An image of the Scarecrow from Batman: Arkham Asylem. Very nice update of the suit. The character designs on this game seem very hit or miss though.
90% of the guys at Comic Con are perfectly normal. 10% have serious personal boundary issue. Every year, there are reports of female attendees being stalked, and booth babes being groped and rubbed against.
Who will this contest most appeal to?
The best part is that they explicitly say you can commit an ‘act of lust’ with any booth babe at Comic Con. Not just those at Dante Inferno, or other EA sites, where the women might be informed of the contest.
You’d think EAs legal department would quickly grasp how this is a bad idea.
I have a list of about twelve LSN subjects in Word doc on my computer, not including various reviews. I figured I’d tackle the most basic one: WHAT IS A GAME?
A game is structured play. (That answer so does not justify the dramatic all caps.)
If a bunch of kids run around and whack at one another, they’re playing. If they create a set of rules –one person whacks at a time, everyone runs/hides from the whacker, if you’re whacked by the whacker then you become the whacker, no whack backs – then they’re playing a game of tag. This structure is usually called the rules, but it might just be a set of guidelines. This structure may be static or dynamic, it might be simple or complex, and it might have a win/loss condition. Win or loss conditions are popular, because they create a definitive ending, and because winning is a powerful motivation.
The human ability to create and communicating an abstract structure is beyond animal intelligence, but there’s definitely proto-gameplay in social animals. For instance, if you wrestle with your dog, they’ll occasionally mouth or snap at you. You can teach them to not do this. ‘Wrestle with me but no biting’ is a form of structured play, as is ‘I toss the ball, and you bring it back.’
Humans like to play and humans like to play games. Games are more important than we tend to give them credit for, but before we talk about that, we need to answer another question: WHAT IS PLAY?
According to Wikipedia, ‘Play is a rite and a quality of mind in engaging with one's worldview. Play refers to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment.’ [1]
If you can parse that first sentence, you are one smart ninja.
I define play an engaging activity that doesn’t matter. Washing your sheets and making your bed matter, jumping on your bed does not. A sudden burp isn’t an engaging activity, burping the alphabet is. Play is innately frivolous, and more demanding than sitting on the couch and watching TV.
Play tends to be associated with children. In many animals, playful behavior happens mostly in childhood and then drops off sharply when it sexual maturity rolls around. Smarter animals tend to play more and play longer than dumber ones. This is because play is a useful learning tool.
A bunch of wolf pubs wrestle, and they learn in a safe environment things like physical coordination, fighting, using their strength, moving quickly, etc. They also start working out pack behavior. Play, like sex, is nature’s way of getting us to do useful activities under the guise of having fun.
Why are games so popular then? Because being a functional, adult human means operating within hundreds of abstract, arbitrary structures. Games teach us how to learn. How to adapt our mindset and behavior to an external rule set, and to internalize those structures and winning conditions.
Monopoly money has no intrinsic value, but neither does ‘real’ money. Value emerges because everyone agrees to operate as though it exists. There’s no reason for soccer/football players to not pick up the ball, and there’s no reason for game reviewers not to take gifts in exchange for good reviews, but these rules still exist, and those who break them aren’t playing fair.
These words that you’re reading, the syntax, associated sounds, semantics, and symbols, all utterly arbitrary, but I have to spend years studying and using the English language if I want to communicate.
A love of gameplay suggests a love of exploring and mastering abstract structures. It can also suggest a desire for simplicity. Games are easier than the real thing. It’s easier to win a game of Guitar Hero than it is to learn to play Stairway to Heaven. It’s easier to get to 450 in Tailoring in WoW than it is to learn how to sew a prom dress in the real world. There are brilliant chessmasters out there, but even a grand master is fighting a battle far more simplistic and easy than any real world general.
Games can be mastered. Real life, not so much.
Humans are messy, and the line between game and reality can get blurred. Professional poker and baseball players make their livelihood off games. A woman has sex with a man after he gives her enough gold in WoW for her to buy an epic, flying mount. A fourteen-year-old in Russia murders his seventeen-year-old Counter Strike rival.
I’d argue (and I might be pulling this from my backside) that like the value of money, and the idea that soccer players who pick up the ball are doing something wrong, frivolousness vs seriousness is a collective illusion. Having sex so someone will by you an epic, flying mount isn’t all that different from having sex with someone so they’ll buy you a new car. Murdering someone because they beat you at Counter-Strike, isn’t that different from murdering someone because they slept with your wife or got the promotion you didn’t.
I’m not about to break out the Nietzsche, but I’m reminded of a review that Yatzee did not long ago for the Sims 3. He complained that in the Sims, the player wasn’t the one in charge, the Sims were. You appeared to be in control – a god of sorts- but in reality, you catered to their every whim. I have to ask, how is that different from every other video game out there?
You’re mastering the system to win, but in order to do so, you become utterly subservient to the developer’s structure and desires. It doesn’t matter how good you are at hoop jumping, you’re still jumping through other people’s hoops. Your ‘winning’ is nothing but an electronic doggy-treat that you pay the developer to give you.
In that light, the massive popularity of games takes on disturbing connotations.
…
…
SHEEP! YOU’RE ALL SHEEP. THE LOT OF YOU!!
See also: Why animals love to play.
A game is structured play. (That answer so does not justify the dramatic all caps.)
If a bunch of kids run around and whack at one another, they’re playing. If they create a set of rules –one person whacks at a time, everyone runs/hides from the whacker, if you’re whacked by the whacker then you become the whacker, no whack backs – then they’re playing a game of tag. This structure is usually called the rules, but it might just be a set of guidelines. This structure may be static or dynamic, it might be simple or complex, and it might have a win/loss condition. Win or loss conditions are popular, because they create a definitive ending, and because winning is a powerful motivation.
The human ability to create and communicating an abstract structure is beyond animal intelligence, but there’s definitely proto-gameplay in social animals. For instance, if you wrestle with your dog, they’ll occasionally mouth or snap at you. You can teach them to not do this. ‘Wrestle with me but no biting’ is a form of structured play, as is ‘I toss the ball, and you bring it back.’
Humans like to play and humans like to play games. Games are more important than we tend to give them credit for, but before we talk about that, we need to answer another question: WHAT IS PLAY?
According to Wikipedia, ‘Play is a rite and a quality of mind in engaging with one's worldview. Play refers to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment.’ [1]
If you can parse that first sentence, you are one smart ninja.
I define play an engaging activity that doesn’t matter. Washing your sheets and making your bed matter, jumping on your bed does not. A sudden burp isn’t an engaging activity, burping the alphabet is. Play is innately frivolous, and more demanding than sitting on the couch and watching TV.
Play tends to be associated with children. In many animals, playful behavior happens mostly in childhood and then drops off sharply when it sexual maturity rolls around. Smarter animals tend to play more and play longer than dumber ones. This is because play is a useful learning tool.
A bunch of wolf pubs wrestle, and they learn in a safe environment things like physical coordination, fighting, using their strength, moving quickly, etc. They also start working out pack behavior. Play, like sex, is nature’s way of getting us to do useful activities under the guise of having fun.
Why are games so popular then? Because being a functional, adult human means operating within hundreds of abstract, arbitrary structures. Games teach us how to learn. How to adapt our mindset and behavior to an external rule set, and to internalize those structures and winning conditions.
Monopoly money has no intrinsic value, but neither does ‘real’ money. Value emerges because everyone agrees to operate as though it exists. There’s no reason for soccer/football players to not pick up the ball, and there’s no reason for game reviewers not to take gifts in exchange for good reviews, but these rules still exist, and those who break them aren’t playing fair.
These words that you’re reading, the syntax, associated sounds, semantics, and symbols, all utterly arbitrary, but I have to spend years studying and using the English language if I want to communicate.
A love of gameplay suggests a love of exploring and mastering abstract structures. It can also suggest a desire for simplicity. Games are easier than the real thing. It’s easier to win a game of Guitar Hero than it is to learn to play Stairway to Heaven. It’s easier to get to 450 in Tailoring in WoW than it is to learn how to sew a prom dress in the real world. There are brilliant chessmasters out there, but even a grand master is fighting a battle far more simplistic and easy than any real world general.
Games can be mastered. Real life, not so much.
Humans are messy, and the line between game and reality can get blurred. Professional poker and baseball players make their livelihood off games. A woman has sex with a man after he gives her enough gold in WoW for her to buy an epic, flying mount. A fourteen-year-old in Russia murders his seventeen-year-old Counter Strike rival.
I’d argue (and I might be pulling this from my backside) that like the value of money, and the idea that soccer players who pick up the ball are doing something wrong, frivolousness vs seriousness is a collective illusion. Having sex so someone will by you an epic, flying mount isn’t all that different from having sex with someone so they’ll buy you a new car. Murdering someone because they beat you at Counter-Strike, isn’t that different from murdering someone because they slept with your wife or got the promotion you didn’t.
I’m not about to break out the Nietzsche, but I’m reminded of a review that Yatzee did not long ago for the Sims 3. He complained that in the Sims, the player wasn’t the one in charge, the Sims were. You appeared to be in control – a god of sorts- but in reality, you catered to their every whim. I have to ask, how is that different from every other video game out there?
You’re mastering the system to win, but in order to do so, you become utterly subservient to the developer’s structure and desires. It doesn’t matter how good you are at hoop jumping, you’re still jumping through other people’s hoops. Your ‘winning’ is nothing but an electronic doggy-treat that you pay the developer to give you.
In that light, the massive popularity of games takes on disturbing connotations.
…
…
SHEEP! YOU’RE ALL SHEEP. THE LOT OF YOU!!
See also: Why animals love to play.
This has nothing to do with video games. Though the bottom talks about a computer utility.
Imagine you are a sweet, young, and innocent lesbian stripper ninja. You head to the dentist one day due to a toothache and he tells you that decay has hit the root of your back molar and the best thing to do is extract it. You could also do a root canal + post + crown, but that’s more expensive, would take longer, what’s left of the tooth is like ‘an eggshell’, and there’s a wisdom tooth right behind it that’s starting to press on the roots.
You agree to the extraction, which should take twenty minutes. It took THREE HOURS.
They used dozens of tools on me. They drilled the tooth into parts to separate the roots. Some electrical thing burned away parts of my gum. Dozens of tools went into my mouth and came out covered in saliva and blood. After the first half-hour, the dentist’s hands shook from the effort of just grasping the end of the molar while prying and pulling as hard as he could without anything budging. They gave me so much anesthetic, I lost sensation in my nose, but I was still treated to occasional bursts of pain as they cracked my tooth and tore it out millimeter by millimeter.
Dentist: This is one of the most difficult extractions I’ve done in twenty years.
LSN: hh.
Dentist: But you’re very calm, you’re a good patient.
LSN: *shrug* (there’s not much else you can do after someone’s cracked your tooth into bits and drilled away the pulp)
Apparently, I have strong gums, significant root curvature, and there are bulbs at the end of my roots. At two hours, forty minutes, the dentist yanked out the last root… and then explained that there was a root tips left within. After twenty minutes of digging and scraping within my gum with a series of picks, he took another X-ray and realized that wasn’t a root tip, but my wisdom tooth.
Ha ha?
Since then, I’ve had a slice of bread, two darvocet, a glass of water, and four hours of sleep. I want chocolate or tapioca pudding.
On to defragmentation! It’s important. The people at Priform are wonderful because they give us ccleaner, which I install on every computer I can get alone for 6 minutes. It’s a utility I run on a daily basis. It takes little time to work. It’s easy. It’s free. It doesn’t try to get me to upgrade to the ‘full’ version, it installs only itself, and it never tries to advertize crap I don’t want.
As such, when I updated my copy today and noticed Defraggler – a defragmentation utility by the same company – I downloaded it immediately. I play games. I constantly install and uninstall stuff. I ought to defragment more often, but my internal HD is 586 GB while my external HD is 300 GB. Defragmenting takes too long, and the software that comes with Windows is finky; if I’m messing around with my computer, it slows it down, but if I leave my computer alone, it complains and stops working. It’s like asking a teenager to do the dishes.
Defraggler helps some of the problems but seems to have its own oddities. I downloaded, installed, and ran it on two computers at work – no problem. It seems less resource intensive than Norton or Microsoft’s Defragment program. I used it on a laptop and computer running XP, the laptop is older than 2004 while the computer has those sticks of RAM that are as long as your arm. 2002, maybe? Either way, I was able to work on them while the program ran with no slow down, and for both (26% and 31% fragmentation) it took about 2-3 hours to complete.
The real test came when I got home. My computer had 41% fragmentation. I turned on the program and headed out to my dentist appointment. When I came back this evening… the program had freaked out. I’m not sure what happened. When I clicked it, it filled the screen with a large, blank box, and when I clicked it again, it minimized.
I restarted the computer, restarted Defraggler and... I had 45% fragmentation? I left it to frolic again, went to bed, and after four hours of sleep, I came back to find that it wasn’t running.
The thing is, I’m in pain and grumpy and hungry but can’t eat because of the pain and the bloody wound where my molar used to be. It’s very possible I just forgot to turn it on. I run it again and…
It’s strange, when I first ran it, it said that I had more used space than free space, and now it says I have exactly half and half. Did I delete something? Did it delete stuff in some sort of Hall 9000 mental breakdown? Is it defragmenting AND compressing?
It’s been running fine since I first sat down at the computer four hours ago. Internet Explorer is taking more resources than it is. Now, it’s about half way done. But it just disappeared again. It’s not minimizing to the system tray. It just vanishes.
Other than that, it’s a great program.
Imagine you are a sweet, young, and innocent lesbian stripper ninja. You head to the dentist one day due to a toothache and he tells you that decay has hit the root of your back molar and the best thing to do is extract it. You could also do a root canal + post + crown, but that’s more expensive, would take longer, what’s left of the tooth is like ‘an eggshell’, and there’s a wisdom tooth right behind it that’s starting to press on the roots.
You agree to the extraction, which should take twenty minutes. It took THREE HOURS.
They used dozens of tools on me. They drilled the tooth into parts to separate the roots. Some electrical thing burned away parts of my gum. Dozens of tools went into my mouth and came out covered in saliva and blood. After the first half-hour, the dentist’s hands shook from the effort of just grasping the end of the molar while prying and pulling as hard as he could without anything budging. They gave me so much anesthetic, I lost sensation in my nose, but I was still treated to occasional bursts of pain as they cracked my tooth and tore it out millimeter by millimeter.
Dentist: This is one of the most difficult extractions I’ve done in twenty years.
LSN: hh.
Dentist: But you’re very calm, you’re a good patient.
LSN: *shrug* (there’s not much else you can do after someone’s cracked your tooth into bits and drilled away the pulp)
Apparently, I have strong gums, significant root curvature, and there are bulbs at the end of my roots. At two hours, forty minutes, the dentist yanked out the last root… and then explained that there was a root tips left within. After twenty minutes of digging and scraping within my gum with a series of picks, he took another X-ray and realized that wasn’t a root tip, but my wisdom tooth.
Ha ha?
Since then, I’ve had a slice of bread, two darvocet, a glass of water, and four hours of sleep. I want chocolate or tapioca pudding.
On to defragmentation! It’s important. The people at Priform are wonderful because they give us ccleaner, which I install on every computer I can get alone for 6 minutes. It’s a utility I run on a daily basis. It takes little time to work. It’s easy. It’s free. It doesn’t try to get me to upgrade to the ‘full’ version, it installs only itself, and it never tries to advertize crap I don’t want.
As such, when I updated my copy today and noticed Defraggler – a defragmentation utility by the same company – I downloaded it immediately. I play games. I constantly install and uninstall stuff. I ought to defragment more often, but my internal HD is 586 GB while my external HD is 300 GB. Defragmenting takes too long, and the software that comes with Windows is finky; if I’m messing around with my computer, it slows it down, but if I leave my computer alone, it complains and stops working. It’s like asking a teenager to do the dishes.
Defraggler helps some of the problems but seems to have its own oddities. I downloaded, installed, and ran it on two computers at work – no problem. It seems less resource intensive than Norton or Microsoft’s Defragment program. I used it on a laptop and computer running XP, the laptop is older than 2004 while the computer has those sticks of RAM that are as long as your arm. 2002, maybe? Either way, I was able to work on them while the program ran with no slow down, and for both (26% and 31% fragmentation) it took about 2-3 hours to complete. The real test came when I got home. My computer had 41% fragmentation. I turned on the program and headed out to my dentist appointment. When I came back this evening… the program had freaked out. I’m not sure what happened. When I clicked it, it filled the screen with a large, blank box, and when I clicked it again, it minimized.
I restarted the computer, restarted Defraggler and... I had 45% fragmentation? I left it to frolic again, went to bed, and after four hours of sleep, I came back to find that it wasn’t running.
The thing is, I’m in pain and grumpy and hungry but can’t eat because of the pain and the bloody wound where my molar used to be. It’s very possible I just forgot to turn it on. I run it again and…
It’s strange, when I first ran it, it said that I had more used space than free space, and now it says I have exactly half and half. Did I delete something? Did it delete stuff in some sort of Hall 9000 mental breakdown? Is it defragmenting AND compressing?
It’s been running fine since I first sat down at the computer four hours ago. Internet Explorer is taking more resources than it is. Now, it’s about half way done. But it just disappeared again. It’s not minimizing to the system tray. It just vanishes.
Other than that, it’s a great program.
Divine Divinity 2 came out in Germany today, and I'm ruthlessly swiping these picures from Morgoth at the Obsidian board. I want this game.
I changed my comment settings, so if you attempt to comment, it will take you to a full page. I hope this will help people having difficulties.
I changed my comment settings, so if you attempt to comment, it will take you to a full page. I hope this will help people having difficulties.
This is part two of a two-part review of Mirror’s Edge and contains many spoilers. Read Part 1 for general thoughts.And here is where I get nitpicky, mostly about the story of Mirror’s Edge.
Mirror’s Edge’s gameplay is good. It’s smooth, responsive, and the blend of puzzle and combat sections (they’re more racing sections as the eight times out of ten you’ll want to avoid combat) work. The bright environments would have been a great set up for grungy, darker environments later on, but that instead we’re treated to grungy, darker cartoons that aren’t all that interesting.
I can buy into the premise of a totalitarian regime taking control of a near future, first-world nation and using the tools we currently associate with informational freedom (the internet, e-mails, video systems) and using them to monitor and control the populous while replacing news systems with propaganda. Runners are one way that people have learned to get around that scrutiny.
The story itself engages in little political or social thought. Strange for a game that’s premise is so political. Faith seems indifferent to the world around her in anything but the most basic level: She runs because Merc taught her to. She investigates the assassination of a politician because her sister is framed.
This is fine; Faith is not required to be an intellectual character. Though I’d be interested in learning her thoughts regarding government power, citizen responsibility, and the tension between keeping a society safe and keeping it free, this is Faith’s game, and these topics never appear to enter her stream of conscious.
Okay then, perhaps Faith is more of an intuitive or emotive person. The cartoons suggest she’s a ‘survivor’ who’s learned to evade the law and make it on the streets at a very young age. This is a great beginning for a story, but it’s not enough. A good story has the main character changing in some way.
This is why Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is one of the best stories in gaming. In the beginning, the Prince is arrogant, ambitious, and obsessed with earning honor and glory. His actions lead to death/corruption of those around him, including his beloved father (and possibly the corruption of the world, but that’s not the central issue for him.) Throughout the game, he learns humility, he learns to take responsibility for his actions, and he learns to trust others and put them first.
Fiction 101: the protagonist goes through a series of challenges in pursuit of a goal that changes them for better (Prince of Persia) or worse (Scarface.)
Video games have gotten away with ‘Aliens/demons/Nazis attack, you fight them and win!’ for a long time, but Mirror’s Edge is trying hard to be something unique. The bits between chapters are obviously attempts to make Faith and the story’s events more meaningful than ‘Police attack, you run/fight them and win, ‘ but that attempt is a failure.
When Kate, Faith’s sister, is revealed I was thrilled. She’s one of the ‘Blues,’ the police that are the runner’s main advisory. I suspect Kate is a lawful good paladin; when faced with a government that robs people of their freedoms and a corrupt police force, she joins the police and tries to be one of the good guys. I think the story as-is would be better told with her as the main character: she’s a good cop framed for the murder of a rising politician. While running from the law, she uncovers a plot to take over the city, and ends up working with ‘criminals’ she once fought in order to make sure the current Mayor doesn’t replace the police with a private army he owns.
When Faith first leaves Kate, she urges her sister to come with her. To run from the police about to enter the building, arrest Kate for assassination, and find her guilty in a mock trial. Kate’s response? She’s staying there. Faith will run, Faith always runs, but Kate will stand.
And, when you have a story about oppression, then you need a character who will stand for something. Faith never becomes this person. She runs, and saves her sister, but she seems as unconcerned with the bigger problems of the world and the events that led her sister to being wrongfully imprisoned, as she is when the game starts.
“I love my sister and would do anything to save her’ is touching, and a great starting point for the story, but it’s not enough.
That Video Game Blog was cast out, never to darken my blogroll again. I’ve replaced it with gamepolitics.com and rockpapershotgun.com. Thank you deepseasharc!
As you might have noticed, the Mirror’s Edge part 2 never materialized. What you might not have noticed is that my Night Elf warrior made it from level 6 to level 20 since I wrote part one. (The blood-elf rogue is twittling her thumbs at level 23) Tomorrow though, you can expect part 2 and some thoughts on Diablo.
I’d like to know more about the people visiting my blog: deepseasharc and Pai, tell me a bit about yourself. What kinds of games do you play? How long have you been a gamer? If you could change/improve one thing about gaming right now, what would it be?
As you might have noticed, the Mirror’s Edge part 2 never materialized. What you might not have noticed is that my Night Elf warrior made it from level 6 to level 20 since I wrote part one. (The blood-elf rogue is twittling her thumbs at level 23) Tomorrow though, you can expect part 2 and some thoughts on Diablo.
I’d like to know more about the people visiting my blog: deepseasharc and Pai, tell me a bit about yourself. What kinds of games do you play? How long have you been a gamer? If you could change/improve one thing about gaming right now, what would it be?
