Escape from Woomera

The Australian Immigration Minister is pissed because an arts group got government funding to build a game that replicates the notorious Woomera refugee detention center and encourages players to find ways to escape. Escape from Woomera appears to be a protest piece of art - a member of the wishes-to-remain-anonymous group behind it says "there's been a lot of focus on the victimhood (of detainees) and we really want to focus on the bravery and heroism of these people." Quoting her from an article about the game in The Age, "she said the project was also a reaction to the Federal Government policy of restricting media access to detention centres. 'They don't want people to know what it's like, and we do,' she said." According to ABC news, a group representing refugees says the making of the game trivializes the issues. But would they say that if hundreds of school children played the game and saw the conditions the game-makers want to model?

For the record, Immigration Minister Ruddock says conditions have improved at the Woomera centers; they have two PlayStations there now! I wonder what kind of fights break out between refugees hoping for chance with the a controller?

(From the Serious Games mailing list)

Shorter Single-Player Games

Single-player games might take you anywhere from 2 hours (Panzer Dragoon Orta on easy) to 250 hours (Baldur's Gate 2 with all side-quests) to play through. Talking to some game developer friends, they said a publisher was urging them to make their single-player adventure game shorter. Towards 16 hours. Then you can play it in two or three full weekends. And then if you like it, you can replay it, maybe with a different character.

Baldur's Gate 2 is a mind-blower - they packed so much single-player content in there, I don't know anyone that has been through the plot, let alone the peripherals. I've started playing it two or three times; it's daunting to think about how long the game is, and discouraging when I think about spending that time instead developing a hobby or exercise.

But if I like a gameworld, like Deus Ex, I want there to be lots of it. I want to be able to explore the whole thing, and then go back and experiment further. Of course, that type of game only comes along every few years. Maybe I should try Morrowwind, which I believe randomly generates new towns and people and quests so you can wander forever in a plotless world, experimenting and empowering. Solve the plot, or explore endlessly.

What is the proper game length? It's hard to generalize - it depends on the type of game, the platform, and the quality of the content. But if I was to tell you that most of the single-player games would get shorter in the next few years, would you be sad?

The GDC Academic Summit

The IGDA posted its official summary of notes from this year's GDC Academic Summit. There's a lot of material there to go through, and it's worth it!

The Wrath of Kahn

EA has gotten into a bit of trouble in Germany with their FIFA 2002 World Cup title. It appears that a German court has ruled the title must be pulled from shelves since the German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn has not been compensated for use of his name and likeness.

A decision on compensation for Kahn will now follow, and may cost Electronic Arts millions of euro.

I know this seems boring when compared to discussions on video-game design, but from a legal standpoint, this will change the way sports games (specifically Soccer titles) are made.

American sports titles are easy to make by comparison to Soccer titles, since American sports franchises have players associations which encompass the licensing rights for the names and likenesses of the players. All one has to do is pay the flat rate to say, the NFL Player's Association, and one has the rights to the name and likeness of every player in the NFL. (For a time, the only exception to this rule was Jordan during his run with the Bulls in the NBA. He was the only player not in the NBA Player Association, because he wanted more money than the NBA PA flat rate, and as it turns out, he is conspicuously known as "Player" in the majority of the NBA titles from that era).

But with a sport like Soccer, there is no single definable player association, and so it becomes much, much harder to attain the legal name and likeness rights to all of the players. Even if you get FIFPRO, it doesn't mean you're going to have all of the club players (since FIFPRO is for the National teams). In the past, companies have gone so far as to slightly alter the name of the player (Kahn would be Khan, for instance) and get the likeness close but definitely off, or just hopefully use that player without paying for the likeness, which EA evidently just tried to do.

"For the first time we have an answer to the crucial question - can one represent personalities in videogames without their consent? Now the legal situation is clear," lawyer Matthias Prinz told CNN.de(translated from German).

slash dot games

Legendary geek portal Slashdot has launched games.slashdot.org, using the familiar Slash.* format to track game news and articles, with attached commentary. If they keep up the roughly-every-90-minutes updating schedule of the regular Slashdot, it should be another good place to track gaming news. They've just started so their bent is not yet clear, but following in the footsteps of their founders, they appear to lean towards Linux gaming more than usual, and online play as well. Here's the launch statement - it looks like Simon "Simoniker" Carless and Jon "CowboyNeal" Pater will be joining the functioning synapses of the global gaming brain.

A Review of "Digital Game-Based Learning"

Lengthy and thoughtful review of Marc Prensky's Digital Game-Based Learning on /..

Justin and I actually have 2 copies of this book - both as yet unread. Games that teach have, however, been a particular interest of Justin's for a while. The book's initial excessive use of exclamation points and italics turned me off on first glance but the ideas seem very interesting.

Best. Costume. Ever.

Randy Holloway sends this amazing link which made us both exclaim, "Holy Fucking Shit":

The Transformers Costume. Look and be awed.

Becoming: Gamer

Hiya. I’m new. Welcome me to the flock.

First of all, I'm a geek. I mean, I'd be silly to deny it after twenty years. Right down to my reverse Polish notation calculator and Tool albums, I'm all geek all the time, and I know it. I'm also fine with it. Being a geek of the female persuasion nowadays seems a lot easier to me than geek boyhood. Honestly, despite our minority status, we girl geeks have a much simpler time of it. As long as I wear clothes that at least resemble those found at Old Navy, keep MTV on in the background while I read Orson Scott Card, and buy all my M.C. Escher materials online so they arrive brown-boxed and hushed up, I function just fine in so-called normal society. And, to be fair, I live in Olympia, WA, where you can wear corduroy coats without shame and even be considered indie rather than just plain old geek as long as Phantom City Records stocks photocopies of your current homemade 'zine. In a nutshell, I may be a geek, but I'm doing fine. Go me.

So, if I'm a current-day geek, I must be a gamer as well, right?

Oh, dear.

Let's examine the facts.

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Neverending Search for Subjectivity?

Stuart Dennett, a postgraduate working on virtual environments and haptics, wrote to direct my attention to a paper (PDF file) which suggests that gameplaying is inversely linked to feeling of immersion in virtual environments. In other words, subjects who played a lot of games reported feeling less presence in the environment than subjects who had not played a lot of games.

Stuart quotes the relevant portion of the paper:

"We... found that females had a higher sense of presence than males. However, since females also played computer games significantly less than males, substituting game playing for gender yields a better fitting model. Greater game playing is associated with lower presence. No other variables were significant [Empasis mine]."

"Game playing is negatively associated with presence, irrespective of anything else. However, there is the same confounding of game playing and gender."

This correlates closely with my feeling that gender studies in videogames have often been conflated with casual-gaming studies, leading to all those moments of disassociation among female gamers who feel, "But *I* don't game like that!"

A lot more work to be done to separate gender from gameplay habits, I think.

Anyway, Stuart wonders if this phenomenon doesn't help to explain perhaps why we "grow out of games"; or, in my case - not yet having grown out of them! - why we seek greater and better immersion; why we can't roll back the graphics technology - graphics being an important element of immersive feeling. Is immersion more important than interactivty? That's another question I have. Any thoughts?

Nintendo's Broadband Pullback

I'm still getting emails from EBay with new listings for "gamecube broadband." I've been hunting for a Game Cube broadband adapter for two months now; they're not widely available in stores. Even the Nintendo website has been backordered.

Since the Dreamcast in 1999, every new console has boasted some means of connectivity. PlayStation 2, Xbox, and then Game Cube - each offered at least a way for broadband users to connect.

But after a hesitant, experimental release, Nintendo has been backpedaling from the Game Cube broadband adapter (if you believe 17 April Magic Box). They've even go so far as to emphasize that the new Mario Kart game will support LAN play but not Internet play. Why even bother having a broadband adapter?

For Phantasy Star Online. One game. A Sega game on a Nintendo platform, requiring an under-supported net connection peripheral. It seems silly to buy, especially since the mark up in most auctions ends up being about 15$, bringing the total to $50 for an orphan device. It's a gesture of desire from hardcore RPG/Nintendo fans.

I finally found my Game Cube Broadband Adapter, I paid $32 with "buy it now." I think I was engaged in the hunt for the device. Maybe the short supply is a sign of Nintendo's commitment to online gaming, for the time being. Maybe the only way to win playing with the Game Cube Broadband Adapter is to turn around and sell it for more than I bought it on EBay.

Emerging Tech Conference: Play Time BOF Session

Jane and I will be hosting a "birds of a feather" get together called Play Time, to talk about issues in video games at the Emerging Technology Conference. Thursday night, 7-8pm, if you're near Santa Clara California and you have time to stop by the Westin Hotel, join the conversation!

Tugbek Olek - Writer First

Part of a continuing series of Profiles in Game Journalism:

Dedicated play can lead to work as a game journalist, at least in Turkey. But first and foremost, Tugbek Olek is a writer.

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Emerging Tech Conference

This week Jane and I will be at the Emerging Technology Conference in Santa Clara. Amidst the talk of nanotechnology, social networks, cooperation amplifiers and wireless webs, the are a few sessions devoted to game paradigms and game design.

Yesterday, Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow wrote up notes on a session by Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, who still hasn't found a publisher for his book on Xbox hardware hacking.

We'll be keeping an eye out for the other innovators and teachers there and we'll post our findings here. If you're around, say howdy!

Thinking About E3

Editor's Note: E3 is a month away... and I'm excited and apprehensive at the same time. This feature comes just in time. Robin Hunicke is a gamer, fan, student and long-time proponent of good games. Her writing is sharp, as is her photographic eye - be sure not to miss her collection of photographs, linked to in the article.

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Christian Game Critique

We've talked about Under Ash, a game used for political ends by Palestinian sympathizers. This fascinates me, the use of games as a means to communicate a deliberate message (other than the passive messages of most fantasy/scifi mythology in electronic entertainment).

Today I stumbled across Christian Console Game Reviews, a partner site of Christian Computer Game Reviews. They host fairly typical reviews, with the addition of a "appropriatness" metric for most games - how these games suit the Christian philosophy and approach to life. The James Bond/Nightfire review belies the lure of gaming and mass media:

From a Christian perspective, this game has its downfalls. The sheer fact that it is a shooter, for instance, or that it has sexual innuendo, which is, really, a part of the James Bond genre. There is one saving point, though. You are trying to save the world from another evil madman. And that makes it worth all the trouble…all the trouble…

More trouble is found in the Super Smash Brothers Melee review, where the writer points out that the game has some Pokemon characters, reminiscent of How Pokemon and Magic Cards Affect the Minds and Values of Children (from May 1999).

There's constant talk of how games might change us, obviously Christian writers and parents have already been giving this some thought. These writers are trying to balance the seduction of occasionally sin-laden electronic entertainment with fears they might be savaging the spirit of their faith. Gamers lacking a strong Christian persuasion have only their eternal souls to worry about.

Patchwork Policing Player-Cop Killing

Grand Theft Auto 3 has sold a lot of PlayStations. The 80s rehash soundtrack of Vice City drew some fans of electroclash towards gaming in general. Some might argue that GTA3 has raised the bar for open-ended simulations. And some have argued that GTA3 makes law-abiding behaviour seem like more of a choice and less of a compulsion.

Now GTA3 seems to be behind one US state's effort to legislate against violence in games. Soon, Washington state is expected to have a law on the books making it a crime to sell specific games. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,

Under House Bill 1009, which passed the Senate yesterday 42-7, retail clerks could be fined as much as $500 for renting or selling video games that contain violence against law enforcement officers.

So this bill bypasses the ESRB ratings system decided on by software publishers and retailers. This is government reaching out beyond industry self-regulation to make a special case, fearing games permitting violence against officers. If there's a cop in a game, and s/he can be hurt, you can't sell the game in Washington State. Funny - that's home to Microsoft and Amazon - both of them lobbied against it. The IDSA is expected to press a lawsuit against the bill.

Let's hope they succeed - we can't have laws that target specific forms of video game speech, that runs counter to the essence first amendment. If we want to bar content from minors, that's another matter - that's why ratings systems exist.

The woman who proposed the bill, Representative Mary Lou Dickerson, wrote an editorial last December, "Parents, take charge of kids' video games." In that piece, she argues that parents don't check ratings on games they buy for their children. It sounds like the solution to her problem is more media education, not a state-by-state determination of evil in this medium.

CNN/Money 's Chris Morris has some additional coverage.

Wagner James Au: Player Philosopher

Part of a continuing series of Profiles in Game Journalism:

Wagner James Au studied philosophy in college, which prepared him to appreciate Thief and write articles about games for Salon.

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Genderplay: Successes and Failures in Character Designs for Videogames

(This essay is based on a talk I gave on April 15th to Katherine Isbister's CS class at Stanford. Thanks to Justin for help with constructing the argument, refining my thought, and for sharing his experiences of gaming in drag.)

As a woman who plays video games, I've had to think about gender in videogames, because it's so obvious that I'm playing in a boys' world.

The late Dr. Anita Borg taught that technology isn't neutral; tools are shaped by the values and desires of the creators. Often the creators tend to be clueless to the values encoded in their tools, because to them, the tools are transparent - they reflect pure utilitarianism. But to those who are excluded, the tools are highly charged.

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Sometimes TV Really Sucks

I'm watching Gameheadz, the documentary on the origin of computer games on The Learning Channel. And what I'm learning is that TV sucks.

The bulk of the Atari portion footage - the historical stuff, not the interviews - is lifted directly from a parody video which Atari employees made (including a handsome young Owen Rubin, who acts in the piece): "Outstanding in Our Field". Part recruitment silliness, part commercial, it was meant to be a funny, self-deprecating piece. It screened at California Extreme last year, and it was hilarious.

But - and maybe it's because I've just finished reading Neil Postman - it's infuriating how the scenes are used with no comment. You don't get that it's a parody. It makes me wonder what other sources they're mixing in there with no explanation or comment.

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The Right to Virtually Assemble

John Scalzi (who evidently writes a column in OPM twice a month) poses the topic on his Whatever web column: The Right to Virtually Assemble.

But I think there's also an interesting wrinkle in the first amendment argument for video games that I'd like to toss out there for comment and criticism (which, of course, I'll use for background in my next OPM column). So far all the arguments for first amendment protection for video games is founded on freedom of speech from governmental intervention. But what about freedom of peaceable assembly?

The debate is an offshoot of his original articles about the First Amendment and how they apply to video-games (and the ongoing case against the First Amendment applying to video games). His peronal web-column is typically devoid of video-game topics, so this is a rare chance to take a gander at a great writer's take on the legality of video-games.

My Trip to Liberty City

Writer Jim Munroe plays a friendly Canadian tourist in the short video, "My Trip to Liberty City" (Quicktime movie). A great little exploration of agency, gamespace, and identity.

Also, it's funny!

(Thanks, yi!)

Ethics in Videogame Journalism

GGA's own Justin Hall writes about the state of online videogame criticism for the Online Journalism Review.

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A Mascot for GGA

I've long been an admirer of Penny-Arcade. Tycho's writing is deft and Gabriel's art has a fluidity that blends the fantastic with the every day in a way all gamers instantly recognize. Last month's "Cardboard and Steel" story in particular is a masterpiece, proving how much range Krahulik and Hollkins have. I can't remember when I've seen richer grayscale images outside of classic film - they fairly glow off the page.

We love Penny-Arcade because they tell our stories - they laugh at us, certainly, as they laugh at their own expense, but their love of games and sympathy for gamers is always evident. We admire them for doing it all themselves, from the ground up. All along they've maintained a deep commitment to their sometimes rabidly loyal fans. They have integrity. And they've consistently been an important source of news, commentary, and critique of games and the game industry.

Having had a crush on the boys behind the strip for quite a while (one of those crushes sustained without ever actually, you know, meeting them), I finally mustered up the guts to ask Gabriel to design a mascot for GameGirlAdvance.

And he did.

This weekend I'll be redesigning to fit the new mascot in, but Justin and I are going to Nebraska, so we probably won't be able to implement until Monday night or Tuesday morning.

Busted for Game Hints

Earlier this week we posted a story about a guy going to jail for selling mod chips online. Now we have a story about a guy going to jail for sending game hints through the mail!

It's a little more nuanced than that - Gary L. Messenger II, a state trooper at the time, got a little excited and beat up a guy with some trooper buddies. He was sentenced to time in prison. During his stay at the Mount Olive Correctional Complex, he made some friends. Evidently they were playing video games together there, but they were stuck! There was some part of the game they couldn't get past. So when he got out of prison, he looked up hints on the internet for the game they had been playing, and mailed them to his inmate friends back at Mount Olive. Unfortunately, this broke the terms of his parole - no correspondence with convicted felons. So he had to head back in for another 90 days incarceration at a halfway house. The story is here, in the Charlston Gazette: Ex-trooper sent to halfway house for giving game hints to inmates. I saw the story on TechDirt: Locked Up for Sending Game Cheats to Inmates. As TD points out, there's no mention of what games, or game systems these inmates have access to. I'm waiting for a call back from Judy in the warden's office at Mount Olive, she said she'd look in to it for me.

More Game Research Coming - With Strings Attached

Did you ever wonder how video games effect you? Well, there could be more research coming, this time from a U.S. Government mandate, proposed by senators biased against "sick and indefensible" games like Grand Theft Auto 3.

Senator Joe Leiberman, former VP candidate with Al Gore and long-time anti-game-violence crusader, has partnered with Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback to propose this legislation: a new Federal Research Program on Media and Children within the National Institutes of Health. I covered these two when they were working to legislate advertising video games to kids. They have some important points to make, amidst a lot of misinformation and grandstanding over violence and immoral content in video games. Lieberman, in his statement talks of closing the "research gap" that prevents people from agreeing that violent media teaches violence. He does mention an opposition to censorship, but I think he hopes to lay a sort of moral pressure on game makers to help them see that they are polluting young minds. I wonder if Rockstar is listening.

The research they are proposing might develop some useful data along the lines of Mark Prensky's work on "Digital Game-Based Learning" which I have on order from Amazon. Hopefully, the researchers will start their research into games with an open mind, and a sense of context and history of other "violence in media" campaigns. Anyone fancy a Dime Novel?

(Seen on CNET News.com coverage: "Senators target video violence" from Ben at Serious Games)

Mod Chip Chill

A sentence was handed down in the case of David Rocci, a Virginia man caught selling Xbox Mod Chips off ISONews. He got 10 months in prison and a $28,500 fine (not the maximum possible sentence, that was 5 years and $500k).

For two months, he sold chips for people to fix their Xboxes to play non-Microsoft sanctioned disks. He was held to be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s provisions against the sale or distribution of circumvention devices.

In online flea markets, I've seen people selling bootleg Xbox disks, so I can see that there might be console privacy concerns. But I've travelled between Japan and the United States, trying to play games in each place, and so I've wanted to be able to circumvent region encoding protections to keep me from having to buy a new machine in each country I play games in.

Is there some way to distinguish between people illegally copying games and people wanting some flexibility with their console? The DMCA's oppressive potential has been well covered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The game publishers' lobbying group is psyched by the DMCA though: "IDSA Applauds Federal Prison Sentence for Mod Chip Trafficker." Applauding a prison sentence, that seems a bit crass to me. I guess they are happy that people might start to perceive mod-chipping as risky, instead of empowering.

From Computer and Video Games: "The Long Arm of the Law Reaches out to Xbox Mod Chips"

MAVAV a Hoax - does it matter?

I was in a class about video games and someone raised MAVAV, Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence. A fellow educator didn't believe me when I said it was a hoax; I showed him evidence that MAVAV was David Yoo's Final Project for an Interactivity & Programming class at the Parsons School of Design.

The people presenting about CounterStrike and game violence and addiction proceeded with their presentation. One said, "Does it matter if it's a hoax? I think it should exist either way."

How They Got Game Weblog

The profusion of weblogs continues - How How They Got Game is a weblog started as part of the project, "How They Got Game: The History of Videogames and Interactive Simulations" funded by the Stanford Humanities Laboratory. The team includes Henry Lowood, who's very active in moderating and appearing as a panelist at digital/new media conferences. I believe they will be publishing a collection of essays under the same title.

(seen on Ludology)

E3 Panel on Asian Games

Following the crash and burn of American video game pioneer Atari, Japan took over the worldwide video game market. Today, Sony and Nintendo command the console and handheld markets, with Microsoft posing the first real Western hardware challenge in two decades.

All the while, South Koreans have been playing PC games, online. They have the most massively multiplayer of all the online games, Lineage, and scores more online games in genres Western gameplayers seldom touch.

South Korea likely has something to show the world, and Japan has always been fascinating, though some have recently been arguing over a decline in Japanese game making. And what is happening with games in China? Taiwan and Hong Kong have their game cultures, but I know very little about gaming on the Chinese mainland.

Differences in video games between East and West are fascinating, as are similarities. Increasingly, the differences between these cultures seem less like a gap and more like a wide gray area. I'm looking forward to learning and discussing more about games in Asia, in part for a panel I'm moderating on this topic at E3 in May in Los Angeles, America's largest video game exposition. Details posted below.

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War Games

A friend called this morning to ask, "Do you think that people have a renewed interest in strategy war games because of the war? Or is it just me?" He's heading out to buy his first war game in several years - he used to play as a teen, but he lost interest in the genre until now.

I don't think he's alone. Certainly the mainstream press recently has run several pieces on the subject. I'm not a psychologist, but I think it reasonable to suggest that some of us are having a tough time grappling with our thoughts of the war, and perhaps playing a simulation is one way to process our conflicting ideas and feelings. At the GDC last month, I spoke with several people who were either researching the military-industrial-entertainment complex or actually working within it. The well-publicized release of America's Army last year also brought the link between the military and the videogame industry to the public's attention.

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Ludology Examination

"Ludology" is the name of a good gaming weblog and a word describing the study of games. Now "games" means everything from Monopoly to Metroid, things that are completely plotless like toys (Tetris) and things that barely allow any user participation at all (Squaresoft's Bouncer). What use is the word "games" then and how could you ever hope to ludologize? Jussi Holopainen from the Nokia Research Center has written Games Without Frontiers to work through these questions. It's a preliminary stab - declaring some parameters and a general need for game study. His bibliography is good looking, as is his project - since the Finnish mobile phone giant has launched a handheld mobile phone/portable gaming device, they've been investing some money in game research. Game research - that sounds delicious.

Blog Play

Seyed Razavi's Blog Shares is a fantasy stock market for weblogs. By tracking the links between web sites, and doing a little simple math, BlogShares allows people to buy and sell shares based on the economy of attention online. Add a message board, and play money, and you have rich role-playing, the potential for cheating and perhaps influence peddling.

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David Hodgson - From Witchcraft to Warcraft

David "Sothoth" Hodgson has been an editor at Maximum, GameFan, Gamers.com and now writes game strategy guides for Prima. All that with a degree in Demonic Possession. This game journalist got his start by making his own gaming publication; not a web site but rather a print 'zine about the PlayStation.

Here, David shares some advice for aspiring game journalists, and his own story:

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More Stuff About War Games

From the New York Times:

"'Ender's Game' has had a lot of influence on our thinking," said Michael Macedonia, director of the Army's simulation technology center in Orlando, Fla., which plans to build a virtual Afghanistan that could host hundreds of thousands of networked computers. "The intent is to build a simulation that allows people to play in that world for months or years, participate in different types of roles and see consequences of their decisions."

The military has already licensed There's technology for testing in virtual worlds.

A New Expansion Pack?

Kevin Maney for USA Today writes:

"It's time for the U.S. to unleash a powerful new secret weapon.

You might call it: The Sims Iraq.

This might be a way to counter what is apparently the biggest blunder of the war so far — i.e., the mistaken assumptions about how Iraqis would respond to our invasion. If it's too late to fix that mess, the secret weapon could be used in the next war.

Sims-style technology could become so powerful, it won't just help us win wars — it might help us win them without armies."

He doesn't mention robot fighters but I'm sure that's in the DoD works, too.