This just in

I got this email while writing the last post. I wrote them ten days ago.

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Tom--I hate your website, and I hope that it, or anyone who may acquire it and leave it as is, fails miserably into bankruptcy.

What a piece of garbage.

Busy Weekend, Part I / Part Sad

I've mentioned before that Muschie and I are den leaders for a scout troop. A modern rite that boy scouts participate in is the Pinewood Derby. Three days ago our troop and other troops in the immediate area participated. Our assignment was to give the best design awards. This was a perfect fit for us, as we aren't good with our hands (well, except for my micro and her knitting) and don't know anything about the derby, and consider ourselves more aestheticists than we would mechanics.

The day starts off on a stressful note, because I neglect to hurriedly purchase some cookies for the boys' consumption (I said there would be 1,000 cookies already and thus we didn't need to spend the money, but the real reason is that I had a rare opportunity to get this done and so I made us barely on time). I am dreading the occasion, and Muschie is enthused, though perhaps bludgeoned by my sucky attitude.

We arrive exactly on time to a church gym containing a table with drinks and 1,000 cookies, some parents, a lot of boys, a few little sisters, and a guy on a microphone, obviously not a parent, threatening bloody murder on any boy scout, parent, or boy scout's little sister who dares to mess with his track that is over 18-feet long and has an electronic sensor that detects who finishes 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. He also will “charge five dollars” for each time someone touches it.

We curve around the back of the gym so Muschie takes a look at the cars to get a look at all of them before they start racing. A lady in charge tells me to go into the kitchen to get the important documents (the awards). I discover bags of mini-sized 100 Grands, and one them is open. I take four of them. Muschie gets angry when she sees me munching.

This thing was 2 hours. It was terribly and oddly competitive. It's been that way for so long in some circles that Pinewood Derby competitiveness is now even clichéd. Children and their parents (mainly dads) rise in triumph, slump in defeat, and wring their hands in agony.

Speaking of dads—I've learned there are two types of dads, essentially. One is the kind that is aggravated, and will break the rules and put the car on the track when his son should. He is urgent in his step, and it is desirable to avoid him because you don’t know what he could do if he gets set off.

The other kind of dad will completely support his son's design-concept, help as much as possible while letting his soon do as much as possible, and not nay-say if he knows the design isn't the most feasible in the engineered sense. We noticed some dads were simply happy that their sons did so much work on the cars in the first place. I salute those dads.

At the end, we distributed design awards; I got to use the microphone and call out "Best carving—David Noobolski!" and other such nonsense. A few were pleased, but most knew that it was inferior to what really mattered—winning. Except that we don't want to go next year. There are always plenty of third and fourth-places.

One car we saw was yellowy, with little brown specks on it, and I thought it looked like an banana with little remaining shelf-life. We gave it “Most Unique Design”. On its first race, it only went halfway down the track. The disappointment on the face of the boy who made it could make an army sergeant cry. He had to race four or five more times, the way everyone else did. As with all the cars, the results were the same.

That’s the hardest thing—watching these kids be reinforced by notions of victory and loss when it’s a place that they should be happy to get “Most Original Design.” Some are happy with such awards, but for our banana-loving friend, he knew what was most important—winning.

He wasn’t the only one who was crestfallen.

My avatar

My skills at digital creation are minimal, at best. However, I have a small amount of pride regarding my avatar. I use it at Penny Arcade and at Snackbar, where I am currently an editor of most of the stuff they churn out. Really, it represents the sentiments of my feelings about a certain word that, when used without anger or hostility, always makes me laugh.

In all its glory:

I think I hate the news

I regret being so heavily involved in journalism in high school and am glad I didn't learn more about it in college. There's so much selling. If it's not interesting, it's not interesting.

On the front page of Gamasutra today I read the following headline: Survey: 83% Of Casual Gamers Embrace Ad-Supported Games. I'm surprised that this many actually want to, and then I think: aren't they already filled with ads? Casual games are already filled with ads. The controversy now is over regular games having ads. Right?

The article just says "According to the latest annual global survey on casual gaming from Macrovision, 83 percent of respondents said they would be willing to watch a 30 second ad to play a game for free", and then goes on for another 299 words to say some more stats, who did it, and what some people had to say about it, all of which are very obvious things that no one cares about.

So I wasted my time. I just get tired of sifting through all the junk. Of course, I guess I should be nicer and focus elsewhere. I mean, I like Gamasutra. Yahoo, your days are numbered.

Manhunt 2: One Sorry Excuse for a Martyr

Manhunt 2, unlike its predecessor, will be a footnote in college textbooks in the years to come.

The game seems to be eliciting two opinions. The first is “It’s disgusting, and I’m glad that it won’t be released, and by the way, I hate video games.” The second is “I’m sick of the government limiting my freedom of expression. [So] I want to play this game. By the way, I hate Jack Thompson.” Predictable responses from those outspoken on the matter.

Manhunt 2 is not simply gaining headlines because it is the first to be denied release in the U.K. by the ratings boards, and one of the first to be given an AO rating in the U.S., severely limiting its distribution. The limits it pushes aren’t just in the type of violence the game can simulate creating, it’s how you, the player interact with that simulation, with the Wii’s new control system factoring in this prominently. The hype of Manhunt 2 is focused around this improved interaction with your murdering character. The previews of it, before the bannings that generated so much publicity, show it planned to be controversial from the get go.

From a preview at 1up.com: “Gouging an enemy's eyeballs with a glass shard, gutting him with a sickle, sucking the life outta him with a plastic bag -- Manhunt's sadistic executions sure did get people's attention. Unfortunately, those gruesome acts also helped get the original game banned in some countries. Lesson learned, right? Pfft -- Rockstar has only cranked up the violence dial for the sequel. And as much as we'd like to say that the gore doesn't impress us (ya know, that'd be the politically correct thing), we couldn't help but want to see more. Some of the new tricks in this game include plunging a syringe into an enemy's heart, or chopping off his head with an ax and then tossing it to distract others in the area. Yet it's the wire cutters that win the prize here: If you perform a level-three execution (just like in the last Manhunt, the longer you wait before attacking, the more grotesque the death blow) with this weapon, you'll reach underneath the enemy to grab on to his family jewels, rip 'em off, and then stick the wire cutters into his back and tear out the spinal cord.”

From a preview at Joystiq: “There is going to be some perverse pleasure about playing this game on the Wii for many, many, reasons. The most obvious being that the Wii's control possibilities could be conceived of as being an interactive murder simulator, and then there's the amazing fact that Nintendo let it happen. But it's all up to the responsiveness of the controls that will determine the sick pleasure factor.”

From a preview at Gamespot: “Once inside the club, the first kill that we were able to pull off was one of the new environmental executions. These occur when enemies are standing next to something that can be used to kill them, such as a rope, a fuse box, or, in this case, a toilet. Our first victim was an unfortunate man in a gimp mask, who had his face introduced to a toilet in a number of painful ways. As well as environmental kills, there are puzzles that require you to dispatch people in certain ways. For example, to gain entry into the torture chamber, you have to show the guard a recognizable face. Predictably, this involves removing someone's head with an axe and then holding it up to the window.”

From a preview at IGN: “Consider for one moment that in Manhunt 2 you can, Wii remote and nunchuk in hands, use a pair of pliers to clamp onto an enemy's testicles and literally tear them from his body in a bloody display; and if that weren't enough, you'll take one of the poor victim's vertebrae along with his manhood. Or, if you'd prefer, you can use a saw blade and cut upward into a foe's groin and buttocks, motioning forward and backward with the Wii remote as you go.”
I am a gamer. I side with gamers. I recognize that the fight against video games is motivated by politicians’ desire for reelection and by the arbitrary standards of various groups and individuals who haven’t really considered video games and what they can potentially do.

It’s ridiculous that a movie can be as bad as Manhunt 2, all elements considered, and still be accessible at theatres by 17 year olds, but a game version will not. Psychological studies, whether you believe them or not (and the opponents of video games do), indict both video games and movies—you can’t get off by saying “oh, a movie doesn’t require participation.” A movie is very much a way of participating. Movies are a powerful influence. But film, as a genre, has finally achieved its recognition as an art form. After the majority of a century, people don’t ask “are movies good or bad”? They ask, “what makes a good movie or a bad movie?” Video games haven’t quite achieved that status yet. If they had, this wouldn’t have happened to Manhunt 2. I wish it didn’t happen to Manhunt 2—not because I like it, but because the real issues have now been thrown at the window and are serving the interests of business. And I’m not talking about Best Buy, Walmart, Sony, or Nintendo. I’m talking about Take-Two and Rockstar.

There shouldn’t be any surprise or uproar over any of this. There should only be eyeball rolling. After Hot Coffee, after all the lawsuits and bad press, after what happened with Manhunt 1, Rockstar persisted in pushing the limits. Take-Two sanctioned it. When it comes to balls, the pain being experienced isn’t by the poor fellow in Manhunt 2 or by Rockstar or Take-Two--it’s by us.

Is Rockstar stirring the pot yet again in order to help our cause of becoming a society that embraces video games, instead of tolerating them? No. They’ve fooled some of us into taking up Manhunt 2 as our poster child, our martyr for our cause. Some will buy it in protest, including some who weren’t going to buy it anyway. To any who do this: you are a tool, and someone is profiting at your expense. Other games have been similarly violent, but not as controversial, and therefore poor-selling, and Rockstar isn’t exempt from this rule. Rockstar is using the controversy to sell a game. That’s all they’re doing.

Take-Two called Manhunt 2 a “piece of art”. I’ve seen games that are a piece of art, and Manhunt 2 is not one of them. Rockstar and its games are not what people think of when getting into the subject of video games as art. A game touted for its ability to redefine how someone can simulate using a knife, phone cord, or pen for killing is not being considered for artistic merit, it’s being considered for its functional ability and entertainment value—and those are the people who want to play it.

Please, for the love of God (or video games, rather), don’t choose Manhunt 2 as your champion or martyr, fellow gamers. Please. This would make Rockstar very happy and the rest of us, if we knew what it meant, very sad. Buy it if you want, but don’t buy it because you are angry.

Do you want present society to eventually embrace video games? Do you want society to stop viewing games and gamers as objects of fear, which must be carefully monitored? Here’s a suggestion: don’t take up as your cause a game that prides itself on the precision with which it enables you to rip off the balls of your enemies. There are plenty of options that are more effective. Whatever happens to Manhunt 2, remember that.

Hi.

I will post on what this blog is about later. I intend for it to be of high quality though.