weighed in with something funny maybe, but not very pointed or particular.

Perhaps the product was recalled because MS didn't want to offend Muslims. But maybe the product was recalled because MS didn't want to be associated with Islam? Probably they wanted nothing to do with religion at all - this might have been Penny Arcade's point. Unfortunately the gaming news sites have reported nothing more than a single sentence-worth of information, and forums are filled with uninformed speculation and idle provocation. These gaming journalists at sites like GameSpy and GameSpot are ostensibly paid to write about games - wouldn't this be the type of story that warrants a follow-up call to Redmond? This seems fascinating as well as important to pursue!

Former employees of Origin, makers of Ultima Online, launched a magazine devoted on MOGs. Their range seems pretty broad, and they are looking for submissions, so if you're interested you might even get paid!