You had better Believe it. More Randomness.
It was maybe a couple of days ago when I jokingly mentioned in an Aim chat room with random members of the Idle Hours’ crew that, “mobile games are the future of interactive entertainment.” If I recall, everyone had a nice laugh at that. Then I spent the next two days reading GDC articles where real industry professionals spoke at great lengths about how mobile games are the future of interactive entertainment. It makes sense with how handsets have been getting nicer and more technological. Probably the coolest thing I read was a overview of a speech given by the creator of Final Fantasy: Before Crisis which if I am not mistaken, and I may be so please check your favorite news source, is being developed exclusively for Sony Erikson handsets in Japan. Apparently you can fuse materia in the game by taking pictures with the built in camera and depending on the primary color of the photo in question, it will decide the effect of the fused materia. Now that is cool.
If mobile games are indeed the future, and the games make you pay more attention to the world around you, then please, sign me up. It sure beats the glut of games on the shelf in my room at the moment. I am in such a desperate mood for something new. In my opinion the coolest game in the world at the moment is N. It won the Audience Prize at the Independent Game Festival a couple days ago in the Web/Downloadable category. It deserved the accolade. I play the game for about two hours every night.
At first, when Nintendo launched it’s line of classic NES games for the Gameboy Advance I was sort of miffed that they were doing nothing but releasing games they have already released nearly a dozen times a piece even if they were budget priced at twenty bucks. But now, as a person who reads every piece of game related writing on the internet, and having a very keen interest in a form of historical archiving of classic games Nintendo has my approval in this move. I am longing for when my income allows me to pick up the first two Zelda titles so I may play them while I sit and watch movies or especially when I should be working. Matt, I know your reading this, hurry up and give me that twenty dollars for my Atari Jaguar. But if they do not freaking release a classic version of either Punch-Out and Skate-Or-Die in the next batch of games I will be pissed. I am warning you Nintendo. The wrath of the Idle Hours’ crew will be upon your head.
I check Gamespy every so often to see if they have an updated entry in their Girlspy column written by one Zoe Flower. I first came across her writing in OPM when she wrote a piece about Hideo Kojima’s masterpiece series Metal Gear Solid. I really enjoy reading her articles because they really do represent a girl’s opinion on video games. I was talking to James about the Girlspy column tonight and how the first thing any guy would notice about it is how strikingly beautiful Miss Zoe Flower is. One can easily see this if they watch the abomination that is G4 because she is on the channel almost as much as Cliffy B. But I honestly think she represents an important voice in the game industry. A voice that is unabashedly female. Most female game journalists hide their femininity and try to prove they can hang with the guys. Which I think is kind of dumb. They have an opportunity to write about being a legitimate minority in the industry. As sad as it sounds, even though I have no immediate interest in the fact, it is sort of refreshing in some way to read an article about video games in which the writer spends an entire paragraph talking about how she asked Tetsuya Mizuguchi to go shoe shopping with her in a Tokyo boutique. How Mr. Mizuguchi answers the question says a lot to me about him as a person and as a game developer, especially since he was the creative force behind Space Channel Five, which was a very feminine game. If I had a gender change I would be really curious as to what type of shoe he would find nice.
Speaking of game journalism and the like, I have been following as much backlash as I possibly can from that New Games Journalism article the Guardian posted sometime last week. There’s a million links I could post following some of this but I am writing this on a laptop in my living room with no internet connection while I watch Just Married. One of the articles linked in the piece was the same one I linked to before, Tim Rogers’ Dreaming in an Empty Room article from Insert Credit. In the comment section below the New Games Journalism article a veritable thrashing of Tim Rogers as a game journalist took place in which people called his articles “ugly, self-indulgent trash.” One person said, “I would rather have my teeth knocked out with a sledge hammer than read anything Tim Rogers wrote” or something to that effect.
Seventy-Five percent of why this article is available to you on Idle Hours right now is because of Tim Rogers’ “2003 Insert Credit Fukubukoro.” His first entry in the piece outlines a trip he took to Korea in which he played Starcraft in a Korean PC bang. It is the most inspired, self-indulgent, brilliant video game related article I have read in my entire life. People can say whatever they please about Tim Rogers as a writer, but I think the guy is brilliant, and when others say that all he writes is self-indulgent trash, I have to disagree and question exactly what they want out of an article about video games.
Now as a whole, I think this whole New Games Journalism thing is good. As the internet is going to kill print magazines in this industry, the magazines have to do something to offer new content. Every print magazine follows the same news/previews/reviews format. These usually show up in the mailbox after everyone has already checked IGN or Gamespot or Evil Avatar or whatever three weeks prior. The new content should come in the form of a New Games Journalism style. Theory should be discussed. The cultural impact of video games as a new expressive medium should be written about in a smart and dare I say educational way. Content outside of what one could get online in a fresh manner. Sadly when the internet kills print media, EGM will still be standing. Screw EGM. I have never read such a useless piece of garbage in my life. EGM is better used as toilet paper than something one would go to for their news or their evil, worthless reviews. Tim Rogers said Famitsu will stand forever as well. But I can’t read Japanese, yet, so it doesn’t do me any good at the moment. Everyone says Edge is great too, and probably the closest thing print media has for subjective video game writing. So maybe it will stand at the end as well.
I have said countless times that I hope New Games Journalism would destroy all archaic forms of video game writing but now, as someone who honestly has spent more time this past two weeks thinking and reading about games more than playing them, I realize this is stupid. Objective game writing has as much place in the world as subjective game writing. I, as a gamer, need my news/previews/reviews game journalism as much as I need my theoretical, analytical, personal game writing. Just as the film industry has its Entertainment Weekly’s and Film Comment’s, so should gaming have the equal equivalents.
One last thing for the morning. I am a very open minded gamer. There isn’t a genre I know of at the moment that I dislike. But more so than that, I put my personal feelings aside a lot of times, so I can fully try and comprehend what a game is saying and make a judgment on what a game is saying and if the ends justify the means. What I am getting at is I believe wholeheartedly in God. The Biblical, Christian God. With that said, the fact that in Ocarina of Time, the story involves the world as we know it in the game to be created by someone other than the Christian God. But I as a person understand the fact that the game isn’t real, and game worlds can create any story they want. My first multiplayer gaming experiences happened in seventh grade when my classmates and myself played Doom on a lan. The teacher won some sort of grant or something so she had eight computers all linked up. Someone installed the shareware version of Doom on the computers so away we went everyday, when we should have been studying some form of science. Doom has hell-beasts and other assorted demonic things. I was freaking addicted to Quake 3 forever and I can’t think of a stage in the entire game that doesn’t have a pentagram somewhere. But I didn’t let those things cloud my judgment on the games in question. Those games are both masterpieces in every right.
But I can’t figure out for the life of me, as video games now have a whole subgenre called Serious Games dedicated to making real world news event seem even more real by simulating things like presidential elections and assassinations, why no one can create religious games that are at least fun. I remember reading something buried in the Insert Credit archives about how some religious groups are trying to develop playable games. Maybe I should try and find that news bit and see if I can obtain copies of the games and try to review them as someone who believes in the messages the games are trying spread. I think that would be interesting. There’s even a game backed by like the world’s largest hate group called Ethnic Cleansing and although that is one game I will never play despite the fact I have played and enjoyed demonic games in the past, which are games whose messages I don’t agree with, I have read that the game in itself is at least playable.
I was going to finish this up by saying that I take back all the nice things I said about the Minnish Cap and then try and take to task every single Zelda game post A Link to the Past but instead I will just post a link to this review written by one Eric-Jon Waugh of Insert Credit fame, because he does it better than I could ever hope to. I will say, that with the exception of Ocarina of Time, I honestly haven’t finished a Zelda game since A Link to the past because Nintendo hasn’t changed a single thing about them in ten years. And quite frankly I am tired of them. And believe me, I am talking about the freaking Windwaker as well, but absolutely not because of it’s art style which is the most beautiful thing this side of Panzer Dragoon Orta, but because it is as trite a game as I have ever played.
And since I have the internet now, here is the link for the greatest piece of video game related writing of all time.
Good night friends.
Wes.
If mobile games are indeed the future, and the games make you pay more attention to the world around you, then please, sign me up. It sure beats the glut of games on the shelf in my room at the moment. I am in such a desperate mood for something new. In my opinion the coolest game in the world at the moment is N. It won the Audience Prize at the Independent Game Festival a couple days ago in the Web/Downloadable category. It deserved the accolade. I play the game for about two hours every night.
At first, when Nintendo launched it’s line of classic NES games for the Gameboy Advance I was sort of miffed that they were doing nothing but releasing games they have already released nearly a dozen times a piece even if they were budget priced at twenty bucks. But now, as a person who reads every piece of game related writing on the internet, and having a very keen interest in a form of historical archiving of classic games Nintendo has my approval in this move. I am longing for when my income allows me to pick up the first two Zelda titles so I may play them while I sit and watch movies or especially when I should be working. Matt, I know your reading this, hurry up and give me that twenty dollars for my Atari Jaguar. But if they do not freaking release a classic version of either Punch-Out and Skate-Or-Die in the next batch of games I will be pissed. I am warning you Nintendo. The wrath of the Idle Hours’ crew will be upon your head.
I check Gamespy every so often to see if they have an updated entry in their Girlspy column written by one Zoe Flower. I first came across her writing in OPM when she wrote a piece about Hideo Kojima’s masterpiece series Metal Gear Solid. I really enjoy reading her articles because they really do represent a girl’s opinion on video games. I was talking to James about the Girlspy column tonight and how the first thing any guy would notice about it is how strikingly beautiful Miss Zoe Flower is. One can easily see this if they watch the abomination that is G4 because she is on the channel almost as much as Cliffy B. But I honestly think she represents an important voice in the game industry. A voice that is unabashedly female. Most female game journalists hide their femininity and try to prove they can hang with the guys. Which I think is kind of dumb. They have an opportunity to write about being a legitimate minority in the industry. As sad as it sounds, even though I have no immediate interest in the fact, it is sort of refreshing in some way to read an article about video games in which the writer spends an entire paragraph talking about how she asked Tetsuya Mizuguchi to go shoe shopping with her in a Tokyo boutique. How Mr. Mizuguchi answers the question says a lot to me about him as a person and as a game developer, especially since he was the creative force behind Space Channel Five, which was a very feminine game. If I had a gender change I would be really curious as to what type of shoe he would find nice.
Speaking of game journalism and the like, I have been following as much backlash as I possibly can from that New Games Journalism article the Guardian posted sometime last week. There’s a million links I could post following some of this but I am writing this on a laptop in my living room with no internet connection while I watch Just Married. One of the articles linked in the piece was the same one I linked to before, Tim Rogers’ Dreaming in an Empty Room article from Insert Credit. In the comment section below the New Games Journalism article a veritable thrashing of Tim Rogers as a game journalist took place in which people called his articles “ugly, self-indulgent trash.” One person said, “I would rather have my teeth knocked out with a sledge hammer than read anything Tim Rogers wrote” or something to that effect.
Seventy-Five percent of why this article is available to you on Idle Hours right now is because of Tim Rogers’ “2003 Insert Credit Fukubukoro.” His first entry in the piece outlines a trip he took to Korea in which he played Starcraft in a Korean PC bang. It is the most inspired, self-indulgent, brilliant video game related article I have read in my entire life. People can say whatever they please about Tim Rogers as a writer, but I think the guy is brilliant, and when others say that all he writes is self-indulgent trash, I have to disagree and question exactly what they want out of an article about video games.
Now as a whole, I think this whole New Games Journalism thing is good. As the internet is going to kill print magazines in this industry, the magazines have to do something to offer new content. Every print magazine follows the same news/previews/reviews format. These usually show up in the mailbox after everyone has already checked IGN or Gamespot or Evil Avatar or whatever three weeks prior. The new content should come in the form of a New Games Journalism style. Theory should be discussed. The cultural impact of video games as a new expressive medium should be written about in a smart and dare I say educational way. Content outside of what one could get online in a fresh manner. Sadly when the internet kills print media, EGM will still be standing. Screw EGM. I have never read such a useless piece of garbage in my life. EGM is better used as toilet paper than something one would go to for their news or their evil, worthless reviews. Tim Rogers said Famitsu will stand forever as well. But I can’t read Japanese, yet, so it doesn’t do me any good at the moment. Everyone says Edge is great too, and probably the closest thing print media has for subjective video game writing. So maybe it will stand at the end as well.
I have said countless times that I hope New Games Journalism would destroy all archaic forms of video game writing but now, as someone who honestly has spent more time this past two weeks thinking and reading about games more than playing them, I realize this is stupid. Objective game writing has as much place in the world as subjective game writing. I, as a gamer, need my news/previews/reviews game journalism as much as I need my theoretical, analytical, personal game writing. Just as the film industry has its Entertainment Weekly’s and Film Comment’s, so should gaming have the equal equivalents.
One last thing for the morning. I am a very open minded gamer. There isn’t a genre I know of at the moment that I dislike. But more so than that, I put my personal feelings aside a lot of times, so I can fully try and comprehend what a game is saying and make a judgment on what a game is saying and if the ends justify the means. What I am getting at is I believe wholeheartedly in God. The Biblical, Christian God. With that said, the fact that in Ocarina of Time, the story involves the world as we know it in the game to be created by someone other than the Christian God. But I as a person understand the fact that the game isn’t real, and game worlds can create any story they want. My first multiplayer gaming experiences happened in seventh grade when my classmates and myself played Doom on a lan. The teacher won some sort of grant or something so she had eight computers all linked up. Someone installed the shareware version of Doom on the computers so away we went everyday, when we should have been studying some form of science. Doom has hell-beasts and other assorted demonic things. I was freaking addicted to Quake 3 forever and I can’t think of a stage in the entire game that doesn’t have a pentagram somewhere. But I didn’t let those things cloud my judgment on the games in question. Those games are both masterpieces in every right.
But I can’t figure out for the life of me, as video games now have a whole subgenre called Serious Games dedicated to making real world news event seem even more real by simulating things like presidential elections and assassinations, why no one can create religious games that are at least fun. I remember reading something buried in the Insert Credit archives about how some religious groups are trying to develop playable games. Maybe I should try and find that news bit and see if I can obtain copies of the games and try to review them as someone who believes in the messages the games are trying spread. I think that would be interesting. There’s even a game backed by like the world’s largest hate group called Ethnic Cleansing and although that is one game I will never play despite the fact I have played and enjoyed demonic games in the past, which are games whose messages I don’t agree with, I have read that the game in itself is at least playable.
I was going to finish this up by saying that I take back all the nice things I said about the Minnish Cap and then try and take to task every single Zelda game post A Link to the Past but instead I will just post a link to this review written by one Eric-Jon Waugh of Insert Credit fame, because he does it better than I could ever hope to. I will say, that with the exception of Ocarina of Time, I honestly haven’t finished a Zelda game since A Link to the past because Nintendo hasn’t changed a single thing about them in ten years. And quite frankly I am tired of them. And believe me, I am talking about the freaking Windwaker as well, but absolutely not because of it’s art style which is the most beautiful thing this side of Panzer Dragoon Orta, but because it is as trite a game as I have ever played.
And since I have the internet now, here is the link for the greatest piece of video game related writing of all time.
Good night friends.
Wes.
posted by idlehours at 7:43 AM
2 Comments:
The lord, yes with a lower case l, has nothing to do with the death and destruction of life as we know in video games. That is why we see no religious based games. Self induligious and self gratuatuded in what we do or say stands in the way of fun and entertainment period. So, grammarical error but who is grading, that is why we periodically escape to never never land (video games) from time to time, only to find an ends to our means.
Bad spelling and grammar all. Life only teaches us, WHO CARES?
The only thing is the way sometimes I play games in ways that directly reflect my own beliefs. I bring some form of myself, good and bad, into every game I play.
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