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I want to play Portal again after reading this article.

I thought that this was somewhat relevant to our recent conversations in class. Most games give you the illusion of control and freedom, but Portal is one of the few games that sort of parodies this idea in a way, and instead tells you flat out what to do and what you should be doing.

I think that a game like Portal is art. It may be short, but it makes you think about things that other video games generally don’t. Are open-ended games truly open-ended? No. Is it good or bad to trick players into believing that it is?

GLaDOS is essentially the equivalent to the game designer. It’s like the game designer has a voice now through GLaDOS, who is giving you orders throughout the entire game. The only choice we truly have is to turn the game off, and even then that leaves the game unfinished and hanging. You might decide to play another game, but you’ll just be following contextual clues that the designer has set in place for you anyway.

If there were no constraints, it’s arguable that a game would really have no true ending. Despite the constraints that are set in place, I think that players do still have some degree of freedom. It might not be true, absolute freedom, but if you feel like plundering caves in a game like Oblivion instead of completing the main storyline, there’s nothing there to stop you from doing that.

I don’t even know where to start with this article. It’s so short yet I have so many complaints.

It’s no surprise that somebody who is playing Halo 3 and using FPS/action movie examples in his writing (Splinter Cell, Terminator, James Bond) is going to claim that video games haven’t achieved that “high art” status (or even just the “art” status). He’s playing all the wrong games. Of course first-person shooters aren’t going to yield “high art.” I think that in order to yield the “art” that this guy is looking for, you need a good, thoughtful narrative.

It’s bad journalism on his part to only be focusing on first-person shooters as an example for how the video game industry hasn’t created anything artful. I’m going to take a guess that he prefers run-and-gun games and has barely ever played an RPG in his life.

To his credit, he mentioned interactive fiction from the 80s, but he failed to give any examples of this while simultaneously contradicting himself a few paragraphs above when he said that “the games that come closest to achieving artistry tend to be non-narrative.” Make up your mind, Radosh. Are you a ludologist or narratologist? …Or did you just get stuck writing about a topic that week that you had no knowledge of?

Moreover, to be comparing video games to cinema is ridiculous. There is no interaction with movies. You are not controlling the actors. Isn’t the creation of interaction in video games an art in and of itself? Isn’t narrative an art? What about graphics?

I’ll give it to him that good graphics don’t make a game art, but when you combine interactivity, narrative, and graphics in such a way that it moves the player like a good movie would, hasn’t art been created?

He makes the claim that cut scenes undermine the sense of involvement/play, but I don’t think that this is always the case. Some games do this very well. The Final Fantasy series, for instance, has always had cut scenes that have enhanced the story of the game without boring players and making them wish that it was over. Cut scenes are not always detrimental to a good game.

People shouldn’t be close-minded and just assume that games haven’t reached that “art” status because they are too afraid to venture outside of their FPS, run-and-gun genre. Lack of “art” may be present in shooters, but I can immediately write a laundry list of RPGs/adventure games that are truly art:

- Final Fantasy 3, 7, 8

- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, or Ocarina of Time

- Legend of Dragoon

- Earthbound

- Chrono Trigger

- Bioshock

- Mass Effect

- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

- Secret of Mana

- Super Mario RPG

- Vagrant Story

- Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

- Xenogears

- Star Ocean

- Shadow of Colossus

IGN’s article about 5 new things in Assassin’s Creed II (i’ll be going step by step down the list)

5. You can swim.

- ok, so in the first gane you’d be trying to kill a templar who was waiting patiently deep in the harbor on a boat. in order to reach him, you had to jump from pillar to pillar across water and of course youd flick the damn joystick wrong pre-jump and fall in the water and die. weren’t you pissed? i was. anyways, now you can swim and even use water a s a tool for hiding from gaurds as well as killing them. you can now pull guards over the ledges beside bodies of water, i presume in the same way you could pull the gaurd off the lighthouse ledge in the first level of splinter cell 3 (the end of that series, as far as im concerned). im glad they changed this, because things like swimming or jumping are something i would refer to as essential gameplay functions. water is just water, designers, dont be lazy, just make it work.

4. The notoriety system

- i actualy had no beef with this in the first game, but it has nonetheless been changed, and i agree, for the better. you are now able to tell your wanted level aside from your visibility, which is cool because it means you can now manage a high wanted level by being more mellow during environment navigation. i think this is an outstanding change, but not something im going to rant about.

3. Fast Travel

- i rather enjoyed plodding through assassin’s creed by horseback, and when you were done with a misson, you were automatically sent back to the chapel, which was perfect. It removed the unecesary travel rather than just negating travel alltogether. you can now trnasport to specific sides of a city if you wish not to travel, and that makes it very convenient when accesssing the town that you will own, and i imagine, imProxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 ove gradualy, in this sequel. i think if you fast travel everywhere, your going to miss out on alot of the game. travel was a large part of the first assassin’s creed and without it, you would never discover half of the smaller non-critical objectives, such as the flags or killing the templars, etc. i will be using this feature, but only in moderation. it’s tough to do a fast travel system and a normal way of traveling because it negates the latter, but hopefully ubisoft has found a way to manage the two options.

4. Yea, you own your own town

- IGN was sort of vague about the details for repairing it, but you do have a town of your own with a chapel, weapons dealers, and the like. its a neat idea, i just hope you can use it thorughout ost of the game instead of not being able to fully utilize it until the last mission or so. thats pretty tight, but i dont understand why an assassin would need to or even be capable of owning his own town. perhaps i will find out.

5. you can bust a cabbage open

- IGN has a picture of you about to hit a gaurd with a mace, and the floowing picture is the point of contact. thats pretty awesome, especially if its satisfying to do. they also mention you can disarm gaurds and use their axes and whatnot against them, though i fail to see why i would choose to actively fight guards with their own weapons when mine are designd for murder. we’ll see how this goes, but i dont see this feature being something that could go wrong. it’s mostly just cool. and thats essentially videogames.

as always, here’s the video link. check out those city environments, right? right.

sick, sick, sick.

…Ok, first of all its so refreshing to read an article that isn’t praising games for their amazing hidden values in regards to whatever. you know what i mean…

This article effectively says many of the things i feel about games as an artistic medium while also acknowledging the fact that not all games need to be art. i was especially fond of radosh’s point about graphics distracting developers form creating artistic games – this is something i have been pushing for a while now. we, as game designers, have an obligation to not concern ourselves with graphics – even the shittiest games can have great graphics, but graphics are merely representational even at their highest level and have nothing to do with effectively entertaining gameplay. the focus of games need to trnasiton from new-age to creative – the blockbusters, as they are called, are going to start selling less because gamers will become sick of the content. somehow, a game like need for speed shift sells 100 million copies, but crap games with good graphics and a stolen narrative aren’t about to keep selling in an environment where gameplay is the focus. i believe we must explore the ludology of games as designers and from that exploration, the artistic ideas will begin to flow naturally. the best art is discovered and then perfected rather than forced.

On the other hand, ive never felt like games are failign to achieve their potential. i dont need art games, i need fun games. mindless fun is a supreme art form and i think people become distracted by an argument over artistic value when in fact the truth is games have legitimacy regardless of their artistic value -  we can call a game good or bad based on so much more than its trancendant aspects. i dont have any idea where the need to call games art dervies from, but if we as designers maintain fresh and fresher gameplay, the art will reveal itself after the medium begins to become exhausted in terms of entertainment value.

Finally, “…once Halo 3’s initial thrill wears off we will be left with a vague dissatisfaction, and once again we will ask ourselves, Is this really as good as video games can be?” yea, i never experienced any lack of satisfaction (though i do admit my fanboyism). halo’s multiplayer gives it unlimited replay value in the same way the super smash bros brawl can also be played for 100 hours a week between me and my roommates and still be fucking unbelieveably fun. replay value is the esscence of good gameplay. solitare and monopoly arent something you play through once and never touch again – we’re so goddamn distracted by narrative and artistic value that we fail to notice that a narrative demands linearity, and linearity means only so much can be derived from a game. i only play through Bioshock twice in my lifetime because i dont care for it after that. do i love it? absolutely, but its not a game that you can always return to. i appreciate games like this but i don’t want all games to be trying to achieve artistic excellence, that shit just sounds frustrating. art is a venue meant for viewing, because ‘playable’ art would have to lead players to a conclusion or a transcendant moment, meaning the objective of the (art) game is to make players realize something outside of the game rather than continue playing it. if as a game designer you choose to make games that explain to players meanings of life, fuckin go for it i guess but the only difference in objective between games and video games is the video. video doesn’t mean art, it means non-physical representation. so on that note, im going to keep my focus where i believe it belongs, on making fun ass videogames, and and i believe your ignorant if you believe that makes me in any way unintelligent. i will explain this to anyone who inquires.

The Tribune Company recently took interest in my firm to partner up, so we will need to grow exponentially. We created a website called ChiTownDeals.com and launched Halloween weekend. If you are familiar with Groupon we are similar to them. ChiTownDeals is not our only project we currently have a lot on the table especially with our new partnership with the Tribune Company.

We are an up and coming firm that is growing rapidly and I am excited to offer this opportunity to Loyola students. We have had interns from the Art Institute in the past and were able to offer jobs once completed.

What we did is we created a website called ChiTownDeals.com and launched Halloween weekend. If you are familiar with Groupon we are similar to them. ChiTownDeals is not our only project we currently have a lot on the table especially with our new partnership with the Tribune Company

About our company:

Zima Studios, Inc. is the proprietary innovator of ChiTownDeals.com. Zima is a Chicago based media development firm with over 100 developed websites and satisfied customers. Located in River North, we have been offering quality turnkey solution services, along with affordable pricing to our customers since 2005. We specialize in unique concepts, social network marketing, search engine optimization and viral exposures. Our mission is to create innovative and new ideas that regular day Internet users can benefit from with necessity and functionally. We know that Internet presence is vital to any business in today’s competitive market. We ensure that with quality web design and production services, Zima projects such as ChiTownDeals will enable your business to grow and progress.

We are all about teamwork and always will be. With both Co-Founders being from a sports background they are always on the look out for team players who are open to a fun, yet hard working culture. With our bright green walls you will never find a boring day at Zima.

We are looking for the following:

INTERNSHIPS – NON PAID (for now)

2 Graphic Design Internships

2 Videography Internships

2 Web Design Interns

Internships can start ASAP or in the spring.

Please have your students contact us at internships@zimastudios.com if they are interested in applying. If applicable please also have them send us a resume as well as a portfolio.

Our main website is: http://www.zimastudios.com

Current project: http://www.ChiTownDeals.com

Our office location is in River North

636 N Orleans

Suite 2 S

Chicago IL, 60654

Employment type:  Contract

My freelance consultancy, Polished Solid:
http://www.polishedsolid.com

is currently working on a content-heavy site for a musician in London, and I need an experienced drupal developer to help us finish the project very quickly. The project has been going very slowly due to other time commitments. The project needs someone who has the time and can perform under a very, tight
deadline. I am willing to compensate for time and experience. I just really need to get the project finished. The deadline I must meet is
Nov. 23rd.

Here is the remaining, main functionality that needs to be implemented:

Lightbox functionality for Photos and Text-Heavy Notes
Integrate TinyMCE in CMS.
Views for all pages of the site (there are approximately 22 different sections)
Help with theming would be a plus, but not required.

Please email me at deangela@gmail.com or call me at 215.694.8657 if you are interested. If you know of experienced drupal developers, please feel free to pass this along. I’d very much appreciate it.

At GamePolitics.com there was a recent article about a new Game Treatment program that opened up within an addiction recover center.  I’d heard about the game treatment centers before, places where people are basically cut off from whatever game (usually MMORPGS.)  At this particular resort in London, occupants participate in a 12 step abstinence program in order to kick the habit.

So why is a video game addiction dangerous, what harm was ever caused by an individual sitting in front of a screen for hours at a time.  Well, Hilarie Cash who co-authored Video Games and Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control said, “patients use their electronic media so obsessively that they stop sleeping and eating properly, ruin relationships with loved ones, suffer repetitive use injuries such as eye strain and carpal tunnel syndrome, and develop depression and anxiety, among other things.”

I looked up the treatment center online but couldn’t find the cost for treatment, but further research revealed dozens of other facilities, all ranger from somewhere in the low 10k to almost 25k.  And you know what?  Almost every news article I read listed World of Warcraft as the prime source of the addiction. 

I’ll admit, I had my brief (*cough*two year*cough*) stint with WoW as well, and at the ripe age of 15 I was heavily invested in my level human mage, and I had friends who were like-minded in their devotion to raiding and farming gear.  But to the point of needing in-patient assistance?

Reading the article linked above (here it is again) I learned that in Europe and East Asia, clinical video game addiction is a widely known thing, with treatment centers sprouting up all over the place.  With one case even listed of a Korean man dying after playing a game for 50 hours straight with little to no breaks.

Rodash contends that video games at this point are not aren’t because they do not  “use the fundamentals of gameplay — giving players challenges to work through and choices to make — in entirely new ways” or “embrace the dynamics of failure, tragedy, comedy and romance…enhancing the player’s emotional and intellectual life.”  I guess this is true.  But that’s only if you define art as something that evokes this emotions or desires in the viewer, or participant.

Rodash contributes a lot of artistic value in the weight of the narrative.  Going as far as to say the games with the deepest narrative were the old 80’s text based role playing games.  Having played my fair share of those (Think early eras of Relms of Hell, dreadful adventures where you /open door, /use potion) I disagree.  However, I would say Halo 3 isn’t art, or maybe, it isn’t good art.  There’s no newness that Halo 3 contributed to the first person genre, or even to online play.

A well-written novel is a work of art, Monet splotching lotus flowers on a strip of canvas, Kid Robot’s graphic t-shirts, a photography exhibit in the 623 building, etc… why not a gorgeous video game?

Forget high art and low art.

art [ahrt] -noun
1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

I played the add-on to Fallout 3 called Point Lookout which brought new characters, weapons, and an new area to explore. The main quest involve playing privy to 200 year game of cat and mouse between two people who spent their lives competing with each other. Along the way you meet people who worship native fruit, moonshine makers, and get a piece of you brain taken out. Beyond the new weapons with enhanced critial, the swampy, bayou like setting is very engaging and is enjoyable when playing through a second time

So after making my way into the tower I found a man who is William Akers but he turned out to be someone else and said Rubi had killed his son. So someone has set her up. We find out that the person who set her up is the same one who stabbed her. He has turned out to be the leader of the drug trade in China and William Akers’s son was the only person in his way. SO its back to Hong Kong again, so more and more of the same old killing guys jumping over stuff. This game is really starting to blow and I should have chosen easy insted of Hard because its getting so difficult that I spent 4 hours on this one chapter alone. Anyways the chapter ends with you making it through a dense jungle base to some other base.