This is super-adorable as well as being super-practical; form+function, what could be better?
The look cute AND dampen the annoying clickety-clack of the plastic heads. Great idea!
(Thanks, Alex!)
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?
The DS was made to change the way that games are played.
If the PSP changes anything about the way games are played, it's that now when you play, you might actually look hot.
Sony marketing's ability to present the PSP as a "lifestyle accessory" rather than a gaming system has really impressed me. Witness Korean website PSPStyle. This is a series of 3 model galleries on the themes of 3 classic fairytales, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, and Cinderella. Throw in some glamour, add a PSP, and there you go.
And that's what's so odd, really. I mean, yes the PSP is a sleek little device. It fits into the style of the photographs, but, I mean, they're so posed and awkward. It's like they decided to do Gothic Lolita night on The Price is Right. It's not really sexy or mysterious, it's just silly.
When it comes down to it, the best glamour shot of a PSP wasn't even made by Sony marketing. It was made by some girl. I linked to the original picture from Kotaku a few days ago. Much to my surprise, the girl writes for gaming blog-thing RedAssedBaboon under the name of Hatsumi. She has in fact written about "the picture," finally proving that ours isn't the only website where women will fondle gaming hardware and then reflect on it.
One the one hand, I think it's really awesome that our gaming devices can look like something you'd want to be seen using. I remember when critics praised the Gameboy Advance SP because it was so small that respectible people could carry it discreetly. Why shouldn't the world learn to see people who play games as playful, sexy creatures? On the other hand, there's the flag waving nerdcore gamer in me who wants a handheld to be awkward and gangly because it means that when I do see one it's like a little sign saying "I am of your people."
This is, of course, ridiculous. Random guy on the street with a GBA SP is no more likely to be anything like me than random guy on the street with a PSP. It's great that gaming can be trendy, and that the 300 pound guy on the train the other day and Paris Hilton are both PSP owners. Maybe now there'll be some demand for game-related clothing that breaks the basement-casual standard? After all, if there's one thing we gamers know how to do, it's play (and pwn) well with others, and the pool of "others" just got a whole lot bigger. Right now, gamers are coming out of the basement, into the lime-light, and you know what they look like? They look like me. They look like you. They look like Hatsumi. But they're all here because they love games. No doubt we'll get to have arguments over who was a gamer "before it was cool," but if it means that we can argue over a friendly wi-fi deathmatch, then I'm looking forward to such inanities.
