In the bygone ages of America’s colonial past the Puritans employed stocks as a means of punishment, the attendant humiliation, as much as any physical discomfort, serving as a corrective to whatever deviant behavior had incurred their wrath.  Now, as the first decade of the twenty-first century comes to a close, Microsoft has gone them one better.

In the latest podcast from Major Nelson, guest Stephen Toulouse announced that stiffer punishments than a simple, reset gamer score will be waiting in the wings for any caught cheating.

‘The bar is a little bit higher than that…  The other thing it does is, it puts a tag that you’ve been cheating on your gamercard. That’s a pretty big Scarlet Letter.’

In addition, it seems that any achievements earned on the offending profile – be it honestly or no – will not only be removed, but denied them forever after in the bargain.  Whether or not the public mark of shame will sting quite so much as the loss of any and all record of their exploits, we can all breathe a bit easier knowing that it might just give the denizens of Live something else to talk about.

Source: 1Up

Turning her thoughts to the reports that continue to surface of harsh interrogation techniques employed under the aegis of the Bush administration, writer Kari Henley of the Huffington Post has taken up the novel view same tired refrain that our entertainment lies at the heart of the matter, and that video games in particular are to blame.

Her argument, at its core, is reducible to little more than the familiar (verging on clichéd) assertion that our frequent exposure to violent imagery and the like has so desensitized us that we’re no longer shocked by acts of real-life brutality.

‘I believe if we are going to truly come to terms with abiding by moral codes against extreme acts of violence, we first have to start in our own living rooms to explore the increased levels of violence we witness on a daily basis that serves [sic] as news or entertainment.’

But Henley takes it a step further, going on to suggest that any who would give a free pass to such games as Grand Theft Auto (my assumption, since she never specifies, is that she refers to GTA IV throughout, but it’s hard to tell for certain – indeed, I suspect she may not even know herself), yet condemn the use of torture or ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, are in fact acting hypocritically.

Pointing to a Mad TV skit in which a man brings home a GTA board game to play with his family, she rhetorically asks: ‘Is it funny? Or is it a terrible reflection of how desensitized we have become to the images around us? If we can laugh at this clip, and then protest about our use of torture, are we being hypocritical?’

To quote Yahtzee, ‘the short answer is “no” ‘ (you can all fill in the rest…).  I’ve never ceased to wonder at the bald irony of a journalist who would accuse gamers of an inability to distinguish reality and fiction, and in the next breath decry a flagrant parody as though it were the very object of its caricature.  Moreover, the practice of torture and a random, one-off skit on Mad TV are as different as night and day, and the link between them tenuous to the point of insignificance – that I can chuckle at a comedic routine does not for a moment imply that I condone the use of torture, and I would in fact argue that any gamer would be well within their rights to take offense at her implication to the contrary.  (I would also point out that the ethical ramifications of such interrogation practices and their use belong to an entirely different area of discourse, and that they have far less to do with shallow, high school sophistry than with a serious discussion of the intersection of morality and efficacy.)

But a cursory glance at the comments that follow her article, at least, are almost enough to shore up my perpetually flagging faith in humanity – I leave you with the remarks of one TheLar, who offers one of the more damning indictments of the position taken by Henley and her ilk: ‘I have to challenge the entire thesis here. Regardless of any so-called desensitization, the fact remains that millions upon millions of people play violent video games, enjoy violent movies (and laugh at them), and listen to violent music yet never harm anyone else.’

Source: Huffington Post (via GamePolitics)

The Telegraph recently sat down to chat with creator Tim Schafer about his upcoming Brütal Legend, discussing the influences and the passion that have shaped what he describes as ‘the most personal game he’s ever made’.

As it turns out, the love of heavy metal which is so plainly in evidence throughout, dating back to his adolescence, was in part fostered by Shafer’s elder brother.

‘My brother caught me listening to Supertramp in the sixth grade and said “what are you doing?! C’mere!!” and he pulled me down to his room and he played me “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath,’ he recounts.  ‘It’s good to have an older brother who does things like that!’

Years later, he’s found himself in the enviable position of crafting a game predicated entirely upon the music and the community that he loves – yet it could have been a very different story.

‘When we first started pitching the game, people suggested we base it around hip hop or country and western music. It could have been done, but it just wouldn’t be the same’

Thankfully the setting was left intact, even attracting actor and comedian Jack Black, on whom Brütal Legend’s protagonist, Eddie Riggs, was in large part based.

‘I saw School Of Rock with Jack Black and something about that character connected; about how much he really sincerely loved metal and rock and there’s nothing ironic about it all.

‘We never thought we’d get him and then we heard that he was a fan of Psychonauts. That gave us the courage to contact him and show him this new game, and when we did he signed up right away.’

While it’s obviously too early to make anything like a final determination about the game, Shafer’s enthusiasm comes through loud and clear, which hopefully bodes well for his opus amoris.  Be sure to hit up the Telegraph for the full text of the interview, and all the juicy details on the metal-heavy title’s development.

Source: Telegraph

A few weeks ago we reported that ThinkGeek had, by the invocation of dark arts unknown, secured a batch of brand new Dreamcasts for purchase by the more refined (or unapologetically nostalgic) among us.  And purchased they were, as they sold out almost as quickly as they had appeared, leaving any who were too slow on the draw to twist in the wind.  But they promised that they were expecting a new shipment in within a handful of weeks, and a quick look at the site today confirms that it has indeed arrived (from Christ only knows where).

It’s hard to imagine that the current supply will last any longer than the last, but for the time being, at least, the Dreamcast is once again available for the modest price of $99.99.  Games and VMU’s are still sold separately, though all the essentials are otherwise included – they’re even good enough to throw in a demo disc with all the latest (if you’re reading this from 1998) previews.

The damnable constraints of fiscal responsibility deny me the ability to pick one up myself, so I’m counting on everyone else to make the frivolous purchase that I can’t, so I can at least enjoy it vicariously.

Source: ThinkGeek

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time could tell you that I love to read.  More than to any other single pursuit, I devote the lion’s share of my day to devouring books of all sorts, and in my impatience to read more or faster I often find myself juggling two at a time – a day without books, to play off the well-known quote, is like a day without sunshine.

Anyone who’s known me for a little bit longer could probably tell you that I also love Xenogears.  I’ve played through it more than I have any other RPG in my library, and to this day have yet to tire of its delightfully convoluted story, abjectly depressing world, and the Gears that populate it.  Unfortunately, both playing the game and reading in general require pretty hefty temporal commitments, and historically I’ve always had to choose one or the other.  Until now.

Fansite Xenogears: God and Mind, among other things, plays host to the ongoing effort to render the entirety of the game in novel format.  Begun ten years ago, the monolithic undertaking is in fact still incomplete, though it has, as the update just last week indicates, by no means been forgotten.

The novelization, the site stresses, is more than a literal translation of game to book.  Rather, author Dark has taken literary liberties where necessary or preferred, smoothing out – and fleshing out – the flow of the story to produce something more in line with a traditional novel.

Slow-going though the endeavor has clearly been, my hat’s off to the writer for the Herculean task that he’s taken on (and evidently stuck with).  So if you’re a fan of the game, stop by to check out what he’s done, and maybe even drop him a line to let him know what you think.

Source: XGAM

Square Enix has just launched a new teaser site, touching off a spate of excited speculation on the identity of the game at which it hints; though by no means unanimous, the growing consensus points toward a new Front Mission.

The site itself consists in nothing more than the image of a futuristic cityscape – which some have tentatively given as New York – dotted by animated explosions to the accompaniment of appropriate sound effects; heavy smoke billows from the scenes of a dozen firefights as bronze-tinged clouds drift placidly by overhead.  In a bottom corner a quote from former President Kennedy reads: ‘The world is very different now.  For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.’

Cryptic though it is, 1Up has pegged the city-shot as a picture appearing in the latest issue of OXM, on which the magazine is expected to elaborate next month.  While declining to explain further, they report that the title is ‘widely assumed to be a new Front Mission‘, which is sure to turn the heads of more than a few who love it when they get mechs in their strategy RPG’s (or strategy RPG in their mechs).

If the site does indeed indicate that a new Front Mission (6..?) in the works, one can only hope that this one will actually release outside of Japan.

Source: 1Up

Pursuant to the negative attention drawn by their web-based Faith Fighter, Italian designers at Molleindustria have opted to pull it from their site entirely.  Though it hit the net over a year ago, the satirical fighting game was catapulted onto the mainstream radar screen after UK news outlet Metro ran a story on it this past Sunday, citing calls from various religious organizations for its removal.

A representative of the Organization of Islamic Conference’s ‘Islamophobia Observatory’, upon learning of Faith Fighter and its premise, remarked that ‘the computer game [is] incendiary in its content and offensive to Muslims and Christians.’

In defense of their creation, a spokesman for Molleindustria rebutted that the game’s purpose as they had conceived of it was ‘to push gamers to reflect on how sacred representations are often used to fuel or justify conflicts between people’.

But in the wake of continued and unabated protest, the company ultimately decided to take Faith Fighter down altogether.

‘We knew that this was a risky operation and we acknowledge our failure as communicators.

‘Taking down the game from this website is a symbolic act: copies and documentation of Faith Fighter can be found all over the Internet.

‘Hopefully this will help people to make their [own] judgments by examining the actual work and not the sensationalist accounts spread by mass media.’

Because if 1930′s Europe has taught us anything, it’s that simply knuckling under is always a sure-fire way to discourage bullies.  However sincere (or not) the development team’s wish to make a genuine point with their game, that they’ve bowed to public pressure and voluntarily censored themselves would seem, at best, imprudent (I would say alarming).  Whether Faith Fighter is ‘offensive’ or not is flatly immaterial – their right to self-expression is, by my lights, of far greater consequence than the imagined ‘indignation’ claimed by a narrow and egregiously hypersensitive segment of the populace.

And most unsettling of all is the tacit encouragement that their concession provides for such groups as the OIC, reinforcing their misbegotten notion that they need only whine loudly and importunately enough to get their way.  Suitably unapologetic though their statement was, I would argue that the Molleindustria team has failed not to communicate, but to stand up for their rights.

Source: GamePolitics

Never one to shy from a gratuitous port, Capcom’s latest iteration of Resident Evil 1 will be shuffling its way onto American Wii’s on June 23.

Easily the most frequented entry in the series, RE1 was originally released for the PSX in 1996, whence it made the hop to both the PC and the star-crossed Sega Saturn.  Not content with the Director’s Cut that they put out barely a year after the original had first hit shelves, Capcom next went on to overhaul the game entirely for its 2002 GameCube debut.  Sporting a then-current gen graphical upgrade, a redesigned mansion, new content, and new (if still B-grade) voice acting, the ‘REmake’ was ’70% different’ from its PSX forebear, according to creator Shinji Mikami.

Even then, however, Capcom had not yet begun to port.  In 2006 the game moved on once more, this time to the Nintendo DS with the subtitle Deadly Silence in tow.  A faithful reproduction of RE1′s very first incarnation, it was, however tepid its reception, nevertheless a remarkable testament to the capabilities of Nintendo’s current handheld.

And now, poised for a Wii release this summer, Resident Evil Archives – not to be confused with the series compendium of the same name – looks to carry its family line into the third straight generation.  While the $29.99 price tag and revamped control scheme alone seem unlikely to win over any save the most ardent fans and the obsessive-compulsive, only time will tell the tale.

Source: Joystiq

Back in 2005, in the midst of a stormy Thanksgiving break, I came to a decision.  For weeks I’d seriously contemplated the purchase of a PSP, weighing the appurtenant merits and demerits of such a (for me) hefty expenditure, and in the end I came down on the side of indulgence; practicality and common sense, far less gratifying, were peremptorily shown the door.

For, the handheld’s immediate appeal lay less in its then-meager library than in that same, nigh on irresistible charm to which so many new gadgets lay claim: it was just so damned neat.  I had precious little genuine need for a portable gaming platform, and its lineup back then hadn’t even begun to show the promise that it’s fulfilled in the years since – it was simply that the thing was too cool not to buy.

But for all the patent frivolity of my investment, before long I found myself reaping benefits wholly unanticipated, and the PSP deftly filling a niche theretofore dark to me.

Easily the most important function discharged by my little ‘PS 1.9′ has been that of a general purpose media player.  Though more than a year would elapse before I acquired a more versatile 2GB memory stick, the 512MB model with which I made do was more than large enough to accommodate an album or two, and almost overnight my PSP had been pressed into service as something of a poor man’s (so to speak) iPod.

I personally spend a goodly amount of time in either libraries or coffee shops, and I like to read or study to the accompaniment of a soundtrack of my own choosing, rather than play Russian roulette with whatever (if anything at all) my chosen locale might have on offer.  But, as fond as I am of my trusty laptop, generally speaking I’d rather not have to lug the old girl all the way across town just for a single application, and the PSP, happily, supplies the perfect alternative (since I never hopped on the iPod bandwagon) – I can even take a break and, say, fly a few quick sorties in Ace Combat X or Warhawk if the mood so strikes me (as it has on several occasions).

Running a close second, the organic Wi-Fi has proven its worth and then some more times than I can count.  By way of example, one morning a few weeks ago I was out and about running some errands, the last of which was to hit the post office and mail off a package.  But as I was on my way out of the library – where I’d stopped to run off a copy of something or other – I realized that I’d completely forgotten the address that I needed, and hadn’t thought to write it down anywhere.  Luckily, though, I happened to have my PSP on me – rather than drive all the way back to my apartment, then, I just whipped the handheld out, keyed its somewhat balky browser to life, and took down the address like I should have in the first place.  Problem solved.

Of course, such is more exception than rule – I’m usually not that forgetful – but it did save me a trip, and vindicate yet again the purchase that I made three-and-a-half years ago.  More than that, though, I love the ready access that my PSP provides to Wikipedia or other reference sources, of which I’ve made not infrequent use over the years.  Every now and again in the course of my reading I’ve happened across a term, event, or person that, although tantalizingly familiar, I couldn’t quite place, which deficiency a handful of minutes spent in consultation with the appropriate site – facilitated by the aforementioned internet connection – has usually been sufficient to rectify.

But by far the most esoteric task to which I’ve set the PSP is, without question, the storage of a book in electronic format.  Some time back, in the course of a search for an old volume that had been out of print for decades, I had learned that a university library had been kind enough to provide high-quality digital scans – freely available to all – of the same.  While it took a fair bit of work to first convert the images to a format that the system could read, and then work around the decidedly backwards organizational schema that it uses, at the end of my labors I had a wonderfully functional copy of a text that I could take with me anywhere I pleased (and that, I’m quite sure, would never see the light of day on a Kindle); that very book, not one month later, saw me through the interminable hours of a somewhat grueling flight across the Atlantic.

All in all, I’ve been absolutely delighted by the manifold capabilities of Sony’s first handheld, and at this point would be hard put to imagine getting by without one.  (For any who may have been wondering, I do also get in the odd game from time to time.)  Compact, versatile, and at times indispensable, my PSP remains, in all its utility, one of the best accidental discoveries that I’ve ever made.

A few years ago, during something of an extended, accidental vacation, I picked up a copy of the novel Manifold: Time.  The cover, a rather minimalist affair, wasn’t particularly inspired – but the title itself, in tandem with the back-cover preview, was sufficient to catch my eye, as I’ve always had an especial fondness for temporal misadventures.

I had also, to that point, never had occasion to cross paths with any of Stephen Baxter’s work, and like any serious fan of a given genre (science fiction in this case) I’m always on the lookout for new authors.

It had, moreover, been quite some time since I’d last read a sci-fi novel; aside from the generally brilliant NJO series, I really hadn’t been exposed to anything new in the genre for a year or more – and certainly nothing ranging toward the harder end of the spectrum.

So Manifold: Time, when I dove into it, came as a most welcome surprise, and established itself with almost startling celerity as one of my favorite books.  For, above all it reminded me of the reasons that I had always been drawn to the genre in the first place.  By no means a truly hard sci-fi story, it nevertheless presented ideas theretofore unknown to me, and all in all afforded me a perspective just a touch different from the one with which I had begun reading.  In short, it genuinely expanded my intellectual and conceptual horizons – if not by any great margin, then enough to warrant both my notice and my gratitude.

And it is precisely this sort of experience that I hope to one day share, so to speak, with a game.

In the course of my personal gaming career, I’ve never encountered a title that I could say truly challenged me, intellectually.  A number have provided a wealth of moral food for thought, and a great many have, without question, pushed me to a greater mastery of their attendant mechanics that I would have thought possible had they simply coddled me (as most games are wont to do) – but much to my dismay, I’ve never yet stumbled to a game that has opened my eyes to new ideas, to new knowledge.

Now, lest I incur the impotent wrath of too many incensed onlookers, I should perhaps clarify what I’m not saying.  By no means am I claiming that ‘intellectual’ games, as I’ve here conceived of them, simply don’t exist, because there’s no way I could honestly be certain of that assertion; I’ve not played every game out there, obviously – none of us have.  Rather, I regret that none such have crossed my figurative desk – if there are indeed any to be found – and hope to some day correct that particular deficiency.

Further, I would never argue that every title should play like a schoolroom lecture.  Though I’ve never been quite so enthralled by the GTA series as most others, I’ve nonetheless enjoyed my fair share of virtual hedonism (Twisted Metal 2 was, for instance, one of the games that most interested me in the PSX), and I would never advocate that we do away with the same.

But, while it’s painfully clear that many can’t be bothered to spare even the dictionary an occasional, passing glance, much less spend any meaningful time in the company of a good book, I also know that I’m not the only one who relishes the thought of exposure to new concepts – and it seems to me that games are one of the finest vehicles by which to convey them.  The Armored Core series, in my own case, provides a serviceable enough exemplar, for when you get right down to it, a great deal of the game is really little more than glorified math.  More times than I can count, I’ve spent an hour or two doing nothing more than assemble and disassemble my AC in the in-game garage, endlessly swapping out her sundry parts in search of the perfect balance of aesthetics and performance, and running through batteries of arithmetic without surcease as I evaluate the impact of different components – and I’ve done so not only willingly, but cheerfully.  (Gran Turismo aficionados are no doubt well acquainted with this same species of mania.)  It’s not that I’m particularly fond of math – though we get on all right, most of the time – but rather, it’s the context that supplies the proverbial spoonful of sugar.

Obviously, low-level arithmetical operations are hardly on a level with a philosophical treatise or a decent sci-fi novel, but the point is that video games, I suspect, could be adapted to transmit the concepts of either with equal utility.  For, the tasks (such as the aforementioned math) which we would otherwise deem too arduous or dull to merit much more than a curt dismissal, when couched in a bit of graphical flair and some solid play mechanics, are suddenly rendered not merely palatable, but enjoyable to boot; I would very much love to see more developers and writers capitalize on this remarkable capacity of the medium.

In closing, I feel I should stress one last thing that I’m not saying: the foregoing should in no way be taken as a complaint, or any deep dissatisfaction with gaming in general.  I love the games that I’ve played, and I rather doubt that RE5, say, would be improved by shoehorning the EPR paradox in there somewhere.  And the oft-vexed ‘games-as-art’ debate, in this case, is neither here nor there.

But, as diverse a lot as gamers are, and despite their repeated caricature by fear-mongering rabble-rousers like Jack Thompson, I suspect that the majority are pretty smart cookies – it’s simply my hope that future games try just a little bit harder to take that cognitive horsepower into account.

Rebels without a cause in North America and Europe will get the chance to fight the power pick up their copy of Red Faction: Guerrilla a week ahead of schedule, according to a recent announcement.

Originally slated for a June 9 release date in NTSC territory, Guerrilla will instead be hitting American shores on June 2; its PAL counterpart will arrive in the Old World on the fifth, also a week earlier than planned.

For those whose appetite for destruction demands immediate satiety, THQ has thoughtfully provided a demo of the game, currently available on the PlayStation Network and XBox Live.

Source: Joystiq

The AAA blockbuster games of today are not your father’s killer apps.  In an especially forward-looking and future-oriented industry, progress ‘ticks’ like a permanent DOT as developers relentlessly push back the frontiers of the medium, realizing ever more fully the idea of ‘virtual reality’; the bounds which delimit what is ‘possible’, plainly, are fluid indeed.

But just as games themselves have evolved, writes 2K Games’ Tynan Sylvester, so too must our lexicon keep pace.  Blogging earlier this week he turned his thoughts to the term ‘game’ itself, arguing that the phenomenon which it seeks to capture should – even must – slip the semantic shackles of this traditional appellation in the pursuit of more precise self-description.

‘The word “game” is starting to get outdated,’ he writes.  ‘It doesn’t fit us anymore, to the point where it is holding us back.’

The earliest video games, by today’s standards, one might generously term rudimentary affairs, built, as they were, from an assemblage of hardware and software marginally less sophisticated than my wristwatch.  They were ‘[s]imple sets of action-reaction rules and mechanics. You’d take your action and the system would apply the rules and respond. There were defined goals and boundaries. Pong, Galaga, Space Invaders – [a]ll resembled board games and pinball more than novels or films.’

But at the end of the twenty-first century’s inaugural decade, the experiences to which we apply the same broad label ‘game’ are immeasurably more sophisticated – not only in cosmetic terms, but in the more abstracted realms of narrative and immersion.  While few tears are likely to have been shed over the original Gradius, for instance, the (sometimes devastating) emotional impact of modern games has been laid bare for God and all the world to see by the users of innumerable message boards. 

Final Fantasy VII is perhaps the first and most conspicuous example that comes to mind, given the great many gamers who have admitted they cried over Aeris’ death, but in all reality Square’s magnum opus is little more than the vanguard of a far larger host of similarly affective titles. Yet for all the medium’s considerable advancement, Sylvester points out, the critical literature surrounding it is still couched in a vocabulary that’s decades old.  ‘Doesn’t it seem strange we’re still using the same word to describe…Hungry Hungry Hippos, and Fallout 3?’

Rather, he feels, gaming requires nothing less than a new identity altogether, even if he’s not yet sure what it might be.  ‘We need something totally new. Alistair Reynolds called packaged experiences “experientials” in his Revelation Space series. Or, we could use Greek roots – Mnemograph would be a “written memory”, for example. But that’s kind of a mouthful.

‘It’s tricky to find new words for something. I’m not going to try to coin one today, but I’m hoping one will appear soon. And perhaps one of you can think of a name that doesn’t sound goofy.’

Though concerted efforts to effect even small changes to a living, spoken language have historically met with little more than failure (as most of your English teachers would likely attest), at the very least Sylvester’s blog serves to illustrate in rather dramatic fashion just how far gaming has come in thirty or so years.  And whether we ultimately choose to divest ourselves of the word ‘game’ and its attendant connotations, or to continually remap it onto the face of an ever-evolving medium, his point is, I believe, one well raised.

Source: Gamasutra