A Little Help

This is a bit unprofessional for a blog and if the title didn't tip you off, I'm about to ask anyone reading for a favor. Next semester I'm only taking three classes and I need to do more actual work in the legal field. Copyrights, licensing, trademarks and IP law in general is the area I'm interested in. The problem is that I don't really live in a good town for it. I did an externship with the R&D department of the largest science institute in my state but I lack the science background for them to justify hiring me. I'm also more interested in work going on through download portals and other internet services.

It's not a problem if the website or business can't pay me. So long as the business or person is willing to actually put me to work a reasonable amount (passing the BAR takes top priority) then I don't mind. I need work experience. Any work I could do would have to be over the internet, but checking contracts and fact-checking claims are all things I can easily do from here. I cannot perform unlicensed legal work but so long as there is a lawyer supervising or at least some kind of structured system in place it won't be a problem. If you know anyone and have even the slightest inclination to put in the good word, please drop me a line about who might be interested.

I know this is a bit awkward. I'm looking at a pile of rejection letters from what was already a small field in this city and have basically been cold e-mailing every online service and website I can think of. I figured I might as well put my personal blog to work as well. I don't have much time left in school and I really don't want to fall on my face when I graduate. Thank you for any help.

The Modern FPS

Running around a bit, got to study for a state pre-exam that must be passed before I can take the BAR. Don't ever go to law school, they save the best parts of the scam for last.

I jabbered about a trend in the industry I was noticing for Brainy Gamer. Basically, 2 decent games whose only problem was being linear corridor shooters got panned by metacritic and some gamers used to more modern sentiments. A lot of this is visuals and controls, the two games I cite are Dementium and The Conduit, but it's curious because a lot of gamers enjoy old fashioned graphics and designs. Technically, both games are really impressive simply because of the amount of juice they get out of their systems. I mean, look at the trailer for Dementium 2, that's a DS making those images. At 60 frames per second.

The reason for this seemed to be something that Rob Zacny recently commented on about COD 4. People are just sorta tired of having their hands held and having to crawl through a unicursal maze in these games. Once you enjoy a game like Far Cry 2 or S.T.A.L.K.E.R., it's really hard to go back to some designer making you play through a level exactly how they want.

It seemed a bit misguided to expand this to games entirely, people still enjoy linear games and that includes me. I just thought it would be appropriate to start really pushing towards a distinction between one being old-fashioned and one being the new paradigm. Games like Uncharted 2, from what I've played, seem to be slowly melding the two by making puzzles and combat sequences with numerous options. I used a lot of Steve Gaynor's ideas to expand all that out.

Makes you wonder what a post-modern FPS would play like.

Our House Party!

Been a long week and all signs indicate the next week is going to be worse, so I forgot this went up the other day.

The notion of a video game being a commercial is one of those things that you'd expect to see more of. Product placement in MGS4 or that creepy Burger King game aren't really the most effective examples because it's just a content job. I mean more on the scale of 1980's commercials where you watched GI Joe or The Smurfs and then the toy commercials broke things up. For a game, a product that you use heavily in the game would have a counter-part in reality that you could buy. Avatar clothing, cars, watches, etc.

That's mostly just me babbling though. Our House Party! is a Home Depot commercial that has you visit the store for stuff you don't really need in the game. While I'm not fond of someone selling me something while I play, it's hard to not notice they aren't really doing it right here.

It's otherwise a mediocre board game / mini-game collection.

Cybertext

It's funny, it has been a winding road through all of these different books. I started with a book on engineering design principles, then moved on to the effects of those ideas in media via unit operations. A closer look at the nature of visual representations of those systems was followed by an exploration of how much those visuals need to hide about the system and what they should let us see. Then a comparison between two books about what effect, if any, these systems can have on a person. Next, a discourse on how the unit operations are the foundation and the rest is stacked on.

I have read a lot of f***ing books about video games this year.

It's interesting to me the surprising variety of interests that you find digging around this field. I pointed out a few posts back that video games are very handy for talking about metaphysics because you've got millions of people engaging with stuff that isn't real. Sitting and jabbering about how we don't really know what courage or virtue is can be a difficult dialog because most people are content with "I know it when I see it." Asking someone why they give a damn about their score in a video game though...now that will get them talking. It's equally surprising that the principles of engineering connect to all this because designing something that isn't real is arguably tougher than designing something that you can hold in your hand. And how do we represent all of this? What, precisely, is the best way to show someone leveling up? How do we design that so that it feels more real? Is the plot what gets people to connect or is it the design? Can it be both?

For all these damn books, I've got more questions now than when I started out.

Espen J. Aarseth's book Cybertext is an argument for finding a new method for discussing these systems that isn't confined to just the plot or just the design. Spinning terms like 'ergodics' and arguing that some kinds of books are literally explored instead of just read, it is stunning to read something like this knowing it was written over a decade ago. What did he have to work with? Text adventures? A few platformers? Much of it has aged, but most of it we're still arguing about even today.

You may as well check out one of the biggest milestones in this debate.

Women's Murder Club: Games of Passion

As the review season launches into full gear, I always find myself opting to play the stranger titles for review. There's a lot of reasons for this, I'm more likely to get the game than an AAA title everyone on staff wants, but I also like to push my boundaries as a gamer. We all have our genres that we prefer. I like a good FPS (though I'm taking a break from them), I'll always make time for an RPG, and adventure games are always good for a dose of my childhood. I also don't feel like dealing with a wave of people brainwashed by hype when I tell them a game is just another AAA no-risk game that isn't worth 60 bucks.

The biggest reason though, particularly when dealing with something I know is going to be shovelware, is to play a crappy game. Almost all reviewers and critics that I read suffer from a quality bias. If all you do is play highly polished, sophisticated AAA games or acclaimed indie titles then you're only playing the cream of the crop. This leads to a lot of nitpicking. Complaints that the controls "could be smoother" or "the story is a bit dull" are all a bit grating because these are highly personal, impossible to perfect attributes.

Basic achievements like the game working, having a coherent story, and me not wanting to quit after ten minutes of play are all things that are difficult to put into words. They can only be understood when the critic has played something that induces these emotions and you're often not going to find it in a high-budget game. You might find something that doesn't induce mountains of joy, but it's the basics you still need to praise in those sorts of titles.

Sometimes to be a better critic you need to really familiarize yourself with what a bad game actually looks and plays like.

ZA Critrique: Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor

A very kind favor to the BPM has made it so I have access to an I-pod Touch. It was stipulated that in exchange I start giving some air time to the games of my choosing on the little unit, so here we go.

So far most of the games seem to be a conceptualization of various ways of moving around space. Attempts to make more finite controls have all been unsuccessful from what I've tried, it's all just steering or moving an object about with finger motions. Which is certainly unique and I'm enjoying myself, I'm just uncertain what to think of it yet. The more games I play, the better feel and understanding I get, the better my analysis until it reaches the standards I hold myself to.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor was a bit of an easy break though, because it's such a brilliant little game. Mostly a spatial puzzler in terms of design, what's interesting is how it builds in a very ambiguous plot on top of this. Score junkies will love the game because of the multiplier system and how tricky it can be to get the max score. People who like a little bit of story will be intrigued by the way your avatar is both apathetic to the game's world and also what a strange human story it reveals.

If you've got an I-phone or an I-pod touch, you really need to try this one.

Two Books on Games & Violence

This post ended up going a bit awry. I read two books on video game violence to pit them against one another, but ultimately Grand Theft Childhood didn't really attack the position that games make you aggressive but rather took it back to inconclusive. I already knew that, anyone who half-way thought about the research claiming there was a connection knew that. Even old judges who have never played a game in their life and highly dislike them will acknowledge that it does not meet the burden of proof.

Both books instead engage in an elaborate looking in on video game culture without really engaging with it themselves. Researchers are "shocked" to discover that kids don't actually take what they're doing in the game seriously. People tend to use video games as an escape, which can be a sign of depression or problems at school. There still isn't much distinction between different genres in either book, nor do they bother to study much of anything besides the same generic topics that have been studied to death dozens of times. The reason I like to post studies on things like the effect games have on dreams or female avatars is that at least they're looking at something new. Until you can plug a chip into my brain to monitor my emotions, you're never going to prove games make you aggressive conclusively.

Which, by the way, is going to cause a helluva lot more trouble than any of these people seem to recognize. If a video game makes you violent, what about football? Debate team? Chess? Why is simulated combat any different from inhibited combat if it's all just adrenaline and training the brain to react violently?

At this point, I am one of these children maligned by years of games. And there are plenty more just like me.