NoG Blog: The Respect that Games Deserve

This article was inspired by Video Games and Facing Controversy, a YouTube video made by Daniel Floyd. Daniel Floyd is a twenty-five year old video game animator that “lectures” on topics such as this in a funny and insightful manner while providing some nice animation in the background (similar to Zero Punctuation in style, if not in substance). I strongly recommend you check them out! Here is a link to his YouTube channel where you can browse his videos.

Video games are rarely viewed in the best light by society. They've had more than their share of controversy thrown at them over the years; one example was the recent Mass Effect “SEXBOX" controversy over a brief sex scene in a thirty-plus hour game. People assumed the worst, even going as far as to say it was a "virtual orgasmic rape" simulator. The media often portrays video games as devices designed to corrupt children, and whenever the topics of childhood violence, social ineptitude, or addiction are brought up, fingers point to video games as the cause. As Daniel Floyd says in his video, “When controversy arises, our opposers don’t look at a game studio and see a team of artists, they see a team of toy makers that have gone too far.”

During Daniel’s video he spoke at length about a game that recently came under fire called “Six Days in Fallujah,” a third person shooter from Atomic Games about the second battle of Fallujah. The game was originally to be published by Konami, but when it was revealed, many decried the game as disrespectful to those who died in that battle; the height of bad taste. Konami quickly bailed and Atomic was left without a publisher. However, if Konami thought that this game was in poor taste, why did they give it the green light? They had to know it would stir some controversy, so why did they back off at the first sign of criticism? Daniel's take; “By caving in, you validate all of the accusations. You have legitimized slander founded and ignorance, and you guarantee a larger outcry the next time you consider a project like this."

“These games are not being judged by their content,” Floyd says, “they are judged because they are games.” He points out that other forms of media, such as books and movies, have explored difficult subjects such as war, genocide, sexuality and hatred with great success; these artists dare to show humanity’s dark side. “They venture into uncomfortable territories and find the truth hidden within. This is the stuff art is made of. What is it about games that disqualify them from exploring this harsh territory?” Until games are taken seriously, we will never be able to see their true potential as a respected form of media and art. To achieve this we must stand up for our medium, be open to criticism, and embrace what games have become and what they will be.

So what do you think? Do video games have the potential to be something more than what they are now? Do you think that they should be able to touch on dark subject matter that many other forms of media have touched upon? Do you believe that video games can ever be respected on the same level as movies, plays, or literature?

Charles (CoRn)

NoG Blog: The Perfect DRM?

Ah, Digital Rights Management, you foil of peace-loving gamers everywhere. It's a fact: If not for DRM, gamers would be a harmonious bunch. The petty squabbles dividing platform and franchise devotees would melt away with the delicate trickle of a spring thaw.

Okay, maybe I'm overstating things. Still, you can't deny that DRM, newspeak for copy protection, is a contentious issue. Nearly everyone sits squarely on one side of the issue; either you believe that DRM is the sacred right of every game publisher who are only looking to protect their properties, or you believe that DRM is an ineffective inconvenience that only punishes paying customers and does nothing to quell piracy.

There have been a lot of requests for NoG to cover the DRM debate, but it doesn't feel like there's a lot of new ground to cover. The debate hasn't moved in the last twenty years; the arguments for and against Ubisoft's new restrictive DRM system are essentially the same as the arguments for and against code wheels in the 80s. What new could we bring to the argument?

So instead of the typical point/counterpoint discussions that have typified NoG so far, this week we're trying something different. The four of us are going to lay out our ideal DRM solution, and you're invited to submit yours! It can be serious, it can be wacky, or it can be anything in between. Who knows? Maybe between us, we can come up with the perfect DRM!

Spencer Williams

NoG Blog: Only a Game?

"It's only a game." It's the refrain I've heard over and over in the course of my twenty-five years as a gamer. From my grandparents who couldn't understand why I was so enraptured by the computer screen, to gamers themselves who chant the mantra every time gaming is blamed for some tragic violence; it seems that "only a game" is the answer to many difficult questions.

But is it really only a game? Speaking for myself, gaming has helped me through a lot of difficult times in my life. Without being too specific, around twenty years ago I'd lost my father and thought I was going to lose my mother. One of the ways I coped was by playing Final Fantasy IV. Playing the game helped me forget the bad things happening to me, and I really do think I came out better for it. To this day FFIV is my favorite of the series, not because it has the greatest story or game play, but because of what it represents. It feels like a warm blanket. It helps me to feel comfortable and secure, and never fails to calm me down.

For many people they are just games. But for others, you can't divorce the experience of a game from the greater context of the life in which it is played. Just as in any hobby, the meaning of an experience is limited only by how much one vests into it. Gaming can mean as much or as little to a person as that person desires.

There are many ways in which games can effect our lives, and I'd like to highlight two extremes. On the one hand, there is an article On Hot Blooded Gaming, Kreyg wrote Video Games: My Guardian Angel. I encourage you to read the whole article, but here's an excerpt:

School wasn’t the only place where things were rough for me, life at home wasn’t exactly peaches and cream. You could say that my parents didn’t have the perfect marriage. There are too many times I can recall my parents having intense fights and screaming contests. Unlike the kids from school, I could immediately escape the madness going on. Most of the time I would close the door to my room and turn up the game volume. When I was playing whatever game it was, I felt like I wasn’t a part of the war going on outside. Video games were my safe zone when the fighting broke out. I didn’t exactly know what was going on, but as a kid, I was scared of all the yelling and knew it wasn’t good. I just wanted it to go away, and playing video games helped make that happen for me. My parents eventually got divorced when I got to middle school. It was a rough time, but I knew I could pop on a game and forget about my troubles for the time being – and I did just that.

Kreyg's story is one I think a lot of us can relate to, and hopefully he'll be joining us for an interview on the next Nation of Gamers.

On the other side of the coin is this video by CirrusEpix and posted at ScrewAttack.com.



Obviously I disagree wholeheartedly with the sentiment in this video, but it still illustrates that, for good or ill, games can have a profound impact on our lives.

What do you think? Are games important to you beyond the enjoyment they provide? Have you had a bad experience made better by gaming, or a good experience that turned bad? Do you feel that games help or hinder your development as a person? How has gaming effected your life?

As always, feel free to comment here or take it to the forums for more in depth discussion!

Spencer Williams

NoG Blog: Enough Handholding, Already!

I'll preface this post with a quote from a wise, influential sage: "It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how." My argument is that modern game developers have forgotten this simple proverb. They don’t trust that their audience can discover how to have fun with a game on their own, and as a result mainstream games have lost an entire dimension of challenge.

Half-Life 2 is a good example of this, but let’s first refresh our memories of Half-Life. One of the mini-boss enemies is the Apache helicopter, an armored flying machine that’s mostly impervious to small arms fire. The easiest way to deal with it is to shoot it with rockets until it explodes; in fact, your first encounter with one is immediately after you pick up the RPG in a cliff side crag. But you aren’t handcuffed to your rockets. Its rotor and engines are actually vulnerable to pistol fire, if you are brave enough to stare it down. You could even try to air burst it with a few well-timed hand grenades. Contrast that to its HL2 analogue, the gunship. It’s only vulnerable to rockets, and there’s a convenient infinite rocket crate near every single gunship battle in the game. There is a certain technique to aiming your rockets so they can’t be shot down, but otherwise that’s all there is to fighting a gunship: shoot x3, restock at crate, repeat. Same goes for the Strider: the only interesting part about fighting one is the mad dash to the win button---erm, ammo crate, that is. (Final Citadel Strider battle excluded, that one was different and fun.)

As I said in my opening, modern games have lost a dimension of challenge. The dimension that HL2 lost is the balance of resource management, i.e. spending your rockets/cells/summonable ninja squirrels now or saving them for the next big boss battle. If there will be an infinite ninja squirrel token crate next to the mini-boss who’s only vulnerable to ninja squirrels, why even bother conserving your most potent ammo? Other games may have lost different dimensions of challenge, be it self-preservation, or directional awareness, or what have you.

That’s just one example of how modern games hold the player’s hand way too much. If you listen to the developer commentary in HL2 Episode 1 and the Orange Box, you’ll discover that they tweaked their maps to accommodate players who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay attention to their environment. This boiled down to looking up, or deducing that they were endlessly walking in a circle for 10 minutes. Around the turn of the century, video gaming got some much needed good publicity when studies reported that games helped hone spatial awareness and coordination. Can we seriously expect games to keep honing our real-life skills when developers are doing their best to remove the need to use them? Looking up is not “hard mode” for Pete’s sake! Doom 3 might have been repetitive and even a little predictable in the way its monsters popped out of every other wall, but at least it taught its players the valuable lesson: "Just because you're looking forward doesn't mean the monsters will conveniently appear at eye level."

In a way, I think a lot of mainstream game development is being held hostage by the notion that games have to be art. Roger Ebert got gamers’ panties in a twist when he said that games cannot be art, and the industry started trying their darndest to prove him wrong, often at the cost of game play. I think a lot of games were designed to be “experienced” rather than “beaten,” which is to say their primary focus is just to entertain the player for 6-8 hours, rather than present challenges that the player derives pleasure from overcoming. That brings us back to my favorite quote in the world: “It’s fun to have fun, but you have to know how.” Modern games, I contend, are not designed for gamers who can walk up to a challenge and have fun conquering it; they are designed for a mainstream audience, not gamers per se, who (the developers believe) can’t have fun on their own. Well, maybe they'll never even learn how, if developers keep it up.

The perfect hardcore game, in my opinion, is a sandbox with a goal in the middle. It’s also hard; not Nintendo-hard, but it’s a challenge that may require multiple attempts or a lot of problem solving. The worst possible game is a straight, narrow, corridor of game play, with the goal at the end, and which is consumed and subsequently discarded in 2-3 hours. STALKER and System Shock 2 stand defiantly close to the "sandbox" ideal, brutally slaying newbies yet gradually rewarding them as they master various skills; and I have a hunch that HL2:E3 and HL3 are wavering somewhere in the middle, not yet sure in which direction to fall. Modern mainstream games are not necessarily bad, but they are inching further and further toward the "narrow corridor," as developers try to handhold players for the best “experience” rather than the best game.

Editor's note: I'm glad to feature our first community column here on the blog. If you want your article to appear on the blog, feel free to either submit it to nog((at))deadworkers.com or post it at the forums! As always, feel free to comment here, or take it to the forums for more in depth conversation!

Jess, AKA EsBe

What is a gamer, anyway?

Ask ten different people what they think a gamer is, and you'll likely get ten different answers. For many, the term is a point of pride. For others, it's a term of derision. Is it possible to coin an objective definition for the word, "gamer?"

Let's get the pat definition out of the way.

gam·er
n.
One who plays a game.

While technically true, that definition ignores the subtleties in the word. It's still a useful starting point; I think we can all agree that a gamer necessarily plays a game. Beyond that is where things start getting fuzzy.

Amongst the gaming community, gamer is used as an exclusionary term denoting pride and a sense of belonging. When one gamer represents him or herself to another as being a gamer, the term connotes a set of specific criteria. Usually, the game type in question is assumed. Someone self-identifying as a gamer at a LAN party would be assumed to be a video gamer, while the same self-identification in a board game shop would be interpreted differently. Beyond that basic information, the term gamer gives some insight into a person's identity. By describing oneself as a gamer, one tells others that gaming is a significant part of his or her life.

That's how we come to the exclusionary bit. My sister is not a gamer. That doesn't mean that she never plays games; she's actually quite  taken with Diner Dash, and I've roped her into a game of Settlers of Catan now and then. It means that gaming is not a significant part of her character. Not only would she not describe herself as a gamer, but even someone who saw her play games would be hard pressed to do so. Especially when contrasted with me, a self described gamer, it becomes abundantly clear she is not a part of the gamer clique.

Here is where the trouble starts. Whenever a group forms, members start to codify what being part of that group entails. Whether the group forms around a religion, an ideal or an activity, eventually someone will try to say that another person can't be a part of the group because they've transgressed some unwritten rule.

I know I'm being overly vague. Let's get specific; Right this very second, someone on the Intertubes is accusing another person of not being a real gamer. Gasp! The horror! Maybe the offending person admitted to pirating games. Maybe they said that they don't like Valve, no matter what all the fanboys say. Maybe they even said something unforgiveable, like... "Bobby Kotick isn't such a bad guy after all!" Another gasp!


Every gamer has a different set of criteria used to define what the term means. Many go far beyond the basic definition, incorporating a set of values, deference or antagonism to certain brands, genre tastes, and on and on. Often, arguments arise when people use the same word but assume different definitions for said word, and the purely subjective nature of gamer is a prime example of that. Most people assume they know what a gamer is, while the person they're talking with may think it's something vastly different.


So, let's get to questioning those assumptions! What's your definition for the word gamer? Do you have any criteria that you consider when deciding whether another person is a gamer? Do you think an objective definition would be possible? What would that definition be?

Feel free to comment here, or take it to the forums for more in depth conversation!

Spencer Williams

Welcome to NoG Blog!

Maybe you've heard that the Dead Workers Party is starting a new podcast called Nation of Gamers. It's all about games and gaming, but unlike most gaming related shows the focus won't be on the hosts; it'll be on you, the listeners. Every week we'll have a different topic or series of topics, and we'll solicit input from you both before and during recording.

Part of that will be this blog. Once or twice a week, there will be a post here designed to get the discussion started. We'll talk about individual games, but we'll also discuss wider issues in our hobby. From the business of making games to how games affect your life, we'll discuss it all.

Keeping with the community spirit, eventually we'll want blog posts from you. Have a topic that you'd like to discuss in detail? This is the place to get things started. Start thinking about it now, because we'll have some submission guidelines in place soon.

As always, let us know what you think! Have an idea for the blog or the show? Feel free to share! NoG is your show just as much as its ours, so make yourself at home!