Video Game Theater Will Make You Brick

Though the recent court battles over the protected nature of video games as a conduit for free speech are over, the much longer, and perhaps more important argument over their value as art continues. Games like Heavy Rain are pushing the boundaries of interactive storytelling. Another telling measurement of games’ artistic merit is what kind of creativity they inspire. 

Next month, the Brick Theater in Brooklyn will be running their third annual Game Play festival, consisting of various performance arts inspired by and occasionally performed using our favorite games.  Last year’s festival caught the attention of the New York Times.  In an article describing performances including Mortal Kombat controlled using a modified electric guitar and scenes from several classic plays performed with World of Warcraft avatars, Seth Schiesel says, “the portrayal of the brothers Luigi and Mario as stoners whacked out on psychedelic mushrooms in the middle of the desert as they deal with visions of huge turtles and man-eating plants is hilarious.”

Other beloved characters were interpreted for a modern audience, including Donkey Kong, Mario, and Pac-Man.  You can find this year’s lineup at the Brick Theater’s website.

Game Over for Game Critics

Today, the Supreme Court has laid out what is hopefully the final word on the sale of violent video games.  The case in question dealt with California’s recently passed law which made illegal the sale of violent video games to minors.  The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that video games receive the same First Amendment protection as books, movies and music.  The Justices’ ruling makes California’s new law unconstitutional and, with any luck, holds enough weight to put bury this tired issue somewhere underground with all those unused E.T. Atari cartridges.

Reddit Fights EA on Battlefield

DLC gouging has created an angry stir among Battlefield players as well as quite a bit of undeserved publicity for publisher EA.  Members of the popular news site Reddit.com quickly organized a campaign against the latest DLC insult shortly after EA announced that pre-ordered copies of Battlefield 3 would come with extra maps, weapons, and ammunition to be made available as downloadable content after the game’s release.  The problem?  As we see it, there are two.

First, the extra weapons and ammunition that come with the pre-order version of Battlefield 3 will not be available to buy or download in any form even after the game’s release.  Much of the internet outrage stems from the fact that this disparity in weapon selection will give an unfair advantage to those who pre-order.  Essentially, it will be possible to pay for an upper hand over other gamers.  This assumes the weapons are somehow better than other, widely available firearms.  At the very least, those who pre-order will receive a somewhat more varied experience.

Second, and more importantly, the defense for DLC has long been that it allowed game creators to extend the life of their games, adding new experiences in the form of maps, characters and items long after the disc or download’s initial purchase.  In practice, this makes sense.  Years ago, a fully fleshed-out game might not have fit an extra twelve maps or second campaign on the initial CDs, hence the hefty expansion packs which were often so laden with additional content that they felt almost like sequels.  Blizzard’s Starcraft and Diablo expansions are excellent examples of this older model.

Recently, however, companies have begun moving toward a trend of releasing mini-updates: two characters here, three maps there, a new mode or item for four, five, ten or fifteen dollars.  These bite-sized DLC offerings might add several hours of time to the life of your favorite game depending on the quality of the content.  Buying three or four of these updates can quickly add up to more than the cost of an old-school-style expansion or even more than what a gamer had paid for the original game.  

Game companies have every right to chop up this service into less impressive, more profitable pieces.  No one has to like it, and as long as players are willing to buy the DLC, they don’t have much room to complain.  However, EA appears to have completed a set of weapons and ammunition for its game, which could easily be released with the final product, and is instead choosing to ransom the content in exchange for money up front, before the game is released or even widely reviewed.  It’s a terribly short-sighted move, especially in light of its main competitor Modern Warfare 3’s impending release.  

Redditors are calling for a boycott of the game in response to the announcement.  A few sites on the net have gotten wind of the campaign, including PC gaming site Rock, Paper Shotgun.  Fans with longer memories will remember a similar scandal surrounding EA’s release of Battlefield: Bad Company, which ultimately resulted in the publisher backing down and cancelling its pre-order content shenanigans and wrinkles the nose of many Digital Overload employees.  We don’t like the smell of publicity stunts.

E3: Nintendo and Sony Systems

E3 is over.  While many have suggested that other conventions and media outlets have stolen much of E3’s thunder, the annual gathering of industry giants reconfirmed its relevance this year when Sony and Nintendo chose the venue to announce their next-generation products.

No, there hasn’t been any talk of a Playstation 4, though tension over the recent string of infiltrations into the Playstation Network has almost certainly transformed this year’s spectators into a more hostile audience.  Instead, Sony unveiled their Vita handheld system.  The Vita appears to be a PSP with a different name and although it boasts a slew of impressive features, generally those kinds of bells and whistles prove to be marketing techniques that receive token attention at best after a product’s release.  That isn’t to say that a PSP2 isn’t an intriguing offering as long as Sony actually releases a library of respectable games for it.

Nintendo owned the spotlight, unveiling the Wii U, the successor to the disappointingly mild Wii.  Motion controllers are back, along with a slew of the nifty-sounding features that induce the same skepticism detailed above.  The biggest changes to the new system include apparently native 1080p HD output, and a new incredibly uncomfortable looking controller (nothing new for Nintendo) with a touchscreen in its center.  The touchscreen itself adds an element of possibility to gameplay that we could talk about in excited tones like every news outlet on the web, if we weren’t still aware of the Nintendo DS released years ago.

That being said, the DS was probably one of the best systems, handheld or otherwise, ever released, and this extra screen functionality adds a proven (not revolutionary) dimension to the system which virtually all new titles will be forced to make use of or face heavy criticism.  Is a console sequel to The World Ends With You out of reach?  If you’re up to date with Squenix news, you’ll know that their immediate future will be all about grinding out ‘traditional games’, but as soon as they recover from this self-inflicted wedgie, they and every other developer will likely be scrambling to make creative use of the dual-screen tech.

Raptr Offers Relevant News at a Price

According to Raptr.com, over eight and a half million gamers have started using the site’s social network to keep track of games, connect with friends, and receive a news feed tailored specifically to their interests.  A recent article in the New York Times says while Raptr my act as a platform for interaction and media, the company’s true focus is on collecting data about gamers and the games they play.

On the surface, this seems like an incredible deal for Raptr—convince a few million gamers to install your software, track what they play, and sell the arcane and highly sought after marketing data at a premium.  This was how I initially envisioned the project and why I am still somewhat dumbfounded that such a vast number of gamers agreed to install the tracking data at all.  With a host of websites like Kotaku, IGN, and 1Up already plugged into the industry and offering up the latest gaming news and the stigma of installing software that admits it’s going to spy on you, I can’t understand the initial motivation for users to try Raptr.

Quite a few gamers have begun using the service however, and according to the company’s representatives, having access to that data allows them to offer more relevant news.  Knowing that a player spends thirty-two hours a week playing Call of Duty and has never once logged into an EA Sports game or Farmville account allows Raptr to pipe all the latest First Person Shooter gossip his or her way, while the remaining stories are directed to users more active in those genres.  More impressively, Raptr can tell by the number of hours a player has spent in World of Warcraft to determine if they are new and more likely to make use of new-user tips, or a desktop veteran only interested in rumors about the next expansion.

If nothing else, Raptr seems poised to cut down the number of clicks necessary to skip through the spam on your favorite websites before you get to a story you might actually read.  Try it if you’re really fed up with your news feed or if you haven’t already found a home in one of the many gamer communities online.  Considering that you’re giving up your privacy and stocking their servers with a sparkling hoard of marketing info and statistics, it might not be worth it to demand top-notch service, instant information, and articles a few cuts above what you’ll find on more traditional sites.

Will the PSN Drama Affect Next-Gen Consoles?

Dominating the news this week is Sony’s Playstation Network and the recent breech in its security that gave a single hacker access to the personal information of 77 million gamers worldwide.  The first class action lawsuit has been filed against Sony by Kristopher Johns, who complains that Sony withheld information of the leak for too long before giving alerting victims so that they could take necessary steps to avoid identity theft on the internet.  

Speculation ran rampant among the internet community until this week when Sony announced that while its table of credit card information could have been accessed, the data was encrypted.  Additionally, no customers’ three-digit security codes were stored on the breeched network.  Some say that the three-digit codes are outdated technology, though, and that Sony’s reassurances don’t represent any real source of relief for the affected gamers.  In fact, Sony may be liable to provide a year of identity-fraud insurance to every affected customer.

This bad press comes at an unfortunate time for the electronics and entertainment powerhouse as the time for companies to reveal their next-generation consoles draws near.  Nintendo has already announced plans to release the Wii’s successor sometime in the next year.  Microsoft has admitted to having a next-generation console in the works, although details about this new project have not been forthcoming.  Of course, any news released about the Playstation 4 in the near future will be overshadowed by the current catastrophe.

Sony will have a lot of explaining to do, but considering the numerous intrusions and exploits that have caused havoc in Microsoft’s Xbox community in years past, Playstation fans can hold out hope that this disaster will fade beyond memory in much the same way.  Certainly, this forced time away from the Playstation Network has been an excellent reminder to many how heavily they relied upon the free service.  Less pleased fans will complain for weeks to come, but remember: you get what you pay for.

Minecraft Set Example for Indie Developers

Minecraft creator Markus Persson proves that indie games, or at least their creators, can achieve financial success. Persson gave an interview to Bloomberg Businessweek earlier this month, in which it was reported that the developer recently completed one of the most ambitious goals on his life’s To-Do List: become a millionaire.   

How much the 7,000 daily sales of $21 Minecraft copies contributes to Persson’s newfound moneybags is a matter for speculation, but one revelation in the interview makes it clear that Persson is quickly becoming wise to the game’s commercial potential: Later this year, Persson’s company, Mojang, plans to create and release versions of the game for iPads, iPhones and Android phones.

Time will tell if this cash injection will carry with it the microscopic beginnings of greed that seem to infect many game companies as they grow beyond their first, humble communities.  Still, Mojang’s seven employees are currently splitting their time between Minecraft support and a new title, Scrolls, a cross between the classic board game Risk and Wizards of the Coast’s shockingly popular Magic the Gathering.  If Persson reinvests the financial and popular success gathered by Minecraft into an equally appealing game, we could be witnessing the first steps of a growing videogame giant. 

Still, not everyone has yet had their free time devoured by Persson’s original pride and joy. Those unfamiliar with Minecraft are best advised to check the site for themselves, but a brief synopsis of the game is commonly, “Legos, with zombies.” Reminiscent of games like the Dark Cloud series, Minecraft requires players to mine or otherwise acquire materials, then build shelters out of them in which they can survive the nightly monster attacks.  

After meeting their initial needs for survival, however, many players have gone on to create objects, buildings, sculptures, and monuments of all kinds.  One resourceful devotee even created a microprocessor out of materials inside the game.  With the flip of a few switches the processor can solve simple equations.

Much like Playstation’s Little Big Planet, Minecraft both fosters and relies upon this kind of creative play to provide a unique, open diversion.  Sharing achievements also brings a social element to the game as players show off ideas and inventions built one brick at a time.  If constructing something like the castle below lures your curiosity, Minecraft may be the game for you.