Chris Anderson over at The Long Tail blog writes this piece about how a zero-piracy rate in any given media is not only impossible, but probably financially detrimental.

Saralah of Athena's Legacy links to an Evil Avatar post, itself linking to a Gamespot video interview with Spartan designer Sophie Blakemore. Quoth the Evil Avatar post, "In this video, Sophie is wearing a closely fitting 'I heart Mario' shirt and discusses gameplay features with a chipper English accent." Most of the comments on the article by Evil Avatar members focus not at all on the game, but on the hot-or-not-ness of the designer.

Is this an example of male troglodytism, or is it simply human nature that once sex becomes part of a conversation, it dominates the conversation (see: Hot Coffee, Michaelangelo's David, the sex lives of homosexual people)?

DEVELOPING...

I've had a chance to play Shadow of Colossus and I'm finding it very difficult to contain my hyperbole. Let's just assume that I've said every possible, positive thing about the game that I could while using a bare minimum of qualifying statements just to appear as though my assessment were objective.

Which, of course, it is not. A primary indicator of which is that Ico may very well be my favorite game in all of eternity. Every instance that I've had to write of Ico's virtues I have taken on with exuberance. Not just any run-of-the-mill exuberance, mind you, but with unadulterated, Viking exuberance. You know, when they got blitzed on mead and charged naked and screaming into battle in the hopes of dying for Odin so as to join their kin in Valhalla.

So, it's from that place that I am approaching Shadow of the Colossus. I find the story arc, beauty and the overwhelming contrasts of scale to be just as enthralling as they were in Ico, but in a different emotional context. In Ico, the sense was of being lost and vulnerable, yet determined to overcome. In Shadow of the Colossus, this determination of the main character takes center stage and the environment isn't a strange puzzle to stumble through, but a knowable to be foreceably conquered.

It also doesn't hurt that the colossi fucking rock. While I've been told the all-boss-battle gameplay metaphor has been used in the past, I'm certain its never been done like this. Each Colossus is a "level" with a sort of Zelda-like overworld in between. Someone's probably pointed that out already.

Also, there's this. I'm no longer in cahoots with the rest of the intraweb the way I used ta be, so you nerds have probably already seen this and passed it to the AllYourBase bin. Apparently it's a Euro-PS2 price-drop commercial that was banned. Thanks Fira :) - sorry for the delayed response.

This is something I hadn't seen done in machinima before: a couple of guys got together and made a legitimate variety talkshow in the Late Night mold using Halo 2. Humorous and informative, but not particularly deep, This Spartan Life.

The guests in this, the first episode, are Bob Stein and Peggy Ahwesh. The show is divided up into several files, so you only have to watch the segments you want to see.

Slate has an article by Chris Suellentrop investigating the world of Islamic videogames after seeing a New York Times article hinting at moral panic with the quote, "One game, 'Ummah Defense I,' has the world 'finally united under the Banner of Islam' in 2114, until a revolt by disbelievers. The player's goal is to seek out and destroy the disbelievers."

It should come to no surprise to anyone familiar with Christian gaming that the actual gameplay is really just a vertical shooter with Islamic text boxes.

Also reviewed, Islamic pseudo-Super Mario Bros. with lasers and Islamic Gauntlet. Check it out.

In the first "long term" scientific study on video-game violence conducted at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana), it appears that scienticians (uh?) have finally concluded what the rest of the stable-minded have known all along: playing games doesn't make people (specifically children) any more violent than they would be not playing video games.

It should be noted, however, that in this particular link, the author calls MMRPGs [sic] "massively multi-layer role playing games."

At any rate, finally, scientific evidence that refutes the rhetoric. There's a lot of "still, the extent of knowledge about what games do to or for people is limited" type of backsliding, but this is a step in the right direction.

Game Insider reports an Interfax China article reading that China's Ministry of Culture has just moved to ban minors from playing any massively multiplayer online game that allows for player-killing (PK).

The statement reads, in part:

"Online games that have PK content usually also contain acts of violence and leads to players spending too much time trying to increase the power of their characters. They are harmful to young people."

Kind of reminds me of my childhood when mom would say, "You've been playing those games too long... why don't you go outside?" Only, you know, reinforced by Chinese police.

I think we can be pretty sure that this is going to change the way that Asian MMOs are made, since almost all of them currently contain large amounts of PvP content.

The megaphones powering the Save the Children Rhetoric Society have found new sources of awesome, cosmic energy with which to boost their signal, lately. Their sound-waves, crushing intellect and creativity alike, have brought to light several instances of demonic perversion through which the medium of "Video," combined with that of "Gaming," shall engulf us all. Unfortunately, there usually is no save-us-from-the-save-the-children rhetoric to follow.

Those who would save our children from ourselves always seem to overlook a rather obvious factor of the meteoric rise in the value of the industry. "They"--the Masters of Decency--seem to assume that it has very much to do with an ever-rotting social fabric and the poor sheep captivated therein having an unconquerable addiction to violence and the sexy stuffs. I attribute it to gamers having grown up, getting jobs and doing what all adults in a free society have a right to do: choose what they wish to spend their money on. What makes the adult purchase of the game unacceptable to many is the same peculiarity that makes adult themes in games unacceptable: games are for kids. Unfortunately, like most absurd cultural anachronisms, things will likely only change once the elite elders that have a monopoly on thought have kicked it and today's gamegirl becomes a gamegranny.

This continued and fabulously erroneous idea is something that strangleholds artistic achievement more than any mere standards rating board could ever hope and I tend to think that we are, at times, showing up with the wrong counter-argument. Rather than address the issue on the grounds of their ruptured view of moral decency, we should let our own rhetoric take center stage.

Games are art--a fine art. They are expression and expression is not obscene. Mr. and Mrs. holier-than-thou don't get to judge for the rest of us what does and does not have artistic value or purpose in the medium. When we buy into the language that places the game developer and the game player on the defensive, it infantilizes the medium as a whole and elevates their parochial dysphemisms into memes. While events like E3 lower the IQ of the dialogue substantially--"oo! shiny!" and "oo! cleavage!"--we should be demonstrably angry over an art form being reduced to a cultural malaise instead of just lashing out at the other side's puritanism. As an art form as much for grown-ups as for kids (much like all the other arts) and as protected speech, it is "they" who should have to have the burden of trying to convince us that censorship is in the best interests of everyone and that such censorship won't kill the valuable expression inherent in a creative medium. You never hear politicians mention that "c" word because they know it's a deal breaker. Over the long term, "The People" tend have a nasty reaction to anything being censored, and rightly so. Censorship is a slippery slope that you don't need a Masters in sociology to understand.

Force them into declaring that they don't want to censor an art form and force them into upholding freedom of speech and expression as the most valuable of all rights in an open society instead of being forced into playing the game of defending ourselves into legitimacy. The legitimacy of new artistic means is already here, already inherent. It's "on" be default. Senators Jack and Hillary aren't "saving the children," they're latching onto a hot-button issue that plays well to whatever demographic their polling data says will get them re-elected and in the process, knowingly or unknowingly, framing the debate on McCarthyist terms which require us to extricate ourselves from obscenity instead of forcing them to extricate themselves from McCarthyism.