A Year of dmuma!

The blog's been up for a year now, and I haven't even completely given up.  Here are some highlights of my favorite posts in the past year.

Flash Game Fridays

• Launch Games (Flight, Burrito Bison, and Pogo Swing) and Burrito Bison Revenge
• GemCraft (Chapter 1, 2, and 0)
• Corporation Inc.
• Sweatshop
• Word Bacon
• Hyperpipe
• Clarence's Big Chance
• Achievement Unlocked (1 and 2) - great games, maybe my favorites of all FGF
• Upgrade Completer

Fallout: New Vegas, the review, and all the DLC reviews.

Going on a bit too much about trophies, in-game economics, morality, and social environments.  Oh yeah, and cave rage.

Pretty intense calculations of the many options of Oblivion.

I have unintentionally posted twice about how I hate female video game characters' hair.  Once when reviewing Final Fantasy XIII, and once when playing through Skyward Sword.

Also, Varric.  And Varric.

Video Games & College Education

With the exception of the breakout hit Oregon Trail franchise, video games are an art form developed primarily as forms of entertainment, much as novels, movies, and radio programs are.  But today I was challenged with the statement "video games are a crippling educational problem for college students."

Well, I work with college students, and I play video games.  But before I went on a rant that this statement couldn't possibly be true, I decided that I would actually research the topic.  Do video games represent a barrier for student academic success?

(Disclaimer: to be certain, compulsive video game behaviors do represent very serious barriers to academic and professional development in the same ways that compulsive internet use, gambling, or drug and alcohol addiction would.  I hope to address more habitual and casual forms of play in this analysis.)

My initial findings were not particularly endearing to my original thesis.  In A Study of Time Management, published in 2007 in CyberPsychology & Behavior, researcher Vivek Anand found an inverse trend in grade point averages with higher daily video game usage. 

Graph!

Anand did note that with the study group, SAT scores were highest among those students who played for approximately 4.5 hours, however "the p value for the correlation between a person's SAT score and video game usage was 0.618, which shows that they are most likely unrelated and thus have no correlation" (Anand, 555).

(In case you haven't been to a stats class forever, but are still reading this, here's what p means.)

However, I have some criticism to Anand's findings (which is easy, since I write a blog, and he is - you know - actually doing research).  The data presented does not indicate what types of video games are being played.  Due to the Skinner box mechanics of online gaming (and the online social environments therein), online games would represent a far different issue with GPA than offline gaming.

Also, results were not delineated by gender.  I, for one, would have liked to have seen whether or not the GPA correlation in gameplay was accurate for both genders, since Anand himself admits to having a higher percentage of male respondents.

If I had hoped a 2010 article in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence titled More Than Just a Game: Video Game and Internet Use During Emerging Adulthood by Laura Padilla-Walker, Larry Nelson, Jason Carroll, and Alexander Jensen would encourage me to think that gaming wasn't a huge concern to college students, I was wrong.  "Specifically, regardless of gender, video game use was linked to greater drug use, drinking behaviors, and lower relationship quality with friends and parents" (Padilla-Walker, et. al., 109).

Furthermore, "research suggests that time spent playing video games may also inhibit identity exploration," a complete antithesis to the notion that games can help facilitate identify exploration (Padilla-Walker, et. al. 110).

In fact, the entire article by Padilla-Walker and her team suggests that video games are bad news, not just for academic performance, but for the development of an older adolescent into adulthood!  Crud.


This article does not please me.

 Again - video games are not specifically delimited in this study, although there is a comparison between "violent" video games and non-violent games.  And, a nod to the research team, because unlike the Anand study, Padilla-Walker does an excellent job in exploring the differences between men and women.  The team went even farther to point out "another limitation [to the study] was the use of single items to assess video game and violent video game use ... future research should examine video game use in more detail by assessing specific games played, as well as other contextual factors" (Padilla-Walker, et. al., 112).

Luckily, I did find an article from CyberPsychology & Behavior by Marko Skoric, Linda Lay Ching Teo, and Rachel Lijie Neo that found a strong causal link between the amount of time playing video game on weekdays and English scores, supporting the notion that Intensive English Language Institute (IELI) students may benefit from playing games in English.  So, I am not left wholly disheartened - only mostly.

The findings from the Anand and Padilla-Walker studies are both pretty directional into my understanding of one very important thing: we've got a long way to go in understanding how video games impact academic performance.  While neither study had great things to say, they were also both quick to establish that they are trailblazers in this area of research, and that without more studies, there could be no conclusions drawn.

If video games are a significant impediment to academic success (research seems to be leaning this way), it would behoove those of us who are assigned the task of removing barriers success to know a little more about them, and a little more on how we can employ harm reduction techniques to make education a priority, and gaming a recreational activity.

But until more research can be done, I guess we'll just wait.

National Coming Out Day

Here we are again, October 11th: National Coming Out Day.  It should surprise no long-time readers that I am of the 'mo persuasion (short for homo, which is short for homosexual), least of all that I carry crushes for video game characters and developers across gaming spectrums (Megaman, Varric, Nathan Drake, the developer of the Trism iPhone app, for some quick examples).  For some, however, the thought of being ashamed or embarrassed to identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer (which I will conveniently use as an umbrella term to represent all other gender/sexual orientations) can be an overwhelming experience.

Things might be (societally) a whole lot better now than they were when I came out a decade ago, but individual experiences, environments, and struggles remain too variable for me to say: "oh you new gay kids have it so much easier." 

Video games were always a resoruce for me when I was feeling uncomfortable in my identity (whether of sexual orientation or other adolescent development areas).  It was great because these games allowed me to role-play a different identity, determining values for a virtual manifestation of myself.  Also, you know - the sheer entertainment. 

When I was coming out, my games of choice were Final Fantasy VII & VIII & Tactics, and The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.  It's like a psychologist's wet dream really, since each of these titles deal with super-imposed battles of good and evil and striving to define the hero's identity (except for Ocarina, which was about fishing minigames).  In my defense, console game-writing hadn't evolved to a point of creating more complex writing scenarios like a battle between a filandering protagonist and a demonic representation of his girlfriend's vagina.

Online Social Environments (Beyond the MMO)

Usually, when I blog, it's to talk about how awesome (or slightly less so) games are; but sometimes, I like to go a little off the deep end and apply my knowledge about social constructs to the design and play of video games.  Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about online social environments and how they influence, impact, and have changed the way we game.

Gaming in social environments is not a new concept by a long shot.  Only recently did the scope of social environments involved in gaming expand exponentially.  An online social environment is a community (best defined by Pillari & Newsome as "[a social system] by the personal or affective ties among their members ... people with a common identity and bond").  This community's common identity is the game play.  And whereas many communities form in geographical locations, the space in which this community meets is virtual: the online social environment.

Before I lose you, here's a graphic representation of community (as we traditionally have understood it) and how an online social environment might be perceived.

Traditionally, communities are formed of cohesive groups of individuals - the community representing the focus of support for the individuals creating the group.  However, with online social environments, we are looking more at structures created (sometimes manufactured, sometimes grown organically) between individuals linked together through network connectivity (also known as the interwebz).

Okay, so what?  Well, the creation (especially the manufactured creation) of online social environments remains a major issue in online social gaming.  Everything from Facebook games to World of Warcraft create and utilize online social environments.  These are the foundations for which the game is designed, developed, and eventually, driven.  Where the theories of community development come into play are in considering how the environment and the individual interact.

There are two concepts of environment when considering systems theory.  I know I'm on the cusp of losing you again, so here's another drawing:

So, a symmetric environment (also sometimes called a symbiotic environment) influences the individual and the individual influences it.  Theoretical democracy is a symmetric environment.  An unbalanced, or directive environment is one which shapes the individual.  Online social environments can be applied to either category.  Consider a server community on Minecraft, for example.  This is a very symmetric environment - users create based on the materials available; the environment is shaped by users and provides the materials for construction (and also, Creepers). 



That'sss an awfully nice ssssocial environement you have there.
It'd be a ssssshame is ssssomething happened to it...

But not all games with online social environments work so nicely.  Let's take my arch-nemesis Farmville for a ride: users have little-to-no interactive ability with the environment, save for cosmetic changes.  There is little environment to speak of, because Farmville holds all the cards.  And rightfully so!  Relying on microtransactions would become difficult if you enabled community members to openly interact (especially on an economic basis). 

I don't want to go crazy into economics, but there is a huge problem between manufactured online social environments and profit motivation theory.  The notion to create a symmetric environment may be at diametric odds with the notion of creating a revenue generating environment.  So, in a capitalist based society, profit may beat out community development.

Because of this (I promise, the econ is almost done) profit problem, organically created online social environments tend to thrive more, because they are naturally uninhibited by those constraints that would generally plague a manufactured environment.

Of course, that sounds delicious to an investor.  Like wanting to capitalize on viral marketing, there is no magic bullet to ride the coattails of Web 2.0 to instant profit.  The motivation differences create a series of problems, lead to social entropy, and the decay (and eventual death) of the online social environment.

If you are an avid gamer, developer, or investor, I strongly recommend that you continue your investigation into online social environments - how we impact them, and them us.  Better understanding our mechanical interactive world can help make it better, not just for us, but for everyone else we share the community with; which, really, is what community is all about.

Bethesda bringing Scrolls Battle to Court

 

Despite Notch (aka Markus Persson, aka the creator of Minecraft, aka my lover) offering to settle the issue in a Quake 3 deathmatch, it seems that big, bad, corporate Bethesda is moving forward with its lawsuit against Mojang.  The charge?  Mojang's upcoming game is named Scrolls and Bethesda feels this might confuse consumers with the upcoming Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the four other Elder Scrolls games that came before (particularly the IVth addition, Oblivion, which was Game of the Year).

I know I often confuse an independent studio's release with a GOTY-producing product line.

When first announced, it was like a bad joke, and Notch offered to resolve the problem out-of-court in what should become a precedent of all frivolous lawsuits: a Quake 3 Deathmatch!  Nevermind that Bethesda made Quake 3, this dude has the balls to go toe-to-toe.

If anything, this was Bethesda's opportunity to save face and build its fan base.  If they lost?  Ha-ha, you got to name your game Scrolls, even though we didn't really want you to, but we got tons of practically free publicity.  If they won?  Ha-ha, we get to keep our naming rights, and got tons of practically free publicity, but because we have this huge release coming out in November called Skyrim, so we're going to let you keep the naming rights, even though we won, as an act of goodwill towards all.

No, instead, it's to court they go. This will only leave a bad taste in the mouth of gamers, almost all of whom have some kind of soft-spot for the underdog Mojang, especially Notch and his hat fetish.  Opportunity of goodwill is slipping away, Bethesda - it's time to reach out and grab it.

On Scrolls, and scrolls.  Penny Arcade.

Finally, a thought: can you really hold a copyright or trademark on a word, like Scrolls?  If so, can God (or Moses, or whatever) sue Bethesda for ripping off the Dead Sea Scrolls?  I mean, there are dead things in Oblivion, and a sea, and - apparently - scrolls.

Do Better Graphics Make Better Games?

While L.A. Noire (r/gameswap'd for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Heavy Rain) and Catherine (friend swapped for Dragon Age: Origins) lie in wait of a playthrough - not to mention the new Dragon Age II DLC and Bioshock 2 DLC I've bought, but haven't played, and the Fallout: New Vegas DLC I've nearly finished and have to review - I spent an inordinate amount of time with Crono Trigger, replaying the 16-bit classic for memories and love.

It forced me to think: do better graphics make a better game?

With new games, graphics are often a huge selling point: the ability to create and immerse a player in distinct and lushish environments is part of what makes the game worth it.  However, indie developers (and some big names, too) have rejected this notion - the simplier, easier times might have a place left after all.  Consider the success of Scott Pilgrim or Megaman 9, which embraced the chunky graphics of old with a new niche.  Or hell, MINECRAFT for that matter.

In fact, there are many times in which the graphical beauty of a game, while pretty to look at, distracts from the game itself.  Form and functionality.

Graphics also deny the player's imagination in the same way television and films do for books.  If the representation I am given of Link in The Legend of Zelda is an 8-bit pixel mess, my mind bridges the difference.  In Twilight Princess, there's nothing for my imagination to do: for the game has done it already.  For a game embracing a concept of realism (Heavy Rain, for example), this is a make-or-break thing, but for fun, and unrealistic worlds, why bother with the realism of the hairs on a man's head if I'm already accepting the disbelief that I can carry seventeen different swords?

16-bit sprites really embody the best of both worlds: enough definition to give you a start, but not so much as to disrupt your imagining of a character.  Maybe that's why Crono Trigger got a chunk of my time.  Or maybe because the graphics were limited, programmers felt more willing (or able) to give the story and dialogue the time they needed to be perfect.

In-Game Economics 101

EDIT: Oh sure, Washington Post, put up your article at the exact same time I post this, referencing very similar things...  You're on my list, buddy.

Disclaimer!  Some of this discussion comes from the presentation "Understanding Virtual Worlds" that Michelle Kandalaft (a Ph.D. Psychology student and awesome gamer-gal) and I put together at the University of Texas at Arlington.  I am not an expert in Economics, though my mother drew a Supply-Demand graph on a napkin at Denny's when I asked why things cost money at the age of 4.  So, credit where credit is due to Dr. Kandalaft and my mother.

Also, the Amazon.com ad for The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers [7th Edition] was purposeful.  If you haven't read it, you really ought to.

With Blizzard's announcement that Diablo 3 will feature a system for users to sell in-game items for real-world currency, gaming blogs and twitters have erupted with interest over the decision.  While to many this seems a formalizing of a long-standing system (gold-farming), the nature of in-game trade for real-life currency is not unheard of in Virtual Worlds.

TL;DR (because really, this is TL):  Economics is complicated.

More (and, lamentably, graphs) after the jump...

Video Games as Art

In case you didn't know, The Smithsonian is featuring The Art of Video Games next year.  In addition to having played many of the video games who won spots in the exhibition (an Internet poll allowed users to "vote" on which games from certain time periods and genres should be featured), I recently took an Art Appreciation class, and therefor am educated in the appreciation of art!

A list of games and my take on the exhibit - after the jump!

Dell Drama

Strictly speaking, in the world between the glorious elite of gaming and the unfortunate slugs of console gaming (best illustrated here), I am squarely in the latter category.  Instead of a keyboard, I prefer a controller, which with 18 some buttons is confusing enough.  But let it not be said that there are games that I like to play on a PC: Minecraft, Sims 3, Civilization, Plants vs. Zombies, etc. as well as a slew of Flash games that are constantly available on the Internet.

Unfortunately, my computer (to borrow my French roommate's current favorite English idiom) has bitten the dust.  After a year of faithful service, it seems the motherboard has gone kaput. 

In most circumstances this would be a lamentable time, but my husband wisely invested in some sort of protection plan from Dell which promised "next day service."

Our experience with the warranty was not virginal.  This very computer had some sort of keyboard/monitor/I-can't-even-remember-what problem before and the issue was resolved professional and efficiently, making us happy in our decision to go with Dell for our laptop needs.

This experience has been anything but... with over ten phone calls to Dell customer support (which provides quality support like a cat would make a quality surgeon), resulting in confusion not only over when our "next day" service would account for a technician being able to fix the problem, but indeed wether or not a part was actually in stock (dissenting answers from both sides were abundant). 

So, considering all those systems in the house capable of playing video games, I really must give a shout out to Nintendo, whose products have rarely faltered (excepting in those cases wherein blowing the cartridge fixed whatever malady had presented).  Despite its apparent lack of appeal to the "mainsteam" gamer, I've never failed to put in Super Mario Galaxy and have results.

With any luck, I'll be able to explore Minecraft 1.7 (with PISTONS) before long, and hopefully with fewer crashes...

Violence In Video Games

The California Supreme Court ruled today that prohibiting the sale of "violent" video games was unconstitutional, something much aga on the gaming twitterverse. 

Personally, I'm okay with making suggestions and educating the consumer population about the content of video games.  Parents who are averse to exposing their children to violent video games (like violent films, or books, I suppose) should be able to know the basic premise and level of violence the game contains.  Thank god for sites like GamerDad's - which specifically take a no-nonsense, honest and fair approach to gaming with children.  The above site does it in a way easy for parents to understand.  For example, when describing the "Kid Factor" of Super Mario Galaxy, GamerDad writes: "you stomp fictional creatures called Goombas, who vanish in a puff of smoke, revealing a coin."

However, not all games are of the puff of smoke, reveal a coin variety.  Games like Call of Duty present real and substantially violent situations, appropriate for mature gamers, but possibly not age-appropriate for developing children.

My background on this issue blends from both my youth as a gamer and my education in childhood development.  Simply put, while I agree with the ruling, there are some fantasy situations (whether by video game, film, or novel) that developing minds will have trouble differentiating from reality.  Considering the medium of delivery, parents should (as best available) be responsible to observe and curtail any influence that could be detrimental to their children's healthy development.

However, with some parents barely even to meet their children's basic needs, perhaps there is a place for government intervention of the sale and furnishing of all media based on developmental level.  Of course, the issue becomes much, much more subjective, and I can't count on the guy in GameStop as being able to assess a child's readiness to look down the scope of sniper rifle and disassociate that with real-life scenarios.

Fantasy play is important to childhood development, and children can benefit greatly from the introduction of age-appropriate gaming, but just like you wouldn't expect a child to appropriately play Canasta, or Texas Hold 'Em, we also shouldn't be forcing games (through advertisement, primarily) to children who won't be able to enjoy or understand the medium.

The Balance of Good and Evil

I don't usually play games as an "evil" character.  My natural inclanation is to save people, heal others, and generally be a "do-gooder."  Games like Fallout 3, Bioshock, Fable, and inFAMOUS have greatly featured the morality/Karma/whatever system that can affect gameplay in subtle ways (slight differences in dialogue), to extreme ways (effects powers).  So it should be no surprise that my first playthrough on games like these is that of the good guy (with the exception of Fallout: New Vegas, on which it was difficult to determine the "good guy" path, and I instead treaded into the murky waters of the unknown - and also Fallout 3: The Pitt DLC, which had the same outcome).

Playing inFAMOUS on Evil (and on Hard mode, for trophy's sake) has actually been a bit more fun than my first playthrough.  I can't tell if it's because I'm now more comfortable with the game, or if the evil missions are more enjoyable, or if I truly have molded into a sadistic creep who enjoys zapping pedestrians with electricity before sucking their bio-energy out of their skulls to replenish my health. 

So today, I wanted to look at the ways in which games communicated good and evil, and my take on that dichotomy.  More after the jump...

Of Mice and Sequels

George Steinbeck never had any sequels to his literature published, but I have a conspiracy theory that they exist.  For example, there were plenty of plot points remaining in Of Mice and Men that could have been answered in Of Mice and Men and Rabbits.  Or what about The Great Gatsby 2: Return to West Egg?  I think there's a lot of potential here!

A quick look at the games I'm playing now (Portal 2, Dragon Age 2, Uncharted 2) will showcase that game developers have the same mindset of squeezing cash from the cow of cash giving until no more sweet cash-like milk will errupt from her utters.  But how many times will developers crack open perfectly sealed stories to capitalize on the notion of "franchise" in order to gain a few extra bucks?  And do we - as fans - contribute to this madness?

I was thinking about writing a bit on sequels last night as I was falling asleep, and when I awoke in the morning and started my internet surfing, I'd found that Yahtzee Croshaw had already written a damn treatise on the subject.  Curse you, Croshaw!  It's like this English/Australian hybrid-man who speaks too fast is simultaneously invading my dreams and sucking out the nectaur of creativity like a viscuous fluid to nurish his savage and wanton needs.  And what's more, the bastard is doing it using time travel since he wrote the article supposedly days ago, when I've just had the idea last night.

JealousyAnimostity aside, I have to say that while I partially agree with Yahtzee, there certainly is some fun in playing a sequel, again evidenced by my current queue's love of the number 2.  So what's the what?  Why are sequels so prevalent, and why do we keep playing them?

Sequels - that is to say, direct continuations of the previous game, not franchise continuations with completely seperate characters and stories - are most successful when planned.  Let's take Bioshock and Bioshock 2 for example.  In the first title, the exploration and mystique of Rapture had been fully detailed and played out.  You had a nice little story and it was concluded with some finality.  The coffin firmly nailed in the story is then accosted by a crowbar in an effort to pump the corpse for some missed cash.

However, I was thrilled at the chance to go back into the underwater city.  There was a lot of Rapture we hadn't seen, and I was more than okay with giving that a go.  The problem errupts in that the story of BS1 was wrapped up too nicely, leaving no dangling threads to explore in the future.  This requires a sequel to create threads, which BS2 actually did in the form of theressomethinginthesea.com - an online marketting campagin featuring a man who had his daughter kidnapped and taken to Rapture, but instead of following up on this man's plot point, the game pretty much delegates him to an NPC with some audio logs and dismisses the whole ordeal.

I still enjoyed the game for what it was, but I'd love to see less recycling and more innovating.  Andrew Ryan's greatest fear was that his city would be discovered, which is why secrecy was so keen.  You want a sequel?  Capitalize on that.  U.S. government discovers Rapture, fixes it up and continues its ill-advised scientific experiments with the genetically splicing ADAM.  Shit goes wrong (as shit does) and you get hired as a merc to get out some government big wig who is trapped in his office.  This is a chance to bring fans back to the environment (Rapture), but explore wholy new story concepts and introduce some substantially different gameplay.   BAM, better sequel made.  You can pay me in chocolate, 2K.

So sequels can be good, but they must be planned, or they must be inventive and creative.  And I wouldn't expect to be picking up The Raisins of Wrath from Amazon.com anytime soon.

Dragon Age II Follow-up

Maybe I was blinded by my extreme love for the game, but there is a substantial complaint that was omitted from my original review.

Here's the deal.  I love the game, the gameplay, the combat, the characters, and the intrinsic story about politics and mages versus Templars.  No really, love the whole damn thing.  Except, here's the thing: for some reason...

The only cave in Thedas, on film.

There is only one cave in all of Thedas, apparently.  I'm all for recycling some content, especially when there is a plot purpose to do so, but the amount of recycling present in Dragon Age 2 borders on digital environmentalism.  In addition to the caves, mansions/manors, and sewers are all recycled from the same base model (sometimes with a frustrating un-openable door to make the place feel more diverse).

I don't know how difficult it is to make new environments, but it would have been nice to see a little nuance, at the very least from the different settings Hawke and Company explored during their adventures.  If it is, in fact, a chore to make new places, I hope Bioware keeps in mind the needs of its developers when setting dates.

Playstation Network (Still) Down

Hopefully you don't rely on this blog for updates on what's going on in the world of the video games, but in case you do (hi Mom!) - you should probably know that the Playstation Network has been down for about a week now.  This means that no online features are available, or online play (like, co-op in Portal 2, for example), can't access the PSStore (to spend money I don't have).  And there may have been some accidental leaking of personal data, like where I live and stuff - but nothing that wasn't already leaked by the Texas Comptroller's office.  Sony assures me that credit card numbers were encrypted, but I dare the hackers to try to use that card to buy anything more than a hot dog.

So today, Playstation released some presses (it was actually yesterday, but I was asleep) - saying that as sort of a "sorry" that users would be getting a month free of the Playstation Plus, and some mystery content (or maybe a choice between several types, as is rumored by the internet).  This is kind of exciting, because despite my rant about Playstation Plus, I actually kind of love free stuff - especially getting a trial at something.  This might be the sort of thing I angle to get for my birthday.

In the meanwhile, I've been trying my hand at Dragon Age II, and borrowing it is not going to work out - I'm going to have to own this eventually, because I already know I want to play it AGAIN, and I'm barely a couple hours in.

Did you want to buy me something?  That's so sweet.  You can check out my Amazon wishlist here: http://amzn.com/w/1HLFDVW8GNHV2.

Yahtzee Croshaw's Take on Being Gay in DA2

You know how I made a blog entry about the Dragon Age 2 gay nonsense debate that is still permeating the very crevices of the interwebs?  Well, Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation (whose wit and unmatchably fast tongue supercede my own) has written a nice little treatise on the topic wherein he found himself accidentally playing a gay Hawke, regardless of his individual desires to avoid "sausage sandwiches."

Warning, the article may not safe for work (depending on your place of employ) and is excessively British.

Late for the Party: Gay Romances in Dragon Age 2

The train has left the station on much of the debate from a post on the Bioware forums regarding relationship options in Dragon Age 2, but I have a blog and an opinion, regardless to the fact that I haven't shelled out the $60 the game would cost so I could refine said opinion.  I did play the demo, and I've read a lot from both all sides of this controversy.

TL;DR: On one hand is this dude's assertation that DA2 didn't cater to the "straight male gamer," and a response from one of the writers that it wasn't supposed to, and some petition that's upset that gay characters were oversexualized.  The internet is serious business! 

Games like Dragon Age 2 are role-playing games that use a blend of open-ended interactive fiction and focused, structured narrative to communicate a story.  The open-ended interactive fiction is what has created the problem for DA2 writers, apparently.  With same-sex options intermingled with opposite-sex options for the romance of the hero (Hawke) as a component of that interactive fiction.  But, as interactive as it is, it's still fiction, and it is not an open-ended storytelling experience.  There are only so many paths available.

Compare a situation like that to one of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, or even a MMORPG.  Herein, the player is able to fully define the character and his or her interactions with all other characters and the environment.  In interactive fiction, the player can choose which path to take, but cannot forge one of his or her own free will. 

When I played through Dragon Age: Origins, I delighted at the opportunity to experience Fereldan as a female elf on my second playthrough.  The way in which characters interacted with me changed, and I enjoyed seeing that perspective.  It does not mean that I in any way want to be a woman, or an elf for that matter.  This rings true, since a majority of gamers (straight male, or otherwise) will play characters of an opposite sex.  Was Tomb Raider designed with the "straight male gamer" in mind?  Was Super Mario Bros.?  How about Ms. Pac Man?

In short, I think the entirety of the debate boils down to someone who self identifies homosexuality as "disgusting" being upset that a male character hit on him while he should have been more concerned about the influx of dragons about to eat him (seriously, think about your priorites, dude).  Fiction tells us a story, and interactive fiction lets us direct some of the ways in which that story is communicated.  The presence of sexuality is not guaranteed to match your own, in fact it would be astounding if it did.  Instead, indulge the opportunity to experience character, which is what role-playing games are all about.

Re: Puzzle Quest

Being colorblind absolutely sucks when you are trying to play puzzle games.

On the Matter of Trophies

Nursing a slight hangover with some coffee, I began to wonder this morning: why are trophies (if I had an Xbox, they'd be called Achievements) so important to me?

I remember first thinking about this while playing through Bioshock 2, and obsessing over multi-player levels until I could achieve level 40 and finally grasp the platinum trophy for the game.  Why was I doing this?  What did the achievement matter to me?

It's possible it's narcissism.  I need the game to tell me I've done a good job and jumped over all of its defined hurdles.  But, it's more than that.

Trophies are fun to go after (if sometimes frustratingly so), and the feeling of completing them does give me happiness.  But the more comes in the fact that trophy challenges do just that: they challenge me.

The first game I made a platinum trophy in was Bioshock.  In order to obtain the coveted platinum trophy, the game asked for no less than to play it on "Survivor" difficulty, and without the use of nearby regeneration chambers.  Essentially, this meant if I died (which I did; many, many, many times), I would be forced to load from a saved game (which I notoriously bad at keeping up with).  This caused me to come at the gameplay in a completely different way.  And though sometimes I was frustrated, I'd never had more fun.

And back to Bioshock 2 for a moment.  I would never have stuck with the multi-player as long as I did without the incentive to obtain a platinum trophy.  But I loved the multi-player.  I enjoyed it completely!  Especially with my French roommate insisting that I save the girl (a type of Capture the Flag gameplay).

There are plenty of people who insist that trophies and achievements ruin gameplay.  That doing well in a game ought to be it's own reward, and that the goals set are arbitrary.  I completely disagree, and I'm stoked every single time the alert pops up that I got a trophy.  It may be narcissistic, and it may be petty, but I like the game telling me that I'm a good little boy.

PS3 Demo: Stacking

This is game in which you are a small Russian nesting doll (or matryoshka doll, thanks Wikipedia), trying to save your family.  Story be damned, you are playing one of those cute little dolls!  And you get powers by stacking into dolls larger than you!  The idea is so cute, I could practically die!

The execution, however, was a little busy.  I found myself hopping around into others, but had some trouble in understanding how powers worked, or what my objectives were.  This is a game to play to just have fun, and that's okay, but I was hoping for a little bit more. The humor is spot on with the game's motif, which is not to take itself too seriously (can you take yourself seriously when you are a game involving nesting dolls?).

I'm stuck between a want tag and not wanting the game.  The deciding point was going to be the price.  If it was cheap, it'd be a no-brainer.  The cost to unlocking the whole game is $14.99, or free, if you have a PlayStation Plus account.

While I had certainly seen the PlayStation Plus account advertised, I didn't know the details.  Access to some downloadable games (like Stacking) for free, and others for a discount; also some custom avatars and backgrounds, and a few 60-minute full-game demos.  Sounds interesting, except...

...$50 for a year's subscription!?

Don't get me wrong, it sounds like it would be a good deal, except the perks (I looked through them all) kind of suck.  If things got better, I'd seriously consider it, but for now, I'd much rather shovel over $15 for a fun game about nesting dolls than invest in a subscription that offers me very little.  In fact, even the $15 seems a bit too much now... sorry Stacking, but your demo was adorable and fun.