Busy weekend, Part II / Part Happy

My wife often gmail chats with me while I’m at work. One day I received the following chat from her: “I'm SO EXCITED FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

My birthday is November 25^th.

Then she says to me:

“I mean:

I"M SO EXCITED FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

I can't wait.

How can you stand the suspense?”

She wants to get my present, she says. She just can’t wait any longer. Absolutely can’t wait anymore. I think, “okay, she wants to get me something. I’m down with that. That’s cool.” It’s not entirely a surprise—she couldn’t take it any longer and we opened all our Christmas presents on the 13^th. We’ve told few people about that.

But the thing was, I couldn’t really think of what she’d get me. A game? She wouldn’t be excited about a game. Plus, the few that she knows about aren’t out yet. Maybe it’s something else. I’d think it may be clothes, but she knows that I wouldn’t be as excited about it. (At Christmas, I got her all toys, she got me all clothes. Guess we should have reversed it?)

She says she’ll be getting a good deal on it, too. Nope, still don’t know.

This last Friday I pick her up from work, and on that day she had informed me we’d be going out to get my present. She tells me we’re going to Circuit City. The only reason I don’t think it’s odd is because it’s got some deal, or whatever (turns out the promotion was over when she got in).

Now, Circuit City. This is exciting. It has to be something I want. It’s a toystore. Circuit City and the like are toy stores. I’m getting a new toy. What could it be?! What would she get me? The only thing I know that she knows what I want are some unreleased games (I think), and maybe a DS, and eventually an Xbox 360. But there’s no way she’d get me a 360—she likes watching TV sometimes and she had stated she doesn’t really want to get a console. In fact, she emphatically said no at one point, when I wasn’t as interested in it.

We arrive, and it’s awkward—she doesn’t want me to see it yet. So, I give her the car keys and go in to Target. The Electronics department is located ironically right next to the entrance; I browse through the systems and titles and I get excited and nervous. What is she getting me? What if it’s a disappointment? What if it’s more than I can comprehend? I then grab the little note she gave me to read while I was in Target:

“My Love,

Before we do anything today, I just want that you know that I really do SUPER love you.

I am so excited to do this little thing for you today. I just can’t wait. I really do hope that it will be as exciting for you as I want that it be.

I just love you and I want to make you happy.

So today, let’s just relax and have fun celebrating you.

All my love,

[Muschie’s real name]”

“Little thing” makes my heart pound—that’s Muschie-speak for “huge thing.” It’s a 360! It has to be! But how could it be?! This doesn’t happen! Why does she tease me! I play a lot on the computer, and the console is even more dominating! Women don’t BUY XBOX 360’s FOR THEIR HUSBANDS 12 WEEKS BEFORE THEIR BIRTHDAYS WHEN THEY ALREADY ARE A LITTLE TIRED THAT THEIR HUSBANDS PLAY A LOT OF GAMES!

After 15 minutes of quiet desperation, she retrieves me and we drive home. When we park, she makes me pop the trunk, where she’s put the gift, and I go inside. I go in another room, and she takes the gift in. She makes me close my eyes, and leads me to the couch, and on the couch is an Xbox 360. Elite.

I haven’t cried in a while. Nor have I been as excited. When I was 5, my bro and I got a Nintendo out of the blue—no birthdays, no Christmas, nothing. At 25, I got an Xbox 360 out of the blue for my birthday 12 weeks before the fact. It's like my life is starting over.

She also researched to know that the 360 elite is the most desirable version. And then we got a few games. And she bought an extra controller.

”I asked everyone at work about it,” she said, “so that I’d know to get the right one.”

“Wow. How’d they react to that? Someone had to be freaking out.”

”Yeah. Charles, the only single male there, likes video games. He was like, ‘Dang, wish I could find one single woman like that.’ I think it bothered him for the rest of the day, or maybe the week.”

I feel that Charles and I may be kindred spirits. The biggest difference between us is that one of us has a wife, and she bought him an Xbox 360 for his birthday.

Thank you, love. You really have no idea what it means to me.

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.

You Can Count on Blizzard

Starcraft 2 may be the most anticipated video game in history. And not just in Korea. Blizzard made an unprecedented move by releasing footage that didn't just show units, but explained their special abilities and which units counter which, and why.

I'm not going to speculate about the units and strategies. Whoever you played in the first one is who you'll likely play in the second. There are a lot of new units, but at the same time—do orcs cast bloodlust?

What I will speculate about, though, is the timeline. To do this, I will look establish some points we can learn from Blizzard's release history of PC games. I will contend that Blizzard has been doing the same things for a long time and that from these things, we can predict a rough release schedule.

Blizzard philosopies

The first trend we need to realize is that Blizzard always has to top itself when making sequels. They’ve stated it, and they back it up with their release history. Everyone wanted Warcraft 3 to be Starcraft 2. Blizzard knew they’d need a lot more time. They tried to buy it with Starcraft: Ghost and Warcraft 3, hoping it would satiate Blizzard fans. Koreans still maintained a monotheistic faith in Starcraft and Starcraft alone.

The second trend to notice is that Blizzard does not commit to specific release dates. They know better, and are honest enough to say it will be released in a quarter instead of a month. With Starcraft 2, they haven’t even said which year it will be released. We have waited a long time between initial news and releases for all the games we hear about.

A third and often unnoticed trend is so important I must also point it out here: they make low risk, consistent and infrequent attempts to expand outside of their current franchises. They don’t want to be stuck making only Warcraft games. Or Starcraft games. Or RTS’s. They already know that the success of franchises, when milked too quickly, simply creates a hollow, average consistent success, one that doesn’t make for great games or great profits. Blizzard doesn’t want to be EA, with Battlefield, Command and Conquer, or Madden games coming out every 1.2 years. They want to make more money than that.

Blizzard’s pattern

Like movie sequels, so go video games—it’s hard to beat an original. Look at the timeline again: Warcraft 2, Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft Adventures, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, Starcraft: Ghost. They used to want to be able to go A, B, A, B. With the exception of Diablo 2 (which wasn’t as successful a franchise as Starcraft or Warcraft), it never worked well that way. Look at the two failures: Warcraft Adventures and Starcraft: Ghost. They rushed too quickly to make something for Warcraft and Starcraft. Their games are too damn good to give them only one title’s breathing space. Try two, or in the case of Starcraft 2, three, with expansions for all.

When a Blizzard game is much more of a success than anyone (including Blizzard) imagined, they know they don’t know how to top it. Now that they’ve learned their lesson, what they do is let a franchise rest for a very, very long time while they hope to make another new success with new ideas, because new ideas are much easier to make succeed than old ones are. All they’re really doing is diverting your attention and grabbing your money in another way until they can give you the World of Warcraft they were claiming to have or the Starcraft 2 you really wanted. That’s why Warcraft 3 wasn’t like Starcraft, because people wanted it to be Starcraft 2. But only Starcraft 2 can be Starcraft 2.

With lesson learned, when they made Warcraft 3, they made sure it isn’t like Warcraft 1 or 2. Instead of yet another RTS, they released World of Warcraft because they knew that Starcraft 2 was the only RTS that anyone would be willing to accept, and Warcraft 3 would be the only non-Starcraft-2 RTS that would be accepted. This is why Warcraft 3 took seven years to follow Warcraft 2, and why Starcraft 2 is taking more than 10 years to follow Starcraft 1.

So this is what we can expect—since they’re still hiring key staff for the Starcraft 2 team, you can count on it being a while. People will expect to see Starcraft 2 at the end of 2008, then hear it will come out around April 2009, then find out it will be released in August, October, or December 2009.

And everything else, like World of Warcraft?

Other projects are harder to predict. Will there be another expansion to WoW? Illidan seems such a big character that there can’t be more material, but remember—if people are still playing it, Blizzard will keep making material for it. Kel’Thuzad (if you don’t know who he is, go play the single player WC 3 again) is in an instance, too, remember. The only prediction we can safely make is that it will be a very long time before Blizzard releases another MMORPG. WoW will be around for a long time. The price will stay the same for a long time. There will be many more patches, big and small. Also, Arthas is probably going to stop by.

Blizzard has shown us they’re not afraid to drop projects—there may be another announcement in there. The next game that isn’t Starcraft 2 will be a bombshell. Will it be the expansion into mobile gaming? Or will it be a new franchise out of nowhere, the way Diablo was? And will it end up coming out before Starcraft 2? I don’t know.

If you’re playing Starcraft 1 to “prepare” yourself for Starcraft 2, you may need to cool down. The terran section of the website won’t be opened this summer, nor the protoss one completed. We have at least a year and a half. Still, everyone agrees--“it’s about time”, indeed.

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.