"Game developer Andrew Doull recently asked readers of his blog whether players of his upcoming game should be able to get enemies to surrender"-Kotaku.com. It's a concept not completely new to games but it seldom works. If the game gave the player the option to choose for example a surrendering enemy I would say 9 out of 10 times they'll still kill them. Why not, with games today pushing higher and higher body counts the environment for morality seems like a mute point. If it moves, kill it. that's the state games are in right now and no one really is crying for choice in their FPS murder romps. And if there was such an implementation of choice to let one live in a fire fight it begs the question what's to stop them( the NPC) from picking up the gun once you turn your back? As for right now this AI addition has a hard uphill battle to seep into games because gamers have nothing to attach emotion to. Red Steel tried to reward the player more for letting defeated foes live but at the end of a hard fight with no emotional connection to whom your fighting why not just finish the foe because the only reason I can see letting one live would be for the reward mechanic but its still shallow at best, nothing is done in the game to encourage an honorable fight when they are constantly yelling you suck and are a "gaijin" (a Japanese slur towards westerners) So Kotaku brings up the discussion to get both sides of the argument but as for what I think Games and the players of today have been too accustomed to if it moves shoot it and when you give no incentive or reason to spare someone, why do it? So ask you the reader what's do you think? Would you welcome this addition or fail to see the point? Add your comments.
Adding Moral Choices to games...do they really matter?
What games can teach us...nothing?
It's sad but true over the past I don't know 20 or so years I have been a user of games ( sounds like a drug addiction and its not far from it) at first they were just that fun and it was something to fill time as a child growing up as were action figures and playing outside. They are things to help you develop as a person and learn values to then take those "skills" and apply them to your life as an adult. As a kid I loved gaming but it came with limits such as play time and sharing. These simple rules in my opinion were the only things that kept me from getting addicted but sadly many of us are now way beyond that point as it has encroached on every facet of our lives to the point we don't even have real goals anymore. A great example would be from my time working a eb/gamestop for about 3 years. I was in college to learn game design to really put my passion to work but i slowly lost that feeling and my goals were dumbed down. It became this job sucks but (enter title here) is coming out I can't wait it's going to be so much fun. Gaming really is an addiction and those who are under it's influence need to come to terms with the fact that no matter how much fun it is and how cool you feel doing it your real life is suffering. I used to be upset with my brother over how could he not care about such and such a game when it was so close to release or the concept of the game sounded so cool but he would act as if it didn't matter to him and that's not to say he didn't like it , he did but it wasn't the end of the world for him like it is for most of us. I am jealous of that now I am starting to see that games are not everything and reflecting how "hooked" and committed as a user I was to not even see what a hold it had on me. I once made a joke that if my history class was about games I would get an "A" and that was proven years later when I began college to study how to make them but I now think about how stupid I must be to be proud that I can ace a game test about Nintendo's history but struggle over the western advances in the world markets in a business class which is a topic that relate to the real world and truth be told is far more valuable to know then what Mario's fist name was (jump man). I feel like I was brainwashed and allowed it to happen. For a few months now I have been living in an area that isn't controlled by games, games here are like a second thought still and for me that was a hard reality to get used to at first. "Your telling me I can't get the newest online xbox 360 game or the cool new DS game that uses all these features" That was gone for me and for a long time I was just like a drug addict doing anything I could to fill the hole. Download PC games on torrent sites watch game news more then real news and begin to dwell completely on trying to only solve one problem...how to get what I want where I am. Just listen to this blog it sound insane. I sound insane. So much time with only goal which all gamers share to experience the next big ride or high if you will. To be apart of it but what does it give back? Now to the meat of this blog. If your a gamer in any respect reading this then pay cation to my words this far because if your not in as deep as me its still possible and its highly destructive to every part of your life. Games as a medium so far have been attempting three things:
1. Emergent play, by this I mean creating stories and worlds that draw you in just like any movie or book. By drawing you in you can let your self go and be entertain for hours coming away from it excited to what's next or what just happened and when this happened you need more to feel that way again just like any-other addictive substance.
2. Attach loyalties, this product placement is proven with any top ten game list where the Super Mario Brothers always tend to find a way to the top three spots and that's because for many they were your first "joint" of games and so that game forever becomes something you will pay attention to even if it never lives up to your expectations you fight with yourself to stack it up with your childhood to that first Mario hit you took and compare them, you are using even when you didn't want to.
3. Taking your money, I'm sorry but this is a business and that's the thing that makes the world go round. they get you on a product sometimes under false pretenses, such as the DS isn't just a game system it can train your brain, which leads to once you have "trained" all you can train you ask "what else does this thing do?" *looks at a wall of games* and then WHAM GOTCHA! You have now went from a moderate user to a casual user and it only "levels-up" from there until your right where the rest of us are. Game don't DO anything for our lives. They are a smoke screen most of the time for us a world to hide in away from this real one. I used to joke about such thought but it's so more true now then before.
Overall games are entertainment and the trick is to not let them control you as much as you control them. Games are not more important then setting life goals games should never be a goal in your life trust me if you looked at the worlds most successful people I would like you to ask yourself if they are hardcore gamers? I would argue probability not even close and if they did play it would be minimal at best. I will leave you with one more quote I thought I was living by when it came to games but ended up being a huge hippocrate to:
"In order to be a great game designer you need to get out in the world and experience any and everything you can you don't create worlds in a basement" Shigeru Miyamoto
Now what If you take two addictive substances and use the in the same instance, such as smoking and playing games. I ran a test on myself recently on the ratio to cigarettes i smoking while engaging in a game over spending a night watching TV. During this time i would allow myself to smoke any time I felt like it for whatever justifiable reason I felt to smoke whilst playing a game "left 4 dead/Battlefield 1943" or watching Television "The Daily Show/The X-files". Let's look at the results. While playing game i tended to reward myself for good playthroughs or kills by smoking like palvios dog, then while watching TV i tended to only smoke when I became board of the show or someone in the show began to smoke making me a sheep big tobacco as a brainwashed drone. When I stopped doing both activities with smoking the effects became more noticeable while gaming. I would kill another play and become excited and begin to look around the room for cigarettes and then the game become more of a annoyance because i couldn't smoke and became aggravated and short tempered. Now people should be able to control their emotion at least behavior with games and many argue both sides but it is true if your easily aggravated in life games can amplify there emotion if you let them.
January 7, 2010
Left 4 Dead* now for NES
In the new year instead of high tech 3-d shooters hogging the market the ambitious fellas over at Pixel Force have worked long and hard to take your favorite 3-d game(s) and return it to a more simple time when it was just you and a buddy and 8-bit goodness. That's right you heard me correctly Valves extremely popular Co-op zombie survival game has been sent back to 1980 with a fresh coat of sprites and love just so we can pretend what it would have been like had this title existed in the golden age of gaming! the screens are great just as fan art but to play the game in action is a great way to kick off 010!
(Why are girls always represented with pink must have been an 80's thing)
Itching to play, that's what I like to hear now head over to the link and start playing like your fourteen all over again! Now with 100% less little kids on live screaming into your headphones, good deal! Download and enjoy Pixel Forces hard work! Look up Eric Ruth as well.
(Bill goes it alone in No Mercy...where's his cigarette its the 1980's again...kids loved to smoke as did many children's characters!)
January 6, 2010
*Breaking News EA confirms NBA JAM for Wii
The Wii exclusive was reported earlier on IGN.com. EA games will be updating (not porting)the basketball series made most popular on the SNES and Sega Genesis. Fans have been hoping for a new title in the series or just a port on the Virtual Console ever since third parties began to show more support for the Wii's VC store. As for details regarding whether or not this will be a Wiiware game or a full retail deal has yet to be confirmed for now gamers can rest easy knowing they can once again hear the classic " Oh my god, He's on fire!!" and "all the way from downtown" and you can't forget "razzle dazzzle!" Expect full details in the coming month.
Personal note* I wonder if you can play as Obama in this one? (to the left Clinton plays for the bullets)
