I grew up reading comics and studying media. Throughout history, new popular-culture forms of entertainment are blamed for the fraying of the social structure and contributing to the general delinquincies. The novel, the ballet, television, rock and roll, comic books, and video games. It seemed obvious to me as I looked back: people blame media for social ills, and then that media becomes more familiar and less threatening. So why assail modern media?

Jack Thompson, a lawyer in Florida, is eager to defend a young man accused of murder because Thompson wants to hold the video game industry accountable - "Lawyer aims to take over murder case." Jack Thompson's few righteous lines sound like they were lifted from a Sinclair Lewis novel.

Some people in our society are locked in a discussion about the propensity of games to provoke violence in youths. How come we don't discuss the propensity of day-trading to provoke violence in adults?

GameDaily is featuring an interview with Representative Mary Lou Dickerson, the Washington state Democrat responsible for the recent legislation outlawing specific video game speech for sale to minors. She hoped to prevent kids from playing games that allow violence to police officers. The interviewer attempts to explain to Dickerson gradations and artistic exceptions; Dickerson has ready, saddening answers. The notion that interactivity makes media different and therefore subject to fewer or different free speech protections is beginning to firm up - a sad sign in the still-early development of the medium of videogames.
GameDaily Newsletter -

I've fantasized for months now about starting or joining a videogames research institute. My peers and I banter about hyper-media over the bleeps and bangs of a handful of machines in a well-lit room with high ceilings, while someone in an adjoining office packages and sells our expertise and suppositions.

So it is with a mixture of absolute enthusiasm and a wee bit of envy that I pass along a link to the newly formed Center for Computer Games Research Copenhagen. Espen Aarseth, Jesper Juul, Susana Tosca; many of these folks will be familiar to the regular readers of Game Studies. They're hard-working pioneers of game research and it's good to see that they have a home. For those of us who aspire to think for a living, we can follow their progress and papers on this new site.

Ludology.org's Gonzalo Frasca writes about the people involved, and the reasons ludology has flourished in the Scandinavian countries.

A recent Rochester study, as published by CNN, states that 16 men between the ages of 18 and 23 took a series of tests that relied on video screens to test visual aptitude. As it turns out, the men who had played videogames regularly in the past 6 months tested consistantly higher than those who hadn't.

Now, this isn't proof positive that video-games aren't mindless, as the CNN article attempts to claim, since the tests only involved the ability to locate the position of a blinking object, count the number of simultaneous objects on a screen or pick out the color of an alphabet letter. These aren't necessarily life-changing skills we're talking about, but they are a measurable quantity for test purposes.

What the article boils down to is that videogames are at the very least an effective tool for training better soldiers.

Hopefully someone will do a study on other (social, problem solving, etc.) aspects of gaming and how they apply to real-world situations.

In a plotline reminiscent of Bandai's dot-hack, Slashdot games is tracking the fascinating story of a massively-multiplayer online game corruption. Last night, the servers on Shadowbane were thrown wide open - unholy and unfair acts perpetrated upon innocent newbies, the terror of angry, arbitrary game gods: "It involved more than just a guild taking Khar. This was teleporting people all over the world, teleporting hostile guards into the safe-holds, bringing in hordes of special event monster sand teleporting everyone to a city at the bottom of the sea." (Trol in the Shadowbane forums).

People are arguing over the bugginess of the game in the /. comments. Some believe this was not so much a hack, involving altered client software or server break-ins, instead they suspect people might have taken advantage of bugs in the game. Maybe there is not much of a difference.

Machine9 responds with some veteran Dungeons & Dragons glee: " I absolutely -adore- this, it's the kind of stuff my DM does to us ALL THE TIME! they should be clever about it, and turn all the offending player chars into NPC-evil-masterminds to be defeated after wreaking havoc on the entire continent... "

That's a creative solution, but these game worlds trade in part on stability and predictable experience for their paying subscribers. This could be a splash of cold water for people invested in virtual economies - the economy is fragile.

The official response of UbiSoft/WolfPack has been to invoke law enforcement. Perhaps they will restore the servers from backup, to present the world before it had seen the plagues and scourges. Some people have suggested that they send in Neo or Agent Smith, depending on their perspective - a hero to right the virtual world, set awry by an unprogrammed enemy.

Slashdot: Shadowbane Servers Hacked, Chaos Ensues

Sorenstam's Got Game, in Reality and Virtually - as part of the Sunday New York Times Week-in-Review section, game designer Sid Meier demonstrates how his SimGolf game could be used to model a match between Annika Sorenstam, the first woman to golf with the male PGA players in 58 years, and Vijay Singh, who said that Sorenstam shouldn't play with the male golf professionals. Meier designs a course that favors precision, and then establishes two avatars modelled after Sorenstam and Singh. The results of their virtual matchup? More questions in the use of sports games, and simulations over all, to model and forecast human competition. In this case, gender retribution has a guest-starring role, arguing for the video game as a level playing field, where an amateur designer can make a course that caters to anyone's strengths.

In this month's feature, Wayne Bremser compares the properties of Donkey Kong to the aesthetics of Matthew Barney's provocative film, Cremaster 3. Wayne is a writer and old-school game enthusiast. His current projects include Harlem.org, a jazz history site, and BeatThief.com. It's obvious from his writing that he is skilled and smart; but you should also know that he brandishes a positively wicked sense of humor, too. He lives in San Francisco and is working on his first novel.

MORE...

Reporters sans frontières is protesting on behalf of some videogame journalists who were detained and deported from Los Angeles as they were en route to report on E3 last week: "Six French journalists detained on arrival at Los Angeles, sent back to France."

Journalists who cover videogames would seem to have it easy - gameplaying, junkets, exciting events. But here's a rude bit of geopolitics and paranoia for them to cover. I wonder if they will report on the experience themselves?

Alexandre Alfonsi of Télé 7 Jours, Stéphanie Pic of Télé Poche and Michel Perrot of TV Hebdo, Thierry Falcoz, editor in chief of Game One cable television, and two of his cameramen, Laurent Patureau and Alex Gorsky - I apologize to you on behalf of my government.

From Ben at Serious Games.

The geniuses at MIT Media Labs (and I'm not being sarcastic) have come up with an expensive but sanitary way to play at the urinal. The stream is read by sensors and used as the interface for an onscreen game mounted above the urinal. "You're in Control encourages cleanliness while reintroducing play to the act of micturition," says the paper (available in PDF).

For the future? "We envision a variety of additional software applications. For example, users could play a game in which they uncovered a hidden image with their urine." Oh, fun! Pee off the sand and find the treasure! "Another possibility is a co-operative networked game -" Never mind, I think I'll stop reading that now. My favorite: "Users could even browse through news stories, advertisements, and stock quotes as they voided their bladders, in a new form of bathroom multitasking." Sounds great. When's the female version available?

A group of die-hard adventure game fans got their hands on Ken Williams, co-founder of seminal PC game maker Sierra On-Line. Remember King's Quest? Or Leisure Suit Larry?

The Adventure-Treff Ken Williams interview brings up old memories for some, ancient history for others. The Adventure-Treff not-so-hidden agenda is to resurrect the adventure game genre with Williams' insight and support. Williams seems more interested in explaining the architecture of the company, and their success. To what does he attribute it? Attention to quality, detail, and dedicated direct marketing. It's a fascinating look at the early days of game publishing. And Williams comes across as a somewhat extreme guy who may have retired too early. He's running SierraGamers.com, to coordinate information sharing between fans and historians, and he has a commendable attitude about abandonware and player game-modifying.

A young videogame programmer felt a sudden urge at airport security in Los Angeles. It was Saturday morning, and he was headed back east from E3. Dashing over to the gray plastic bins reserved for laptops, he grabbed one and immediately vomited in to it. A caring security officer approached him: "Are you okay?" she asked. Slightly chagrined, he didn't mention he had a thorough hangover from a night of drinking with his mates. Instead, he said quickly, "I'm okay, I just have a little fever." He was immediately stuck in quarantine until he could be checked out by a medic.

SARS hung in the air over E3 this year, perhaps because there wasn't any bigger news.

From writer Julian Dibbell, a link to the Iraq invasion reimagined as a Ultima Online guild chat.

Microsoft has been steadily back-pedalling their beefy sized console and controllers. For the Japanese market, they released a special, smaller "S" controller. Originally, this was made to cater to smaller East Asian hands, now ithe S size controllers ship standard with all machines since most people have sub-Paul Bunyan sized grabbers. Besides that, the machine itself is a Buick. Rumors have been bandied about in the last few months that they are working on Xbox 1.5 with a smaller footprint.

Smaller controllers, compact console - it seems Microsoft no longer wants to be known as the swollen game device maker. So why are they going in on this promotion with McDonalds?

"For many years we've allowed our customers to Super Size their meal combos, giving them larger fries and drinks with their sandwiches," said McDonald's vice-president of marketing Carrie Yang. "Now, in cooperation with Microsoft, we're giving our customers an even bigger option - Xbox Size!"

(pssst... it's not a good idea in any situation to take me seriously. just so you know. no getting mad when the goofball opens her mouth.)

So. This isn't really a Becoming: Gamer installment - consider it my first nitpick in the world of Gamer, rather. I think I deserve one after two weeks. :P

Let's just say I've got the game situation under control. I gave Harry Potter to my brother, who told me to buy it in the first place, and I've confiscated the family copy of Pokemon Ruby. Sure, an 8 year old could play it, but it's a format I'm familiar with, and, more importantly, it involves no jumping. NO jumping. Yay.

I still don't believe that you have to be good at jumping or the like to be a gamer. If that's true, then I ought to quit right now. But I don't think it is. A few of you commented in the affirmative - you, like me, believe that not all games are about pixelated jumping. That's nice to hear. But I discovered this past week that most games that are jump-free or sport-free seem to fall under the category of, well, "Role-Playing". And that, in fact, even Pokemon is considered a role-playing game.

Role-playing. I don't think so.

Look, I may be a geek, but that is NOT my bag, baby. I am very happy in this particular set of bones and skin, and when I do pretend to be someone else, I stick to stages full of lights and people bringing me pretty things in my dressing rooms. And I know that not all geeks role-play.

Here's my argument. Aren't all games role-playing? I mean, you're obviously not in the game yourself - you're controlling something or someone. Will the new Matrix game be considered a role-playing game? I mean, does it make it less of a role-play depending on how many things you shoot or stuff you jump over?

Is the label Role-Playing just slapped onto games that seem to fit in no other category? That is, games that we uneducated few can play without confusion or fear? Yes, mortal fear. Shut up.

I don't know. Help me out, guys. I'm confused.

Justin and I are totally excited to see The Matrix Reloaded tonight at Mann's Chinese, of course! But as for the game, well, we're not holding our breath.

Justin was asked by Julian if the game was going to be any good. He replied, "Oh, you know what it's going to be. They're going to take the three popular genres - there's going to be some shooting, some driving, some sneaking around - and they're going to cobble it together into a great lumbering mutant monster glued together with long, amazing, unskippable cutscenes."

Well, yeah. And the mainstream press agrees. And you?

More voices, more games, more players. It's a deep desire of anyone who loves this medium. Today at E3, the games conference in Los Angeles, software publishers and journalists discussed the issues surrounding a maturing game market. They decided that games should respond to a players mood and behavior, movies will be advertisements for games, the core gamer is dead, and there should be more sex in games.

Following up on Robin Hunicke, this week Game Girl Advance is covering E3, the dizzying spectacle of videogames sales. Not so much like the Slashdot Games guys, who are providing timely updates on conference news, press releases and new games, we're synthesizing the emerging truth of the global electroculture, ie, attending a lot of panels. It's like going to videogame school! Jane is taking notes. If you're in the neighborhood, be sure to say howdy.

I posted an essay version of a short talk I gave at an Austin Game Developers' meeting in March: "How Has Inventory Management In Computer Role-Playing Games Affected The Way I Pack?" It's one way of phrasing the question: how have videogames affected me as a person? Which is part of a broader inquiry: does a group of people with deep experience playing videogames solve problems differently? Or engage in different sorts of relationships?

Last week Brenda Laurel gave a talk to Katherine Isbister's CS class (where Justin and I also spoke a couple weeks ago). Brenda is a co-founder of Interval Research in Palo Alto, and founder of Purple Moon, a spinoff of Interval Research Corporation, focused on making technology for girls. She's written several books, including the ground-breaking Computers as Theatre (she has a PhD in Theatre) and The Utopian Entrepreneur. She's worked at several leading companies in the industry, including Apple, Activision, and Atari. She currently serves as the Chair of the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design.

She's been an inspiration to many people in the way she combines geek knowledge with humanist values. She is also an amazing speaker - funny, passionate, and absolutely thoroughly steeped in professional research. A real rabble-rousing shit-kicker, with a mane of strawberry blond hair and tatoos on her arm and peeking out over the collar of her purple tank top on her upper back. She spoke to the students about doing good design research, using her own experiences at Purple Moon as a test example. I'll attempt to paraphrase her remarks from my notes.

Based on the Multi-Played Out thread, fellow GGA gamers might do well to have some ready friends in different online games. A game-literate social group widely travelled in online worlds.

Posting your player/character handle/contact information for online multiplayer games in the comments below. Then you can add fellow GGA gamers to your buddy lists and we can play together some time. I'll start -

Part of a continuing series of Profiles in Game Journalism:

JC Herz wrote an early book examining the emergence of electronic gaming as a medium, Joystick Nation. Her Game Theory review columns in the New York Times were among the first popular intelligent game commentary. Now a freelancer and consultant on massively-multiplayer online games, she shares her brief history of timing and the importance of critique:

I have taken my first glimpse of Planet Gamer, my friends, and I may never be the same.

So. After making this mildly insane declaration, I was bound and determined to stick to my promise. When The Man saw fit to hand over a paycheck on Thursday, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. That's right, baby. SP.

Being intimidated by Gamespot and the like at the current time, I figured I'd just pop over to Toys R' Us and spend, spend, spend. I marched in, grabbed my new toy in the humongous plastic casing complete with infrared detecting and global positioning system, and plonked it down on the checkout counter.

"Just that," I tell the 16 year old guy behind the counter with his red polo shirt buttoned all the way to his neck in high fashion style.

"Do you want any batteries with this?" he squeaks, setting off my Harry Potter Puberty Detector.

I'm in too good of a mood to really make fun of him, so I just beam and say, "The Game Boy SP has a lithium battery already installed. No batteries for me."

"Really?" Hm. Why didn't he know that? Isn't he supposed to be a game expert or something?

"Yes. Incidentally, do you have any headphone adapters for the SP in stock?"

"What headphone adapters?" O-kay. Obviously, this guy knows NOTHING about games. I can't believe how much more I know, and I don't even play them. I've gotten all pissy now, so I shove my money at him and storm out. The nerve of some stores.

I get the thing home, plug it in to charge while I spend three miserable hours at my brother's Little League game, and come home all ready to go. I unplug it, click it on, and hold it three inches from my face, allowing the gorgeous backlighting to frame my face in a Holy Mary, Mother of God sort of style. All is good.

Until I realize that I somehow neglected to buy any games.

In the last week, I've experimented with a hearty load of English-language multiplayer games: Phantasy Star Online (Xbox and Game Cube), and a mess of PC titles - Battlefield 1942, Puzzle Pirates, Second Life, There.com and ToonTown.

All of this massively multiplaying means one thing - I'm missing the entire point of these games.

Draigon asked in a comment thread, "How many gamers are musicians?"

I'm curious too. There's something about music composition which is both creative and disciplined in that math way which might attract the same kinds of people drawn to videogames and gaming. Am I way off base? How many of you gamers have also composed? Written music? Played music? Played with sound software to create music?

Have any of you had other associations between music-making and game-playing?

"Kids, don't let your parents tell you that video games will get you nowhere in life." - Kellin Manning, musician, in the liner notes to Boomkatalog One, a new album by Boomkat.

Amusing NYTimes article chronicles the rise of Boomkat with an emphasis on the role of the Codemasters' "MTV Music Generator" for the PSOne. "I had been struggling with my traditional four track," Kellin is quoted as saying. "And I was sort of anticomputer. I thought you had to make music the old-school way. This game was a revelation. It totally opened my mind to sequencing and editing."

My favorite part, proving yet again that sequels are not always better: Kellin doesn't like the PS2 version. The original software let you record samples from any source, burn them onto CD, and then manipulate the samples. The newer one requires the use of an optional "Sampler Kit." But Kellin said even so, he doesn't like the sound of the samples.

As a gamer and a musician, I of course find this fascinating. We've tried a lot of different recording techniques in my band, and most of them required weird patches and complicated (and very expensive) software. Sometimes we like the crappy gritty sound of cheap 6-tracks; sometimes we need something warmer and more sophisticated. But most of all we need a fast way to sketch out a song as part of our composition process - just to be able to see how all the parts fit together, and then an easy way to do quick edits before we spend the time and money in recording the master. A videogame interface sounds like a brilliant solution. Why didn't I ever get this before?