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City of Copies: Marvel vs. NC Soft

In the off chance that you've been asleep for the past month and haven't wandered across the large expanse of the gaming internet, you might not know that Marvel is suing NC Soft over copyright infringement.

The gist of it is that basically, NC Soft is infringing on Marvel's characters with its game City of Heroes. It's not just that you can build heroes in CoH, it's that you can build Marvel heroes, or at least close facsimiles to Marvel characters. I would imagine for this case to hold any weight, Marvel is going to have to prove somehow that NC Soft made some money off of Marvel characters, by allowing people to create or use said characters.

In the interest of trying to see what all of the fuss is about, I purchased a copy of the game, installed it (five hours, thanks for asking), and the next day began creating Marvel characters...

gimme gamepunk

Video games come from the heart of machines. They bend us over plastic and make us obey their rules. Game characters are mostly power fantasies: action heroes offering easy escapes from the mundanity of humanity. Game companies push these characters at us on trading cards, comic books, and fast food wrappers. It's not a pretty sight for eyes searching for signs of intelligent life in cyberspace.

But games are the best hope for the future of communication! They encourage us to grab ahold of what we see on-screen and twist it and make it ours. Literally, to play with it - to understand media, situations, all of life as something fun, to experiment with. We cast ourselves into another world, try, fail, try and succeed, and we emerge unscathed - entertained, inspired, awake and aware, prepared for technology and citizenship.

How can we see that our culture of video games stays true to this spirit of innovation? This spirit of failure and play? To keep games from being training for passivity, to ensure games remain the domain of hard-rocking innovators hell bent on making their own stories?

It may already be too late -

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.

Game Heroine Invades Bucolic Needlepoint Landscapes; Wreaks Aesthetic Havoc

One might imagine that Lara Croft, having already expanded her franchise beyond the boundaries of the pc/console arena and onto the silver screen, might be looking for ways to expand her realm of influence and extend her reign as one of the most recognizable female icons in gaming. But artist Becky Schaefer has taken her places she might not have imagined.

Schaefer's works--needlepoint kits and framed 'found' works with subtle additions--insert this game-world icon into a wholly different universe. Though she is still toting her gun, it's unclear whether she'll really need it. Rapelling down a large sunflower plant or from a rainbow-hued hot air balloon, posing with one leg on an old wooden fence in a farm landscape, lounging with her pistols by the ocean--not the usual day's work.

Not Yet you Fools!

For this month's feature, we're honored to have Richard A. Bartle's thoughts on voice communication in multiplayer online games.

Not Yet, you Fools!

By Richard A. Bartle

When I first heard that the X-Box would support real-time voice communication between players, my heart sank. It didn't sink because the effect it would have on X-Box games; it sank because of the effect it would inevitably have on virtual worlds.

matthew barney versus donkey kong

From the Editor:

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.

Thinking About E3

Editor's Note: E3 is a month away... and I'm excited and apprehensive at the same time. This feature comes just in time. Robin Hunicke is a gamer, fan, student and long-time proponent of good games. Her writing is sharp, as is her photographic eye - be sure not to miss her collection of photographs, linked to in the article.

Genderplay: Successes and Failures in Character Designs for Videogames

(This essay is based on a talk I gave on April 15th to Katherine Isbister's CS class at Stanford. Thanks to Justin for help with constructing the argument, refining my thought, and for sharing his experiences of gaming in drag.)

As a woman who plays video games, I've had to think about gender in videogames, because it's so obvious that I'm playing in a boys' world.

The late Dr. Anita Borg taught that technology isn't neutral; tools are shaped by the values and desires of the creators. Often the creators tend to be clueless to the values encoded in their tools, because to them, the tools are transparent - they reflect pure utilitarianism. But to those who are excluded, the tools are highly charged.

The Destiny of Games

I'd wanted to go to the academic summit at the Game Developers Conference because, for whatever perverse reason, I am still attracted to the academic side of any equation. The summit was mostly about how game developers and academics might work together to further mutual interests.

I won't try to summarize all the speakers' remarks, because those notes will be shortly available on the GDC webpage and in any case, I couldn't do them justice. I'll just comment on a few things which I found most compelling. The theme that resounded most of all to me was the need for communication, not only between the game industry and game academia, but also between academics, between designers and consumers, and among all of us as consumers of this relatively new cultural product. A new shared language might spark an open source grass-roots revolution in the way we think about games and gaming.

The Dark Age of Chat

I dreamt last night of three realms. Vast though the lands were, it was possible to communicate directly with other citizens of the realm across great distances, either by sending a private message or addressing a group. I had a list of friends, complete with their alternate identities on other servers, with icons after their names that showed me at a glance their profession, level, location, and whether they were in the realm with me or not. I marveled at this system, in my dream. I admired its beneficent efficiency, its robust architecture. I touched on a name in my list to send an instant communication…