The topic of videogame violence has always been interesting to me. Especially since many use it as a scapegoat for the things they can’t explain. I’ll never forget when approximately a week after the Columbine shootings the principal had found the game Diablo in my friends backpack. Needless to say it didn’t help that it was a Catholic school too. He was forced to go to the office and his parents had to come in and explain why he had such a game.

It was a bit unbelievable when self proclaimed crusader against videogame violence, Jack Thompson was put on the air on the day of the VT shootings. Not only was he put on just a mere 8 hours after the shootings started, but the killer wasn’t even identified yet. Even more crazy was that the trend continued later on throughout the week. One of the interviewers was interviewing one of the roommates and asked out of the blue “Have you ever seen him playing Counter Strike?” The roommate gave a strange look and said he was never seen once playing a videogame. I just sat there disgusted with the media once again trying to shift the blame.

I have never been big on overly violent games personally, but I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy games like GTA, Halo, Counter Strike, etc. when I had played them. There is something satisfying in that “lock on” feature we had talked about earlier in the semester. It’s a means of release, just like any other medium. We read, watch movies, listen to music to escape reality for a while and I think videogames is just this generation’s rock and roll. Most likely as time passes this will no longer be an issue and something else will come up because people fear what they don’t understand.

On a lighter note I plan on picking up the new Pokemon game coming out this weekend. Yes, I'm not ashamed to say that I enjoy these games. I think they are actually quite amazing and surprisingly deep.

So I have gotten Super Paper Mario this past week. Although, I haven’t been able to play much of it with all the homework piling up in these last couple of weeks, it has been a very fun and entertaining game. Like I had said before, the 2D to 3D perspective change is an amazing feature and I really feel more games should take advantage of it. Even the changing the perspective itself is amusing. For example, if you stand on a platform in 2D and switch to 3D you may all of a sudden not be on it any more and Mario give a little whelp of worry as he falls down. Even though he should still be on the platform no matter what dimension he switches to, it’s little touches like this that add to the overall humor of the game and the craziness of the Mario series as a whole.

Speaking of humor, I absolutely loved the presentation part of Bard’s Tale. Having played games like Diablo and Baulder’s Gate, seeing Bard’s Tale in action was hilarious. This idea of humor and parody I think further goes to prove how far along videogames are coming to start being taken as a serious textual study. A text has to be worthwhile in order for there to be a parody of it in the first place because otherwise no one would care for the parody or find it funny. With videogames reaching the point of having been around long enough to start becoming a strong part of culture it also becomes a part of textual parody. This can be seen with games like Super Paper Mario which parodies’ it’s own series, or Bard’s Tale parodying the Hack and Slash RPG genre, or Conker’s Bad Fur Day parodying games and other texts in general.

This beginning of the branching off in parodies is much like the forming of genres within a text. Videogames have been forming their own genres much like texts with mystery, comedy, suspense, science fiction, etc. It’s just recently that I have begun to notice this emerging of the parody, something that has been around in literature for a while now.

After seeing “Façade” in action today, it had made me want to try it out. It appears to be one of those games that tries to attract the non-gamer as well as peek the interest of the regular gamer. The reason for this being that it appears to me that it has a “Sims” like quality. Meaning, that it has tries to simulate some aspect of life by putting you in this god-like role.

With “The Sims” or “Sim City” you either can control people or a city and the way in which they act. The difference with “Façade” is that you are more in control of human emotion. As a character you can respond in any way you please and it affects the way in which characters react around you, similar to other simulation based games.

Although simulations are often classified as a game, I do agree that they can fall under game and non-game categories. I believe a game would be defined as something that has rules and an end goal. Simulations often fall under the first part, since any kind of programming intrinsically has rules and restrictions within the code. However, there is no end in sight, or at least something officially programmed as an end. The end can only be made by the player. Such as wanting a certain size house or city in “The Sims” and “Sim City,” or wanting the couple to reconcile in “Façade.” In other words, the end rule has to be established by the player in order for it to become fully a game. Otherwise, it remains on the borderline.