(David) Play It!

This session we will visit two renditions of “Mario Bros.”! What makes this topic so noteworthy is the concept that people will take something that’s established and tear into it or modify it to make it their own. The term, as described in our class, is Bricolage: An act of transformation by which a new and original style is formed through plunder and recontextualization as a challenge to the hegemony of the dominant culture. The following examples certainly are new and original, and they borrow heavily or outright steal from the Mario series! The only thing that needs to be asked: Do they challenge the power and solidarity of the dominant gaming culture?

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=5768.0

Our first example is “The Mushroom Engine”. In this game, you play the entire thing backwards! You start at the end and walk backwards to the beginning, being careful not to cause any time paradoxes by collecting too many coins or by not reverse-killing a goomba that the game predetermines you killed. It’s as confusing as it sounds, and by the time you finish, your brain will be scrambled backwards!

What this title gives is something new through the use of something old. We all know Mario, and the games are very straightforward, jump and run to the end, and the forward level design in this game shows the very most straightforward of them. However, the axis of time is what’s off kilter here, and the challenge? It asks us, why do we accept the same conventions and gameplay for so many years and so many dollars, when we could be experiencing entire new dimensions of gameplay? Just imagine how different your games would be, Metal Gear Solid, Rockband, Halo, if you had to play them backwards? I am having a hard time even imagining it because the companies have enforced their policy of “forwards time” and linear gameplay so strictly on us.

http://zarat.us/tra/offline-games/eversion.html

The last example is a gamed called “Eversion”. It looks like a happy sunny Mario clone, and a poorly disguised one at that, suited for ten year olds, right? I can sum up the game in this phrase taken from their website.

“NOT INDICATED FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION”

That’s right. The game holds, if I may use a clichéd term, a dark secret. You have a power called “Eversion”, which allows you to move to parallel universes where things are slightly different: perhaps a bush is a bit more overgrown so you can stand on it, or a grass wall has decayed a bit so you can pass. You will use this ability to avoid obstacles and progress further and further, finding new areas to use your eversion power. The true twist unfolds bit by bit as the game goes on, but I won’t post spoilers!

What this game seems to challenge is both the happy go lucky atmosphere of the Mario series (along with their true rip-offs, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, too many to list really) along with, as with the Mushroom Engine, the straightforward nature of the games. There are always static bushes in the background, clouds, blocks, and so forth. What if they weren’t static pieces of background, and they actually mattered in the game? It sounds simple but it’s a revolutionary concept in gaming, which is, why don’t most objects in games do something?

I’ve beaten both games myself, and can highly recommend them for the surreal experience they give, particularly to fans of the genre. I’ve been playing Mario for years, have been getting bored of them for a few years less, and enjoying these games all the more immensely for it. I know they might be hard, and you might not have free time, but these games don’t ask for too much, so please beat them and post here!

As a note, Mushroom Engine is much shorter, perhaps half an hour, while Eversion might take up a full day for the casual player.

Bioshock: I’m a new addict!

Hey Guys! So I played an interesting game this week, Bioshock! When my friend first let me borrow it he explained that the object of the game was to kill little girls. I took it from him because I figured it would give me plenty to talk about, I wasn’t particularly excited to kill children (that was my disclaimer). Anyway, so I put the game in and it took me through the start button and then there was a small background story about who the character I was playing was. Then, all of a sudden all there was on the screen was fire and water, the game had started and I had no clue!! I’m ashamed to say that I stared at the screen for a good minute before I even though about pushing a button and carrying on with the game. This game was particularly challenging in the sense that it takes a bit of skill in handling the remote. You have to use the joysticks and the other buttons are all used to attack. What was particularly difficult for me was not being able to see the character that I was playing. For example, when I played the Mortal Kombat game I could see which character I was supposed to be. What I found was that because I couldn’t see the character the game sucked me in even more because I WAS THE CHARACTER! There was no role playing involved.

               Finally I figured out my way around the fire, out of the water and into what looks like a castle. I move around and get into a submarine thing which closes and begins to descend into the water. As the submarine moves around I can see sort of and underwater community, but it seems to be deserted then all of a sudden a projector goes off and starts to tell a story of a man that was tired of all the restrictions that the world had imposed on people and he set off the create a hedonistic society where people could fulfill the utmost desires. His initial goal was to create a type of utopia, an anti-fascist and anarchist society. Well, apparently something went wrong and everyone turned into zombies and now the projector informed me that I had the luck to have crashed right in the snake bit. That’s when it hit me that I was in the water after a plane wreck…yeah I’m kinda slow sometimes. So, that’s when I hear a voice on a radio, since I’m on easy mode the game instructs me to pick up the radio, the voice tells me that he is going to help me get out alive and that I need to get to higher grounds and so my first mission begins.

             What interested me the most was this idea, in the video game, of how careful people need to be about their desires. Let’s face everyone presented with and opportunity to live out every single one of their fantasies and desires would be ready to go. This notion that our desires can bite us in the ass really got to me, it’s the age old idea that too much of a good thing can be bad. The story was put together quite nicely and I kind of enjoyed playing the game. By the way I haven’t gotten to the part where I kill little girls yet. Apparently she’s protected by a big metal robot and she’ll show up as I advance in the game. I didn’t get too far so I’ll keep you guys posted on the progress. That’s it for today! Have a good one.  

Cesia.

(David) Piracy Rates for the New Release: Demigod!

Alright, so this should probably be the last update about piracy, so we can get back to the fun gamey stuff! On April 9th, a game for the PC called “Demigod” was released, and with that release was an interesting decision by the game developers. They chose –not- to put in any DRM protection into the game; their logic was that it harassed the honest buyers and their solution was that in order to play the game online (which was its main appeal) you’d need to have a legitimate copy anyways.

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/346815/

Here are the announced figures for the game: 18,000 people bought the game legitimately, and over 100,000 people pirated it. Things are looking very poor for the company in light of this, amongst other problems, and it appears that their faith in the consumer may not have paid off. What is someone supposed to do? If you put too much protection on a game it backfires horrendously, like in the case of Spore, and is worse than if you left your game naked. If you do leave it naked, though, and go by the honor system, no one will buy the game anyways and they’ll just pirate it. What is the solution??

The OnLive Cloud computing system

http://www.redherring.com/Home/25965

The link above talks about Cloud computing. In this, all of the computing power is with the company and they send you the images on your monitor. Basically, you don’t own the computer or game, just the tv and controller/keyboard. Piracy would, in theory, be impossible with this because there’s no game to spread around after release. The problem with this? The US is woefully lacking in the high speed internet power needed to effectively deliver enough information to have a great gaming experience. Many other countries are moving to fiber optics while we’re still stuck in high speed cable.

Advertising in Games

http://www.blindsociety.com/blindspot/2007/06/

Lastly, this link talks about advertising in gaming. Advertising, known as commercials here, basically pay for the television we watch, so why not games? We could have commercials during loading screens and product placement in games, so the advertising companies pay for everything and thus, even if you pirate the game all of the advertising is intact (since you would weave it into the game) The problem? http://www.filmhobbit.com/games/Advertising-In-Gaming-Bombs-With-Consumers-2102.html

The study above says that gamers don’t really pay attention to ads in games, so it might repel otherwise willing companies. The temptation to continue charging more and trying to pound pirates will also continue, because if you can beat piracy your revenue theoretically goes up. What is the final solution to all of this? Likely it will be a combination of several things, such as those above. Definitely though, piracy will never truly die out, in our new digital age it’s here to stay. I wonder if we are living in the golden age of pirates, or if this is simply an omen of things to come?

1. Demigod cover. [Online image] Available http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/Demigod_Cover.jpg, 4/19/2009. 2. OnLive System. [Online image] Available http://www.redherring.com/Home/25965, 4/19/2009. 3. Ads in Gaming. [Online image] Available http://eduncan911.com/archive/2007/01/27/if-you-watch-ads-you-should-get-free-stuff.aspx, 4/19/2009.

(David) DRM: A History of Combatting Crime and Criminals

When last we spoke, I went over the sheer power modern pirating has; pretty much anyone can do it without cost. Even consoles are not safe, though at the moment they take a little more technical finesse to pirate games for. How have companies begun to react to this?

Digital Rights Management: DRM. Essentially, it is anything which allows manufacturers to put limitations on the software (and sometimes hardware) which you buy. This ranges from forcing your game to connect online so they can check if it’s a legit copy to only allowing you to install the game three times for the rest of your life. The game companies have acted very harshly and tried to put the hammer down on pirating. Here’s an example where the game “Spore” will cease to work if it doesn’t connect to the internet in 10 days.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52547

The problem, of course, is what happens when you go on vacation? In the cases of games which only install three times before they stop working, what happens if you get a new computer, then have to format it a few times because of a virus? The community of gaming, like pirating, is much more savvy and aware of these things, particularly because it’s already very difficult to operate a computer for most of the population.

http://torrentfreak.com/spore-most-pirated-game-ever-thanks-to-drm-080913/

If you would take a moment to browse the title of the above link, it appears that many people have pirated Spore because of the DRM, as opposed to the DRM slowing it down! This is an amazing phenomenon, simply because we have seen many ages of censorship and cracking down on media. Comics have been neutered, as well as television, movies, and books, but this single incident has cost EA (the publishing company) many millions.

I will say, in my honest opinion that this is because of the internet. The internet has given power to the consumer, the public masses, that they have never before enjoyed. If a comic was censored you would have to either a) buy it because you like comics or b) go without any. If a television show had a very unpopular policy, let’s say that they increased the amount of commercials cutting five minutes off the show, you had a similar a or b choice. On the internet, though, you have the right to free information.

If you don’t like a company, you can pirate their games. If you want to know what a company is actually doing, searching a blog post describing the company policy can be done on the inside of 20 seconds. People have actually bought copies of Spore, found that the DRM was so harsh they couldn’t get it to work, and then pirated it so they could get a working copy!

There is an interesting repeat of history here, considering the give-and-take of companies cracking down on these crimes and the people snapping back. I have no particular citations, but look at the current anti-drug laws in the US. Many of the offenders of marijuana use in prisons are small time users, they are often not the people who poison the supply of drugs, nor are they the people who make all of the profit, nor are they the people who produce the majority of it. The laws only serve to punish the common person who wants marijuana, and leaves the true targets and drug lords untouched. It only serves to make the public angry and cost millions in dollars.

In gaming, DRM is aimed towards stopping pirates, people who crack the software so that anyone can use it with a simple download. However, the people who are most affected are the people who buy it; they will have to deal with the inconvenience of typing in serial codes and having the internet verify their copy. A true coding genius, of which there are many, will simply strip the entire setup of DRM off of the copy of the game (And they will; no company has created a DRM that wasn’t cracked in weeks, sometimes even weeks before the game was in stores!). Once they distribute it, the pirates will never ever have to deal with it, so the pirates go completely unaffected while the mass public is punished.

My point here is that these sorts of anti-criminal policies (3 strikes laws, zero tolerance, DRM, etc) rarely hit the intended targets and always indiscriminately nail the public. The public will react to this treatment and rally against them until they disappear. It’s simply that the internet allows it to happen much faster and more viscerally than in person.

In short, the culture industry can only go so far before the mass public lashes back. The power they (the Culture industry) are purported to have is great and affects the way we live, but we the people are not animals to be kicked around. On some level, they are following our rules as much as they like to believe that we are following theirs. The question that comes up, then, is, “Does the culture industry simply fill a role that we desire at our will, or does the culture industry impose its own will over ours?”

-David Kim

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe!!!

Hello fellow bloggers!! So….I was finally able to buy the Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe game!!! YAY!! Before I move on to talk about my thoughts on this game let me just say that I am flabbergasted at how much money needs to be invested into gaming. I spent 100 bucks on two games AND they were both used. Now that I’ve written this down I feel like someone is going to tell me that I’ve been ripped off. Since I don’t have the money to invest in games I’ve decided to just play the games that my friends will let me borrow. If any of you have ideas on how to get my hands on a certain game for less, please let me know.

Now that I’ve vented about the extraordinary prices of video game, on to the good stuff!! I’ve had so much fun playing Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Literally I’ll come home from work and I’ll play it until I realize I have to be up in five hours and I better get to sleep. They’ve really put a lot of effort into how detailed all the characters are. For example, after a fight superman always ends up with a torn up shirt and a bruised eye. Personally I love to think of myself as a pacifist, but this game truly brings out my violent side. The only thing that bugs me is that all the women have the same bimbo looks: curvy, big breasted women in extremely revealing costumes while all the men are covered up or monster looking. Look, I know that video games target men, but really?  Is it that necessary? It also bugs me that none of them are strong enough to beat every guy, well, except for wonder woman, she kicks ass!!! By far my favorite character to play, especially when every once in a while I accidentally hit the right buttons and she goes into a full split and grabs her opponent by the ankles and slams him/her against the floor!! Don’t worry my brother already enlightened me to the fact that if you pause a match and hit one of the option it will tell you how the moves for that particular character work. Well guys I’m off to continue enjoying spring break. The next game that I’ll be playing is one where the objective is to kill little zombie girl, my friend said that I should play in the dark all by myself and something tells me that I should do the opposite. Have a good one!

Cesia

(David) Video Games: The Pirating Phenomenon

Here’s an interesting subculture of video gaming; many people pirate games. This is a type of slang for people illegally downloading full games without having to pay for them, and given the low cost and high return of the act (it is virtually impossible to catch or prosecute for this crime) it has become a very popular sub sect of the internet.

People have always pirated games; back in the days of floppy disk based games and companies have always tried to deter them. For example, vital information necessary to beat the old floppy games were often printed in the instruction manual so that you would have needed to buy the game (and the physical manual) in order to ever beat it. Why would I bring mention to it now, given its long history?

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/13/world-of-goo-has-90-piracy-rate/

The above link details the relatively recent game “World of Goo” which has a 90% piracy rate, meaning that for every ten people who are playing it, only one of them has actually purchased the game. To add to the list (feel free to drop down a line or two if you don’t like lists) the popular game “The Sims” is not only the highest selling game for the PC, but is also the second most pirated. 1

To analyze this as a cultural motion, remember that pirating software was once the domain of arcane computer wizards who were light years ahead of the rest of the population. Though they would steal, they could only do so much damage to the sales as a whole (To note, even estimating damages can be difficult! You need to take into account those who would not normally purchase the game even if they couldn’t pirate it, for example). Now, though, more and more American teenagers are finding it easier and easier, through bittorrent or underground forums, to pirate their games and save their precious disposable income.

The figures for World of Goo and the Sims force a new question; what happens when the cultural majority begins to steal from the industry? This is a matter of intellectual property, which is a major holding of the world of manufactured culture. If our readings are to be believed, they make their entire living on dictating what we should think. What are the cool fashions, what it means to be a man, what it means to be a family, which is all converted into a product: Jeans, sunglasses, cars, and so forth.

Video games are, in many cases, what the culture dictates we should want to play. They produce the game that fills a need, we buy it, and they profit. If everyone is stealing, does it mean that people don’t value the game as much anymore? Of course not, it is simply that the allure of free stuff is too great. However, like video games, the internet is such a new phenomenon that there are too many legal and cultural issues to deal with, given its new power.

To say it shortly, the new rising culture is the culture that pirates games. If the culture industry is supposed to control our thoughts so that we buy whatever they want and conform to whatever standards they want, what is supposed to be done when people can simply steal it off the internet? Imagine the outcry and panic if teenagers had a 100% foolproof way to shoplift the latest fashions from the mall and, more importantly, the industry feels helpless against their shrinking wallets. Why make fashions? Why even have an entire industry devoted to culture if you can’t profit off of it. If, to be frank, the product of your machine has run out of your control?

The next update will address what’s been happening in that field, but for now, think about Frankenstein’s monster bursting out of his creator’s lab, the culture industry losing its grip on the appetites of the hungry bargain hungry consumerist masses.

1. http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2008-081204/

-David Kim

One Big Rant About Rockband

              I thought I’d write about s game that many of you will be familiar with, rockband. You guys all know that I’m a horrible video game player and imagine my surprise to find out that there was a bar in North Hollywood that hosted rockband night, which I went to a couple of weeks ago for my friend’s birthday. I tried to play the game, but I found it not that interesting. What I did find interesting was how many people form their own rockband groups and attend, religiously, every rockband night; there was even a group that dressed up!! It reminded me of those people that form military-like groups to go paintballing, you know the ones that wear combat gear and they run some drills before the games start. Anyway, call me crazy but I didn’t really like the game, it might be because I don’t know how to play it, while everyone else seems to know what they’re doing I just look like a fool. It wasn’t just the buttons that I didn’t get it was really also the screen, I have no idea how the point system works. I mean I understand that it gets people involved in the same activity during a party, but you’re just standing there playing a couple of buttons. I am much happier pressing random buttons on the DC comics vs. Mortal Kombat game, which I am getting tomorrow!! (thank you payday).

             I was talking to my friend about my experience over lunch the other day and I mentioned I had gone out to a bar and had completely butchered a couple of songs as I tried to learn how to play rockband. Thankfully I bit my tongue and didn’t make too much fun of them because she, excitedly, told me that her and some of her girl friends get together and have rockband night. They each have an instrument that they play in the game and once a week they all have a little too much to drink and they play rockband for a couple of hours. Not only that, but my co-worker is one of the people that goes to rockband night every week!! Then it hit me, I have no clue how I’ve avoided playing this game until now, apparently I’ve been living under a rock! I might have to give the game a second shot, who knows maybe next time I’ll be writing about how addictive it is. Have a good one.

Cesia.