NES Controller Hacked into TV Remote

So maybe your NES doesn't work anymore. Recycle those controllers, don't throw them away! An enterprising hacker has turned the controller into a stylish remote for your television!

TechEblog, via OMG Blog. Check the links for video.

Fun with Photoshop

Something light-hearted for Friday: The bad videogame box art contest! I would submit one, but the ones they already have are so, so good. I wish Xmen Legends II: Rise of Pikachu were a real game. I'd totally play it.

3-D Level Design Now

A couple of days ago we checked out the new multiplayer levels from Splinter Cell: Double Agent and what struck me right away was how three-dimensional the levels are - so much so that each space looks entirely different if you play as a Merc or as a Spy. There's a sophistication in level design these days even for the humble FPS that takes into account such a great deal of vertical space that levels feel that much more vast and explorable. It's almost like we've defined a new sort of third dimension - maybe dimension 3.1.

It's not like this is totally new. Alien VS. Predator offered a similar shifting of venues as the player shifted avatars, leading to completely different game experiences in a shared space. It's all about how the player experiences the space, and that, it turns out, is a very powerful mechanic.

Check it out - the mercs view (on the left) looks like standard FPS; the spies view (on right) looks like third-person stealth. See how different the same area looks in the pairs of shots.

Boss House

Dawn Waves

You can also see it in motion here:

Make Your Own Fun/Rules.

I was talking to a buddy of mine at work here, and he was describing a "new" form of Halo that some folks are playing off hours just for fun. Be it "emergent gameplay" (the new hot buzzword in game design), or an open set of tools, we've all probably come up with our own fun/rules games with our favorite titles, and I figured since it's been ages since I posted anything here, I'd share a few, as they're my favorite kind of game.

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Lumines Sneakers

Mizuguchi shows off special limited-edition (as in, "unique") Lumines sneakers made just for him. Awesome.

For the video, check Jason's blog.

Q Entertainment Cover Story

A week in Japan and many sweaty hours of taping have paid off: take a look at the Q Entertainment cover story put together by James Mielke and Jason Bertrand. It's pretty cool.

I forgot to ask Miz if we could go to a club together when I'm in Japan this September, but I'm counting on it.

Delicious Gaming Goodness

Cool photos of videogaming-themed cakes. These are pretty amazing., especially the standing cabinet. But I want to know, how do they taste?

Be sure to also check out the behind the scenes post and video.

Top Ten Hottest Guys in Videogames

I protest this list of hot guys in videogames. First of all, why is Tommy Tallarico number one? That makes no sense. And where are the hot Japanese developers Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Keita Takahashi, Fumito Ueda, and Shinta Nojiri? I guess people just don't know about them, but they beat Adam Sessler any day (no offense, Adam).

Come on, we can do better. Who do you nominate for hot guy in videogames?

Totally Unrelated: A Confession and a Request

I have a bad habit of making up fanciful passwords to various applications that require me to log in. Consequently, I've completely forgotten how to log in to my Movable Type account for umamitsunami.com. You may have noticed that I have not updated in a very long time. Part of that is ... that I've forgotten how to log in. An additional wrinkle is that I started the account before Movable Type unrolled their "recover your password" feature so I never set that up.

Any thoughts?

A Day in the Life of Yoshitaka Amano

Amano is perhaps the best-known artist among videogamers, mainly for his ethereal, otherworldly character designs on the Final Fantasy series. My colleagues at Ziff, Jason and Milky, recently went to visit him at his home studio in Tokyo. In a country where few friends are invited over for a cup of tea, it's a rare glimpse into an artist's private life. Big thanks to Hiroko Minamoto for hooking up the translations!

The Role of The Critic

A.O. Scott had an amazing essay in the New York Times a few days ago in which he pointed out (or maybe "lamented" is a better characterization?) the fact that the critics had roundly panned Pirates: Dead Man's Chest yet that did not deter audiences from piling up to see the film. "What," asks Scott, "is wrong with you people?"

I was amazed at how nakedly petulant Scott seems at this outcome. You can almost imagine him stamping a foot. "Why, oh, why, won't you people just listen?" No one in his right mind would suggest that a critic's opinion ought to be a barometer of a film's success; and yet you hear it all the time in the videogame world, in an exchange in the forums that goes like this: "Such and Such game sucks." "Oh yeah? Then how did it sell over a million copies?" Oh, I don't know. Marketing? Availability? The fact that EB Games employees were told to suggest it to every kid, mom, uncle who came into the store that week?

Scott goes on to ask, if no one seems to listen to critics, then why do critics exist?

It's clear that critics are not the "voice of the people," even if they start out to act as one. Ebert, the most famous film critic although not the best, is perhaps the reigning example of a man who seems to put himself in a pedestrian audience's shoes. But after a decade or two of reviewing cinema, it must be difficult: the average movie-goer sees how many films per year? I'm not sure, but the average critic sees many, many times that. Such a glut of cinematic experience is bound to alter and inform your perceptions of good and bad.

Take game reviewing for instance. If you've played quite a lot of videogames, then something like The Godfather comes off as, well, prosaic. But say you're a college kid on a limited budget - you've got Halo and GT 4 or something, both of which you play frequently, and you're looking for a change of pace. You might reasonably enjoy The Godfather - and you would not be "wrong" to do so.

Critics exist for another reason - they are not barometers of success, not even predictors of my enjoyment in a film or game. They contribute to my understanding of a particular film in a larger context; they write one side (or really, several sides) of the dialogue I will have about the film. They point out what's interesting even in a shitty film and I can either agree or not. I enjoy reading my favorite critics - Anthony Lane, Susan Sontag, and yes, my dear A.O. Scott - even when I have little intention of watching the film in question. Their essays are self-contained and of interest on their own. They, too, contibute to the world of film.

That is the element that is missing from mainstream game reviews, with some very small exceptions. It's rare that I feel like reading a game review about a game just to deepen my understanding of videogames as a whole. I know that is not the reason most people claim they read game reviews; but it is mine.

Mizuguchi and Sega Rally

Today I spent two hours in a slightly stuffy conference room with Tetsuya Mizuguchi, creator of some of my favorite games. I wasn't alone with him of course (zut alors) because he had his peeps and we had ours - everyone who's ever been to an industry event in San Francisco knows that Ziff rolls in a pack. So I was there along with the gang, talking about Lumines 2 and Every Extend Extra.

But we also talked about Miz's earlier games, Rez, Space Channel 5, even extending back to Sega Rally. At first glance, Sega Rally seems a departure for Miz - after all he's the guy who introduced gamers to Kandinsky and synesthesia. He's come a long way from racing games.

But I remember the first time I played Sega Rally - it was in Las Vegas, in, I believe, an arcade in the Luxor hotel. I saw this cabinet there - I'd never seen anything like it before - there were miniature cars. It was something like four dollars to ride, which at the time was a decent chunk of change. But I waited in line to ride it. When I got into the car and started up, the car jumped forward. Whoa. The speakers, surrounding me, blared not just music but sound effects so the engine rumbled below, tires squealed, and the navigator was perched right behind my shoulder saying in my ear, "Easy right. Easy right." It was a totally immersive experience. In fact, Miz was, even then, exploring the ideas that he'd go on to refine with Rez and Lumines.

Which goes to show that you can apply high-concept ideas about game development to even a fairly trite (at least to me) formula like racing games. Sega Rally really strove to take you out there in the field, just short of spattering you with mud.

I think that's pretty cool.

I Am Not Smart Enough For This Game

Seriously. I mean, I already get lost in a lot of FPS games. This game would make my head explode.

From the PR Wire This Morning

Some interesting developments off the wires this morning.

Cartoon Network Announces MMO - in partnership with Korean MMO developer Grigon. Grigon's most well-known work is a game called Seal Online. The game will be aimed at kids and will incorporate Cartoon Network characters. Hm, okay. Well, if Toontown can do it, why not?

Absolute Poker Launches Poker Site for Women - called AP Lady. Don't click anything on the site, it'll trigger a download. What makes it different from regular poker? Well, apparently women aren't good at poker and this special site "is exploring partnerships with other relevant women's groups that will help to achieve the site's mission of helping women who want to get better at poker." Okay.

Women in Games International Conference Hosted By Microsoft - was announced today. The conference will happen on September 16th at Microsoft in Redmond, WA. Bonnie Ross, Director of Product Development for Microsoft Game Studios, will give the keynote address. The main topic addressed by the panels will be quality of life issues. I'm not sure I'll be able to attend, as it's a bit close to Tokyo Game Show, but I hope so.

Animal Crossing: The Movie

It wouldn't be my top choice for a game based on a Nintendo movie (come on, Legend of Zelda!) but it's an interesting one: apparently there exists a trailer (which isn't loading for me right now, unfortunately) and a website.

Here's the original advert. As a huge AC fan, I'll admit to some excitement over this development, but it's still a bit odd. What's fun about the game, in my view, can't really be translated to a linear narrative medium like film. But it might be fun.

Trailer still isn't loading for me. In the meantime, enjoy this lovely video of piano versions of AC songs. So relaxing!

Betty Ford for Gamers

The BBC reports that another has opened in the Netherlands. From the article:

"I lived in my room. I have 4 televisions around me, with one X-Box 360, PlayStation 2, X-Box 1 and a Game Cube and a lap-top, where I can play online games," said Tim, a 21 year old who has received treatment at the clinic.
Tim played games for up to 17 hours a day.
"I have no social life, I have no friends - only cyber-friends"

There's no doubt that much of what the "language of videogames", as popularized recently by David Jaffe's blog post earlier, feeds the compulsiveness of gamers. Games reward you for being OCD, for playing long hours, for repetitive behavior. But again I protest the idea that "cyberfriends" are somehow not "real". I'm not sure that meetings in the flesh make friendships and relationships more meaningful. In fact I'm sure they don't. That's not to say that a cyber-relationship is the same as a physical one, because I think they're very different. But we all have many different kinds of friendships, all of which are valuable, some of which happen nearly entirely online.

So, people probably shouldn't play games for 36 hours straight; but I say they should feel free to count their fellow-gamer compatriots as friends, as real as anyone.

Sound Like a Man!

Eurogamer has an article about some voice changer software just released from Audio4Fun. From the article:

According to research conducted by the company, "The number of female online game players is not small" ... However, most women have a common concern about the long-lasting existence of "male chauvinism" in the world of online games. In considering this point, Voice Changer Software proves very helpful to solve the problem."

This raises several questions for me, not the least of which is that if you hear someone who's obviously using voice-changing software doesn't that immediately identify said person as a woman-who's-trying-not-to-be-revealed-as-a-woman and therefore open her up just as easily to online harassment? I suppose that would depend on the quality of the voice-bending algorithms (I can't program so anything magical accomplished through software is for me automatically the result of an algorithm), but I still wonder how big of a market there is for a product like this. Granted, this is a PC application, but let's assume for a moment that any online audio-only communication was capable of disguising the gender of your voice, how many of you lady-gamers would find it useful? Obviously I've never had to be on the business-end of the kind of kunckle-dragger bullshit many of my female friends have had to deal with, but I know from playing many an online Live game that all a girl has to do is say "Sniper on the roof" to start getting all sorts of "special" attention paid to her. So, women of gaming, are applications like this useful to you? Would you never use them but are glad they're out there? If one actually turned your voice into a convincing male alternate does this, as Audio4Fun's marketing literature suggests, allow you to "prove that playing online games is not a pastime for men only, and that their talent can make male partners goggle?"

"Goggle" ... ?

Julian Dibbell's Play Money

When I first met Julian, he was in the process of quitting his freelance writing career to become a full-time trader of virtual goods for one year. The book that resulted has just come out: Play Money. I've ordered it, and I'll post the review here.

Julian's previous book was My Tiny Life, a virtual autobiography. He also wrote the groundbreaking article The Unreal Estate Boom for Wired in 2002. He posts at Terra Nova.

Jews Play Games, Too

What do you get when you combine snappy songs, a goofy sense of humour, and puppets? GameJew of course, one of my new favorite shows. It's the brainchild of Jonathan Mann, who also created the Mario Opera.

He posts the episodes directly to Youtube. I love the music. Check out the tribute to Wii in the first episode - it's gold.

This is episode 3:

Apparently, We Suck

GameDaily has really made a business of railing against itself lately. One wonders, then, what the point of its existence is. Games suck, people who write about games suck, game developers hate everything, etc. Originally I composed a long (and, to me at least, highly amusing) response referencing self-flagellation in the Philippines, among other things, but really, it's just too easy. Also, I promised I wouldn't complain anymore. So I'll just leave it at that.

When Will Games Disturb Us?

I watched City of God, finally, last week, and it shattered my peace of mind that night. I've avoided seeing certain movies in the past knowing that they would disturb and upset me, but recently I've cued up my Netflix to go back and see the films I've missed, because I decided that it's important to see art that doesn't always make me feel good. Using art as a salve alone is foolish - and a one-dimensional way to experience humanity.

I was talking about the film with friend and fellow-GGA poster Matt, and he noted that videogames have not yet reached that stage of being deliberately disturbing the way that City of God is. If a videogame is no longer fun, we tend to stop playing. How can you make a videogame not "fun" and still compel players to go on?

I think Matt might not be quite correct. I remember playing Manhunt with an unshakeable conviction that the game wanted to disturb me, to take to to places that weren't fun. Of course, it all depends on your definition of "fun" - some people like scary movies, I usually don't. But here was a game that took an extremely creepy premise and played it out to the logical extreme, forcing the player into the uncomfortable role of both victim and murderer.

Yet you could argue that Manhunt used a cheap trick - it set up the situation in order to exploit it for someone's idea of "fun." You could say that the developers did not mean to convey any message beyond entertainment. City of God was entertaining, in the broadest sense of the word, but it was also a portrait of hopelessness and a cycle that trapped its inhabitants; it was also in some ways a social history of gang violence in the slums from the seventies to the eighties. Manhunt does not have enough external references to be about anything other than what it is.

If games are to be taken as art, the next step has to be for some game developers to abandon the concept of "fun" - or at least, to rework it and to challenge it.

Of course, I should mention that videogames already disturb many people - politicians, some parents, Jack Thompson. They would argue, I think, that we've already reached the point where games explore thoroughly unpleasant territory. But most gamers would argue that the exploration still stays in the realm of fun, however it may look to an external observer.

Games that deliberately challenge and provoke and disturb are being made in academic circles, in experimental projects, among the avant-gard. But we are still a long way off from a commercial game like The House of Sand and Fog or Hotel Rwanda, in spite of the fact that both of the themes in those films could be very effectively - and chillingly - explored in an interactive medium. Is it just a matter of time before we see games like those movies? Or is the inherent nature of engaging the player anathema to certain unpleasant, unpalatable themes? Are those themes easier to digest in a more "passive" form?

Project Tonight

Yes, I'm a fan.

I must admit I got into reluctantly, because I don't really care for those other reality show contests, like American Idol or Making the Band or America's Next Top Model. I don't mean to be a snob about it - I think they can be amusing. It's just that the formula is so obvious after a couple of episodes that it fails to hold my interest over an entire season.

But Bravo's Project Runway is different. It's different because the contestants have to actually produce something real, something that works; a tactile piece that gives three dimensional shape to all their high-falutin theory talk. And that's exciting.

Last season, I have to admit I was rooting for everyone's favorite nerd-turned-fashionista, Diana Eng. She combined a vigorous intellect with dreamy intellectualism and a dash of whimsey. The pieces she made for the show I thought were less successful than the ones she's produced in school, or on her own (check out her portfolio to see some cool wearable concept art). I love her mathematical knits for example! And I love the idea of uniting math and art, two strangers who ought to be lovers. But she got kicked off the show, and then I was rooting for Daniel Vosovic. First of all, how dreamy is he? Long and lanky and soft-spoken, with great hair - total dreamboat. And his taste is exquisite - always refined, always sophisticated, maybe a little too much so at times. Sometimes you want a young person like that to do a few shots and jump up on the table and dance to Foreigner. Daniel's clothes would never do that. But boy could that kid sew. His stuff was technically some of the most accomplished on the show - sleek and (except for the one infamous weird-boob collection) well-fitted, tidy seams, straight hems, flawless use of bias cut.

It's inspiring to watch the beauty that arising out of all the chaos of the studio. The contestants sketch, bitch, think, work like mad, and the final dress is so - it seems so effortless, so serene, mute to the anxiety and stress that produced it. Project Runway demonstrates that fashion, for all its useless luxury, is serious business, and people sweat and cry over it, and that work deserves to be celebrated.

Tonight I'm making champagne cocktails with friends to celebrate the return of Project Runway. I can do without goosestepping Heidi Klum, but Tim has endeared himself more and more to me. Long live the serious frivolity of fashion and those who worship it!

Better Game Characters By Design by Katherine Isbister

I've known Katherine Isbister for quite a while now; she wrote the excellent piece on Becky Schaefer's Lara Croft-inspired needlepoint art a few years ago. Katherine has a background in the social sciences which served her well when she moved over into game design. She now has a book out -- Better Game Characters By Design: A Psychological Approach.

One of the first times I met her was when she was working at a lab in Kyoto developing an effective virtual tour guide to the city. We had interesting conversations over ramen about how information can be packaged in an emotionally charged character. She then went on to teach a course at Stanford University, where I helped judge a contest among her students for best game character design (Tim Schafer was co-judge, and that's where I met him for the first time.)

Then she moved away to upstate New York to teach at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she founded a Games research Lab. Sounds like she is doing well!

Bored Games

I was at my local game store on Sunday (the tabletop kind, not the electronic kind), walking off my World Cup woes (it's still too painful to talk about but oh Zizou why, why why?) when I came across World of Warcraft: The Board Game. I would have bought it except that it was almost ninety bucks. I'm intrigued, especially upon reading the official publisher's notes, explaining that it "is a team-based fantasy adventure. The Horde and the Alliance factions must compete to be the first to defeat the invincible Overlord...."

But hold on a minute, on the back it says it's for 2-6 players. How do you recreate World of Warcraft with two players? For that matter, how do you have competing teams with two players?

As I said, I'm intrigued. I have spent many happy hours on board games. Actually, I met Warren Spector over a board game, before I quite knew who he was, many years ago. But there's something odd about adapting a persistent-world MMOG to a board game that takes 4 to 6 hours and requires up to, but not more than, six players.

Board games ought to be solid enough to be good on their own, without the benefit of an electronic game tie-in. That is not to say that there are not natural correspondences between the two platforms, because some of the basic design principles are the same. Thus Risk works brilliantly as both a board game and an electronic game.

But some elements of board games are difficult, if not impossible, to recreate electronically. Diplomacy is an excellent game that, when I used to play it with a bunch of my Machiavellan friends, inspired hours of secret treaty-talk, backroom deals, slips of paper exchanged, and of course, backstabs and betrayals. In that setting it was extremely important to sit right across from the other players and read their eyes to see if there was a traitorous glimmer lurking there somewhere.

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An Interview with Gregg Tavares

A while ago John Ricciardi and Hiroko Minamoto interviewed their friend Gregg Tavares in Tokyo. We used a snippet of it for the 1UP Show, focusing on his comments about the game Loco Roco, on which he is a programmer. But the footage I looked at had so many other interesting things in it, such as what it's like working as a foreigner on a Japanese dev team, and what he percieves as the tastes of Japanese gamers.

The longer version of the video is here. It's hard to believe that Gregg's first game was for Commodore 64. He looks way too young for that!

Thanks so much to Gregg and Hiroko and John.