Digital Cream

Australia does not have a category for videogames on a par with the USA’s “M” rating, for games which are for those 17/18 years or older. This means such games are barely shaved down to squeeze into the M15 rating, advised for 15 years of age, similar to the USA’s “T” rating. Or the games are kept out altogether, though this is more rare. There is a revived debate about whether to allow games to be classified as R18. In doing so, they would match the ratings for movies, which have the same distinction between M15 and R18. (continued »)

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth District has ruled that a California Law that would require stiffer penalties for minors purchasing violent video games and more stringent labeling requirements is unconstitutional.

“We hold that the Act violates rights protected by the First Amendment.” - The Honorable Judge Callahan.

Once again another court joins to rule that games are a form of protected speech. Read more about it here at the Video Game Voters Network.

I have finished and released a fiction project which is minor and experimental (aren’t they all?) but hey, it’s a release. See it at A Very Special Shutdown Notice. As I explain in the About page, my main goals are to popularize and explore the Simulation Argument and transhuman issues; to build an audience for my eventual game Pod Tycoon; and to drive some traffic so I can exercise my site in preparation for release of the first Picture Game Platform game I am hosting, called Taboo Snaps. Please check it out and let me know what you think by leaving comments on this post.

Once the site starts to show up reliably in search engines, I will make a push for a viral spread-the-word campaign. For now, don’t make any special efforts to spread the link around. Stay tuned for my request for you to do that soon!

Results Show Need for Continued Improvement by Movie, Music, and Some Game Retailers

I read this report by the FTC with interest. It supports my general argument that it should be up to parents to enforce age ratings and pressure retailers to do the same, voting with their dollars as they do so. I expect many retailers will continue to improve. Those that don’t will be all the easier for parents to keep their kids from frequenting. (continued »)

My son Dylan urged me to play Portal, a new game contained in Valve’s “Orange Box“ product. I already had good reasons to check it out– an amazing design riff; a Cinderella story of birth as a student project at DigiPen; and I heard bizarre rumors that it exhibited a real sense of humor. However, watching Dylan fall through an infinite chain of portals while flipping the gravitational axis made me fearfully recall a childhood viewing of The Man With The Golden Gun which put me off the hall of mirrors for years. Dylan assured me that it was not nearly as confusing as it looked, but as he gleefully recounted to his friend Harry yesterday, I once got lost in a single room in BioShock. (I crept around a bloody lab table, came upon the door through which I entered the room, exited through it thinking it was a new door, and then wandered in confusion wondering why everything looked vaguely familiar.) In any case, I screwed up my courage and gave Portal a go. I was delighted in all the ways that the game’s many fans have already extolled, but I want to especially point a prophetic finger at a feature of the game which I predict will soon be commonplace, and the game world made all the better for it: Portal has optional commentary by the game creators, much like a DVD commentary track. This is very cool and I am bursting to tell you why. (continued »)

Gday me heartys! So it be that on Talk Like A Pirate Day a story swings upon me decks. Though ‘t be a sore burden t’speak o’ video game laws in this gamesome tone, the laws o’ the sea be the laws o’ the sea, and speak like a landlubber may I not.

Grab yer tankard and roll a barrel to the foredeck as I give ye the news from Oklahoma, far over the rollin’ waves in the New World. It just so happens that a right wise wig-wearin’ man o’ the law there, deemed he a stop t’a law forbiddin’ young scalawags from buyin’ certain video games. (continued »)

I’ve been playing BioShock on the 360 for a few weeks now, often in the evenings when my brain is too puddly to code but not ready for sleep. My son Dylan has been watching me and he has been playing it himself. I will likely write a few posts about it. In this post I want to extol the game’s overall mood of imposing, sinister breakdown and corruption. I was a great admirer of its ancestor System Shock which had a similar mood. (continued »)

Video games, like movies and books, are a nascent but promising form of artistic speech and as such must remain outside the power of any state to outlaw them by a different standard. This kind of law has been defeated on unconstitutional grounds in many states. Pursuing this kind of law wastes taxpayer money and defuses the impetus to take real, effective action against the serious problems of youth violence and antisocial behavior, both at home and in society at large.

Californians, please consider visiting this site opposing this video game law and pass it to other Californians. It helps you urge the governor to give up on his efforts to pass a law making it illegal for minors to purchase certain categories of games.

It’s unlike me, multiplayer enthusiast that I am, to play a solo game. But Oblivion (to which I am at long last getting) is a delightful change. For one thing, it’s a beautiful game, with some genuinely artful visual compositions and decent attempts at an epic story full of moral questions. But it also makes me think about how my sense of being heroic in Oblivion is a nice change from the MMOs I usually go for.

There are some great things you can do and feel in a world that revolves around *you* that you can’t do in a multiplayer-oriented world, no matter how much the latter tries to make you feel like The Hero. I wonder if there will be a bit of a pendulum swing the other way now that so many gamers are so heavily into World of Warcraft, that within a few years there will be a big hunger for a game that makes the individual player feel central and unique and big and strong.

In design as well, I astonish myself by sometimes thinking of game ideas which are solo in nature. Most of my ideas remain multiplayer focused, sometimes in an asynchronous and casual way where I think some real gold waits to be discovered, but I do get the odd solo-oriented idea now.

Here is a repost from Wired Magazine online which I like a lot. It illustrates how the threat of corruption from new forms of entertainment have long arisen in society. 

The Culture War: How new media keeps corrupting our children

US senator Charles Schumer says some videogames aimed at kids “desensitize them to death and destruction.” But dire pronouncements about new forms of entertainment are old hat. It goes like this: Young people embrace an activity. Adults condemn it. The kids grow up, no better or worse than their elders, and the moral panic subsides. Then the whole cycle starts over. Here’s how the establishment has greeted past scourges. (continued »)