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.

Continuing my Mario nerd-a-thon I thought I’d just post a video I found of these two guys racing each other on the original Mario Bros. game. There’s nothing particularly deep about it, but if you ever played the original, it’s quite amazing to watch, especially the ending. So here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRY6vTsnNjA

Now on to more important things, it was interesting for me to watch Katamari Damacy in action for the first time. A friend of mine had said he played it and it was a lot of fun and I have seen plenty of references of it on the internet, never really got the chance to see it played though. The first thing I noticed was that it really brings out a certain “craziness” of Japanese culture. As we had discussed earlier with Okami, one of the potential problems with it not selling so well was that strong drive of Japanese culture throughout the game that tends to only appeal to a certain type of gamer. However, as I said before, it focuses less on the serious and more on the wacky side of things. It reminded me of other strange Japanese games like the Wario Ware series or even a game that was made on Playstation where you would control a guy’s nose hairs to fight off enemies. In a way it’s like that parody that The Simpsons had done a while ago with Mr. Sparkle.

Katamari really tends to embrace its own craziness and it’s this stereotypical craziness of Japanese culture that makes me wonder if that’s the reason these games only become cult favorites. Katamari follows the usual feeling of videogames becoming a collection-fest but on a higher level that most people once they give the chance to play it, enjoy it. Or even in Okami’s case, it was compared to the likes of Zelda which is very popular with Western culture, yet once again it only appealed to a select few. The same can be said for American based games like Halo which do poorly in Japan. It’s rather interesting to see how much culture influences the selling and accepting of videogames world wide.

I’ve been wanting to talk about the new Super Paper Mario game coming out for Nintendo Wii. However, I was never quite sure what to say about it. When I heard in class today someone who said they often compared ideas of games to actual texts, then it hit me. To get an idea of what this game is about, here is a video:

http://media.gameinformer.com/downloads/downloads2014/movies/2007/spm/spm-3.wmv

In the video a guy demonstrates how to play the game and a basic idea of what it is about. What I found most intriguing in this particular video was when he demoed a familiar stage from Super Mario Bros. To view the stage in 3D is really neat, especially since most everyone has played it back in the day. As a fan of Mario, it’s a bit mind-blowing to think that there was more to the 2D world of the old Mario Bros. games.

I then started to draw parallels to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” As a reader, we often view the text by blindly following Hamlet and not noticing much of anything else that surrounds Hamlet. A reader tends to only think that there is a story about Hamlet and nothing else. Later there comes a film called “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.” The movie follows these two characters that played a fairly minor roll in the actual play, yet we see how the play unfolds from their perspective. The movie takes on a humorous perspective, for example, when they spy on Hamlet by himself giving a soliloquy they think he’s crazy.

It’s this idea, that I was able to somewhat compare to Super Paper Mario. And Super Mario Bros. Much like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, it’s a bit funny to think that the character Mario was running in a straight line and jumping over pipes when he could “see” that he could just walk around them. It becomes a whole new view on a classic text. The possibilities are endless in expanding a text like Shakespeare’s if you take a slightly different perspective on it. As with Mario, it becomes even more apparent the videogames can do the same thing.

After looking at the list of the ten most important video games of all time, there are some interesting choices. Some with which I would agree and some not so much. I think the ten most important games would have to follow criteria in which the game pushed the video game medium forward in terms of the way games are played and the way in which people viewed them.

Games on the list like Tetris, Doom, and Sim City I believe follow this best. They were all essentially the games that started out their genre, became well known among the public, and besides being the first they were very well done.

Now there are some games on that list which I will admit I had never heard of, so I would have to refrain from commenting on their impact on the industry. However, I do consider myself fairly well know in video game history and some of those games I have never heard of, so perhaps they aren’t very influential to genre, because if I don’t know about it, chances are the general public doesn’t either. And if they don’t, then how can those games affect the way people viewed them. But it is very possible that those games may have influenced their own genre, so they still may follow a criteria of pushing the industry forward.

Also, something I don’t quite understand is how they can only list Mario Bros. 3 and then list the whole Warcraft series. It doesn’t make much sense when you consider that the original Mario Bros. paved the way for the third. Also, thinking to Mario64 which shaped the way many 3D games are today.

It’s an interesting list and probably not too far off from being correct in what they were trying to accomplish from it. This list goes to show just how video games are becoming a text that needs to be documented and kept track of and probably re-edited in the future. For example, I can imagine 5 years from now Wii Sports making it on that list, if the Wii continues to shape gaming in the way it is doing with its motion control.

Yipes! Getting caught up in the Mid-term rush and Spring Break, I’ve fallen behind on the blogging. I’ll have to pull double-time this week.

Anyway, after reading the short article done by William Gibson about Playstation 3’s Home, I would have to agree and disagree with him at the same time as to whether or not Home is forming a Metaverse.

When I had first saw Home I thought it had looked pretty amazing and seemed to be the big kick start Playstation 3 has wanted. Virtual worlds have always been an idea that has captivated people in different ways like The Matrix, Second Life, Animal Crossing, etc. Home seems to try and make it the most realistic example of a universe within a universe. The people all move and react based on our own reality, there are no random samurai battles or leveling up. This gives it the sense of a “realistic” Metaverse. However, I see the people controlling these avatars are what are going to make it appear unrealistic.

Only a few will take full advantage of this virtual world by making microtransactions so that their avatar with have all the latest clothes, furniture, emotions, etc (Then again maybe that is a lot like real life). The rest of the Home universe will probably be sitting in the lobby screaming, “Who want’s to play Resistance with me?!” The only way I can imagine this kind of behavior could be combated is if Sony gives lots of options to everyone. But only time will tell whether Sony can fully develop its own Metaverse.

I’ve been playing Paper Mario for Gamecube in anticipation for the one coming out on Wii. The Wii Paper Mario looks to bring an interesting twist on 2D and 3D gaming at the same time. But that’s a blog for another time.