Nowhere-Fast.net

I haven’t written a gaming post for awhile, so today I’m going to talk about Spore.

Spore is the recent big release from the creator of the Sims, Will Wright.  It’s been anticipated by the gaming community - myself included - for three years now.  The basic concept of the game is profound in its expansive simplicity - you create a one-celled creature and follow it through its evolution into a space-faring empire.  At each unique stage of its development - cell, creature, tribe, civilization and space - you engage in a feature-rich and compelling “creature creator” tool to define its look, character, technology and society.  By the time you’re done you have a truly unique and personalized creation with which you can take on a massive galaxy populated by the creations of other Spore players.

A great way to understand the game is to picture an actual gameplay possibility late in the Spore experience - you can start with the view zoomed in onto a planet, showing small animals frolicking in a woodland clearing and, in moments, you can zoom all the way out until the totality of the galaxy is represented on your monitor.  Very cool stuff.

There is a problem, though - despite the impressive high concept and stunning implementation, the game just isn’t very much fun.  None of the gameplay elements are particularly compelling and the attachment you feel to your creature is lost as it fades from a unique personality to a useless sidebar graphic in your quest for galactic domination.

Each unique stage represents a particular style of gameplay but each style is so simplified as to be completely uncompelling.  The game also moves you through each phase of civilization so quickly that any depth that could be found is lost as you’re forced, inexorably, to the next advancement.  That could well be a meta comment on the natural world and evolution, but in practice it just limits the enjoyment that could be garnered from the game.

At the end of the day Spore is an impressive achievement but it’s really not a very good game.

The New Yorker ran a cartoon of Barack Obama on their cover recently.  It caused quite a stir among liberals and conservatives alike.  For those of you who haven’t seen it here’s a link.

Everyone - politicians, the media, random punters - went out of their way to express their rage at the New Yorker and their horrendous editorial judgment.  Republicans and Democrats were united like never before as they laid into the New Yorker.

The media, especially, spent many words ensuring that everyone watching knew how enraged they were at, well, the media for that affront to all common dignity.

In short, the bullshit was neck-deep.  The comic is clearly a satirical commentary on the absurdity of the claims (still) being made by the rabidly anti-Obama.  It’s funny because these people also happen to be decidedly anti-brain.  It was very effective and the New Yorker had every right to publish it.  This is a case of people getting their panties in a twist just so they can be seen with their twisted panties.

That’s an odd turn of phrase, really.

I suppose I’ll speak briefly about E3.  It’s the yearly video game expo and it promotes all the exciting new things being done within the video game industry.

Oh how I wish that were so.  Sure, there are some cool new little gameplay things - vertical cover and movement in one game, “go everywhere” niftiness in the new Prince of Persia, really fancy looking fanciness, etc - but there isn’t a lot of storyline or artistic innovation to be seen this year.  Again we have sequels upon sequels but even the new games aren’t stepping very far away from the now-standard grungy near-future, aliens guns and robots stuff or dark bloody fantasy.  It’s the “I boil with generic rage” issue - all of the protagonists are looking to be cookie-cutter caricatures.  If gaming is supposed to be becoming a real artistic medium then the characters need to change and evolve.

As an added bonus, I ran across a Craigslist posting offering a “vintage” 1996 laptop for sale.  That’s some ballsy marketing.

The internet is an impressive thing.  First, it’s an impressive piece of technology.  Next, it’s more impressive for the value it holds as a source of information, a labor saving tool and an entertainment medium.  It’s impressive because it has fundamentally and permanently changed how people communicate.

It’s also impressive in how effective it is, how stunningly effective it is, at making you embarrassed of any group you might consider affiliating yourself with.  Here’s a link to a post on Gamepolitics.com about the possibility that Sony’s PS2’s could have, along with other electronics, inadvertently fueled conflict in Africa because certain resources required in their production were found in contested regions.  I found this to be a sad commentary on how our consumer lifestyles can effect other people in ways that we are completely unaware of.  I had no idea that my PS2 could, potentially, have cost a child their life in a dark, dirty mine in some war-torn corner of the world.  If I did then I wouldn’t have purchased a PS2.  I don’t need to play games that badly.

The response to that feeling was, in effect, “fuck them” and “why shouldn’t I buy a PS2?  It’s already been built so the damage is done” or “it’s not our fault, it’s the people who are exploiting the miners and starting the wars.”  With very few exceptions that was the consensus - the gamers over there who felt compelled to comment on that story were saying, almost to a man, that they value their PS2s over the life of an African child.  That is fucked up.

The actual situation wasn’t simple, but I’ll do what I can to simplify it.  There is a certain mineral that goes into the construction of transistors.  This mineral can be found in parts of Africa that have been engaged in violent conflict for years.  In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, the price of this mineral skyrocketed due to a massive increase in demand that was fueled by the tremendous upswing in electronics consumption.  Basically there was a period of time when everyone in the Western world who didn’t have an electronic gadget of some sort was purchasing at least one.  The PS2 was released around this time and was a major contributor to this demand - although clearly not the only cause.

Due to this increased demand miners in parts of Africa were forced to work themselves nearly to death and wars were fought for resource-rich regions.  The mineral was heavily exported and companies who needed it didn’t ask too many questions.  It would be foolish to imagine that it didn’t end up in some PS2s.

Is Sony directly responsible for this?  No, our Western consumerism is.  Of course any valuable resource can be the cause of conflict.  That’s human nature.  The fact remains, however, that money was funneled into the hands of violent men who used it to main and kill because Western corporations didn’t ask any questions when they got a good deal.  Should Sony, or any of the companies that profited, be considered culpable?  On some level, yes, but the burden of guilt is shouldered by all of us.  Now that this circumstance is known, should Sony or any other company be vigilant and ensure all of the resources used in their products comes from sights that have a minimum standard?  Yes, of course.

Even if Sony had no idea that there was any possibility of any part of their product coming from a conflict area but that turned out to be the case, I still wouldn’t purchase the product in question.  Unless you’re in a hospital there are very few electronic gadgets that you need to have and if you imagine that any of them are worth more then the life of another human being you are morally bankrupt.

My point of all of this is that the internet has made it possible, once again, for me to be embarrassed to associate myself with gamers.

Let me throw up one final Blizzard-related game post.  With their bags of cash and legions of fanboys Blizzard is a company that can, more or less, get away with anything in the video game sector.  Here’s what I want to see them do.

I want them to make a sci-fi, guided MMO - it could be in the Starcraft universe or a new IP - that’s a reasonable mix of twitch and skill and that features extensive ground and space areas.  If Blizzard did that then, to me, all of their past transgressions would be forgiven.

For those of you who read that second paragraph and said, “what the hell is he talking about?” I will briefly explain.  I want Blizzard to make an MMO, a persistent world, but I don’t want them to make a traditional MMO.  Most MMO’s exist in a state of dull stasis where nothing really interesting happens because it’s important to ensure that all content is available to all players at all times.  In effect nothing ever actually happens in the world of an MMO.  When I say that I want a “guided MMO” I mean that I want a game where the developers are actively participating in moving the fiction of the game world forward based on the actions of the playing (and paying) population.

The danger there is that new players could be “in the lurch” without having had participated in all of the previous events.  That’s easily remedied.  Offer a single player component for new players that runs them through the major game world events while at the same time giving them a chance to get to grips with the gameplay mechanics.  They could also offer “holodeck” style replays of certain key events if anybody wanted to relive a past triumph.

Ground and space areas - well that’s pretty self explanatory.  See, this is what I want to do in a sci-fi MMO.  I want to walk around a nifty sci-fi city, go to a space port, get into my spaceship, fly into space, fly around space, dock at a space station and then get out of my space ship and walk around a nifty sci-fi space station.  Also, they need to have player-controlled capital ships.

Now for the important part - it should be twitch and skill based.  See, a traditional World of Warcraft MMO is skill based.  You build your character’s skills by grinding xp in massive, dull play sessions in order to win in PvP by having a higher level character with “uber loots.”  Something like Counter Strike is twitch base - you have to move really fast and actually be good at it in order to succeed.  There is a happy medium between those two gameplay styles and Blizzard is in a position to find it.  Go forth and compromise, Blizzard!

Oh, and as a final note - and final nail in the coffin of anything like this ever being created by Blizzard or, for that matter, any other MMO company - the whole thing should be decidedly not loot based.

There.  I’m done talking about Blizzard.

Happy 4th of July everybody.  In the way of fireworks, here’s a petition by Diablo fans who are unhappy with the art style in Diablo III.  They’re whining that the people who are, effectively, making a game for them are somehow doing it wrong.  Why are they doing it wrong?  Because they didn’t do exactly what these people want.  How foolish of them!  Everyone knows that all good artistic expression is created by pleasing your most rabid, vocal critics!

How valid their concerns are depends on how important you imagine fans are in this world of sequals and endlessly exploited intellectual property.  Certainly the success of any series is due to the support of the fans, but does that support buy them any editorial control?  My view, simply, is “no.”  I hate it when a good franchise is destroyed by a lack of vision or poor storytelling (I’m look at you, here, Wachowski Brothers - it’s not just Lucas) but I’m not going to get pissed off because they didn’t make my ideal version of the game or movie or whatever.  Also, I just can’t get myself worked up over this sort of shit.  It’s just not that important.

That’s the saddest part of this.  There are, if the numbers on that petition are to be believed, nearly 32,500 people who are so upset by the imagined “cartoonish” graphics in Diablo III that they have affixed their names.  They have registered their outrage on the Diablo forums and made it clear that they want nothing to do with this new Diablo game.  Apparently all they want is the exact same game as Diablo II only in 3D.

Well, I suppose that answers one question of mine.  Now I know why Blizzard only bothers to make three games.  That’s all people want from them - when they try something new they bring on the Nerdpocolypse.

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed something new in my email spam.  Amidst the usual sexual advances, promises that I can massively extend my penis size and promises of Nigerian cash I’ve noticed spam messages that say “that’s a really stupid picture of you, Tom!” and “have you seen how you look in that video?”  Now that YouTube, Flickr and Facebook are some of the most popular sites on the web spammers are trying to embarrass you into clicking on their links.  The thing is that, for many people, there may well be some very embarrassing, possibly condemnatory videos and pictures floating around.  There are definitely some pictures of me on Facebook that I would rather never have been shared.  I do actually wonder how well those new spam techniques work, though.

Sometimes I wonder if all of my spam is legitimate.  What if there is some doctor somewhere who desperately wants to increase the size of my penis?  He’s just sitting there, wondering why I’ve never replied.  “Who wouldn’t want a bigger penis?” he’s asking himself.  Nearby one of the hundreds of thousands of sexy women who’ve been trying to get in touch with me sighs as she looks longingly at a website full of embarrassing pictures of videos of me.  Bank accounts of tragically killed rich diplomats are so full of cash that they’re bursting, yet all that money goes unused because my help is needed to access it.

On an unrelated note, I’ve reinstalled Diablo II in order to try to dredge up some excitement over Diablo III.  Playing Diablo II again had a pretty profound effect on me, actually.  After only a few minutes I decided to reinstall Fallout so I exited Diablo II and jumped into the best isometric 2D RPG ever made.  That then got me excited about Fallout 3 because they’ve decided to do some new, exciting things with their popular intellectual property.  Once I checked out some cool new screenshots and videos from Fallout 3 I realized just how sad it is that Blizzard isn’t doing anything new or interesting with Diablo III and I remembered why I’ve never really bothered with them.  They’ve only ever made three games - they just patch them very infrequently.

Any gamers (still) reading this site are probably aware, through other channels, that Blizzard is making Diablo III.  Non gamers - well now you know.

OK, Blizzard is raking in completely absurd amounts of money with World of Warcraft and they have decided, with barrels and barrels of cold hard cash available to them, to do the most unoriginal things possible.  First, they are making Starcraft II which is, in effect, Starcraft but with 3D graphics rather then sprites.  Now they have spent a week and millions of dollars to announce that they’re making the third iteration of the Diablo franchise.  It will be, in effect, Diablo II but with 3D graphics rather then sprites.

Blizzard is the only big, independent gaming company that has the ability to start doing really interesting things with the medium.  They can afford to take the big, dangerous leap into the unknown because if they fail miserably they will still have World of Warcraft.  Hell, they have so much money that they could release Starcraft II and Diablo III for free without any financial concerns.  In fact, that might be a nice gesture for WoW players - a free copy of all new Blizzard games for the duration of your account.

I was going to write about a couple of idiots who broke into a guy’s house, held him at gunpoint and dragged him outside before saying “It’s all a prank for Myspace!” and running off, but I found something else that is even stupider.

In NY the Senate just passed a video game law.  That in itself is pretty stupid because it means that the state of New York is going to have to spend obscene amounts of money on a failed defense against the inevitable game industry lawsuit.  There is an aspect of the law that is even stupider, though.  Here is a quote from Sen. Andrew Lanza, the colossal moron (or self-serving jackass who wants to have another bullet-point for his reelection campaign) who wrote the thing, that defines its primary function: “this simply says that every video game sold in the state of New York simply should have a rating consistent with what the ESRB does presently in a voluntary way.”

The video game industry has voluntarily enacted the most sweeping and complete ratings system of any form of media.  No game can see a retail release without being rated and having that rating clearly displayed.  Every rational debater on the media violence issue has stated that what the ESRB does voluntarily is of the highest quality and many have suggested that it be emulated by other media.  There is no chance that they will ever stop rating games… but Sen. Lanza has wasted New York taxpayer money to pass a law that says that the ESRB is legally obligated to keep doing what they have been doing for over a decade and intend to continue doing indefinitely.  That is really, really stupid.

Just a quick note to say that I’m in Boston.