One of the most interesting, enlightening and exciting games I played last year wasn’t even a video game. Insane, isn’t it? I mean, the way we played it, it might as well have been a video game: a computer-based program was used to resolve our actions, and the primary methods of communication were IM, Skype and e-mail. But, make no mistake: Diplomacy, in all of its available new-media dressings, is a true, dyed-in-the-wool board game. And it’s a gas.

Diplomacy is a game where you take control of a dawn-of-the-20th-century European superpower, and, through diplomacy and war, attempt to dismantle the continent, piece by piece, until it belongs to you. The rules are incredibly simple, and rightly so: they are not the centrepiece of this game. In essence, it is a game of two being stronger than one, and three being stronger than two, and so on. Without allies, you will lose. But, everyone playing wants to win in their own right. What results are a series of shaky pacts based on delivering a blow to the player/empire with whom you’ve just made another (obviously even shakier) pact.

What made it truly great is that I played with six other people who I consider to be among my best friends. We (almost) all went to high school together, hung out together virtually all the time (before half of us moved around the country) and know each other incredibly well. And, since this is a game of psychology, it made for an incredibly satisfying game. All of us were engaging in our first game of Diplomacy, and we all had pretty different ideas of how games work, and how we intended to win. If you’ll indulge me, I am going to try to explain the seven of us, and I’m sure you can see where the conflict might occur:

Austria: Matt. Unfortunately, Matt didn’t get a chance to leave his imprint on the game, having three handicaps going in: one, Austria is surrounded by three nations and a glut of resources, making him an easy target; two, a reputation for being very good at strategy games, which painted a bullseye on his back very early; and, three, his own brother in nearby Italy, meaning an alliance was incredibly likely (this didn’t exactly work out, though, as I’ll explain later). Matt was the first player to be eliminated.

France: Will (that’s me!). Somehow I was one of the two “winners” (not technically, though). One of my greatest strengths going into this game was that I am, as far as I know, a pretty agreeable person. I was constantly brokering deals, taking only what was mine, at first, waiting to see what aggressive actions other would take before deciding what I would do. My greatest weakness, this game has taught me, is my trust of other people. I had (what I thought were) unwavering alliances with three players over the course of the game who betrayed me at one stage or another. This nearly sank me; thankfully, a combination of good positioning (France is great for stalemating those who are trying to crush you) and infighting among my enemies allowed me to strike back and survive until the end.

Germany: Gavin. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like Gavin. He’s a high school teacher with an almost Aspergerian obsession with game mechanics (or, at least, that’s what I screamed at him, replete with expletives, at least once in Skype conversation). I first started hanging out with Gavin years ago when I joined a D&D group. He was the one who had the combo wizard-priest that could win virtually any encounter alone, due to his exhaustive knowledge of third edition (and his blatant disregard for taste, as far as metagame exploitation went). It became evident after a few turns that he was probably the best player, game-wise, out of all of us. His ability to use logic to support his moves was virtually untouchable. However, he was the king of the backstab, and this led to his undoing (which, to this day, he states, never happened: in his mind, he was part of a three-way draw, as that’s what the rules state. Since “surrender” is not an in-game order, he maintains that he could not and did not surrender, and is one of the three “winners”).

Italy: Greg. Greg has been one of my closest friends throughout my life, but I still think the best way to describe him is as an enigma. He is a competitive gamer: at one point, he was a part of the semi-professional Counter-Strike circuit, and only quit because he was in high school and his parents wouldn’t let him fly to Texas to compete for a big cash prize. If there’s one thing he loves about games like this, it’s the ability for him to unleash his unpredictable nature and fuck with people. If you don’t believe me, ask his brother, Matt, who was out in four turns because his alliance with his brother ended just because Greg thought it’d be more interesting that way.

Russia: Angus. The token pacifist, Angus is the kind of guy who doesn’t want to fight with people, and only will if an ally asks him to. Where my philosophy is more of an isolationist, “wait and see” approach, his is much more Gandhi. While this is an awesome way to look at real life, it didn’t really translate to success in-game, as he never ended up taking a single territory from another player, and was the second player to lose. Still, gaining him as an ally was vital for two of the game’s major players, and he played a pretty big role in the Eastern theatre.

Turkey: Andy. A leader at heart, Andy has always been the one who convinces everyone to come out and do things when we all hung out in real life (before half of us moved halfway across the country). Andy’s pretty much an open book, and there are two things you can be sure of in any situation: he is as loyal as anyone comes, but if you cross him, he will never forget. In a game like Diplomacy, a reputation like that makes you incredibly powerful. You can be confident knowing that you will only be attacked by people who are sure that they can take you because if they can’t, you will chase them to the ends of the Earth (or Europe, I suppose). Out of the three people who survived, he’s the one I’ve written least about, and I think that speaks volumes about how he plays these games: it’s simple, but it’s powerful. He’s charismatic and clever.

United Kingdom: Travis. If there’s one word that describe’s Travis’s MO, it’s “diabolical.” He’s not a griefer, but he delights in crushing his enemies. Where Gavin can be almost robotic in his drive to win games, Travis brings a touch of evil to his playing. He doesn’t get anything out of simply winning– he believes that winning can be hollow, and losing can still be fun, sometimes. But he wants to compete, and as such, he can be mercenary. Finding the Achilles heel of his enemies is where he shines.

I will be posting more about the results of the game in the near future, but I realized that this article is already in “page down several times” territory, so I am going to split it up. I will do a series of articles on how the game unfolded, and a final article on my impressions.

It’s been a while, blogosphere.

I mean, do you remember me? I used to write things here. However, I haven’t been around in quite some time. For those who are interested in where I’ve been, I’ll keep it short, since this isn’t a personal blog: working 60-hour weeks in a QA position on games that most of you will never play, left said job, started my undergrad (finally) at Concordia University, started testing somewhere else on games you’ll almost DEFINITELY never play, dropping my PSP on the floor and breaking the LCD, writing articles for Everygame, chasing down late reviews for Everygame, and playing many more games without even remotely thinking about what I’d write about them.

But, this leave of absence from my blog (which may have killed its readership—I suppose we’ll see) is about to end (this is entirely unrelated to the fact that I recently got the bill for another year of owning this domain—at least, that’s what I’m telling myself). I’ve been gathering topics that I want to talk about. Instead, though, of talking about the stuff I’ve been playing more (which has been covered to death—a lot of Left 4 Dead, really, and Shadow Complex, and Scribblenauts, Trials HD, Final Fantasy Tactics, and some other stuff that I can’t even now remember) I have decided for the next couple of months to pontificate on some stuff I haven’t heard that much about on the Internet at large lately.

Here are some of the topics I intend to cover:

1 vs. 100, one of my surprise favorite games of the year.

Brickbreaker again. It’ll be short—I promise. But I hit the next “level” of play and quit the game forever. I think you’ll find the “why” entertaining. I hope. Maybe.

Dai Senryaku VII, a game I accidentally found at a pawn shop and bought on a whim, which ended up being proof to me that even in this Internet age, there are titles that I and everyone I know have never even heard of.

Diplomacy (as in, the board game), which I am currently playing by e-mail with some friends.

How do we create fun in losing? This is prompted by a piece that I read a few days ago (I will link it in the piece) about “sprayparks,” those places where kids shoot water at each other. Can there be games where getting shot is as fun as getting shot with water at a water park?

Everygame, again—I’ll go over some stuff that the writers have written that I have dug, and maybe a couple of my own pieces that have intrigued me, as well. Since, you know, we just hit the halfway point in our multi-year endeavour to cover all of those 720 SNES games listed.

I had a couple more ideas but I won’t write them for fear that I’ve already oversold myself here. I was going to put deadlines, even, but I can’t promise I’d even come close, even if I set them very conservatively, but– hello again, world.

So I finished my insane-o run of Fantasia films as previously mentioned, and, sadly, many were disappointments. Thirst, Grace, Hells and Black just weren’t quite as good as I hoped– but, as always, some of the stuff was pretty incredible.

My favourite film of the fest was Best Worst Movie, which is surprising because it was one of the ones I was least excited about going in. It’s… well, it’s a documentary about Troll 2, as I mentioned before, but it ended up being one of the most hilarious, heartbreaking, and charming filsm of the festival. Absolutely see this if you get the chance. The two “protagonists,” Michael Stephenson and George Hardy (the son and dad of Troll 2) seem like two of the most genuinely nice people ever– especially George, who was at the screening of this and Troll 2 and too kthe time to shake every single person’s hand in line before Troll 2 played– some 800 people or so. I have to go to the dentist soon to get a tooth filled, and I am tempted to go down to Alabama to get him to do it (since he’s a full-time dentist now).

The next best, in my opinion, was also a documentary. Playing Columbine could have been awful– a discussion on games as a means of expression, directed by the guy who made Super Columbine Massacre RPG!– but he manages to make his point without being arrogant, or dickish, or insensitive. He comes off as a bit of a messiah, but it’s still a very thoughtful view on the current censorship battles that games are going through, and provoked some great discussion.

Daytime Drinking was probably my favourite non-documentary of the film. Slow, but meaningfully so, the lead actor’s incredibly muted emotion during the whole film makes for the perfect vacation-turned-crappy flick. That is was shot on such a shoestring budget is impressive, but it stands among the best of the festival even without knowing the amount spent on it. Similarly, Cryptic is the new Timecrimes, or even Primer; a microbudget (done for $250,000, and everyone who worked on it was unionized or at least paid fairly, which is insanely impressive in Hollywood) sci-fi time-manipulation flick about a cell phone that, for some reason, can call back in time. I barely even roused enough interest in myself to go see this, but I am so glad I did. It is another amazing addition to this decade’s scantily-funded science fiction flick glut.

There was a special thing on pink eiga films, which are Japanese skin flicks of approximately 60 minutes in length with five sex scenes. Aside from those two restrictions, the directors of these flicks — many would become premier Japanese auteurs after getting their feet wet making these films for the Japanese sex cinemas — were free to do anything they wanted. Blue Film Woman was one of the films screening — a stylish, dark (almost Greek) tragedy about a man who can’t pay his debt to a ruthless debt collector. It devolves into a bunch of people’s lives really sucking, with some really fucked up sex scenes inbetween.

The last film worth mentioning is Breathless, yet another amazing Korean flick this year. Written, directed, produced and starring one guy (who sold his house to fund the production), it tells a story about an incredibly unlikeable person who beats people up for money. Yet, it shows you why is is how he is, and by the end he becomes one of the most sympathetic anti-heroes in recent film history.

Any of those five films I would highly recommend. Now, that’s enough film-related talking for this blog for a while– back ot video games at some point in the future, I suppose!

Finally, it begins. I see maybe 30 movies a year in the theatre, and about 25 of those are in July for the Fantasia International Film Festival. I am not a big fan of going to films– I hate the chair-kicking bros behind me who make grossed-out noises during Brokeback Mountain (what did you assholes expect?) and crying kids and that dumb bastard who sits in front of you and declares in a loud whisper to his wife “THAT’S HIS GOOD WINE!” when Paul Giamatti breaks out his Pinot Grigio in a fast food joint in Sideways (dude, you’re either married to the dumbest woman ever, or SHE ALREADY FIGURED IT OUT AND YOU NEED TO JUST SHUT UP). I also don’t really care for the fare that you “need” to see in a cinema– I’d rather watch Spiderman or Transformers or whatever on DVD than on a big, loud screen surrounded by assholes.

That all changes in July, though, when Fantasia rolls into town. Instead of stupid chair kickers and dumb middle-aged dudes who tell you what’s hpapening on the screen you get a bunch of film geeks who are really excited to see the source material. And, even more important, you get to see a bunch of movies that you ACTUALLY have to see in theatres– because you will probably never find a DVD or even a torrent of some of these obscure flicks from around the world. Or, since it’s basically a “genre” film festival, there’s some stuff you have to see in theatres because it so damn scary that you need to experience 300 other people SCREAMING (last year’s [REC] for example).

Last year, [REC] and 4bia and ESPECIALLY Adrift In Tokyo (I feel like an idiot for not putting it on my top 5 movies from last year) blew me away. I’m hoping this year will be as good. Here are some of the highlights, at least, for me now (I have yet to actually watch these, so they might be disappointments– we shall see):

Daytime Drinking — in Korea, there’s a rule: never turn down the first drink someone offers you. A dude goes to a resort town in winter (not exactly when it’s packed with people) to meet friends who aren’t there. He wanders around and people keep giving him soju (rice-based alcoholic beverage, about 20%, vodka-esque). It was shot on $20,000 and it’s apparently beautiful and funny.

Thirst — Have you seen Oldboy? Because the director of Oldboy has a new movie. About a priest. Who is a vampire.

Dream — I suppose all I can say is that Kim Ki-Duk directed this. If this means anything to you, you’re excited. If not, well, watch 3-Iron, The Isle, and Spring Summer Fall Winter And Spring. Especially 3-Iron, though.

Power Kids — Okay, it’s a kid’s movie, but… damn it, lsiten to how amazing this is. It’s the same producers as Ong Bak. They got four kids and trained the hell out of them to make them Muay Thai machines. They made a movie with them. They do their own stunts. This is like Tony Jaa meets SURF NINJAS. From THAILAND. How could that not be incredible?! SO MANY KID KNEES TO THE FACE!

Grace — Dead babies and crazy moms scare me. This seriously looks scary as hell.

Instant Swamp — the trailer’s only in Japanese so I won’t link it, but it’s by the Adrift in Tokyo guy, so here’s that trailer. It was one of the most charming movies I ever saw, so I am gonig into his next movie blind.

Hells — some really crazy looking anime movie. Don’t know much of anything about it, but I’ll check it out.

The Chaser — While the director of Oldboy has a different film at the festival, this is apparently the REAL spiritual successor– keeping that awesome Korean New Wave brutal flick thing going.

Playing Columbine — A documentary about Super Columbine Massacre RPG? Well, okay. Seeing it in Montreal, with the bit about Kimveer Gill… there are gonna be some not-impressed people, I reckon. It’ll be interesting to see a film open a dialogue about games as more than just mindless nerdy entertainment.

Black — film from France about a Senegalese dude stealing diamonds with an awesome funk soundtrack and scenes that look like they’re out of every 70s exploitation or 80s action flick. I am really excited for this. Also, the pun at the end: “L’afrique? No. Le fric, oui.” Amazing. I guess you have to understand a bit of French for it to be funny, but it is.

Best Worst Movie / Troll 2 — Troll 2 is considered one of the worst films ever made. It has an insane cult following. This documentary, directed by the guy who played the kid in it, explores the phenomenon. It’s followed by a screening of Troll 2.

I’m also seeing a few other movies: Blue Film Woman, Canary, Cryptic, Deadgirl, and Breathless… I know next to nothing about them though, so perhaps I’ll talk about them once I see them. I am seeing the first 5 movies on my list over the next three days, so expect to hear back!

I’ve been thinking a lot recently, as I’m sure much of the Internet has, about the possibilities that will be in Scribblenauts. It presents an intriguing way of play: your imagination is your biggest obstacle. Thinking of strange ways to beat things will be where the real fun is.

That lead me to something else I have been thinking about a lot recently, as prompted by Angus’s recent article on game morality: creating artificial barriers to overcome.

I’ve seen it in countless other scenarios in games since I found myself staring into the 16-color abyss of a Netscape Navigator window in 1997: beat Final Fantasy with four white mages. Survive a Roguelike with only the items you can forage within the dungeon. Finish Ikaruga without firing a bullet (or, you know, finish it while playing two players simultaneously). Solo Onyxia. Beat Mirror’s Edge without using a gun. Don’t kill anyone in a Metal Gear Solid game. The list goes on, I’m sure.

I, on the other hand, never have the patience or skill to do any of these things; they require qualities (namely, hand-eye co-ordination and/or unemployment) I’m devoid of. However, I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty clever kid (my imagination is at least good enough to imagine that I’m an imaginative person) with a decent grasp on the English language (I know great nouns such as “dirge,” “colugo” and “arthrodesis”), and as such, I see Scribblenauts as a fantastic way to get creative with arbitrary rules.

I know it’s a bit early to start coming up with arbitrary “hard modes” for the game, but it’s been on my mind for a while. As such, I’d like to solicit ideas from my audience!

Here are some of my ideas so far, ranked in ascending order of assumed difficulty:

1. Played-Out Mode: Beat Scribblenauts without summoning zombies. ZOMBIES ARE PLAYED OUT.

2. Acrophobic Pacifist Mode: Beat Scribblenauts without use of height-assisting items or weapons (although, in true Pacifist style, tools which are also weapons can be used for their original tool-like purpose, so a chainsaw can be summoned but only to cut down a tree).

3. Fantasy Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only items that only exist in the realm of fantasy. If a replica has been created of an item, it is okay, but use your discretion: a Bat’leth is okay because it is strictly from the realm of fiction, but a robot may not be, despite its birth in the realm of sci-fi.

4. Alphabet Aerobics Mode: Beat the first “level” (or stage, or starite, or whatever they end up being) using only items that start with A. Beat the next with B. The next with C. You know how the rest of the alphabet goes. Flip back to A, I guess, if there are more than 26, flip back to A, I guess. Have fun on level 24! (For the record, though, Phi-Life Cypher did the ABC thing better only a year later.)

5. Conversationist Mode: Beat Scribblenauts without destroying any of the environment. Summoning animate objects to do the destruction for you is also not permitted.

6. Breath of Life Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only items that are alive upon their summoning. A tree is okay; a wood pole is not.

7. Midas Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only gold-coloured items.

8. Intangible Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only items whose noun is an “intangible.” While they typically become tangible once summoned in the game, words like “dream,” “temptation” or “theorem” are acceptable while “pillow,” “chocolate bar” or “right angle triangle” are not. Homonyms are a cheeky way to get around it, but are not allowed if the word you’re pretending is allowed isn’t a noun. So, no using stalk and saying “but the verb is intangible!”

9. Gadsby Mode: Beat Scribblenauts without using the letter E.

10. Summon Nothing Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only items that rhyme with wolf. Remember that wolf does not rhyme with wolf. They’re the same word no matter what terrible rappers may try to trick you into believing.

11 (yes, THIS LIST GOES TO 11). 43 Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only words that are a part of George W. Bush’s active vocabulary.

And for my second small post that simply links somewhere else, I’d also like to draw your attention to Text Adventure.

Tiff Chow and I are curating what will hopefully be a totally dope and expansive repository of great examples of text in videogames. From unforgettable splash screens to thoughtfully-placed speech bubbles (ooh, that reminds me… Comix Zone), anything where the text makes you sit up and say “I like the way that looks” will be up there, a couple entries at a time.

But, then again, chances are you’ve already seen this at Offworld. Or Destructoid. Or Infovore. Or Waxy. Or Tiff’s blog. Oder Nerdcore. Ou Graphism.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m late to the party on linking to someithng I had a part in making. Still trying to figure out if that’s sad or awesome. If you’re not already, follow us on Tumblr (or make a Tumblr so you can), and we’ll transport you to…

…sorry. Lame joke.

I’m not usually one to play the “link something interesting” game with my blog, but you owe it to yourself to read this. Angus of Tango Lima Delta Romeo has written a very thoughtful piece on the continuing evolution of “morality” as it’s presented in games (his definition of morality, in this case, is doing your best to achieve your goals within a game; so, as such, it is “moral” to kill goombas in Super Mario Bros).

Aside from criticizing the “invisible hand of God” that keeps a fully tabulated and annotated count of how many “good” points and “not so good” MoralityPoints™ you have, he raises interesting ideas as to how one might truly present moral quandaries to a player, and, therefore, add new depth to “playing” and “beating” a scenario.

But the most interesting parts of moral conflict, the ones that separate pulp and genre from literature, are the ones that are ambiguous and dependent on situation. I ran an Unknown Armies (a pen and paper role-playing game) game for some friends awhile ago where everyone played sort of idealized selves and put them through any number of horrible events that have no grounding in life. Players reactions were surprising. People acted out of panic, anger, fear, attachment, all of the things that many simplified moral codes urge us to deny.

Definitely worth a look, if this sort of thing is up your alley.

Over at Every Game Ever the original plan was to write a little piece about every NA-released SNES game in alphabetical order. For about two weeks, I slogged through te games starting with numbers, and the games starting with A. After a while, though, I lost steam, and it sunk into unfinished obscurity. Two years later, my friends Mekki and Brian berated me until I resurrected it, in a new capacity: many writers, each doing one article every week (well, that was the original plan. Some people are two months behind, INCLUDING BRIAN WHO MADE ME START IT AGAIN). The only rules are:

1) 150-450 words, roughly, unless it’s a special case;
2) At least one screenshot;
3) No number scores (6/10, 85%, etc).

It was a good idea, though. I brought it back and started recruiting friends to write for it. It started with myself, Scott, Angus, Brian, and Mekki. From there, it began to flourish. Monday through Friday, we’d bravely wade into the sports-game-infested waters of the SNES catalogue. I had (and still have) an ulterior motive, though: by forcing deadlines and topics, I got some of my most gifted writer friends motivated enough to actually write something. Looking at those previous blogs will show you how long it’s been since they even wrote something of their own accord.

And, despite my own shoddy writing on the site (my own official excuse is twofold: one, my focus is now on badgering people who are late to submit ASAP; and, secondively, I’m experimenting with copying other people’s writing styles or toying with my own on a weekly basis), it’s going fabulously. We’ve since doubled in authorship. Scotty joined the team, bolstering the ever-important “dick jokes” quota required for a modern website; Travis, too, was recruited for another quota: pretentious English Master’s student-style existential pontification. Adam found the site through my blog (I think) and expressed interest, so I hooked him up to help with the load. Alex showed interest, and contributed to the noise with his debut article on Chessmaster– in all-caps. Tiff Chow joined the team to round it out to a nice, even ten.

Since the site gets little traffic, aside from some very weird search engine results (my favorite at the moment is still last week’s “where can a condom get lost in vagina”), so I thought I’d highlight some of my favourite articles from the site over the past few months. I’ve included links that will allow you to read just that author’s works, as it’s a lot more enjoyable to read one author at a time and develop a sense of their style. These are in random order, except for the first two who I recommend above the rest of us (sorry, everyone, but Scott and Travis truly have this thing locked down — step up your game if you wann be at the top of the next roundup in a few months!).

TRAVIS makes you want to read from the get-go. From his review of the diabetes edutainment title, Captain Novolin: Captain Novolin is a brilliant metaphor for the struggle with obesity and diabetes, but also the simple yet unending fight against temptation that we all face as ultimately flawed human beings.

Also check out his Chrono Trigger review. It’s some of the best game-related writing I’ve seen on the Internet. It’s a crime he isn’t writing more about the games and the industry. But there is a difference between your standard unsophisticated video game story, upon which I now smirk from my ivory tower, and something like Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger is a fantasy/sci-fi genre epic translated from Japanese, and it wasn’t written by professionals in either language, I’m fairly sure. This is, generally, not a recipe for the most delicious of successes. But it’s something special. It has a rather intricate narrative of time travel and the alteration of the future through your actions; it has characters that, to some extent, come alive. It has a nasty, big-boss villain who you can even convince to come to your side, if you do it right. It has multiple endings and a terrifying final boss that destroys worlds and waits for you at the terminus of every timeline, like a living, breathing dark god of entropy.

SCOTT manages to turn many of his pieces into hilarious little bits of short fiction. From his review of Andre Agassi Tennis: I’m glad these 16-bit graphics don’t allow the detail necessary to see the disappointment on the faces of my family as they sit in the audience and hold back tears of shame and disgust. How did this spastic even find his way to the tennis court? I knew there was something wrong with him…spends his whole day watching Mr. Belvedere re-runs and eating Sun Chips out of a dirty wooden bowl.

Or, check out his write-up of California Games II: I hoped that once the drug testing was done, I’d be banned from the California Games forever. Too many dark memories, scattered fragments riding a wave of victory that took me through the silver-lined gutters of stardom. Once you’ve won a California Game, the ultimate test is detoxing from the heady fallout of athletic recognition. Party people. Opiates fell like candy from the sky into my open mouth and I twitched slightly and pulled the hair of a supermodel. She screamed in outrage, but there were others waiting to take her place.

WILL (that’s me!) misses the simpler times. From Brett Hull Hockey 95:Originally I was going to talk about the weird 3/4 perspective in this game, and the even weirder old guy with greasy hair who POINTS at your coaching resource allocations with his HAND, in effect being a living cursor, but what’s the point? You don’t care about that. I don’t care either. I do, however, care about a bygone era where kids had artifacts other than the ones you see in poorly-encoded Youtube videos.

SCOTTY hates rudders, even though the word sounds sort of dirty. I hate flying games. Flying games are way too complicated and there’s usually no pay off. It’s like trying to sleep with girls that listen to NPR and check Pitchfork every 5 minutes. I just don’t have time to devote to something that won’t end in burgers or orgasms, or if I’m lucky, both, in any order I see fit.

MEKKI gets why Battletoads included two modes. From Battlemaniacs: The game is full of great times for two players. You can select between two modes. In one mode, you can hit your teammate. In the other mode, you can’t it each other. The first is great for trash talking. The second is great for actually making it anywhere in the game.

BRIAN managed to truncate every story ever quite succinctly, with Art of Fighting: (the) Art of Fighting’s plot is simple enough. Ryo’s sister gets kidnapped. Ryo and his friend Antonio Banderas go save her. Along the way you uppercut some dudes. The end.

ANGUS has been MIA for a while (finals tend to do that), but he’s coming back with a vengeance. From his recent article on Beavis and Butthead: It would be a beat-em-up if there was any sort of combat system. It would be a platformer if it had platforms. It would be a puzzle-platformer if it had any puzzles. It plays a little bit like A Boy and His Blob. Except the blob doesn’t do anything. And you can slap it. Repeatedly.

ALEX hasn’t been with us long, but his first review, of Chessmaster, is a lot of fun:
THIS AIN’T YOUR GRANDMA’S CHESS VIDEO GAME, FUCKERS! THIS IS ON SOME REAL, STREET-LEVEL SHIT. TOP OF THE LINE MOTHERFUCKING CHESS GRAPHICS! INSANE MOVES! WHITE KNUCKLE ACTION! THIS IS THE BAD BOYS 2 OF CHESS VIDEO GAMES FOR THE SUPER NINTENDO!

ADAM, as well, is new to the site. He has two reviews up (should be three later today!) and he was lucky enough to start with everyone’s archnemesis: the snackfood tie-in. But maybe I’ve been asking all the wrong questions. Would it sell a pack of Cheetos? Probably it would!
“Screw this, Cheetos are heaps better than this game. Wanna get some Cheetos?”
“HELL YES.”

Please check it out. While they can’t all be hits (I turn beet-red when I think about how bad some of my articles were. My Axelay acrostic poetry stands out as one of the most embarrassingly pathetic jokes I’ve ever commited to a computer), there are gems worth looking to as great pieces on games you (and, usually, the author) have no interest in.

And if you’re interested in writing, let me know. We may add a couple more in a month or so.

I didn’t expect to generate so many comments on my dam-bursting logorrheic last post. Really, I wrote it because it was floating around in my mind, and it was the closest thing to something bloggable that I’ve come up with in a month. As such, I thought I’d spit it out and people might get a little amusement.

Instead, I got a bunch of comments that challenge my position, and that really put my brain into overdrive. I think we fail to challenge people’s opinions far too often on this whole Internet vidyagame blogging sphere thing, and I truly appreciate the feedback. So much so, that I’m writing this response! It might be worth reading the first article before this one or else it may not make sense.

Matthew Gallant was the first to post, and he said:

Of course memory == binary, so that’s another direction you could take.

This is in reference to my use of the word “mems” to replace “videogames.” He’s right, and mems is close to memes, so… bines? I like bines.

From commenter mad, I got this response:

There is history here; see Chiptunes, 8-bit, 16-bit.

Naming it after the memory makes it feel static, like data. Naming it after the processor makes it dynamic, which is what games are typically all about.

Compare also to processes, executables, etc.

I see what you’re trying to do here; but, the only problem I see is that it assumes that a… a mem… (you know what? for the sake of the argument, I’m jsut going to call ithem mems for the rest of this entry) must be dynamic. Why didn’t they name “the film” after the projector? Because to name an artistic medium because of a characteristic you assign to it does a disservice to anything that wishes to use that medium to illustrate the opposite of that characteristic. What if a mem’s purpose was to communicate stasis, or stagnation? The only truly neutral way to name it is to simply name it for what it is on (ie. film, memory/binary)… not what takes it from that form and displays it (as a projector or processor would).

mad adds:

also note:
video games are about graphics
computer games are about numbers
most players don’t care about the other stuff :P

But, they don’t have to be. They can be about whatever the originator wants them to be about.

teh_red_baron says:

And then there’s ‘movies’, or ‘moving pictures’.
I think ‘videogames’ is fine. It’s inextricable. All it takes is exposure for people to respect the medium.
But I still like what you’ve attempted here.

The terms movies/moving pictures, while not perfectly accurate (after all, there are experimental films where the pictures does, in fact, never move), is restrictive but nowhere near as restrictive as forcing every piece of computer-assisted interactive entertainment/art to be a game. While exposure is key, so is changing some of the very language we use to describe the medium. After all, respected games are still games.

Eric J:

in the middle days of Infocom, they decided that the moniker “interactive fiction” was too clunky to go on, and announced a contest to have it renamed.
The contest ended without a winner, nobody was able to come up with anything decent.

I rather fancy the term interactive fiction. What else could explain it better? Plus, it shortens to IF, which is bloody brilliant for so many reasons.

Travis’s response will need to be broken up, I reckon, if I’m going to respond to it at all properly:

The problem goes beyond nomenclature. The medium of which we speak is largely composed of, yes, games. It is to games that we look when we want to make some kind of critical artistic analysis.

It is indeed largely composed of games, but it doesn’t need to be. I agree: the nomenclature isn’t the only issue, but, it is one that needs to be assessed.

Can a game be art? Is chess an art? What about Puerto Rico? Is good game design an art form - establishing balanced choices and keeping players entertained and stimulated throughout? What about playing a game - is there art in being a mindboggling Street Fighter expert? Does that mean polevaulters and gymnasts are artists too?
There is a philosophical distinction between “design” and “art,” one that only became pronounced after classical times. Building a beautiful chair that is like a minimalistic sculpture is surely art, but building a GOOD chair became delineated from that. Some would suggest that the gap between them is narrowing again.

This skirts the original question, which is, why must the medium only be games? There is interactive scuptural art which is certainly not called a “game”– immediately to mind springs an exhibit where a robot was sweeping a floor. When people approached it, it would sweep more feverishly. By the end of the night (accidentally, I might add), it had managed to etch a design in the buffed concrete underneath it. That’s not the point, though; while the generative art it created is interesting, the point was the interactive structural piece. Why does all computer software need to be a “game,” then? That robot wasn’t a game. Whether the creation of a game is art or not is meaningless — the question is, why must we call any attempt at art within the medium a “game”?

Beyond that, should “video games” remain in the arena of gaming, or should there be attempts to move beyond entertainment to a more artistic realm? As you say, most art is not “fun” in the same sense of the rest of its medium. I have fun reading a good entertaining story, but when I read Joyce or Faulkner it’s not “fun.” It’s satisfying, it’s engaging, it’s fulfilling, it’s mind-broadening, but not fun.

I think that, as a medium, there’s absolutely no reason that it shouldn’t be explored in pursuit of experiences other than fun. I can’t justify that; it’s an opinion. I don’t think humanity would be where it is now had film or literature simply stayed in the realm of fun, though.

But how else can people be motivated to engage in something so interactive? How else can their interest be gained, especially in terms of a medium so deeply embedded in our minds as a game? The video game is so closely tied to the engine of industry, and so young, that I don’t foresee it breaking away from being fun - usually mindless, shallow fun - for profit. Of course, film and books and music are massively profit-based as well. There exists still a strong current of “art” film and “literature,” at least, which is driven by artistic needs and desires rather than entertainment = money.

There exists a similar current within gamemaking. It’s a lot smaller, and much more stunted, but in time, it will be a force, given the current trajectory.

I really don’t foresee the imminent success of a game that isn’t “fun” to play, but on the other hand we are seeing some now - the one where you play a grandmother walking through a cemetery, and all you do is walk and wait to potentially die, for example. Probably not “successful” but it has been published and received news stories from various major websites.

Exactly. It moves away from gameness, but is still called a game. Wherefore?

mad again:

Games of poker, chess, football, war, the heart…. with money, pride, life or love on the line, all games contain anticipation, drama, conflict, hope, tragedy, catharsis. There’s always a context, a history; there are colorful characters, their developments and revelations. To win or lose is simple and pure; but it provides a reason, and a meaning to everything that surrounds it.
Games aren’t supposed to be fun because they are fun, but because that’s what can sell to people who just want to have… fun! Trying to distance oneself from games not because of what they are but how they’re sold is kind of meh…
..‘Game’ is the perfect word though. My argument is that the only reason it seems like an improper term is because the markets, media and even academia, have co-opted the term to suite their needs. To rebel against the word ‘game’ because of how they use it, is to implicitly buy into their worldview.

The question isn’t, though, what defines a game: the question is, why must “game” define so much? It’s as much a misnomer as when someone calls commissioned urban aerosol art (yeah, I just called it that) “graffiti.” It misses the point. Furthermore, I’m not sure the word game is being misused. Sure, there are dozens of entries in the dictionary for “game,” but to me, it means something that’s meant to challenge in a way that can be defeated. Art can’t be defeated; it does challenge, but that’s a different definition of the word “challenge.” You can interpret a piece of art; you cannot master a piece of art, though. I want this medium to have the opportunity to be interpreted without being mastered.

Ben Abraham writes:

I think that “video game” (or videogame if, like me, you prefer) comes close to describing what they’re usually “put on”, since they’re usually on some sort of video screen.
I also think that the conventions around memory say that something is stored “in memory” rather than on memory derails your argument a bit.
What’s wrong with ‘Computer Games’? That *is* what they are played/put on, after all - some kind of computer. In fact, ‘computer games’ used to be my defacto term for video games before I picked up that convention.

Whether it’s in or on, memory is the place it is put to be worked on, distributed, and consumed. But, the point is twofold– not only is “video” outdated, but “games” is as well, in my opinion.

And, finally, Tellurian writes:

There’s the constantly ongoing bitchfight between consoleros and PCgamers wether you’re talking computer- OR videogames, since one term supposedly doesn’t fit the other’s contents.
Going in the “Movie” direction, the term “Interactive” could be coined there, since that IS the common element of these.
“Yesterday I watched a movie and played some online interactives.”
Yeah still sounds a bit like a 70s sci-fi version of today.

Interactives is indeed another possibility. Originally I was going to try to work with that term. But, at some point, I decided that I couldn’t derive a punchy, one-syllable name from it. Certainly nothing that could invade the public arena like “games” already has. As far as computer vs. video goes– do people actually argue about this? I call it whichever comes to my mind first, generally.

The point is, basically, that I have a problem with calling the entire form “games” when the medium has potential to be more than games. Calling it games means that people are not only less likely to make non-”games” due to the name, but people are also less likely to accept those non-”games” for not being fun, even if they have something else to offer.

I’ve seen the argument online, I’ve had it in person, and it repeats in my dreams: the term videogames (or video games, whatever) needs to be replaced. Games are supposed to be fun, but the interactive computer-assisted medium can’t be an art form if it HAS to be fun. Last autumn I saw an original Kiki Smith piece, and I didn’t have fun. Once I read King Lear. It wasn’t fun (despite what the mainstream media says, I, the video game player, did not derive pleasure from such things as an old man having his eyes gouged out), but I liked it. Watching Loves of a Blonde wasn’t fun, either. But it was worth it.

I had a conversation with Matthew Gallant recently about the term “video games” and how it’s useless and paints the entire medium into a corner. I mean, clearly the video part needs to go. There are entirely auditory games. I heard about an XNA one recently where you have to sue your speakers to evade a monster of some sort. He brought up “interactive art” or “interactive entertainment” but who’d say something like that? I think at a certain point we decided that, since it’s software, and it’s art, why not software art?

The thing about software art is that it works insofar that you might refer to filmmaking as “the cinematic art.” Or, you know, when you’re in school and you have to study “language arts.” That’s not what we need, though. We need a good, solid noun.

So, I decided to do a little research: where did other media get their everyday names from?

BOOK: From Old English bōc { Proto-Germanic *boks, probably related to *bōk- (“beech”) (perhaps originally used to make writing-tablets). Cognate with Dutch boek, German Buch, Swedish bok. Compare beech. — Wiktionary

Right, so the book is probably named after that which they were originally put on. That makes sense, right?

MUSIC: Now, hold up a minute. Music isn’t the product that you have. You have singles, or albums, or MP3s or whatever, right? Let’s look at album, here. From Latin album (“blank white writing tablet”) { albus (“white”). That’s Wiktionary again. So, it seems like the musical album was informed by the more traditional book-like album, which is a word for what it’s on. Again. I am seeing a trend here.

FILM: A film is on film. I never call it a movie anyway. It sounds like a kid’s word. Besides, film supports my argument.

Books, albums, and film are references to what they’re on. What’s a “videogame” or “video game” or “piece of interactive entertainment/art” or “software art” on? Well, probably a number of things, potentially. A punchcard. A USB key. A GD-ROM. A hard drive. A website.

Thing is, it’s always on memory.

So what if we called them “mems?” It’s short, catchy, doesn’t pigeonhole itself by explaining only one facet of itself, and refers to the one thing it needs to exist: the memory upon which it is imprinted.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think this is going to happen. I just needed to put a cease fire on the war going on between my blog and the massive writer’s block in my head. I banged this out in… well, by the time I finish this paragraph, 20 minutes. I needed to make sure my blog still works. Or I can still press buttons on a keyboard. Or something.

So, yeah. MEMS. It’s the new slang. Someone tell Michael Abbott, Ian Bogost, N’Gai Croal, and Geoff Keighley to start saying it– they’ve got the blog, academic, enthusiast media and mainstream media pretty much locked down. Those four are like the Voltron of changing our lexicon. I implore you, gents: MEMS.