My guy friends thought he was great, but my girl friends– well most of them– couldn’t understand why I loved SC so much. They pointed out that our relationship was not healthy and that I should spend more time outdoors. But they didn’t know what they were talking about. Being with SC was such a rush of adrenaline; he would bring me to a high every single time without fail. Sometimes our sessions would last 20 minutes, sometimes 2 hours, but every experience was fresh and exciting. Sometimes we would seek out new locations, but mostly I was fine with Hunter. Hunter was the best map in my opinion.

When I graduated and got a job, our relationship became more casual. We still met up occasionally and those meetings were steamy, but we were no longer steady. After I moved 3 years ago, I lost contact with him permanently. I still yearned for him, especially the background music, but I felt I had to put him behind and move on with my life. After SC, however, I never became involved in a committed relationship, my relationships were extremely casual, mostly one-time flings. Some relationships lasted a couple days, but never quite more than that.

When I met SC2 a few days ago, it was like old times. I thought it would be the same thing all over again, an old flame rekindled. But this time, it felt different. SC2 looked the same as SC but my fingers were unfamiliar, the sounds were unfamiliar. And the action was so much slower; I know most of that is my fault, but the tempo kind of ruined the experience. There was no adrenaline.

Maybe I need to get to know SC2 more, but maybe I should have just left SC as a good memory. After all, both of us have changed and our relationship can never be the same. It was nice meeting SC2, but the heartthrob was gone. Ah, growing pains.

The Great Gatsby has excellent music, very nice voice actors.

But that’s not what happens. With some games, I stop playing after two or three minutes. It’s kind of scary, if you think from the developer’s point, that the first couple minutes of gameplay affect whether or not I will continue for the rest of the hour. I think this short timeframe is because these games are casual  in nature and most casual games are in series of levels that increase in terms of difficulty, but don’t change substantially in terms of play mechanics.

There are various reasons for why I stop playing after two minutes. I don’t think it’s one thing, but a combination or interaction effect of several different factors, such as graphic design and difficulty. Most factors, however, pertain to some game mechanic or other. For instance, if there is a lag after I click, or if the game is too easy or the graphics too lame, I won’t even bother playing the full hour. Since a lot of the new releases on Big Fish seem to be hidden object games, some examples of games that I lost interested were: Flux Family Secrets- the Rabbit Hole, L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Journalistic Stories. I especially don’t like hidden object games where I’m looking for random stuff in a cluttered room (I’ve talked about this in a previous post on hidden object games). It really baffles me why items such as umbrellas, binoculars, pocket watches, and cigars are popular hidden objects across all games. So weird.

The poor combination of real/pixel images in Wizard of Oz created an eyesore. The story was very weak too.

While I’ve talked about the importance of narrative in a previous post, I want to add another ingredient that makes me want to buy the game. Certainly an interesting narrative makes me curious about what is to come, but it is not enough. What really helps me decide whether or not I want to buy the game after the hour has a lot to do with audio, because at that point, good narrative and playable mechanics are already assumed to be part of the game. For example, I really enjoyed The Great Gatsby because of the honky-tonk piano (or whatever the instrument was) playing 20s music. It was extremely enjoyable to listen to the music while playing. I usually turn down the volume when I play, but not with this game. The game was also nice in that you were looking for hidden objects in a scene that seemed natural (not a cluttered closet with random items) although some items were indeed out of place.

It’s not just the music. When executed well, I actually prefer games that have voice-overs. Of course, this is very difficult to execute well since the voice actors may have annoying voices and/or bad acting skills. Also, if the voice sequence is too long, I would want to skip it. I guess this creates a lot of trouble for developers (ie., costs more) but i have never actually bought a game that did not have an audio component. It wasn’t because i was actively looking for it, but in hindsight, I think that audio was the secret sauce that triggered me to make that purchase.

Platform matters when it comes to social games, according to Dan Fiden, general manager of the San Francisco studio of Playfish. Speaking at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle, Fiden emphasized that what we generally call “social gaming” sometimes is not really social. His talk was appropriately named “Why Friends Matter: Designing Social Emotion.”

“[Players] are friends before gamers,” Fiden said. “A lot of that has to do with the platform. The game becomes a context to live out all of the emotions and relationships that you have with people. Social network sites leverage strong emotions between your friends. We like making games on social network sites because we can play with people we do know. Social network sites are great platforms because friends are always accessible.” 

Fiden’s stance on the importance of platforms was almost entirely opposite of that of Steve Chiang of Zynga. In an earlier talk, Chiang had said that the user-size of the platform was important, explaining why Zynga jumped from MySpace to Facebook, and are looking at more open platforms. Chiang downplayed the role that Facebook played on the success of Zynga games while Fiden said that the success of the game strongly depended on the platform. Fiden, however, was more interested in game-play between existing friends rather than strangers.

Fiden also differentiated “virality” from social experience. “A viral game incorporates mechanics that requires interpersonal communication for individual advancement. A social game is a game framework for a social interaction. Virality is good for business, getting people to re-engage and drawing people to the game. It’s important for success of games, but don’t make them social,” he said.

He gave examples of what he thought was virality, giving examples of some games (including Playfish’s) that use interaction between players as a game mechanic. Some examples could include so-called “helping” a friend complete a task or reciprocating an in-game gift. He said that too many rulesets of the game that impose these types of player interactions can crowd out truly social interactions.

Fiden suggested that social game developers should think outside of the box and not limit themselves to the games that are currently successfully. “Limiting ourselves to the few games that have been made over the pasg couple years is maybe not the way to think about it. Let’s look at all the awesome social games that have been released on different platforms. What we should do is remember that games that are deeply social were made way before video games,” he said. 

He said that providing evidence of interaction is important for asynchronous play. For instance, if a friend visited one’s farm, how can we create something more meaningful than a pop-up? How do we do that in a way that feels more natural?

This post was written by Wisnie86, A. Young, and M. Ericksen:

Wisnie86: Not too many years ago the only way that you could purchase a video game was from a brick and mortar video game store such as EB Games, Software etc, Gamestop or various others. As an ever increasing number of these retailers created online shopping websites, more games were purchased online. Eventually as internet connection speeds increased and more people were connected via broadband, yet another method of distributing games emerged: digital distribution. Systems such as Valve’s Steam have pioneered digital distribution. Steam requires that you first create an account, and then allows you to either import valve games that you have purchased otherwise into your steam account by entering the CD-Key into the system, or purchase games from the steam marketplace, thus allowing you to download the game on any computer that you log into steam from.

Personally, I find this type of system to be very effective. Not only does it remove the need for keeping track of cd-keys and game install disks, but it also creates an extremely easy method of acquiring new games for the most part as soon as they are released. Additionally, this type of system is beneficial to the developers and publishers of the games in that steam for example often has weekend deals that drastically reduce the price of certain games that have been available for a long time, causing a great increase in purchased of that particular game, thus creating more interest regarding that game. An example of this was when valve dropped the price of Team Fortress 2 to $2.50 for random hours throughout the weekend, this caused many people to try very hard to get it for that price, and even caused some people to buy extra copies to distribute to friends who don’t yet have the game. This in turn causes more people to play TF2 on steam, and therefore introduces more people to the steam system.
In addition to helping the big developers and publishers, steam also assists smaller developers by removing the extremely large barrier to entry that is distribution of physical media. For example, there are many smaller indie games available on steam that probably would not succeed if not for the simplicity and value of the steam system.

All in all, steam and other digital distribution systems provide many benefits to both the purchasers and producers of games, even if they can be a very large pain in the ass if the service goes down or becomes unavailable.

A. Young: With the market place in video games today demanding that every console have a heavy online component, downloadable content  has become a prominent source of extra revenue for publishers and developers alike. PC gamers have long since experienced this with the “expansion pack” system. It is pretty much a given that any AAA title that gets shipped nowadays is going to have some DLC coming after it down the pipeline. The quality of this content has failed to hold up consistently with the standards of the original games. Titles like GTA IV, Assassin’s Creed II, and Fable II have all put out downloadable extra content recently with mixed reception. I actually just purchased GTA: Episodes From Liberty City and true to the reviews I read, the two separate games are excellent extensions to the GTA IV story-line/universe. I have also read that the expansions to Creed and Fable are less than stellar and are not worth their price tags. This brings me to the main issue I feel some people have with downloadable content: they don’t understand why they should have to pay extra for an experience that they feel should have come in the box originally. Personally, I feel like developers should not make downloadable content unless it significantly enhances the experience of the original game. If the downloadable content is a completely separate game, or if it adds holes to the original story then there is no point in releasing it under the parent game’s moniker. Obviously there are cases where developers are just trying to exploit an IP’s established market to make a few extra dollars so they just throw some nonsense out there. Then there are situations like Borderlands where the game studio has actually gone through great pains to add to the original experience. This is why you must do your research to avoid getting burned.

M. Ericksen: I tend to lump downloadable content into three categories, free, a large supplement to the game, or a shameless attempt to milk every penny from customers. The first category, free, goes with little explanation; it’s free so there is no real question of whether or not it is worth it because it’s free. If you like it then keep it, if you don’t then delete it from memory, either way it cost nothing so there is nothing to lose. The pain is when game developers feel that they can make a game that is mostly lacking in either length or just general content, and then decide to dump a whole bunch of pay-per-item content. This is just ridiculous, and the fact that they can get away with it is even more ridiculous. While they could have a “reason” for doing this, like they needed to get the game out on time and so they cut things but then finished those removed elements and now wish for you to pay for them. I think this should stop immediately though, if things like this are allowed to continue then a can see a very obnoxious future. Picture spending $60 dollars to get a videogame like Halo 5, and you fire the game up and all that pops up on the screen is a beautifully rendered menu with one gorgeous HD option “Download.” When the option is clicked then it gives you a buffet of weapons, armors, character, and levels all of which can be yours for a price. These things should have been shipped with the game originally, but they weren’t because it was better to charge you for a menu and then make you pay for every part of the game that you want/need. Now this is a huge exaggeration, games these days do try to get away with putting less in the game initially and then charging you to download things to bring it to the necessary “full game” length. This just makes everything harder for the people who actually try to make their games worth the price.

We tend to think of gamers as those who play in solitude at home; a Caucasian male wielding a curved piece of plastic and hunched in front of a screen. The truth, however, is that outside of the United States, most game players do not own game consoles at all- they play with standard PC computers or mobile phones. Although mobile game users are rapidly increasing, the capacity of a mobile phone has yet to catch up with the PC or game console when it comes to graphics.

The PC room gamer is at the center of an interesting gaming culture that is particularly prevalent in many Asian countries such as South Korea, Vietnam, and China. A PC room is a room full of desktop personal computers (PCs) that are connected with each other and also have access to the Internet. Different cultures have different names for this type of facilities. In the West, the closest equivalent would be an Internet cafe (despite the fact that the term “cafe” is not used in this context as we think of in the sense of a cafe being a place with empty tables and chairs where people can eat or drink between meals). PC rooms are easily found in places with high Asian populations, however, are very different from Western Internet cafes because the computers are equipped with hardware and software for an optimal gaming environment. Thus, when I talk about PC room in this article, I am not referring to Internet cafes. The PC room is more often referred to as a “PC bang,” which is what it is called in South Korea, where the culture is prevalent. In Korean “bang” means “room.” 

Characteristics of PC rooms

Playing at PC rooms does not require a lot of money compared to other types of media entertainment (such as going to see a movie). In South Korea, hourly fees range from 500 to 2400 won (roughly 40 cents to 2 dollars), mainly depending on the competition.

Who plays at PC rooms?

Throughout the day, the demographics of the PC room change. Most PC rooms are open 24 hours, so it is interesting to look at the cycle of people. In the mornings, the primary type of user is an adult male, between 30 and 50. Many are unemployed or between jobs, and are dressed business casual. Many engage in online day trading or online card games and in-between games occasionally surf recruiting websites. When afternoon comes, a trickle of very young boys (younger than 12 years) and the occasional girl start pouring in between 1 and 3pm, usually in groups. They are extremely noisy because they continuously talk to each other while they play and usually play racing games or first-person shooters. In some sense, in the afternoon, the PC room becomes similar to what coin arcade rooms were like in the past. Of note, PC rooms don’t aggressively monitor which games the children play; technically, they can play all of the games that are installed on the computer so they usually play network games among themselves without going online. This is because if they try to go online, they will most likely not have access.  

Around dinner time, teenagers come in, wearing their school uniforms and are followed by young adults. Many women come in in the evening, they usually play online card, arcade, or MMORPG games.  Competitive Tetris is a popular game that young women play. The “hardcore” game players (ages 18 and up) start coming in at 8pm and usually stay for several hours or all night. World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, and Starcraft are the most popular games for late-night players. Although PC rooms have non-smoking sections, this is in theory only; if you go at night, expect to be drenched in smoke.

Catering to people who stay for long hours, PC rooms are usually equipped with drinks and snacks (that are bought separately). Popular snacks include cup noodles (ramen), coffee in cans, and various chips. Players, however, can also order food from local restaurants– usually Chinese.

I have done a lot of regrettable things in my time. I have used guns to shoot people and swords to slice my victims apart. I have stolen vehicles and used them to run down helpless pedestrians. I have trafficked drugs in several gangs and engulfed entire cities in fiery destruction. Dare I say it; I have even stomped on babes. My victims are shown no mercy as I make them endure waves of carnage.

Of course, this was all accomplished in video games. Violence in video games has evolved over time and is becoming more realistic as technology advances. There is strong debate over whether or not violence in video games can cause violence in the real world. Taking a look back at all the cruel and inhuman acts I have committed in games, it’s hard for me to see the correlation between video game and real world violence. I have never committed a violent act outside of a video game. I was never even in a fist fight in grade school. I do not steal cars and go on crime sprees. Human life is not meaningless to me and I have not been desensitized to death. Real world violence and death still generates strong emotions within me. It is possible that I simply am able to distinguish fantasy from reality, and know that the two are completely separate from each other. I also think this applies to any sane-minded human being. This is why I argue that violence in video games has no effect on whether or not a person commits an act of violence in the real world.

Something that bothers me is the fact that some people actively look for certain kinds of media to blame, such as television, movies, cartoons, rock music, and games. This can even be extended to media such as images or artwork and literature. Video games are probably the newest of these medium, and as such are probably the most sought after to blame. I believe that whatever technological advancements follow video games will be the next targets of blame, and video games violence will be completely forgotten about.

A famous incident where some blamed video games for its occurrence was the Virginia Tech shootings. In a 1996 study, it was found that over 98% of children who played video games played games that contained violent content. This is a very large percentage, which makes it difficult to see how it can be linked to a very small statistic, such as occurrences of school shootings like Virginia Tech. If so many children are observing violent content in games, and if that content is causing violence in the real world, then occurrences such as these should be much more prevalent. In my opinion, it seems irresponsible to try and shove the blame on video games instead of trying to figure out what the shooter’s life was like. I think things such as mental illnesses, living environment, quality of life, home issues, and so many other things need to be looked into instead of turning towards video games as something to point the finger at.

Violent video games have been around since the beginning of the 90s. If video game violence did in fact cause real world violence, then one would expect to see an increase in violent crimes from the 90s on. The FBI released violent crimes statistics in 2005 which showed violent crimes have been decreasing for the last 20 years. Video game violence has come a long way in terms of realism as graphics have advanced. Video games today display extremely life-like depictions of violence, and yet these statistics show a decrease in violent crimes being committed. I find it hard to believe that video game violence is causing real world violence when these statistics are decreasing and video game violence is becoming more realistic.

Sociologist Karen Sternhiemer found that video game sales have risen to more than $10 billion annually in 2007. At the same time she cites homicide rates of juveniles dropping by 77% and the chance for a student to be killed by school-related violence to be less than 7 in 10 million (Seff, 2007). As more children are purchasing and using games, less violent crime is occurring. When a school shooting happens, it is hard to believe video game violence was behind it when these statistics are presented.

One issue that has always bothered me in this debate is what exactly qualifies as video game violence. Mario from Nintendo’s Mario franchise has been stomping on mushrooms and turtles for years. It may seem silly to think one would assert that Mario jumping on a turtle could cause violent behaviors, but some of the actual assertions made seem just as implausible. Violence in a lot of video games is graphically realistic, but is not often realistic in terms of the real world. Mortal Kombat games had fighters that could spit acid to melt their opponents or rip their heart out with their bare hands. At the very least, I find it hard to believe that someone would try to imitate these actions. A lot of video game violence is so farfetched that it would be almost impossible to argue that someone would observe it and mistake it for anything but fantasy.

A lot of research has been conducted on whether or not video game violence causes violence in people. Many of these studies claim a link between the two. These same studies have been criticized as having inconclusive results and for the methods by which they were conducted. Laboratory environments in which these studies are conducted are also very different from the environments that people play video games in. These studies often times find correlations between violence and video games, but correlation does not imply causation. These studies may only show that people with already violent tendencies tend to enjoy video games with violence. There is simply no existing research that proves video game violence to be the leading factor in causing violent behaviors outside of the game . If study after study has come up with no positive proof of video games causing real world violence, then I feel this should be an indicator for researchers to branch out and study other areas that may cause these violent behaviors. I do not see a reason to continue dragging along an issue when there is no evidence to back it up.

Video games extend to a vast age group. Children, teens, young adults, adults, and the elderly all play video games. One argument some use is that violent video games have a greater impact on children. Whether this is true or not, it leads to the issue of why children are allowed to play these violent games. All games come with a rating system called an ESRB rating. The ratings go from early childhood (3 years and over), Everyone (6 years and older), Everyone 10+ (Ages 10 and over), Teen (13 and older), Mature (17 and older), and Adult (18 and over) (ESRB). These ratings are clearly labeled on all games sold in stores. While some parents argue that violent video games are affecting their children, this would not be the case had the parent just restricted their child’s game play to the correct age group. These ratings are imposed in order to protect children from content that it is believed they should not be viewing. I would be much more inclined to believe violent video games could cause violent behavior in children as opposed to adults. But this rating system is put in place specifically to protect children. If the parent fails to control the content their children are taking in, then blaming video games and ignoring parent responsibility seems completely ridiculous. I feel that the whole issue of video game violence is just placing blame on something else rather than taking personal responsibility for our own actions.

Some research suggests that video game violence is the most harmful of all media violence. According to this research, it is because video games reward the player for doing well, whether it be killing the most people and causing the most damage, whereas in a violent movie or television show, the consumer is simply observing the violence and is not partaking in the outcome and being rewarded . I would argue that this makes video game violence more effective at actually preventing real world violence. Most human beings realize there is consequence to their actions. If the player is indeed looking for a reward for their efforts, then real world acts of violence would be something to avoid, as the outcome would be punishment, rather than reward. A player can then enjoy being rewarded in the virtual world of a video game, and at the same time realize that only the game rewards this type of behavior, and as such that is the only time the behavior should be displayed.

Some analysis suggests that video game violence can actually help quell violent urges. For those who might experience anger during the day and feel the need to take it out on another person, they can instead sit down to a fighting game and beat up on a virtual opponent . Video games can be a great way to relieve stress, whether it is a laid back game or a game about stealing cars and shooting at police. I believe sometimes some people forget that a game is a way to get away from reality, and not a tool to take things from a fantasy setting and apply them to a real world setting.

What I find most discerning is the fact that all of this research and debate has to be conducted because of a few non-typical instances of violence. Laboratory tests are done in artificial environments in a short period of time, but the majority of people who play video games have been doing so over long periods of time. I have been playing video games since I was five years old, and have been exposed to an enormous amount of violent content in these games. In my years of exposure, I have never committed or felt inclined to commit a violent crime. This applies to many other people in the same situation. There can be no logical link between video game violence and real violent crime if this is the case. Limiting cases like the Virginia Tech shootings occur and video games are blamed. I could twist it around and conduct studies that correlate playing violent video games to not committing violent crimes in the real world. They would be just as invalid as the research conducted proving the opposite. I would be taking a sample of people who were already non-violent human beings, and finding that they play violent video games, so there must be correlation. There is absolutely no cause in that situation, or in the opposition’s situation. That example may seem like a long-shot, but blaming video games on school shootings and other violent crimes is not that different.

It’s hard to argue with the facts. The fact is, more video games are being bought and consumed than in the past. Violent crimes statistics show a decrease in crime. If violent video games did in fact cause violent behaviors in people, then as video games became more used, it would be expected that crime statistics increase. This is simply not the case. Studies on violent video games have shown to be inconclusive and provide only correlations and not causal relationships. For these reasons, and from my own personal experiences, I believe violence in video games does not lead to violent tendencies in the real world.

I really hate to admit it, but the past month or so I’ve been obsessing over a time-management game called Farm Frenzy 3: Ice Age. The Farm Frenzy franchise is kind of like the Diner Dash, Cake Mania, or Ranch Rush franchises in that this “frenzy” isn’t terrible unique from the previous “frenzy” and requires an awful lot of clicking. There is no way of discreetly playing this game at work because of the zealous clicking sounds from my mouse.

I was playing this game far more than I should. At first I thought it was a procrastination problem. Obviously, I had a lot to do, some of which was being temporarily put off when I chose to play several minutes (sometimes several hours) of this game. But then, I realized that no, it wasn’t exactly pure procrastination, because there are several other games on my computer, all of which I could have used to procrastinate. But why did I choose this specific one?

So then I thought, it must be the game content. As my screen name “arcticpenguin” implies, I have a soft spot for plump animals that live in the polar regions. The three stuffed animals in my room are a penguin, a polar bear, and a beluga whale. Farm Frenzy 3: Ice Age caters well to the cold theme. The game basically requires you to harvest certain items from the animals (you must keep them well-fed) and then you process to items to make processed materials which you can sell for a higher price. For instance, you can harvest eggs from a penguin and turn them in a bag a flour, then a cookie, then a cake. Ok, eggs don’t exactly create flour, but the game has a lot of incorrect things: for instance, mammoths create snowballs that you can process into ice cubes. In this game, obviously mammoths are not extinct.

But after playing for quite a while, I stopped saying “awww” as I watched the penguins waddle around the frozen pond. The animals were cute, but I knew all the visual elements, I was becoming sensitized. At that point, I had already cracked all the levels, and was working on getting a gold trophy for each level.

I then realized that I was playing for achievement to gain self-esteem. Getting a perfect gold trophy-worthy score on a level was not always easy, but the moment it was accomplished, I felt a wave of satisfaction very unlike the rush of adrenaline I get when I beat an opponent in StarCraft. It wasn’t a racy feeling of blood-pumping, heart-pounding kick of energy. It was more of a warm feeling of calm and content. It was the feeling of self-esteem, pride… a different type of satisfaction.

This post was written by Elda A. Includes mature content -Ed.

I forget how we met. We were in the same [World of Warcraft] guild and our characters were both female Druids. I think we became close because he was about 20 levels higher than me and helped me out with our quests. At first, I didn’t know that he was a guy playing a female character, but in hindsight, it was kind of obvious because we rarely spoke. He would tell me to do something and I would do it. It was like a mentor-student relationship. I was completely dependent on him.

I didn’t find out that he was a guy until we started going on raids with other people in our guild. Apparantly, a lot of the people in the guild had met offline, so they knew the real genders of the players. There were only two female members of the guild before I joined. Two of us were late 20s, one was early 30s. The ages of the men in the guild were pretty broad: from teenagers to 40s.

I found out that my gaming “partner” (we weren’t officially partners or anything but we spent a lot of time together) was considerably younger than me in real life and jobless at that. I only mention the jobless component because a few months after I met him, he didn’t have money (or so he said) to pay for his account. So I gave him the password to my account so he could play with my character. I trusted him. He played with my character while I was at work, and then when I logged in, he would log in with another friend’s account. It was nice for me because he was a very competitive person and spent a lot of time increasing the level of my character and improving the armor.

Summer came, and the guild decided to have a get-together at one member’s home, which was close to the beach. People came from all over- some even flew just for the purpose of the guild get-together. I took a 6-hour long train ride. The boy and I (he was 23 but still felt like a boy to me) decided to meet a little early for lunch before meeting up with other guild members in the evening.

When I arrived, I called him and asked him where he was. He said he was in a motel near the beach and told me to meet him there. I went to his room and met him for the first time, but strangely, it wasn’t like meeting a person for the first time. I had already seen pictures of him that the guild members had taken on previous guild gatherings (they apparently got together at least twice a year) so the face was familiar. And I felt that I had spent so much time in WoW that I already knew him.

There was a large bed and he invited me to sit down and rest. I was feeling really tired after the journey so I took a nap on top of the blanket. When I woke up, he was lying next to me- not close, but just on the other side of the bed. We both looked at the ceiling and talked about WoW. And then he started petting me. I don’t know how it happened, but it was very natural. We didn’t kiss. It was as if the petting was a getting-to-know-each-other ritual that we were performing with no sense of emotional involvement. It was a quest that needed to be performed.

He brought me to an orgasm with his hands. It was amazing. I imagine it was kind of like playing WoW for him, because in addition to the WASD directional keys, he used at least 20 other keyboard shortcuts when he went on raids (the game only allowed 10 shortcuts but there was something you could install to increase the number of shortcuts). I also brought him to an orgasm with my hands. We never kissed or had intercourse. Whatever that means.

The weird thing was that after that incident, I could no longer be close to him. I started avoiding him. He tried to communicate but I didn’t want to. I changed my password so he could no longer use my character. Our relationship was great when he was only a cyber character, but once I knew him in real life, it felt complicated. I started playing WoW less. I realized that one of the reasons I had played was to play with him, but now that I wasn’t playing with him, there was little reason to play.

I read stories of people who meet in games and then become real-life partners and I find it hard and easy to believe at the same time. I can understand the part about getting close and feeling intimate. However, in the real world, there are so many other factors aside from emotion. In Warcraft it didn’t matter that he was a young, jobless boy that was thin as a rail and uninterested in anything but games. In the real world, that kind of matters. And then there was the distant component. So that was my one-day stand. The funny and sad thing is, since then, I have never had such a big orgasm as the one he gave me.  He had magic fingers. Makes me want to date a professional videogame player.

Video games and cinema have an association that I think can be broken down into four distinct parts or categories. The first of these categories includes games that are based upon films. This category uses a popular film and bases the game play off of that film (or at least incorporates the source film in some significant way). The second category encompasses films based upon games. An inverse of the first category, these films use video games as their source and incorporates that video game into the narrative of the film in a significant way. This also includes films that use video games as a central plot element, such as <The Wizard> or <Tron>. Category number three consists of the full motion video (FMV) game. These games use video sequences in tandem with gameplay in order to create a sort of “interactive cinema.” The final part of the relationship is so called “cinematic adventure” game. Since the advent of 3-D graphics technology, video games have often used cinematic techniques such as shot selection, framing, and camera movement, especially with the use of cut-scenes.

Games Based on Films

Video game designers basing their video games upon popular films is not a new trend by any means. The first notable example of this is the infamous <E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600>. E.T was a fiasco for Atari. The game received terrible reviews, with many commenting on the obviously rushed nature of the game. This criticism was well founded, however, as the games designer, Howard Scott Warshaw, had designed the game in a mere six months. Eventually, after cartridge after cartridge was returned to Atari after the 1982 Christmas season, the decision was made to bury all of the unsold cartridges in a New Mexico landfill.  It would be the first of many poorly received licensed games.

There have been a select few that have been noted as being a shining example of using a film property creatively. One of these such titles is the arcade game Star Wars. Star Wars took place during the last act of <Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope>, with the player controlling Luke Skywalker during the rebel assault on the Death Star. Star Wars the arcade game actually took a few liberties with Episode IV, the film on which it is based. For example, instead of shooting lasers, the TIE fighters in the arcade game shoot “fireballs.” This was done in order to make the gunfire easier for players to shoot and dodge. Even with these liberties, however, Star Wars is still a classic example of a licensed game done right. The game not only chose one of the most thrilling passages from the film to translate into a game, but it used sounds ripped directly from the film to further immerse the player.

Sweet Home movie poster

One of the most fascinating games based upon a film is the 1989 Famicom game スウィートホーム, or <Sweet Home>. Never released outside of Japan, the game was developed by by Capcom in order to capitalize on the Japanese film of the same name. This cross-promotion went so far, in fact, that the trailer for the film went so far as to include footage from both the film AND the game. <Sweet Home> is one of the rare video games adapted from a film that really works as a companion to the film on which it is based. The plot of both the film and the game concerns a group of five people attempting to locate a lost fresco by the famous painter Ichiro Mamiya. Once they arrive at her estate, however, the door locks and the investigators must find a way out before the various ghosts inside the haunted house kill them.

While the film version of <Sweet Home> is a fairly conventional (at least by Japanese standards) haunted house type film, with gruesome special effects and a rather predictable story. The Famicom version, however, takes a different narrative path. Instead of using cut-scenes to tell it’s story, it plays like rfeading an expository novel, with letters and notes hidden throughout the mansion intended to flesh out the story. These letters create more of a back story than a 90-minute film ever could, and therefore the game works with the movie instead of simply attempting to mimic scenes from the movie.

Films Based on Games

Super Mario Bros. The Movie

One cannot start a discussion about films based on video games without bringing up the most infamous one of all, <Super Mario Bros.: The Movie>. Exemplifying everything that is wrong about video game films, <Super Mario Bros.: The Movie> takes everything that makes the Mario games fun and memorable and just does away with it. In place of the bright, colorful landscape of the Mushroom Kingdom from the games, the audience is greeted by “Dinohattan,” a Blade Runner-esque metropolis that bears essentially no resemblance to games. Cartoonish representations of characters like Yoshi and the Goombas are replaced by much more drab, realistic looking ones. It’s too bad, because there once was a good Super Mario Bros. movie, though it was never released in America. スーパーマリオブラザーズピーチ姫救出大作戦, or <Super Mario Brothers: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach> is an anime version of Super Mario Bros. released not long after the original game in Japan. After watching it, it’s obvious that the anime version is much more successful in capturing what made the Mario games so memorable. It’s got all the celebrated characters from the games, as well as replicating all of the colorful locales. It even uses sound effects from the game where applicable. For instance, when Mario shoots a fireball, it makes the exact same sound as it does in the game. I’m not sure if it’s necessarily a great movie, but as a representation of the Mario games, it certainly blows the 1993 film away.

I think that the main problem with the 1993 film is the clear sense of misdirection that pervades it. John Leguizamo (who portrays Luigi in the film) stated that it was one of the worst experiences of his career and that the biggest reason the film turned out so poorly is because the director of the film wanted to create a darker vision, while the studio wanted a children’s film. This statement makes perfect sense, as the childlike nature of the video game is constantly clashing with the dark atmosphere of the film.

More interesting than films that are directly based on games are films that use games as inspiration for their plot. One key example of this immediately springs to mind, <Tron>. Not only do video games figure heavily into the plot of the film, but the plot takes on a video game-like structure at one point. In <Tron>, a computer programmer is sucked into his own game and is forced to fight his way out. Even today, the special effects in the film are fantastic, and I feel that <Tron> captures the video gaming experience far better than any film that’s actually based on a video game. Once Flynn (Jeff Bridges) enters the computer world, the film actually takes on a video game styled narrative. Flynn is subject to a number of challenges (light cycles, tank fights, etc.) until he reaches the “final boss:” the Master Control Program (MCP). It is because of this structure that I feel <Tron> is truly the only successful “video game movie” of all time.

Full Motion Video Games

Dragon's Lair

One of the most interesting developments in game design was the creation of the full motion video (FMV) game. These types of games had their heyday from 1992 to 1995, during which 61 FMV games were produced. By combining live action video with interactive button pressing, these games attempted to bridge the gab between cinema and video games. One of the first of these games, <Dragon’s Lair>, also proved to be one of the most successful. Disney mainstay Don Bluth’s animation briefly brought players back to the fledgling arcade scene, and for a while, things were looking great for FMV games. This resurgence, however, was short lived because the Laserdisc drives installed in the arcade cabinets required constant maintenance.  This early form of the FMV game vanished from arcades quickly, and this form of game didn’t appear again until the early 90’s with the advent of console-based CD technology. Three consoles were at the forefront of this technology: the Philips Compact Disc Interactive (CD-i), the Panasonic 3DO, and the Sega CD. Many of the games for these systems were FMV based, with the Sega CD going so far as to include the FMV title <Sewer Shark> as a pack-in.

<Dragon’s Lair> itself was ported to every one of the consoles. None of these consoles were ever popular, however. The CD-i gained a reputation for a small time for it’s licensed Nintendo games, but quickly fizzled out. The 3DO’s exorbitant $699.99 price tag seriously limited it’s consumer potential, and it too quickly faded. Only the Sega CD lasted slightly longer, primarily because of controversy surrounding one it’s games, an FMV adventure titled <Night Trap>. The plot of the “game” was typical B-horror movie fare. Dana Plato stared as an undercover agent working to stop a group of zombie/vampires (“augers”) from killing a house full of teenage girls. Gameplay basically boils down to switching around the various rooms, as if operating a security camera system, and waiting for the augers to get in the right spot so the player can “trap” them by pressing a button. Pressing this button either initiated a trap scene, in which the auger is humorously disposed of, or the player misses, and the auger goes free and sometimes kill the girls in the house. This part of the game is what started the controversy. The voyeuristic nature of the game no doubt exacerbated the heat surrounding the game.

Voyeurism could be seen as a sort of running theme throughout many FMV games, including <Double Switch>, a game that had similar gameplay to <Night Trap>, and <Wirehead>, a game that tasks the player in guiding a man with a computer in his head through various situations. Most other FMV games are played in the first person, such as <Crime Patrol> and <Mad Dog McCree>. It’s these types of games that come much closer in achieving the goal of an “interactive cinema.” By achieving this, though, they are much worse games. It’s basically just like watching a really bad movie, except if you mess up, you have to start the movie all over again. It gives the player little control over the actual events that take place because these types of “games” are little more than on-rails shooters with live action video. Overall, it would seem that the FMV genre isn’t as much of a hybrid of video games and cinema, but a Frankensteinian mutation of the two.

Cinematic Games

Since the advent of 3D technology, many developers have been trying to make their games more “cinematic” in nature. Games of this type include the <Final Fantasy> series (at least post-VII), Hideo Kojima’s <Metal Gear> series, and the <Ninja Gaiden> series. Even before 3D, though, video games used a visual language similar to cinema. The original <Ninja Gaiden>, considered the first game to use cut-scenes, can be seen as the originator of this trend. Before <Ninja Gaiden> most games, like <Metroid> and <The Legend of Zelda>, told their stories through their manuals. <Ninja Gaiden> was the first game to tell it’s story within the actual game, and it did it through highly cinematic cut-scenes. Through the games use of highly film-like angles and techniques like shot-reverse-shot, the games cutscene’s play like an animated film. The game relies heavily on cinematic techniques to tell it’s story, drawing visual inspiration from Japanese films and anime. Hideo Kojima’s <Metal Gear> series also draws heavily from a variety of cinematic references. For example, on the cover of the very first game in the series, <Metal Gear>, the character of Solid Snake is modeled after the character Kyle Reese from The Terminator.

Later games in the series, notably <Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty>, make use of extensively long cut-scenes, with some passing the 40-minute mark, that are very cinematic in nature. The most recent entry in the Final Fantasy series, <Final Fantasy XIII>, contains similarly long, cinematic cut-scenes. It seemed that the game designer’s were sacrificing gameplay, especially in the first half of the game, for the drawn out story. Many recently released popular games, <Mass Effect> for example, have had marketing campaigns chiefly advertising the story aspect of the game. That’s not to say that gameplay isn’t important in today’s gaming climate. More abstract games like <Flower> and <Braid> tell their stories in ways completely devoid of cinematic reference, instead using techniques that are unique to the video game medium. These types of games, however, are exceptions as the vast majority of popular, blockbuster games have narrative campaigns pattered after cinema.

Video games have shared a tumultuous relationship with cinema throughout the mediums young life. With six video game based films set to be released by 2011, cinema’s influence on video games shows no sign of letting up. Though it seems that the current trend is to make blockbuster video games as cinematic as possible, perhaps in the future the video game medium can further develop it’s own visual language and become something more than just “interactive cinema.”

Aaron Hamel is currently a sophomore at Michigan State University and is pursuing a degree in film studies.

Procedural generation comes from the concept of fractals

This post was written by guest author Matthew Ericksen

When it comes to video games, there are two fundamental coding styles each with their pros and cons. The style that is most often used in video games is to hard code every element of a video game. This makes a very stable gaming environment that can be modified and perfected so that, come release time, the game has very detailed content that has been painstakingly created for the player by teams of creators. This is a tried and true method of video game creation that gives the creators complete control over every aspect of the game. The only problem with this method is that it takes a great deal of man power to create every aspect of a video game by hand.

Procedural generation, the other style of game creation, has the advantage of not needing such a large team of developers. Procedural generation is a coding style that is the near opposite of hard coding, it uses a set of instructions to create an object. An example where this would be particularly useful in a video game is a forest: A modeler could go and make a variety of tree models and then have a level designer meticulously place these and eventually a forest would be created, on the other hand, the modeler could make a variety of tree branches and trunks then a programmer could go in and code roughly how these branches should be placed on a tree and roughly how far apart the trees should be and then when the program is run an infinitely large forest could be created. Obviously this is very advantageous as the effort-to-content ratio is much higher and therefore less time and effort is spent creating any of the in game content. Unfortunately some of the detail is lost, but overall this can be an extremely useful tool.

Procedural generation originated in 1958 when Benoit Mandelbrot, a young mathematician, was doing research on several unrelated topics including galaxy clusters, the stock market, and the river level of the Nile, etc. What he realized when he was doing this was that these “unrelated” topics actually did have something in common, they all had to do with statically irregularities and could be mathematically recreated. In 1975 Mandlebrot used the word “fractal” to describe this concept: a fractal is a seemingly basic shape, a triangle for instance, that when repeated following some pattern creates a very intricate pattern.Using patterns and mathematics to create an image laid down the basis for what would become procedural generation.

Procedural generation was first introduced into video games roughly 20 years ago by a group of people known as the demoscene. Gaining prominence during the 16/13-bit era of gaming, demoscene used procedural generation to create intros that showed off their programming competency, they would attach these intros to games that they cracked and they soon came to be known as “cracktros”. This technology quickly made its way into video games: due to limited hardware space it was necessary to make a way to create lots of content as space efficiently as possible. After a while, though, procedural generation faded out of practice because the amount of data that could be stored for video games improved so much it wasn’t necessary any longer. At this time procedural generation took a back seat until about 1998 when it was used by Diablo to randomly create the dungeons that were used by the player, this made it so that each play-through would be a unique experience. Although the argument can be made that Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall was the first to reintroduce it, coming out 2 years earlier, I feel that Diablo is a better example due to its much greater popularity.

With the rise of Diablo there was a renewed interest in procedural generation. Procedural generation was used a great deal in Diablo. Not only was it used to create random maps but it also was used to randomly spawn enemies, items, enemy’s drops, and items that were received from treasure chests. The idea of using procedural generation to randomly drop items was passed on to many other games because of its ability to make each game have a slightly different feel to it. In one play-through the player may find a very expensive or powerful item after they defeat the boss and on the second time through the game they find that the item is not there but they had found a different rare item earlier, this not only makes each play-through different but also makes it so that each individual person has a slightly different game than their friends.

Video game developer Gearbox takes this a step further with their game Borderlands, not only are the items randomly dropped by enemies and chests, but the randomly dropped items are randomly generated. Different power levels, ammo clip sizes, status effects, outer appearance, and weapon types are all combined together to create a game with nearly 18 million different weapons. Even if each of those weapons took 1 second to model and program it would still take roughly 200 days of non-stop work to make all of them, not to mention how much space would be required to hold all of the information.

Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 are good examples of other ways that procedural generation can be used to create in game content. In the Left 4 Dead series, procedural generation is used to give the game explicit control over the environment that is being played through. This is all made possible by an artificial intelligence created by Valve Software called the Director, Director constantly analyzes the flow of the game and maintains control over all of the elements in it so that things like ammo and health are only given out when it is needed. The Director software also can control the frequency and ferocity of enemies so that the game is always at the skill level of the player. All of this is taken to the extreme in Maxis’ evolution adventure Spore, where the player is given an entire Galaxy to visit with an entire galaxy’s worth of planets, the amount of time it would take to create the landscape, size, resources, native species, and types of suns would take a near infinite amount of time. Spore is a good example of a game that uses procedural generation for a lot of the game, everything in the game can be procedurally generated including the music, the AI difficulty, the environment, and the variety of creatures not to mention the animations that everything used to move around (11). This high level of procedural generation is a very possible step into the future of gaming.

Procedural generation is a good step towards what can conceivably be called the future of gaming. With Left 4 Dead, the AI can control the difficulty of the enemies and even possibly open up different routes for the players to take. This can obviously be expanded to make it so that things like difficulty levels no longer exist, procedurally controlled AI’s can be used to make it so that every game matches the strength of the gamer and so no game is too hard and or unapproachable for a player. With Spore there was the complete control of content using procedural generation, so you are never playing an exactly identical game to the one that you played previously. Games like Spore and Borderlands make it so that there is a near if not infinite amount of content available to the player. The argument however, against procedural generation is that if the computer is controlling and creating every aspect of the game (procedural generation can be used even to create story lines), then the games might not be very interesting. This is true, for computers are many things but one thing they are not is creative, but that is the beauty of procedural generation, it can be used to create some of the game leaving the important aspects to the creator.

Take for example, the leap of faith from Assassin’s Creed, an algorithm can be made to randomly throw these areas all over the city, but what if the creator wants to add a particular chase scene that ends with the player navigating to a leap of faith that lands them in the exact middle of the plaza? All of these events could technically be procedurally generated but the amount of work that would take far outweighs the effort it would take to just do it by hand.

One opportunity for procedurally generated content in video games is cities, it is very possible that it has never actually been done. The odd thing about this is that cities can and have been procedurally generated, it happens all the time for city planning,  just not in games. There are various other things that have not been utilized in games that very well could employ procedurally generated content, and this is what I see for the future of video games, a wonderful blend of procedurally generated content and “handmade” content. This would help combat the rising cost of video games because it would decrease the need for gigantic teams of artists and modelers. By allowing the computer to do all the heavy creation of non-essential content and leave the creation of all the important ares to the actual level designers. This could conceivably allow a huge boost in game quality because no time is wasted making anything not essential to the game, therefore all of the production time could be used to create all of the important elements theoretically increasing their quality.