Game Girl Influence

QTVR at NYU ITP

I met Todd Holoubeck at the Machinima Festival last Saturday, at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. He's got a laid-back, friendly demeanor and regularly peppers his conversation with "dude". He is part of a live improv Machinima group called Reverend FunnyPants. Taking inspiration from the medieval art of Commedia dell'Arte, the troop perform in a multi-user virtual public space. If you have trouble imagining what this looks like, don't worry - I've never seen anything like it, and you probably haven't either!

Todd teaches in the Interactive Telecommunications program at NYU. He graciously allowed me to visit. The topic of the day was examining narrative strategies through Quicktime VR - basically, you take a series of photos by rotating the camera in one spot. The cool thing is you can insert objects or people multiple times in one session, thus creating lots of surreal images.

Part of classtime was hands-on, making our own narrative - I got to participate! Todd put up the final product here. Click in the photo area and pull with the mouse to see. I'm in the sparkly pink sweater!

Gaming Major League, Part Four

This is part four and the wrap-up of a special report on Major League Gaming brought to you by GGA contributer Mike Drucker. Read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

The Major League Gaming tournament in New York City has come and gone. The winners have accepted their checks, GameTime Nation is once again open for the general public, and the Dream Team are off somewhere kicking someone else’s ass in Halo.

While I’ve basically covered all there was to cover of the event, I’d like to share some personal thoughts on the overall event, and just how it went.

A personal opinion of sorts.

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Gaming in Iraq

No matter who you are, and no matter where you fall politically on the war in Iraq, if you're a gamer and you care about other gamers like you, check out Zeyad's entry at his Healing Iraq webblog about gaming in Iraq.

I've been following Zeyad's new blog for awhile for political/information reasons, and it's relieving, if not comforting, to hear about what Iraqis do for fun, even if it means pirated games and old machines.

It's nice to know that gaming is so prevalent in our society that it continues to thrive even in a post-war hostile environment. It makes me want to send a care package to Iraq with a bunch of my old games in it.

Fun with Joysticks

Nick Catucci's a young writer who went though the NYU journalism school and worked his way through several positions at New York's venerable Village Voice (former home, incidentally, of Julian Dibbell, too). They gave him a column and basically said, "Do want you want with this."

If it's not yet on your radar, his column Joysticks should be. He's previously reviewed music and films - infamously, porn films. So his take on games is not so technical, but more experiential - treating them more like cultural products than like virtual toys. He often places games into larger socio-political contexts, noting for example how a game like Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon "actually gives one an idea of the depths of our entanglements around the world."

He still does the rating thing, which is something I hope smart game reviews will drop one day, but hey, nobody's perfect.

WSJ reports that women DO play games

"Where the Girls Are" article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday suggests that the game industry is waking up to the commercial possibilities of paying attention to the growing female market.

Some numbers provided by the Entertainment Software Association in the article are interesting:

26% of electronic game-players are women over 18.
21% are boys 6-17,
12% are girls 6-17,
38% are men over 18.

The article also notes that "For the holidays this year, Codemasters says it will run its most aggressive U.S. ad campaign ever, placing print ads in magazines including CosmoGirl, YM, Teen People and Working Mother. The multimillion-dollar campaign also features TV spots set to start airing next month on the WB network, during "7th Heaven," "Smallville" and other shows popular with young women and girls."

There are also a few paragraphs on There, the open-ended virtual space that is designed to attract more women. iVillage ("the internet for women") has a special deal with There, Inc. whereby it will be able to provide ads and services in a special iVillage zone.

I wonder if all this mainstream feminizing of gamespaces will alienate the original women who colonized them. Current female gamers may be disgusted by the fact that they can now get astrology and love advice in their gaming. Will we see an increasing divide between the female old guard "OG" - original gamer - and the fluffy newbie lured in by Cosmo quizzes and virtual fashion design aspirations?

[Thanks to Wayne and Mike Spriggs for the article!]

Gaming Major League, Part 3

This is part three of a special report on Major League Gaming brought to you by GGA contributer Mike Drucker. Read Part One and Part Two.

If the first day of the Major League Gaming tournament in New York City started with a steady pace, Sunday’s championship games went at a full blown sprint.

As Soul Calibur II, Gran Turismo 3, Madden 2004, and the big momma of them all, Halo all started to reach the final games the atmosphere inside of GameTime Nation became electrified.

Unlike yesterday, when most of the playing was met with playful conversation and helpful tip sharing, today’s games were mostly serious business. Players watched each other game, and crowds drew up for the big final matches. People on the street saw crowds inside the small facility and went inside to watch.

It was Sunday that MLG’s plan to make videogames a full-blown spectator sport became really realized. Watching people come in not to play, but to cheer on other players was an interesting experience. We’ve all at one time or another sat on the couch and watched a few friends go at it in a game, but here crowds drew. Even after being eliminated, many players stayed for the entire Halo tournament to just see how it would end.

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Gaming Major League, Part 2

This is part two of a special report on Major League Gaming brought to you by GGA contributer Mike Drucker. If you haven't read it yet, read Part One.

Meet Bonnie Burton. Bonnie’s 12 years old. She’s got a blonde pony-tail and rosy cheeks. In fact, if you saw her on the street, you’d think Bonnie was just a regular middle school student from Pennsylvania.

Bonnie is also in the winner’s bracket final round of Major League Gaming’s free-for-all Halo tournament. In fact, in the matches played so far, she’s rarely done worse than fourth place out of eight, often beating well-known professional players.

“I just love playing Halo,” Bonnie, who calls herself “Xena” in the game, said. “My brothers introduced me to the game, and I decided to compete.”

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Gaming Major League, Part 1

This is part one of a special report on Major League Gaming brought to you by GGA contributer Mike Drucker.

It’s been big in Asia and especially Korea for years now. Professional gaming. Getting paid for being good at videogames; it may just be the dream of many a gamer. However, in America, tournaments have almost never been much larger than city-wide, and never consolidated on an international basis. They payouts have mostly been small pots made by the players themselves. And now, an upstart company, Major League Gaming, is trying to change that.

Major League Gaming has so far played their cards right. They’ve scored a spot on ESPN 2’s show Cold Pizza. They’ve spent plenty of capital to get their project off the ground, and their forums show them to be pretty well known amongst the competitive crew.

However, now, the weekend of October 24th-25th, Major League Gaming has its first real test. According to the co-founders of MLG, they’ve put a large amount of money into the event, and the success of the upcoming tournaments really decides whether or not the business becomes either the NFL of gaming sports or the XFL.

The first tournament, in Halo, Soul Calibur II, Madden 2004, and Gran Turismo 3, takes place at GameTime Nation in New York City, New York, a small console-based gaming café.

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stick a lightsaber in it

Professor Timothy Burke is a pop culture historian and eager gamer. An early player of the highly-touted Star Wars Galaxies, he wrote several pieces exploring the contours of the game in its fetal stages. I played with him, and I linked to his pieces from GGA.

Months later, the game seems to have grown up, and grown ugly. Burke has written a sort of player's postmortem, explaining why he cancelled his account, and trying to reason out what went wrong:

The major research question posed to me by Star Wars: Galaxies is no longer about virtual economies, emergent systems, or anything similar. The question is how a massively-multiplayer game that has the rights to the single most popular licensed property of the late 20th Century, the backing of a company with deep pockets, and a dream team of developers can end up being in the absolute best estimation no better than any other game of its kind, and by many accounts, including my own, among the worst.

The Mystery of SWG is good reading for anyone who follows this type of game. Burke writes, "I still believe that MMOGs have enormous potential to be fun and engaging, and I believe they remain the best place to realize the more profound artistic, cultural and social possibilities of computer games as a whole." I agree, though I'm increasingly saddened that those MMOGs touted as reaching into the mainstream fail in this regard (The Sims Online, and now Star Wars). None of my borderline gamer friends picked them up, and I soon stopped playing both of them. I have fonder memories of more hard-core games like Dark Age of Camelot, where the goals and systems for reaching them are more clear. MMOG game designers have not yet understood how to make participating in a persistent world a pleasant and playful way to spend a few months. I don't think it involves hours of repetative of clicking to make gun barrels.

A sizeable number of people will probably continue playing this prematurely-released game. But not breakthrough numbers, not too many people who have never played a multiplayer online game before. The real innovation in multiplayer seems ever-more likely to emerge from unlauded corners, unburdened by big licenses, fast schedules and huge teams. Note: that doesn't mean I won't try Grand Theft Tolkien online, during opening week.

Hunger Strike 2

Talking to W. David Marx at a ramen restaurant in Tokyo earlier this month.

Hand on my forehead, I said I was working to understand how videogames matter in a world where there is much suffering.

David immediately replied, "Have you played Hunger Strike 2?"

Pimpin' Out

It's not everyday that I get interviewed about what I do for a living, so I figured I'd link to the Gaming Age interview I did with Tim Lewinson about being a Lead Animator on NBA Ballers, the title I'm currently working on.

This was a pretty fun interview to do (my first ever!), and I'm happy that I was allowed to be as candid as I was. Check it out.

NERO Nearly Killed Me

Actually, it did kill me. But thanks to a kind Earth scholar, I was brought back to life by one of the few remaining Life spells. Huzzah! I've successfully played in my first LARP.

Though I'm not exactly a newbie to gaming in general, I've been intimidated by the Live Action aspect of this particular form of Role Play. My first experience was several years ago with Vampire, and it just didn't do it for me - it seemed to moody, angsty, and just a touch pretentious. My next experience was at GenCon this year - the Changeling LARP, which was way too complicated, even though they kindly ran a class for beginners. I have to say that NERO was just right, in many respects - pretty simple to pick up, and everyone I talked to was most helpful with tips and answers to my dumb questions.

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Psst... Hey, Buddy, Augment Your Reality?

So, how about that Augmented Reality?

I recently attended The 2nd International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in Tokyo, Japan. From my time hobnobbing with other presenters at ISMAR03 and the related Augmented Reality Toolkit Workshop, I can say that this is a technology that gamers would do themselves a favor to get aquainted with. Currently, the Sony EyeToy is the only real forray into commercial use of (limited) AR tech for entertainment applications, although non-commercial explorations exist. ISMAR03 Keynote speaker Nassir Navab, of Siemens Corporate Research, centered his entire speech on getting the AR development community used to the idea that the technology is ready for prime time in the industrial sector, and that means its time for the game developer to raise her groggy head, get a web cam, and start hacking.

The simple truth is that, right now, there isn't that much to be said for AR entertainment. The BBC's R&D department has some interesting stuff for adding bits of AR to a news broadcast, and a few groups have done stuff for edutainment, but when it comes down to it, AR is an awesome, approachable technology with a high wow-factor and a vertible forest of low-hanging fruit. I say, time to start picking.

Justin's TGS Coverage

Mr. Hall wrote a very lengthy article for Gamasutra on his experience of the Tokyo Game Show. He talked to some interesting people and took great photos. Check it out.

F E T I S H

Like many other women, I love clothing, especially shoes. When you find that really killer pair of sexy heels, and you slip them on and they feel so damn perfect on your feet, and miraculously your feet seem to be the most adorable, beautiful feet you've ever seen - well, you can imagine what sort of endorphin rush you get from that feeling. You don't ever have to wear them out; simply owning them is enough to satisfy the covetous breast.

I also have a thing for sleek gadgets. Apple really gets this - the power of the object itself to inspire desire. And when I was in Asobit in Akihabara recently, I saw something that I had to acquire, with a passion that surprised me: the GBA SP in pearl pink.

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What's Sexy?

The BBC reported that Mr. Darcy won out in a recent poll as the fictional character whom British women would most like to date. What's not to love about Darcy? Okay, he's a little stuck-up. But he's extremely handsome, well-bred, of a good old family (although that aunt of his is insufferable) and he happens also to be the richest man in the county. That never hurts.

As far as electronically-generated fictional characters go, however, there isn't much to make women swoon. Mostly you get muscle-bound dorks with very little character, like Turok or that Doom gunslinger. You get broody pouty boys with troubled pasts in Japanese rpgs, like Squall or the Canadian equivalent, Carth (although I admit I have a soft spot in my heart for him). You get little prepubescent boys like Link.

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New Book by Sheri Graner Ray

Sheri Graner Ray has a new book out, Gender-Inclusive Game Design. Among other things, she directed product development at Her Interactive. She's currently the co-chair of the Women in Game Development Committee for the IGDA. I saw her speak at GDC last year, and her approach is extremely practical and grounded in research. I get a lot of questions from game designers who want to know what women want in a game. The answers are out there if you look.

Welcome to my World

I'm in the process now of putting together an adventure in a brand-new world which I will administer as Game Mistress. The activity consumes my energy. I have started maps, NPC descriptions, historical appendices, character and location sketches. It's the kind of thing I love to do - get all snarky with the details. But I've never done it before. Sure, when I was a kid, I wrote a series of fantasy adventures that took place in an invented world - but that was all for me. Now I'm supposed to allow other people in who might very well change the way things are!

I wanted some help. So I asked some people for advice, but I also found a great deal of helpful material at Burning Void, which is geared towards publishing your adventure but contains a rich store of good advice, nearly all of it written by Heather Grove. Ms. Grove believes passionately in free will - that is, the players' playing the game rather than the GM's telling a story. The story should be something that emerges from play.

I relaly love that idea. Who knows what could happen? So although the novelist part of me balks at losing narrative control, the obsessive-compulsive detail freak in me revels at the thought of packing in the possibilities. The play space will be Victorian/steampunk, in the middle of an industrial and technological revolution. So there will be all sorts of tensions and potential conflicts. Will my players become rich capitalists? Will they join the workers' cause? Will they fall in with bandits and highwaymen? Will they become arms smugglers or diplomats? Inventors or saboteurs? Or something I haven't even thought of yet?

My Leather Vest's at the Cleaner's

This weekend in Los Gatos, a snark of nerds (okay, what's the collective noun for nerds?) will collect to play NERO, a fantasy LARP with props and combat and costumes. I've tried LARPing in a hotel basement, which was a little less than ideal. This time might be my chance. But what to wear?!?

Fellow girl-geek and attendee Min Jung mentioned something about "hoops" so I know she's got a costume of some sort. And Ernie will certainly have something going, that sassy boy. Darn it, where did I put that corset? And could I justify a camera as a magical item of some sort?

GTA3 Import Substitution

I've been observing how much everyday import substitution there is evident in Seoul. Many of the drinks, the appliances, the consumer goods look and taste similar to Western or non-Korean counterparts. But they are made by Korean companies, to provide the same kind of good or service to the country.

It's a matter of economy-building, early on. India practiced extensive import substitution when it was industrializing. Korea has managed to rebuild itself with astonishing speed after devastating conflict, in part by demanding that its citizens buy Korea and invest Korea. Korea could probably be called fully industrial now, and import substitution starts to seem like a matter of pride and habit more than economic necessity. Companies like LG and Samsung has become world-class brands though, tempering the seeming inferiority of imitation.

This phenomenon is nowhere more apparent than on the roads. It is difficult to see a foreign car in Korea. I did spy a BMW dealership in a nice neighborhood. But otherwise, all around me, the cars are Kia, or Hyundai, and their forms and names evoke car models I'm familiar with from the United States. Today in Seoul, I saw a luxury car called a Magnus, a minivan called a Carnival, and a small delivery truck called a Porter.

This all reminds me of Grand Theft Auto, where a Cadillac is called an Esperanto, a Hummer is called a Patriot, a Corvette is called a Stallion. There's some sense of humor evident in many of the GTA3 names. My favorite Seoul car is a luxury sedan called the Equus - reminding me of a play I neither read nor saw, about this shrink and his patient: a kid who puts out horses' eyes.

Times are Tough (Sigh)

You've probably noticed that things are a bit disorganized around here at GGA. Posts are slow to go up, I'm not responding promptly to emails, I haven't published a feature or dealt with the zine in a while. Part of the reason for all that is the recent traveling, which has deprived me of a decent internet connection; but there's a lot going on in my personal life, too, which affects the site.

So without going into the melodramatic and gory details, I'll just say that I'm working things out, and all your contributions to GGA are important to me. It'll just take me a little while to deal with it all. I have a big backlog of great stuff you've written that I'm itching to publish. Also I've been thinking about a print edition. But while I have the spirit, I don't have the physical energy to expend in those longer term projects right now. I ask for your patience, Gentle Reader.

Okay, enough blabbling about boring sad stuff. On with the games!

NYC is the Place to Be

Near the end of the month, I'm going to two interesting events in New York City. First is "Storming the Playground", conversations around Katie Salen's and Eric Zimmerman's upcoming book from MIT Press, Rules of Play. It'll be a talk show format, with folks like Warren Spector and McKenzie Wark and Frank Lantz and me! That's going to be Friday, October 24th, from 7:30-9:30 at Tishman Auditorium, on 12th street between 5th and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. The word is Warren going to show a sneak preview of Deus Ex II!

The very next day is the Machinima Festival in Queens, at the American Museum of the Moving Image. I'll be there with friends Souris and Silvio from Invasiv.

Maybe I'll see you there.

Let's Get Physical

I've got a chip on my shoulder about mobile multiplayer. What's the point of using a networked device with a tiny screen to play a 3D shooter or throwback arcade game, when you could be playing something more like MULE with your friends?

I wasn't seeing any blow-away mobile multiplayer at the Tokyo Game Show this year. But I wanted to be excited about something. Souris and Silvio had asked after a certain wireless ping-pong game; when I found it on the show floor, the sheer excitement of physical play without wires was inspiring -

Excite Ping Pong 2 is a simple RCA device that plugs into the TV and reads some radio or IR signals from simple plastic ping pong paddles. When you see the ball coming your way onscreen, follow through with your paddle and fire a ball towards the other side. It's amazing to wave your paddle through the air and affect the action onscreen. the 16-bit era graphics are indispensible, neatly matching the casual fun style of the product. But it's not clear that sweeping right or left makes much difference - the sensors in this game don't seem accurate enough to pick up the subtleties of good paddle skills. In that case, it's mostly a matter of timing - who is paying attention, studying when the computer wants you to block the ball and return - like Pong! Either way, it definitely warrants more play, which is more than can be said for much of the other content on the show floor.

A similar play dynamic rules Square Enix's sword waving "Kenshin Dragon Quest: Yomigaerishi Densetsu no Ken" game. When the beasts appear onscreen, wave your plastic sword hard in their general direction and you might be rewarded with a clean sweep that destroys your foes. It's like playing Tetris where you must urgently wave your arms to destroy lines of stationary enemies.

Just the physicality of these games is inspiring - part of the DDR magic. There seems to be a rash of these games flying off shelves in the Akihabara game stores - one-off, wireless controller based, standalone game devices. Buying a machine to play a small subset of games - it's a throwback to Baer days!

These game devices don't have much to do with mobile phones, and they're about as "wireless" as a WaveBird or television remote control. I travelled to the Tokyo Game Show this year in part to cover it for TheFeature - I ended up writing about Konami's tiny cars that can be remote controlled by mobile phones: TheFeature :: Mobile Reaching Robots.)