Games: February 2003 Archive Page

"They aren't videogames, after all; except for the occasional cut scene, we almost never use video. We use images rendered on the fly--and the images are the surface of the game, the interface, the cotton candy. The meat of the game, the heart of it, is in the underlying code. These are games that run on processors, not on magnetic tape; algorithm and interactivity is what they are....Indeed, given the visual crudity of the original videogames, it's hard to believe that even non-gamers could have thought that 'video' was the single factor about those games that needed mentioning. But of course, the prevailing culture has never understood the game qua game." Greg Costikyan --Death to VideogamesGames * Design * Art * Culture)

A post from a few weeks ago, which I missed.

"Baseball - a slow, serene game played with a wooden bat, a cloth ball, and cowhide mitts on a broad, grassy field - surged in popularity just when the industrial revolution was taking hold, leaving masses of urban workers and shopkeepers yearning for the pastoral peace and quiet of the fabled agricultural age. They could relive this for a day by attending a baseball game. By extension, no wonder stock-car racing - a fast, furious sport contended on a paved roadway with snarling, smelly machines operated by hand - is surging in popularity at the very time the computerized information revolution is transforming our society from top to bottom." --Social Science at 190 MPH on NASCAR's Biggest SuperspeedwaysFirst Monday)

The above speculation is from an article by David Ronfelt, who credits "long-time race promoter and track owner H. A. 'Humpy' Wheeler" as quoted in Scott Huler's A Little Bit Sideways: One Week Inside a NASCAR Winston Cup Race Team. This line of reasoning also accounts for the popularity of BattleBots.

DADDY: Peter, the weather is so nice... let's play a game.
PETER (age 4): I do NOT want to play any game that's in the world. I want to play a game that's NOT in the world.
DADDY: Peter, what kind of game is not in the world?
PETER: (pointing towards computer) On a CD.Games: Not in the WorldLiteracy Weblog)

"Vatsim allows virtual pilots (but real people) and virtual air traffic controllers (also real people) to see each other and communicate. The result is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game patterned after the government's dullest bureaucracy." --Always a Dull Moment: The hottest game in the sky is simulating a holding pattern. Fasten your seat belt.Wired)

"Your task is to write the first line of an imaginary novel. Your goal is to make it hilariously bad.... Maximum sentence length: 25 words." (Deadline: 14 April 2003) --Jennifer Stood There, Quietly OvulatingAdam Cadre)

Adam Cadre, who started the Lyttle Lytton contest as a reaction against what he sees as the increasingly lengthy and unfunny entries in the more famous Bulwer-Lytton contest, is also the author of several top-notch works of interactive fiction, including the touching "Photopia" and the single-gimmick "9:05".

"Game importers and Internet cafés remain vulnerable. Police are cracking down on players of Counter-Strike, Age of Empires, and digital backgammon and chess. More than 50 people have been arrested and face up to three months in prison and 5,000-euro fines." --More Fallout Over Greek Game BanWired)

"When you play a multiplayer FPS video game, like Counter-Strike, you enter a complex social world, a subculture, bringing together all of the problems and possibilities of power relationships dominant in the non-virtual world. Understanding these innovations requires examining player in-game behavior, specifically the types of textual (in-game chats) and nonverbal (logo design, avatar design and movement, map making, etc.) actions." Talmadge Wright, Eric Boria and Paul Breidenbach --Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games: Playing Counter-StrikeGame Studies)

"MMRPGs are pervasive virtual environments populated by human-controlled digital people from around the globe. | Players develop characters, work towards goals, solve puzzles and engage in social fluttery. They're the visual marriage of text-based adventures and chat rooms, and women are flocking." Alex Krotoski --Online Role-Playing Fits the BillGuardian)

Interesting... while Slashdot just posted a thread savaging The Sims Online, the article above praises it (but it apparently hasn't been released in the UK yet).

"There are dozens of well-designed studies that show that TV, movies and other media affect what viewers believe and how they behave. This is true of many different kinds of attitudes and behaviors -- positive and negative -- but many studies conclusively show a statistical link between watching violent programs and behaving aggressively. And, of course, billions of dollars have been spent on media advertising because it is well established that even brief messages can be powerful in shaping behavior. However, there are very few studies of whether exposure to media violence causes criminal behavior." Diana Zuckerman --What is to Blame for Youth Violence?: The Media, Guns, Parenting, Poverty, Bad Programs, Or? Nat'l Center for Policy)

I found this link on Donna Hibbs's Media Issues Weblog," which looks like it will be worth watching.

"But after being heralded on the cover of Newsweek and on '60 Minutes,' the $25-million 'Sims Online' has turned into an expensive letdown for Redwood City, Calif.-based EA. Sales are sluggish, reviews have been merciless, and many in the video game industry wonder whether online games will ever find a large following." Alex Pham --'Sims Online' Gives Creators a Painful Reality CheckLA Times)

A Slashdot poster sums it up well: "With The Sims Online, you basically end up with a graphical chat room. The tasks you perform are repetitive and dull. Each involves clicking on something and staring at the screen until that task finishes or your happiness levels go down far enough to finish it for you. Fix that up, rinse and repeat. All in all, the game ends up being a glorified IRC chat room that you pay for." And this is the next big thing in gaming?

"The kicker for economists is that these virtual economic relationships have broken into the real U.S. economy. When players found EverQuest's bartering rules inadequate, they started exchanging the armor, spells, and other Norrathian objects of value at real-world auction sites. These transactions are conducted not in Norrathian PP but in U.S. dollars and then completed between avatars inside the game. (You pay in dollars at a real-world site, then the seller's avatar gives your avatar the goods in Norrath.) You can even buy another player's avatar, complete with its accumulated skills and assets. Sony tried to stop all these transactions and persuaded eBay and Yahoo! Auctions to bar them on the grounds that they involve Sony's intellectual property. But this kind of protectionism is hard to enforce whether the goods are real or virtual: Trade in Norrathian goods and services simply migrated to other sites." Robert Shapiro --Fantasy EconomicsSlate)

I built a bloated icebox made to store
my ripe ingredients. Its shelves are crammed
with shrunken tentacles, and scalps are jammed
beside the vats of larva, pulp, and gore.
The handle's slick. It's hard to shut the door
against the swelling mold. It must be slammed.
This foul refrigerator of the damned
will always stretch to hold a little more.

The fearful call this fridge a gate to Hell,
the brave can't wait to stick their heads inside,
my neighbors can't endure the rancid smell
and wonder what the sticky magnets hide.
But now it's time to bid you, friends, farewell,
and save the nutrients your skins provide.
Jacie Ragan

--The HoardGorelets: Refrigerator of the Damned)

"The Refrigerator of the Dammed" lets you play with virtual tiles (refrigerator magnets) on a horror theme. Part of Gorelets.