Reticulating Splines

The Reticule

2008-11-08T08:00:00.003Z

Yay! There's a new PC gaming blog in town, and I just happen to write for it. Please check it out, I think it will be rather good.

Don't consider Splines dead, but rather an inquiry into the effects of prolonged inactivity and solitude on the bloggy brain. I hope to resuscitate Splines after the tenure of generic time-sinks has passed me by. Until then, Colin, you should probably remove me from your RSS feed. See you on the other side!

Interview with Asi Burak - Co-Founder of Impact Games

2008-07-06T07:10:00.030+01:00

After the ambiguity of my last article accidentally insulted a member of Impact Games' community, I reluctantly reasoned that my chances of attaining an interview with co-founder Asi Burak were somewhat diminished. Although I welcome any effort to expand the remit of games, I think I'd been mistaken for someone who's content and conservative of the retirement home diet of drip-fed grey gruel and extreme violence upon which most gamers are currently sustained. Luckily for me, Asi's the forgiving and resilient sort - perhaps he has to be - he explains, "[I'm] actually used to harsh criticism from hard core gamers".

After a bit of apologetic email bouncing, Asi and I's relationship had recovered to the extent that an interview seemed possible. Intimidatingly, Asi'd only recently been siphoned for words by The Guardian, yet I think the Splines interview is special (not only in length and garish appearance) because Asi's unguarded and contemplative words reflect on his character and motivation to deliver the experience, knowledge, and stimulation required to think for oneself. From speaking with Asi, it's clear that a shared culture of thought and understanding will become the means to improve life on this conflicted Earth, and he's making quite the impact.

This dialogue is formatted oddly and it's full of spelling mistakes because it was birthed in cyberspace - like the orbital foetus at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey - so please understand that it's been hard to make the kid presentable.

[17:37:15] Sean Garland says: Peacemaker was originally due to reward its players with the Nobel Peace Prize once they'd met the goal of bringing peace to the Middle East. Shortly before Peacemaker's release, the Nobel Foundation issued a cease and desist letter to Impact Games, demanding that the prize be removed from the game. Were you surprised by this order? How did you react?

Asi Burak says: yeah

completely surprised

in fact, i even think that we were approaching them at some point letting them know about PeaceMaker.

it was opposed to all the support we got in media outlets, the community

if the guys at the foundation had stopped to play the game, they would have seen it adhere to the kind of values they propagate, right!

instead of them being glad we are using the prize their lawyers came at us

yeah

the irony is

that we actually got a lot of criticism when we used the nobel prize

especially from the israeli/jewish side

why do you think that was?

since arafat recieved the prize, it is somewhat tainted for some people

as Oslo was controversial and never really resolved the conflict

and some israelis never fully trusted araft as a diplomat

and someone who can take it to the end

but thats politics

our response by the way was to fully comply

best to avoid the lawyers eh!

it was def something you could argue as fair use but we didnt have the resources nor the energies to deal with it

and end of the day- if they dont see the merit, let it be

after we removed all mentions we actually realized that the loss is minor

do you think perhaps a new generation of nobel employees will see things in a more sympathetic light?

i hope so

like u said- probably they never played the game

if it was a book or an essay i am sure they would have investigated it

but they have no capacity to deal with interactive media and understand it

Play The News' concept is lofty and unconventional in that it raises awareness of real world events and entertains while doing so. Can you describe the creative process your team followed to produce the outlandish phenomenon we know as Play The News?

heh

u cant separate it from peacemaker

peacemaker is the father

its an evolution

when we presented PM around the globe, spoke with users and read their emails there were 3 core issues coming up all the time:

(1) can you do it about my conflict? or about my domestic issue that keeps me awake at night?

(2) can you update it according to the headlines? on a daily basis?

(3) can the community participate?

all were impossible with the PM model, to deal with another subject matter would take us at least a year

and it had no community, streaming capabilites

adding those was feasible but not justified in business terms

so we said- why instead of going deeper we'll go wider / shorter?

lastly-

the main feedback that came from people who liked PeaceMaker was a lot about engagement and understanding of news events

less the peace message, much more about context in interactive environment

like: i learned in one or two hours more than i understood in years

an...

don't say edutainment!

no no

we are very much opposed to the "education" or "edutainment" label

would you call a documentary "an educational movie"?

or a non-fiction book "an educational book"?

well, i suppose not

the educational value is incidental

why any game that smells of infromation and meaning we push to the classroom?

do you think a relexed learning environment is superior in some way to the classroom?

hard to say

i also dont feel i have enough expertise in education

i have a feeling that interactivity can do things that traditional methods cannot do

but i also have a feeling that games cannot answer everything

([by the way], fascinating how the community practically demanded PTN from you!)

yeah- thats the power of the internet

the immidiate feedback

does Impact Games have any plans to introduce their games to the classroom?

not solely for the classroom

we had some interesting discussions with educational publishers

big ones in the US

that were interested in PtN junior

a version for education

that is fine, as it is an incarnation

but doing something solely for the classroom is against everything we believe in and advocate :)

why's that? why take a principled stance against entering the classroom?

no no

many teachers use our products in the classroom

thats terrific

we get emails all the time, and they are usually by their intiative

we didnt really market there

what im saying is that as an additional distribution channel

one more segment it is terrific

but not as the core thing

its a kiss of death in my opinion

do you mean the label 'educational' [is the kiss of death]?

yeah

the fact that games that are positive have to be "educational"

as i mentioned - u dont have that in mature media

discovery channel is main stream

CNN investigates is a prime time show

Al Gore's movie won the oscar

thats [where] positive games [or games about current events] should be...

games should be in a situation where they're not rendered special by being informative

right

and also not segregated

again going to other media, and this is what the guardian piece is talking about:

there are no movie-goers or radio listeners or Tv-watchers

everybody is one

with mature media everybody finds his favorite flavor

with games were still in the trap

who is a gamer and who is not

mature mediums are broad enough to accomodate all sorts

and i feel its a matter of time

right- we need to diversify

luckily, the world is not waiting only on impactgames :)

check what happens on Facebook, phenomena like the Nintendo Wii

games for brain training on the DS

breaking the boundaries of traditional perceptions about who is a gamer

and what a game is

but i think you've carved yourself a rather interesting niche

and i believe that PtN can get much much larger than what it does now

there's no other games company attempting a similar task to Impact Games, as far as i know

not on a commercial level

some have tried

but its not their sole mission

and a lot is done on the non-profit side

u can check "Games for Change" and their community

How do you envision Impact Games' future? Will Play The News continue as Impact Games sole project, or could there be another game on the horizon?

def we could do other stuff

but i think that we didnt scratch the potential of PtN

a few directions were going:

(1) signing up partners

we never intended to create a new desitnation site but partner with media channels

so imagine news games on CNN, the New York Times or BBC

that's a brilliant idea

(2) other platforms: like mobile or other social networks beyond what we did with facebook

(3) user generated games

(4) other verticals

what else could you predict beyond news?

TV shows?

stock markets?

again. if we build it right and with the right partners we can make it big

TV is actually interesting as it is all around episodic content

if you think about it, just like in the news, events open and close, open and close

so its easy to structure ptn around TV shows

except with the news, it's sometimes hard to predict when the closure will come

thats the fascinating thing about it

that its not a TV writer who structured it

An awful lot of events happen in the real world, and the Play The News team can only report on a few of them. Do you worry about bias in the stories selected for Play The News?

before i address bias

as for quantity- again, going back to the partners

imagine that they support the creation

so instead of one game a day we create 10 or 20

so then we could be less biased

and ideally we could present the NYT game next to Al-Jazeera

it could be even on the same subject but the way you design it will make all the difference in the world

which roles and actions you chose?

which event is the one you focus on?

ideally, once again, i'd think that the broader spectrum of choices will represent the game coming into maturity

more choices, more user input, more stories told from more perspectives

agreed

and ultimately the users creating the games themselves

after all, the platform is made exactly for that

that's what i'd love to see

Currently the choices offered to your players are decided upon by Impact Games. Is there a chance that users could submit their own options in a future iteration of the game?

yeah- im talking about the next step:

make a game about your town

let other people rate it and the best games will get up in the rating

top of the pile

but as you say- letting people add actions would be a nice step

nice first step

ah, the Reddit mechanic

very democratic

yeah, like [Digg]

there are many directions

but limited time :)

i have to admit, i assumed that PtN was going to be a short-term project

it's great to be proven wrong!

not at all

internet apps are full of potential

its like coming to YouTube at the very beginning and ask them- so your whole business is video upload?

those ideas that take off are pretty simple

and unlike "titles" they evolve

yeah, if there's a demand

so people who judge internet apps as "titles" look at them as "frozen"

sure-

its more than about demand

execution, the right timing, viral growth

after all for every successful app there are dozens of clones

and only few make it

but demand would be the cornerstone of success, right?

mmm...

not sure :)

i mean, no matter the finesse of the operation, it cant succeed unless someone has a use for it

we know that people out there are interested in news events

we know the traditional media is losing custoemrs to more sophisticated engines

like - digg

like - google news

and RSS feeds

so if we design the right stuff for them and do the right marketing we should capture some of that market

but it all takes time to reach the tipping point

i've not seen any of your marketing

where can it be found?

there is none really

we have a lot of publicity

and our approach to media channels

is all about using their channels and user base

so imaging someone sitting on a story and he can just click "play it"

and its a win win

i get exposure to their audience, they add engagmenet to their passive content

that's a superb plan, i can imagine it working brilliantly

hopefully

Is the Impact Games team a diverse one? do you think you'll need to diversify further to broaden the scope of your reporting?

sure

we are now only seven

one writer

i imagine that if we succeed in our plans

and expand

we will need more writers and content experts

build a small newsroom 2.0

gosh!

i wish you all the luck in the world

in business terms its challenging

[because] the growth is expensive

but satisfying?

more than that!

we already created some change

and impact

small as it is

where have you seen the impact?

well, with peacemaker

the peres center distributed 100,000 copies in one day in israel and palestine

it was the talk of the day, after all its a small community

(relative to the US)

but also...

again- on a small scale

when people read the guardian

or see our stuff elsewhere in the news

it gets more traction to the message

the message i got out of peacemaker was that the two sides are not adversaries but working to accomplish the same goal

right

excellent idea to get out into the community

yeah we were lucky to have such exposure

but its only one portion of what one needs to do

in a world with so much information

its like a few pings, weak signals

and u can get a larger signal only with customers

like u said-

real people who enjoy it and use it

and it fills something missing for them

im off man- have a great weekend over there

[18:25:26] Sean Garland says: you too - dont brainstorm yourself into oblivion!

24/7 Ticker Tape Parade

2008-07-03T03:59:00.004+01:00

I want to tell you about a game called Play The News. It's made by Impact Games - the most hypocritical of game developers - for whilst Peacemaker emerged from their offices, their seemingly innocuous production process continues to churn out ammunition for debate with the 'games are mindless' clan. As critics fall, clutching their garlic, into conveniently placed prison colony furnaces, the power generated by Impact Games' minimal input (a website, a news story, and a decision for players) is highly efficient because it's the community which drives the brain-whirring mechanism of Play The News.

I'm uncertain whether Play The News ultimately qualifies as a game - it bears all the hallmarks of a modern news website, replete with reader's comments and the option for you to 'yay' or 'nay' the words of another person depending on whether they rung true or struck you as tone-deaf; yet the archetypes of gaming will swiftly be evidenced to you after the topsoil is unearthed. You'll be wooed by Play The News' achievements - become a Charismatic Debater by posting 10 comments and earning a yay or nay for each, or achieve Presidency of the USA by establishing principles then abandoning them for electoral gain (this last example may not be part of the game) - but the most woosome way Play The News flaunts its gaming credentials is by ensuring your interactions are meaningful by asking you to opine and predict upon the outcomes of ongoing events, and emailing you when the results are out. In my opinion, readers disgustingly transform into gamers when their interactions result in an emotion. People can experience pleasure through their sucessful interactions with a technology, and it's in this way that I believe Impact Games are encouraging people who'd normally not find an interest in the news to Play The News.

Play The News is free, follow the link on the top line of this article for more.

You know the corporate behemoth's shields are down when...

2008-06-30T05:42:00.003+01:00

Iron Sky Trailer

2008-06-25T18:16:00.001+01:00

Iron Sky Details

2008-06-25T02:20:00.000+01:00

In 1945 the nazis went to the moon, in 2018 they are coming back - that's the magnificent premise of Iron Sky. The film is bound to be of educational value to us all, come the inevitable uprising of comfortably distant extremist ideologies. With its visuals and fascinatingly ridiculous subject matter seemingly designed to tractor in the grazing geek, Iron Sky instantly sucked me in, despite furtive attempts to avert my gaze and attention by using tabbed-browsing. If you're a member of the gaming tribe, Iron Sky will probably spark pangs of familiarity within you. I've spotted the callsigns of some of my favourite games - Fallout, X-com, Wolfenstein - and I'm sure you'll develop a list of abductions you think Iron Sky has committed upon our culture. So it's with an entirely failed effort to create tension that I remark that it's a shame Iron Sky isn't going to be made into a computer game... oh but it is!

Details regarding the Iron Sky game are sparse. Unusually for a game developer, rather than throwing a few crumbs for the internet to swoop on and speculate over, Energia are inviting the winged community to the dinner table where their foul manners and rancid input are appreciated. Energia are the Finnish creators of Iron Sky (their previous project was Star Wreck), so perhaps their nationality serves to explain the unfamiliar and alien way they've chosen to respect and value the opinions of their fans. Whatever the explaination, Energia's exotic culture deserves an entire refrigerator dedicated to it at the supermarket. Shame there's no more details.

Tension sucessfully created! If you goose-step this way, we have an interview with the director of Iron Sky - Timo Vuorensola.

Splines: I love how you're encouraging community input on Iron Sky, and you seem to have created a culture of sharing on your forums, your blog and on Wreck a Movie in which the importance and impact of the individual is upped. How do you feel, as director of Iron Sky, about relinquishing control over the creative process?

Vuorensola: I'm not worried about that, because eventually I still have the control. More than handing out creative control, I'm extending my brain and using the community as an extended hive mind to ponder matters I need ideas for. But eventually, it's my decision on which stuff ends up on the film.

I think that Iron Sky's visual imagery is its strongest dimension. I'm a little concerned because the images on your website are restricted in that they only portray Nazi space technologies. Jarmo Puskala writes on his blog, "we want to create a whole world- with history, future and unlimited posibilities", do you think Iron Sky will be able to grow to meet this aspiration? For example, could you tell our readers how the history of Earth in Iron Sky differs from our own timeline - are the world's governments prepared for the lunar orbitskrieg?

What Jarmo there means is that we want Iron Sky to be not just a movie, but more of a sandbox where people can in the future start building on the things we throw in the air with Iron Sky. Therefore we build Iron Sky in a very open-ended model, paying a lot of attention to details and reasons, much more than we would if we were just making a film - we want to have a working universe for people to build on, and think that our film will hopefully just be a kickoff for a landslide of hundreds of stories that can be told in this world. We haven't yet revealed anything more about the history timeline of Earth.

Do you intend for Iron Sky to extend its space flight of fancy beyond UFOs and into the realm of other outlandish Nazi mythologies such as the reich's meddlings with the occult?

We haven't revealed these details either.

Discussion then veered towards the Iron Sky computer game:

You've crafted a pen-and-paper roleplaying game for Star Wreck, and now Jarmo Puskala says that he's hoping there will be a full-blown computer game to accompany and extend the Iron Sky universe. What stage of development is the game in right now?

We started to work on the Iron Sky game about a year ago in a very conceptual level, finding a good partner to do it and finding out funding sources.

Puskala states as fact that the best game ever made is UFO: Enemy Unknown (I can provide evidence that this is indeed the case) -can we expect the Iron Sky game to bare any similarity to UFO?

I don't want to rule out that possibility, but more than that we are looking into the world of good old adventure games, which all of us as Energia seem to love so much.

The Iron Sky movie will be distributed to theatres and directly to your fans via the internet. Would you consider a purely digital distribution method for your game? In your opinion, can film or game creators earn a greater reward for their efforts if they neglect traditional retail methods?

Nowadays the media depends on the traditional distributors and their valuechain, and breaking that chain is always hard, and should be led by those responsible for the distribution, and not so much by those responsible for the content itself. We took the whole chain in our hands with Star Wreck, and it led us to a success, but it's not to say that it could work again, since handling those chains is an art itself, and we've seen many more failures there than successes. Therefore, anything about Iron Sky or Iron Sky game distribution hasn't been decided. We care now only about producing the quality content, and keep on looking for the most intelligent distribution options and possibilities.

Thankyou for your time and sincere responses, Timo, and best of luck with Iron Sky!

Review: Mass Effect

2008-06-21T22:40:00.003+01:00

Mass Effect could benefit from more corridor combat. The shooter - a genre with which Mass Effect clumsily flirts - is oft criticised for its use of corridors to channel the player from one point to another. Bioware's new-found territory has people-funnels in abundance, yet, like the oilfields of Nigeria, Mass Effect's resources are misused by those who have taken charge of development. For example, rather than coupling claustrophobic corridors with the shock-value of a wall-bursting insect warrior, Bioware have chosen to relegate the man-shafts to the role of safe zone, and conversely every (disfunctionally common) lobby area predictably becomes an arena. Safe zones provide a welcome respite and a chance to save progress - there's no saving during combat, or even if there's a faint whiff of enemy - yet as only the deranged would deem Mass Effect a linear game, I would have expected Bioware to take advantage of the immediate quality-of-life benefits a modern corridor can offer.

With all major travel-tube related gripes out of the way, it's time introduce those unfamiliar with the game to its premise. It's a lot like Spore's creature creator, in that you take into your hands a lump of un-loveable clay (that's the guy on the box art, by the way) and mould him into an irreplaceable urn of great unfurling depth, history, and insight, or even into a girl. Soon, your evolutionarily triumphant Adonis will be in space, dominating lesser species (if you chose to be a carnivore/Renegade) or helping them out, perhaps by dancing (as a herbivore/Paragon). I ended up as somewhat of an omnivore, and Mass Effect excels in that it allows you to be both a Paragon and a Renegade - there's no arbitrary dichotomy between good and evil to be found here - and you might even find yourself sympathising or disagreeing with your friend over what constitutes Mass Effect's 'baddies'.

An online friend and myself reached consensus on the issue of AI teammate pathfinding when Steve remarked, "I wanted to summarily execute them quite a lot". Your buddies will both get stuck on objects and on occasion they'll refuse to budge from an unobstructed spot, seemingly disillusioned by the realities of space war. Perhaps Wrex - the token Klingon-alike character - expected blood, guts, and the horror (the horror), rather than the clinical character of this resurrections all round future fracas. Frustratingly, friendly fire is disabled.

Frustration was not the only emotion Mass Effect evoked in me. Melancholic moments froze me - Wrex like - with dejection. I'll reveal a minor (easily-missed) experience to you, but the most heart-wrenching hinge on your own decisions and will act as great engineering works on the flow of Mass Effect's Mississipi. I found myself on a planet under siege, ack-ack wounding the sky as synthetic troops assailed barely entrenched colonists. The dead lay underfoot, so it was to my surprise that I noticed one fallen fellow's gaze tracking my movements. I approached him and at that moment he was extinguished. I didn't realise this immediately, I'd assumed he was placed there to set up a 'fetch me 7 pints of blood' mission, so I did a silly dance, circumnavigating his cooling corpse in an effort to see his neck spring into swivelly action once more. Then, the event I'd just witnessed sunk in. I moved on, my resolve to thwart the siege hardened. Conversely, I felt a pang of anger directed at Bioware when an opportunity to free indentured torture victims was stolen from me as a single jail cell was unopenable, dooming the aliens within - this is not acceptable in a game you're claiming to be superior to a console port, Bioware! And while I remain full of ire: there isn't enough of a visual impact as a result of player decisions - when I restore a colony's desperately-needed water supply, I want to see the colonists quenching their thirsts when I return to town, Bioware! BIOWARE!

Because we don't yet live in The Future, Mass Effect's facial animation and general graphics wondrousness remain only close-to-perfect. Though generally 'awesome' is both an applicable and mandatory description for many of the game's panoramas and bleepy-bloopy Star Trek Original Series deco interiors, facial animation can't quite escape the ugly Scottish ravine. Disturbingly, the transition between characters' facial animations is handled rather haphazardly, the result being what appears to be a cast of incredibly nervous people who suffer from anxious tics whenever you speak to them.

It's a shame that this is one of those games which refuses to cooperate with 'return to Windows' commands, because the music is just terrible - the tracks are short but unfortunately they repeat. I prematurely ended each of my visits to Normandy (an Earth Alliance frigate and one of Mass Effects' hub areas) because my cochlea couldn't cope with another plinky-plonky soundwave collision.

The game has been played, the plinks, plonks, bleeps and bloops have been tallied, and we have a verdict. Mass Effect isn't the groundbreaking game I'd hoped it would be - it remains a accomplished RPG with a terrible inventory and fantastic graphics. The graphics and the inventory cancel each other out, leaving gamers with a good RPG that almost any gamer will enjoy.

The Mux of the Issue

2008-06-12T14:24:00.003+01:00

I've muddled through making myself a Muxtape, maybe you'll make one too? I wonder what the Muxchief does with all those uploaded mp3s - perhaps he's the supreme overseer of the newly DMCA-enabled corporate colony of Canada. We'll know for sure when the lawyers take flight on subpeona wings and a hot air current rather than foresight. Muxtape's lovely, if a little slow, rather like me.

Squeeze Mass Effect Through Your Blocked Ports

2008-06-08T14:44:00.009+01:00

On Friday, Mass Effect was released for PC. This weekend, I've wailed at my monitor in anger, grief, and because I heard the sound of wailsong could have a calming effect. The source of my angst, besides the fact that there's never anything to eat in this house, was this response from EA regarding my activation woes - devoid of empathy or comprehension:

I wonder how Glenn supposed I was talking to him without an internet connection.

Refusing to accept defeatist Glenn's assessment of the situation, I had a poke around on the ever-wonderful internet and found a solution, which I'll now share with you.

A disclaimer: This solution will only work with legitimate copies of Mass Effect, so it's only a useful technique if you're having trouble activating the game because of overzealous port blocking at your university or army base.

We're going to create a proxy, which will bounce your vital bits all over the place - at some point they'll probably enter Sweden - eventually they'll end up activated and wiser for the experience, over at Mass Effect HQ. First thing's first - you'll need to go here and also here, so that you can download the latest versions of Your Freedom and Freecap. You might need to register Your Freedom, but it's free and easy. Next, configure your proxy settings - use port 8080 and ask your friend who knows the correct spelling of orc what you should put in the 'proxy address' box (sorry, I can't help you, it's unique to your location). For server connection options, have a gander at this:

For Freecap, use port 1080 and the default proxy which, for me, is set to 127.0.0.1, and then click File> New Application and find Mass Effect.exe in your 'binaries' folder in the game's installation directory - once this is added, right click the icon, click 'Run'. Well done! You have now earned the right to play the game you bought!

It's good to be back, Colin!

Not At All Busy

2008-06-08T14:11:00.003+01:00

It took a little longer than expected, but now life has finally got its act together!

Reticulating Splines: Act 2 will commence shortly, please check under your seats for the special brew and emergency eye wash - together, we'll get through this.

Really Busy

2007-10-01T17:04:00.000+01:00

Normal service will resume when life gets its act together.

Black and White and Seaman all over

2007-09-20T14:09:00.001+01:00

Review: Global Conflicts: Palestine

2007-09-15T14:15:00.000+01:00

Format: PC
Developer: Serious Games Interactive
Publisher: Serious Games Interactive

I liken my experience of Global Conflicts: Palestine to the average Palestinian's right to freedom of movement within the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza: it's fractured and unreliable, yet impossible to give up on. I digitally downloaded my copy of GC:P from the Serious Games website, expecting an experience that would be more 'serious' than 'game', but thinking the price of twenty Euros a meager one considering that I'd be throwing a few crumbs to a small political fish in the main stream. I was surprised to discover a game that is challenging in three ways: to fickle human preconceptions, to intellectual and emotional disengagement, and to the calm temperament of those who expect a game to be finished before it's put on sale.

Character selection took a broom and rattled it around the recesses of my mind, clearing out cobwebs of comprehension and my assumptions about what defines someone as 'Palestinian', 'Israeli', or indeed 'Impartial'. The player can be represented by either a chap who identifies himself as having a Palestinian heritage or as an Israeli lady. Both characters share in common that they've lived most of their lives in America, they're both established journalists in their mid-thirtees, and they each have a personal interest in returning to a perceived homeland in the Middle East. Don't fret, choice of character doesn't affect much - the player will be thrust into the employ of a balding, bespectacled editor-man either way - and I suspect Serious Games' intention for character choice was to engage the player's imagination rather than to significantly affect the gameplay. The aim of each mission is to collect noteworthy quotes by engaging in conversation with local residents. The player's purpose being the piecing together of an appropriate article for one of three newspapers which each cater to a divergent demographic.

Errands are the currency of friendship, and the desert's denizens won't feel confident enough to confide in the player until their journalist has run a marathon - delivering messages and gifts throughout the domain - and, back in the real world, the player has begun to contemplate the risks of repetitive strain injury after countless clicks, unaided by an autorun. Coaxing a juicy quote out of an Abrahimic esophagus won't be easy even once you've successfully established an American Express franchise in Jerusalem: you'll need to maintain a polite veneer over your mighty pen before directing it towards a pointed question. My experience of GC:P has taught me that, by commencing dialogue with a query about my subject's health or about the status of their family, I'd find myself facing a much easier task and a more malleable interviewee. GC:P's citizens are fickle folk, and they'll quickly void their opinion of you from one day to the next, so you'll need to persuade them to like you all over again if you happen to want their opinion for the next story you write.

GC:P is a game about perspective. The player, as a freelance journalist, must consider the culture, daily life, attitudes, and expectations of the people they'll be interacting with, both individually and as a collective readership for each of the newspapers. A quote that I've collected may have a high news value (reflected by an on-screen display, frustratingly present only after the quote-collection section of the game is over), but if it's been sourced from an Israeli settler claiming a right to land because of the Palestinians' ineptitude to grow or build on it, then the quote is unlikely to generate interest amongst the editors of Palestine Today. I began the game thinking that I'd write for the international press in an effort to maintain impartiality as I strolled boldly between two decisively partisan communities. In actuality, I stumbled upon Hard Mode. Serious Games seem keen to stress an attitude of 'With us or against us' and they show this with their character's aversion to the international press: framed to be both biased and unconcerned with the humanity of the conflict. Intentional or not, I developed an opinion that writing for an Israeli or Palestinian paper would lead to wider recognition for my stories because the conflict is so intensely immediate to the people who live in the occupied territories that they couldn't become apathetic in the way that we 'Others' have the privilege of being able to.

If you wander from the café to the market in GC:P's Jerusalem, you'll be gifted with a bunch of bugs for free. People crossing the street will, for comic effect, adhere themselves to seemingly sticky sides of passing cars, and then proceed to thrash violently until another zombie-like pedestrian bumps them free. A quick flick through your notebook will result in a stuttering effect on the (criminally limited) sound samples of city life. You'll find that important people (who you'll frequently find standing on the pavement, staring at the traffic) won't talk to you - "Sorry, I'm too busy right now" - if you've already talked to them once during the mission. And may your god bless you if you'd like to ring the phone and complete the final mission, because it was impossible for me. I've done a fair bit of forum browsing in an effort to find a solution to this game-ruining bug and found two sources that attest to there being a patch to fix the problem next week.

I've enjoyed playing Global Conflicts: Palestine, to the extent that I felt a pang of sorrow when the game abruptly ended on me without a proper conclusion. Yet, I can't recommend it to you unless you'd like to use the game as a teaching aid instead of for fun. There's a lot to be learned from the conversations you'll have with the well-developed characters of GC:P, and each mission begins with a helpful list of points to consider as you play. If Serious Games patch their creation to a level of reliable functionality then GC:P would be perfect for schools and I'm sure it would provide a wonderfully vivid teaching-aid for the classroom environment.

Playing Columbine

2007-09-15T07:33:00.001+01:00

Snake Seeker

2007-09-12T09:30:00.000+01:00

I had intended to write something a little more substantial than what you're soon going to regret reading. That was, until I was approached by a Greek friend and persuaded into proof-reading his 86 page computing dissertation, placing a rather downpour-like dampener on my aspirations to stimulate my readers both intellectually and spiritually. Honestly, this impromptu-essayship is awfully convenient: I enjoy the silly stories.

What more can I say? Click on the thing. Tell me what you think for a change.

It'll be like this only Capcom..ier

Splines Flames Lair

2007-09-10T13:30:00.000+01:00

I'm quite certain that Sony's mission won't be complete until a day in the life of a game reviewer goes like this:

Awaiting Instructions. Connecting to Sony ... ... ...
Connection Established.
Commencing Review.

Undue Sony-bashing? No. They've only gone and issued a Lair Reviewer's Guide, for flip's sake.

One Frustrated Consumer, To Go

2007-09-09T01:34:00.000+01:00

If I don't intend to buy a game, is it OK to pirate it? The God and/or EULA-fearing mind would deliver a firm, 'Certainly not, infidel' to a query of this kind, yet I'll persist for the sake of madness, heathens, and blog posts greater than one sentence in length. Let's lay a framework for what will surely earn us rigorous flagellation in the afterlife: my question specifically regards Medieval 2: Total War, which is an ace game and the receiver of hearty compliments across the known world when it came to review-time, yet in using Rome's engine and Medieval 1's source material, it's hardly pushing the boundaries of what The Creative Assembly can achieve. I'll concede that I've made a value-judgement: that Medieval 2's full-price is not worth the samey entertainment I'll receive in playing it. My logic is based on an assumption and could therefore be incorrect.

Through acts of digital piracy, we circumvent the monetary reward-giving that our economy relies upon to drive creativity. The Creative Assembly is thus aptly named because it consists of a group that have come to be united through their profession and the knowledge that their efforts in developing games will provide them with an income and livelihood, stability of existence and intellectual stimulation. I ask you: do we need a games industry for games innovation? A misnomer of a suggestion would be that mod teams excel at applying their skills for creativity, and at no cost to the end-user, framing their serious hobby in a loftier light than those of career-professionals. I say 'misnomer' because the modder's existence is reactive - the act of modification is applied to another group's product - and therefore the foundation of games modding lies upon the software-ceiling defined by a (not necessarily, but often) financially incentivized group.

Piracy is wrong, according to the publishers of games, because the act of creation requires resources (in terms of necessary hardware and software, talented people and their wages), and that these resources were applied under the knowledge that, as in a car factory, the final product would be of greater monetary worth than the combined expenditure. I think that there's something sadly remiss with the computer game industry of today. Whilst a game's demo and many reviews could be analogous to the 'test drive' of a new car - both serve to be testament to the quality of the product and an aid to the consumer's certainty that they'd be correct to make a purchase - cars tend to vary in quality depending on the price a customer is willing to pay, yet computer game prices remain static (according to their system) and only the age rating fluctuates. Game publishers encourage their developers to produce their games at regular and frequent intervals, knowing that they will sell regardless of quality. A game therefore requires itself to be on the shelf and ready for sale before it risks becoming a financial liability. It is thus wrong for publishers to claim that piracy stifles creativity because, I suggest, piracy is a reflection of a game's lack of innovation and, additionally, a game's quality is dictated by market forces long before a publisher could be aware of the harm piracy may do to their game's sales.

I'd like gaming to be placed back at the fingertips of the enthusiast. If energy and curiosity were the driving force behind game creation, and donations were the method of revenue being earned, then I'm sure we'd see a return to technically simple but terrifically original games being in the majority. I believe that the capitalist market-system produces little of worth (see the military-industrial complex), that it engages its consumers in a downward spiral of lowering expectations and rising prices.

So, back to my original question: If I don't intend to buy a game, is it OK to pirate it? I'm sure that it is not. The fact stands that Medieval 2: Total War was produced with economic venture in mind and that I'd be abusing my power as a net-savvy irate individual if I were to obtain a copy against the will of its developers. Instead of swallowing this grey goo that trails all over the face of modern gaming, thinking that we've achieved a sly victory because we've eaten a shallow meal for free, we should be producing our own artefacts of worth: sumptuous everlasting cascades that we can each banquet upon together, rather than queue for yet another McDonalds to be eaten hurriedly amongst greasy, slouched figures in an endless cycle of fast-food life. I, for one, will make a point to create alongside my consumption. In fact, I'll model my life upon the Kinder Egg :)

Obliterate Homes, Help the Homeless

2007-09-08T13:38:00.000+01:00

It's not often that e-philanthropy takes the form of swooping TIE-Fighters 'sploding up the place, so we should be grateful that SOE have gifted Star Wars: Galaxies' players with the opportunity to take wrathful revenge on the derelict housing that (assumedly) has blighted the past few years of their online existence, offering both maniacal satisfaction and the knowledge that a charitable donation will be made for each galactic-emigrant's home destroyed. A department of Sony's Online division is located in Austin (Texas) and so perhaps they've monkeysphered their way to choosing Austin Habitat for Humanity as the charity that will receive the proceeds that result from each of Star Wars Galaxies' ex-resident's living spaces becoming Jawa jewels.

I think that Sony have made the best of a bad situation. Clearly, a plethora of players no longer consider SWG their home, yet their homes still remain in virtual existence on the surface of one of SWG's many planets. SWG's new subscribers now find that living space is at a premium on Tatooine, and they're reasonably disgruntled that most of the existing sandy-coloured shacks lie abandoned and unclaimed. Now, considering SWG's relatively low player base (relative to you know what), server-expansion no longer presents itself as a viable option, making the deletion of accounts and destruction of long-abandoned virtual property a transient 'out with the old and in with the new' necessity. The fact that SOE chooses to contribute to charity (when they could simply edit the residences out of existence) is, to me, evidence of businesses' necessity to retain good public relations becoming a positive force for humanity.

The Sentiment is Shared

2007-09-08T10:25:00.000+01:00

I had to rejigger this post because of some copyright issue over at YouTube. Fortunately, Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw remains someone for whom I'd gladly donate ten pints of my blood ... and I'd wash out my own milk bottles so he could carry it home to use in case of emergency.

Review: Bioshock

2007-09-03T19:55:00.000+01:00

Format: PC
Developer: 2K/Irrational
Publisher: 2K

I'm awash with disappointment. Bioshock is not the exceptional game that I'd been told (and sincerely hoped) it would be. High production values and a no-doubt talented development team have combined to found an exhibit of the most paradoxically ocean-deep yet Serious Sam-shallow soggy mush of storytelling and saline gaming. I summon Sam because Bioshock all too often betrays its simple-shooter essence. The truth is, despite its sprawling cityscape, voice-recorded backstory, and literary-inspiration, Bioshock herds the player along a pre-defined path in a manner akin to a headless kamikaze. Once the basic rules have been defined (hack the cameras, electrify the water, exploit the Daddies), Bioshock is a tiresome and repetitive trawl, although it is trawl through some eye-searing and ear-arousing locales.

Ken Levine - Bioshock's project director -once worked as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures. I find Mr. Levine fascinating because he opines that a player must retain freedom of control throughout the telling of a game's story, yet I think that Bioshock has failed to bring this premise to fruition. Rapture is introduced through a torrent of set-pieces that revolve like a whirlpool around the player. I think that the first fifteen minutes of Bioshock may be one of choreographed-gaming's greatest achievements. Then, like a hurricane, Bioshock's energy dissipates upon dry land, and tiresome convention sets in. Bioshock's story is largely told through the discovery of superbly voice-acted tape recordings that are scattered like jetsam throughout the city. The recordings serve to permeate ripples from Rapture's past, describing one man's impractical ideology and the dystopian implications of remaining doubtless when reality's tide erodes a ruler's fantasy. One could argue that this system gifts the player with a freedom to continue their game whilst revelling in Rapture's past, yet I felt that the recordings necessitated my standing still in order to avoid triggering combat, or any other such noisy distraction, until the playback ceased. There are a few pipette-drops of genius dispersed within this inverted fish-tank of disembodied storytelling - Brechtian acknowledgments of gaming's similarity with theatre - but they remain sadly infrequent tips to an iceberg that remains largely submerged below the high tide defined by Deus Ex.

Almost every room in Rapture contains a few bad guys and represents an equipment-expending battle. I'm the kind of person who likes to thoroughly explore the games I play, so I felt unduly punished when I found that areas I'd previously cleared of enemies had become re-populated with another happy-go-lucky set of spritely psychopaths. An internal conflict emerged: should I continue to explore this level and risk the loss of my best ammunition or should I continue to the next in the hope that I'll get to appreciate the city's intricacies without suffering through the wasteful chore of combat? There was a solution: play the game like an online shooter and treat the ability to re-spawn upon death as advantageous excuse to skimp on using med-kits. By half way through Bioshock, I'd even grown accustomed to teasing the baddies with telekenetically-thrown scraps of rubbish to the face so that I could be fatally flung as a shortcut to the nearest re-spawn point. When I'd completed the game, I felt as though I'd failed to fully understand Bioshock, yet I'd loathe to live another few hours playing it.

The bloody ballet of Bioshock's combat is renditioned through use of plasmids (think Jedi force powers) and conventional weaponry. Together they fuse to become complimentary methods of mass maiming. An early example of the plasmid and weapon's symbiosis comes in the form of Atlas' 'one-two punch': the sadist's catatonic coupling of the lighting plasmid's stunning shock and the wrench for good old fashioned bludgeoning. I fumbled around in the settings to find the button I should press to lean - to no avail - there isn't one! Merely entering a room is usually enough to alert all of its inhabitants to your presence, signaling the development team's departure from common sense and a welcome to Rapture. Later in the game, two separate tonics (subtle plasmids) negate this problem, imbuing the player with silent footsteps and Predator-style camouflage. Oddly, the player's enemies seem to have their own set of poor-man's plasmids (and, in some cases, no special powers at all) even though their character as 'splicers' hinges on their overuse of super-human augmentation.

If the player wants to save themselves a bit of dosh (and blood), they'll have to learn to plumb. That's because a vital component of Bioshock comes in the form of tubes, which need to be neatly arranged to form a channel so that liquid may flow from one point to another. You see, the organisation of pipes acts as a 'fun' metaphor that represents the hacking of equipment such as turrets and vending machines. I'd previously had a wholly unrealistic and romanticised opinion about the excitement of hacking, but after playing Bioshock I realise that the life of a hacker is simple and brimming with mild stimulations. Hackers are no risk to the US government because their role can be simply outlined using the 'series of tubes' language that senators are able to understand.

Without spoiling anything, I can say that I'd expect to be granted a degree of freedom after a major event that takes place during Bioshock. Perhaps the player's avatar has a chain tattooed on his wrists for a reason: to signify total adherence to each order he will be given during the game. Bioshock's publishers framed their game as an intellectual stimulation, so it's sadly ironic that the only choices to face the player regard violence and occasionally the choice to refrain from killing someone.

Perhaps I've been too harsh on Bioshock. Perhaps it deserves the uproar that it has provoked through its commercial and critical success. I remain firmly unimpressed. I expected so much more. If you've yet to play Bioshock then I recommend you think twice before you make a purchase.

The Value of Games

2007-08-30T16:49:00.000+01:00

Ian Bogost is a sage amongst milder herbs. According to Bogost (and contrary to Splines' previous reports), we're all a little to blame for the failure of the original Manhunt 2, Carmageddon, Fahrenheit, and every other game deemed too 'adult' for retail acceptability. Bogost, who is the founder of Persuasive Games, conceives a need to critically assess the ramifications of the label 'Adults Only' (AO): the decisively fatalistic rating which the US' ESRB deemed appropriate for Manhunt 2 last June.

Reading this statement, I think that Bogost is outlining a failure of duty (and the existence of a duty!) on the behalf of those that produce, distribute, and enable the playing of games:

"A number of commenters… are calling for… an AO version for PC sold outside the traditional videogame retail channels… I suspect such a move is financially unimaginable in contemporary videogames […] But game devs and publishers are going to have to start making moves like this if they also want to continue making calls for the protection of games as speech. Who will take this argument seriously if game creators are so willing to compromise their intentions?"

To use a civil rights analogy (why not): I think that we as gamers should consider the example of Dr. King, who successfully displayed that a valid and effective strategy to bring an end to discrimination is to avoid an adversarial mentality and instead to persuade those who would discriminate (against games as a worthy medium) that we should be recognized as members of the community with a valuable contribution to make.

We can achieve the respect of doubters in a number of ways. We as gamers can take it as our duty to show our favorite games to our friends, relatives, and people who would really prefer we didn't. We can tell people why we love games, how the media tends to report only on the negative aspects of gaming, and that 'Adults Only' should not be demonized because a lot of gamers are just that: adults. We can praise the efforts of the many developers that strive to exceed expectations and to produce something truly exceptional. We can reject the studio that fails to defend its creation when it comes under criticism for being 'too extreme'. Games are a creative vision. Developers: for you to submit to outside interference is like poking yourself in the eye, suddenly that vision becomes blurry and indistinct.

Decades of Decadence, Decimated?

2007-08-27T20:55:00.000+01:00

The United Kingdom plays venue to past glory and modern mediocrity. This statement could never resound with greater poignancy than with respect to the UK's history of games development. This sceptered isle once hosted a plethora of innovators and instigators: pioneers that led the world's first virtual revolution. Today, talented British developers leave their native shores in multiples of 56, heading for a warmer reception within cultures that view gaming as a valid contributor rather than incidental childs'-play.

Bearing our temperamentally transitional history in mind, I'm mindfully skeptical yet tinted with a pang of glee when a prominent Conservative MP announces an ambition towards, "Tax breaks for the games industry similar to those experienced by the film industry".

I'll write more on this issue should the ambition become a promise. Until then, I'll be remaining cautiously optimistic.

No Tricks or Treats, Only Manhunt 2

2007-08-25T01:57:00.000+01:00

Hi. Just a quickie to update you with news that Manhunt 2 has undergone an ordeal as Rockstar's psychotic staffers hurriedly applied the surgical blade to modify their game's body in time for a Halloween release date. No anesthetic was used due to the game already being knocked out by a severe blow to the freedoms of game developers when the BBFC refused to certify the game (in its original form) earlier this year.

In other noteworthy news, I have Bioshock, and it's good. Unfortunately I have to go to some stupid partnering of husband and wife in legal matrimony this weekend, guaranteeing the whole forty-eight hours to be a total wash-out. A few frustrating rotations of my clock's big daddy hand occurred before Securom replied to my e-mail and kindly allowed me to manually activate the game I'd paid for.

Although I would never advocate piracy, I think this form of mockery is objectively quite justified:

Massive Damage

2007-08-23T16:41:00.000+01:00

The ever clever Gamasutra today begins a new feature - Game Design Essentials: 20 Difficult Games - providing informed insight into the 'skill-test' philosophy of early video games (as opposed to the modern focus on narrative and thus the requirement that players reach the 'end' of the game). John Harris, the article's author, shoots my weak-spot:

"[D]ifficulty in a video game must be handled carefully. Nothing attracts the ire of those fickle game bloggers quite like them getting their asses handed to them by a game."

I'll concede this is fair criticism, especially regarding this rambling rejection of the English language. I'll contemplate Harris' sentiment and ideally become a better writer because of it.

Frau Chancellor, Tear Down This Wall!

2007-08-22T21:35:00.000+01:00

Tonight, as conference-goers settle into their hotel rooms in Leipzig, news filters through the binary-vine that Crytek's Avni Yerli cannot envision a future for his development team in Germany should the state enact proposed legislation against violent games. A tougher law is needed, according to the German government, because of the (disputed) risk that the playing of violent games may lead increased aggressiveness in a gamer's behaviour.

I have sympathy for the German people. I think the state is acting out of concern for the individuals under its charge, yet I fear it may have 'set up the bomb' on this one: somebody's going to get hurt before the round is over, no matter where the truth lies in the video games violence debate. If the legislation does not come to fruition, the government will disappoint the 59% of German people who feel that a ban on violent gaming is appropriate (see 'proposed legislation', above). Yet, if a ban is enacted, the economy is guaranteed to suffer. The existence of Crytek and the Leipzig conference within Germany provides onlookers with strong evidence that the German people value gaming in their lives and with their wallets.

I think that I've yet to reach the core of the issue: should the state halt their proposal at draft, this will happen because of coercion. The German people are in majority consensus that violent games are bad for society, so a decision to halt legislation would be a demonstration of the state putting economy above welfare in its priorities. My ideal solution would be for everyone involved to have a stein of bier and an academically-supported chit-chat which would (of course) result in all the skeptics agreeing that they were wrong and that Manhunt 2 and all its companions should become part of the school syllabus. Failing that, I'd simply like the German state to agree that, due to insufficient evidence either way, video games are not a risk to peoples' sanity and should therefore not be restricted any further. The ratings system is, after all, a restriction, and it should be tailored to meet the opinions and sensibilities of the people.